Anti-matter - as a method of propulsion.

Austin Stanley · 2002-12-18 13:14:55

As anti-matter is offten brought up in respect to propulsion, I thought it would be benificial to discuss it here.

In order to deal with anti-matter you first have to get anti-matter. Fortunatly they're aren't any anti-matter mines lying around and the stuff must be made.

http://www.engr.psu.edu/antimatter/Pape … i.pdf]Here is a good website about it. but I'll summerise.

The energy necessary for the creation of anti-matter is bound by the laws of physics. The entire mass energy of the anti-matter must be provided, and unfortunetly, the manner in which this is done is usualy very inefficent. The cost can then be expressed like so:

cost=(kg*Ma*c^2)/n

Where kg is energy cost, Ma is mass of anti-matter, c is the speed of light and n is the efficency of the anti-matter production system. The theoretical max of n is 1/2 due to the conservation of baryons (for every anti-particle you create you must create a real particle counterpart).

As you can see cost is strongly dependent upon the efficency n. However, n tends to be incredibly small, right now around 4e-8 giving a cost of $62.5 trillion per gram of anti-proton (assuming energy costs of $0.1 kW-hr). This is much to high to be of pratical use today.

The people at CERN seem certian that they could improve this by 3 or 4 orders of magnitude. But even a n of 2e-4 gives a cost of $25 billion per gram. Which is about 1,000 times more expensive then an equivelent amount of energy in chemical propelents. Even at theoretical max of n=1/2 and a cost of only $5 million per gram, it only starts to approach chemical propulsion's cost. And of course, we can't even come close to this level. So large (kg>or more) amounts of anti-matter are out of the picture until energy costs become much less than there current prices.

But with the improvments projects requiring smaller amount of anti-matter (in the micro to nano range) become possible. I let you guys look over and discuss that part.

mauk2 · 2002-12-24 17:22:47

Ooooooh, antimatter, one of my favorites.

Here is a fat .pdf on the ACMF with more details than you can shake a stick at.

http://www.pr-llc.com/prop/ICAN.pdf]htt … p/ICAN.pdf

http://www.pr-llc.com]http://www.pr-llc.com is a company with a nice website and a definite sense of getting serious about anti-matter.

soph · 2002-12-24 20:13:48

if we could design an anti-matter production facility on a ship, it would be an amazing boon...as far as i know, it would be the only type of propellant you could maufacture in flight...just filter in normal atoms, and take out the antimatter.

theoretically, couldnt you produce endless amounts of antimatter in flight? thus, wouldnt the propellant weight be minimal?

Austin Stanley · 2002-12-28 21:12:17

Unforchently Soph, the creation of anti-matter takes (at least) twice as much energy as can be found in the anti-matter created. This is due to conversion of baryons (protons and neutrons) and leptons (electrons).

Creation of anti-particles must go something like this.

energy -> particle + anti-particle

So you need to particles worth of energy. To create one instance of anti-particles. This is because the baryon or lepton number must remain constant. The baryon number is equal to the number of number of baryons (protons or neutrons) minus anti-baryons (anti-protons or anti-neutrons). Ditto for the leptons number (electrons-positrons). In either case, this number must stay constant, so for every anti-particle created a normal particle must also be created, so that the baryon (or lepton) number stays the same.

Now you can reverse this reaction (ie. particle + anti-particle -> energy), but obviously this results in 0 net energy, so you're not getting anywhere.

Of course this is all in an ideal situation. In reality we can't produce reactions that come any where close to the thoretical maxium efficency of the above equations. Currently the efficency of the creation of anti-matter is around .000004% with some potential to raising .02% in the near future.

And the reverse reaction (anti-matter annilation) is actualy not completely efficent either. Some of the energy is going to go into the creation of neutrino's which interact very weakly and will escape with some of the energy. Some of the muons and pions will have to much energy to be captured and will escape as well (they will later decay into gamma radiation, but to late to be of use to us). So this reaction is actualy not going to be totaly efficent either.

As for collecting anti-matter from space. Apparently anti-matter is quite rare in our corner of the universe. I don't think we've even detected any naturaly occuring out in space, there certianly isn't enough to power a space-ship. I've seen a few studies saying the same is true for harvesting matter from fusion in interplantitary space as well. Matter is more common inside the solar system, but in any case this would be a very slow method of travel. Solar sailing has much more potential.

Phobos · 2002-12-31 21:53:41

One of these days we should build a big anti-matter factory on Mercury. It's the perfect place, lots of solar power and easy to produce the vaccuum you need and it won't be anywhere near Earth where terrorist groups could sabotage the plant.

soph · 2002-12-31 21:59:47

if it is worth the benefits in speed, im sure factories on earth could be built to produce anti-matter--we produce all kinds of useless crap, we could certainly produce something this beneficial.

Phobos · 2003-01-01 15:25:51

There's a number of problems with producing anti-matter on Earth. One is that to produce anti-matter in commercial quantities would draw off a lot our power generating capacity and two I wouldn't want to live within a 1000 miles of an anti-matter plant that produced enough anti-matter that you could see it with your bare eyes. Any kind of industrial accident that releases anti-matter into the environment would reduce the number of zipcodes in existence. Mercury is the perfect place in my opinion. It's just tortured with solar energy and we could put the critical parts of the plant far beneath Mercury's crust so that it's well shielded against meteorite impacts. And if the things blows on Mercury at least most of us will still be intact.

Auqakah · 2003-01-12 11:54:25

CERN has been producing anti-matter for a number of years, and has only managed to produce a tiny amount. I was going to include an interesting link from their website, but they seem to have replaced it with stuff for schools. Oh well. I'll keep looking, though, because I might be looking in entirely the wrong place (knowing me, I am). I'll post the links when and if I find the pages I'm looking for.

But considering the expense and lack of efficiency of producing anti-matter, and discounting new methods of production, I fail to see how any decent, usable amount of anti-matter could ever be produced for use in space flight - or for any other area of energy production, for that matter. Seems a no-go entirely, to me. (And thats saying something. )

soph · 2003-03-10 20:57:30

It would make sense to me that an advanced society would be willing to spend the energy and cost needed on Earth to produce the anti-matter for the spacecraft. Since it isn't being produced on board, the anti-matter's speed and isp benefits may be worth the development cost.

Earth would probably have these resources, as well as perhaps a space-based outpost, and maybe Mars.

TJohn · 2003-03-11 07:32:56

How long can antimatter be stored?

nebob2 · 2003-03-11 11:28:58

Probably not more then a few weeks if even that.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-10-26 17:17:15

Maybe in a future but for now it seems FAR Away into the Future.

Yet new events are observed through science

'A newly-observed Gamma-ray burst might be the brightest space explosion ever seen'

https://interestingengineering.com/scie … -explosion

old article

New and Improved Antimatter Spaceship for Mars Missions
https://www.nasa.gov/exploration/home/a … eship.html
Most self-respecting starships in science fiction stories use antimatter as fuel for a good reason – it’s the most potent fuel known. While tons of chemical fuel are needed to propel a human mission to Mars, just tens of milligrams of antimatter will do (a milligram is about one-thousandth the weight of a piece of the original M&M candy).

What to Know About the Newly Discovered Tetraquark at the Large Hadron Collider

https://gizmodo.com/what-to-know-about- … 1847396650

NASA telescope images reveal brightest explosion ever recorded, as a star collapses into a black hole
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/nasa-te … 39271.html

Astronomers think the powerful gamma-ray burst comes from a supernova: the collapse of a dying star

Matter / Antimatter Mass-to-Energy Conversion, a Future Power Source?

https://www.designnews.com/matter-antim … wer-source

Is Warp Drive Real?

https://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/tech … /warp.html

Ever since the sound barrier was broken, people have turned their attention to how we can break the light speed barrier. But “Warp Drive” or any other term for faster-than-light travel still remains at the level of speculation.
The bulk of scientific knowledge concludes that it’s impossible, especially when considering Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. There are certainly some credible concepts in scientific literature, however it’s too soon to know if they are viable.
Science fiction writers have given us many images of interstellar travel, but traveling at the speed of light is simply imaginary at present.
In the meantime, science moves forward. And while NASA is not pursuing interstellar flight, scientists here continue to advance ion propulsion for missions to deep space and beyond using solar electric power. This form of propulsion is the fastest and most efficient to date.
There are many “absurd” theories that have become reality over the years of scientific research. But for the near future, warp drive remains a dream.
If you would like to know more about the theories of interstellar flight, you should visit the Tau Zero Foundation. Marc Millis, a former NASA Glenn physicist, founded the organization to consider revolutionary advancements in propulsion.
Past articles of warp drive found at this location have been archived.

An exploding star known as the BOAT — “brightest of all time” — appears to have produced a high-energy particle that could be evidence of dark matter

https://www.quantamagazine.org/brightes … -20221026/

The explosion was a long gamma-ray burst, a cosmic event where a massive dying star unleashes powerful jets of energy as it collapses into a black hole or neutron star. This particular burst was so bright that it oversaturated the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, an orbiting NASA telescope designed in part to observe such events.

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2022-10-26 17:20:27)

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#1 2002-12-18 13:14:55

Re: Anti-matter - as a method of propulsion.

#2 2002-12-24 17:22:47

Re: Anti-matter - as a method of propulsion.

#3 2002-12-24 20:13:48

Re: Anti-matter - as a method of propulsion.

#4 2002-12-28 21:12:17

Re: Anti-matter - as a method of propulsion.

#5 2002-12-31 21:53:41

Re: Anti-matter - as a method of propulsion.

#6 2002-12-31 21:59:47

Re: Anti-matter - as a method of propulsion.

#7 2003-01-01 15:25:51

Re: Anti-matter - as a method of propulsion.

#8 2003-01-12 11:54:25

Re: Anti-matter - as a method of propulsion.

#9 2003-03-10 20:57:30

Re: Anti-matter - as a method of propulsion.

#10 2003-03-11 07:32:56

Re: Anti-matter - as a method of propulsion.

#11 2003-03-11 11:28:58

Re: Anti-matter - as a method of propulsion.

#12 2022-10-26 17:17:15

Re: Anti-matter - as a method of propulsion.

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