I was once transporting antipasti and no one wrote HN post about it :(
Antimatter has been transported for the first time
61–70 of 222 posts
Re: Antimatter has been transported for the first time
#62From a layman's point of view antimatter seems like an ideal spacecraft fuel. It's as energy dense as E = mc^2 allows, and if you have infrastructure to make it, the only input you need to produce it is electricity. Being able to transport it seems like an important piece of that puzzle. Production and storage would need to be scaled by many orders of magnitude, but that's merely an engineering problem...right?
> ideal spacecraft fuel
If you're ok with the looming threat of total annihilation.
I suppose at least it will kill you faster than your neurons can communicate so you wouldn't even notice.
Re: Antimatter has been transported for the first time
#63I definitely was expecting "transported" to be some kind of teleportation when I clicked this link. Too much sci-fi!
Surprisingly, teleportation is easier.
Re: Antimatter has been transported for the first time
#64From a layman's point of view antimatter seems like an ideal spacecraft fuel. It's as energy dense as E = mc^2 allows, and if you have infrastructure to make it, the only input you need to produce it is electricity. Being able to transport it seems like an important piece of that puzzle. Production and storage would need to be scaled by many orders of magnitude, but that's merely an engineering problem...right?
> ideal spacecraft fuel If you're ok with the looming threat of total annihilation. I suppose at least it will kill you faster than your neurons can communicate so you wouldn't even notice.
If you're on a spacecraft you're sitting on a tank of rocket fuel anyway. It's the same problem, just slightly less total.
Re: Antimatter has been transported for the first time
#65I am curious about how much energy needs to be expanded to contain the anti-matter. Say it the matter/anti-matter is to be used for propulsion/energy generation can we reach a threshold were we are actually energy positive
Re: Antimatter has been transported for the first time
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wolfram Alpha says it's approximately _one-sixth_ the kinetic energy of a mosquito in flight
When we're talking scales like 10^-23, "one" and "one sixth" are comparable enough to warrant an "approximately".
I'm not sure! One is just barely within human scale and one isn't. I think I could feel the impact of a mosquito on a sufficiently sensitive patch of skin. I'm not sure I could do the same with one sixth of a mosquito. Its like the difference between something I can lift (100 lb) and something I definitely cannot lift (600lb)
Re: Antimatter has been transported for the first time
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do we know there are no antimatter galaxies far away from us?
Mass in the universe appears to be (very) roughly uniformly distributed, so even if there are large bodies of antimatter far away in the universe there would have to be a transition boundary somewhere between here and there where the universe goes from being mostly matter to being mostly antimatter. The universe is big and stuff would sometimes cross this boundary and get annihilated, and if this happened it would be…
Great explanation. One thing to add: annihilation happens with a very specific energy. Even if it was very far away and redshifted and dim, a "bubble" with a very uniform color (photon energy) would be plainly visible.
Re: Antimatter has been transported for the first time
#68From a layman's point of view antimatter seems like an ideal spacecraft fuel. It's as energy dense as E = mc^2 allows, and if you have infrastructure to make it, the only input you need to produce it is electricity. Being able to transport it seems like an important piece of that puzzle. Production and storage would need to be scaled by many orders of magnitude, but that's merely an engineering problem...right?
Not familiar with the subject so genuine question. HOW would antimatter be used as fuel? There is energy released in matter antimatter annihilation, but where would the force to move a spacecraft come from?
The always excellent PBS Space Time recently did an episode on antimatter drives:
Re: Antimatter has been transported for the first time
#69pssh, antineutrinos are transported all the time!
That's a contentious statement! We're not sure if they are or aren't.
More accurately: we aren't sure if antineutrinos are the same or different from neutrinos!
Re: Antimatter has been transported for the first time
#70From a layman's point of view antimatter seems like an ideal spacecraft fuel. It's as energy dense as E = mc^2 allows, and if you have infrastructure to make it, the only input you need to produce it is electricity. Being able to transport it seems like an important piece of that puzzle. Production and storage would need to be scaled by many orders of magnitude, but that's merely an engineering problem...right?
Not familiar with the subject so genuine question. HOW would antimatter be used as fuel? There is energy released in matter antimatter annihilation, but where would the force to move a spacecraft come from?
my absolutely-non-expert guess is that it would work much like any other fuel? Combine with matter, get a lot of head out of it and use that in the best way we know.