space.com — Antimatter has tremendous energy potential, if it could ever be harnessed. A solar flare in July 2002 created about a pound of antimatter, or half a kilo, according to new NASA-led research. That's enough to power the United States for two days.Laboratory particle accelerators can produce high-energy antimatter particles, too...
Mar 17, 2007 View in Crawl 4
ziffelMar 18, 2007
I bet Exxon already owns the patent.
katana314Mar 18, 2007
"Sir, we've discovered a new type of substance that could power the US for at least five seconds!""Astounding work, Scott! Where did you find out about this?""In the prequel to The Da Vinci Code..."
iancalMar 18, 2007
Actually it's ridiculously inefficient if you are creating it. If you found it, on the other hand, that would be great. Still, it'd be a bitch to convert to useful energy.
jake3988Mar 18, 2007
2. How are we going to get enough antimatter to keep things moving? We can't keep annihilating matter forever - we'll run out.=========Well, we make anti-matter FROM matter. The science behind it is weird because you make anti-matter of out seemingly nothing. The current science behind it is that you smash subatomic particles together at high-rates of speed and anti-matter is formed. Scientists theorize that anti-matter pops in and out of existence all the time (They pop into existence for no apparent reason collide with real matter and then annihilate each other vanishing). Its really neat. Confusing too!
charlotte_webMar 18, 2007
It seems to me that, while this seems like cool, futuristic technology, right now it's hard to see it having a practical application.The problem is that if it takes a solar flare to create a pound of the stuff, that's a helluva lot of energy to create such a small amount. Of course, if it was possible to create antimatter with less energy than you would gain back in a matter/anti-matter explosion, then you'd have the recipe for a perpetual motion machine.I suppose the nice thing about uranium in nuclear power plants is that uranium is naturally occurring, even if it does have to be processed (maybe someone more knowledgeable can speak to how energy-efficient this whole process is). Antimatter exists in such small amounts in the universe that it appears that we would have to create all of it that we use. And then we get to the problem of spending more energy to create it than it releases. And why would you use coal to create energy to create antimatter to create energy for homes, when you could just use coal to create energy for homes.The only real practical application for this, I suppose, would be for energy storage in a spaceship, where you are away from fuel sources for extended periods of time. And then to have power generation on the surface of planets that we are still exploring and haven't started claiming resources from.
randysouthMar 18, 2007
If you don't antimind, it doesn't antimatter.
s1ngular1ty1Mar 18, 2007
Two wrongs never make things right....
jewdiknightMar 18, 2007
You mean it just doesn't matter?
afreytMar 18, 2007
Store it? What are you crazy?You make it as needed. And if there's no good way to make it "cheap as free" you don't. Antimatter is silly-dangerous stuff to keep lying around.
mindstalkerMar 18, 2007
mitrovarr: Actually from what I've read several calculations have shown is is efficient as a space fuel. Look at it this way, its physically impossible for a spaceship to takeoff with enough fuel to make it to mars, relaunch from mars, and get back. You would have to launch several refueling vehicles into space, then you would have to setup some type of mining operation on mars to refuel to get back. The amount of needed fuel is simply too large to fit into one tank and you lose most of it on takeoff because of the weight of the fuel itself. Anti-matter on the other hand while a lot of energy is wasted in its creation is extremely light weight for the energy it can produce so would make a perfect fuel for space missions.For terrestrial uses, yea its fairly worthless, though one MIGHT use it for a bomb simply because they could make an extremely powerful bomb that was very small, it would take a lot of energy to create and be very dangerous to handle. I don't think anyone would do such a thing, but you never know.