antimatter propulsion system
This isn't a trick question. Antimatter is exactly what you might think it is -- the opposite of normal matter, of which the majority of our universe is made. Until just recently, the presence of antimatter in our universe was considered to be only theoretical. In 1928, British physicist Paul A.M. Dirac revised Einstein's famous equation E=mc2. Dirac said that Einstein didn't consider that the "m" in the equation -- mass -- could have negative properties as well as positive. Dirac's equation (E = + or - mc2) allowed for the existence of anti-particles in our universe. Scientists have since proven that several anti-particles exist.
These anti-particles are, literally, mirror images of normal matter. Each anti-particle has the same mass as its corresponding particle, but the electrical charges are reversed. Here are some antimatter discoveries of the 20th century:
Positrons - Electrons with a positive instead of negative charge. Discovered by Carl Anderson in 1932, positrons were the first evidence that antimatter existed.
Anti-protons - Protons that have a negative instead of the usual positive charge. In 1955, researchers at the Berkeley Bevatron produced an antiproton.
Anti-atoms - Pairing together positrons and antiprotons, scientists at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, created the first anti-atom. Nine anti-hydrogen atoms were created, each lasting only 40 nanoseconds. As of 1998, CERN researchers were pushing the production of anti-hydrogen atoms to 2,000 per hour.
When antimatter comes into contact with normal matter, these equal but opposite particles collide to produce an explosion emitting pure radiation, which travels out of the point of the explosion at the speed of light. Both particles that created the explosion are completely annihilated, leaving behind other subatomic particles. The explosion that occurs when antimatter and matter interact transfers the entire mass of both objects into energy. Scientists believe that this energy is more powerful than any that can be generated by other propulsion methods.
So, why haven't we built a matter-antimatter reaction engine? The problem with developing antimatter propulsion is that there is a lack of antimatter existing in the universe. If there were equal amounts of matter and antimatter, we would likely see these reactions around us. Since antimatter doesn't exist around us, we don't see the light that would result from it colliding with matter.
It is possible that particles outnumbered anti-particles at the time of the Big Bang. As stated above, the collision of particles and anti-particles destroys both. And because there may have been more particles in the universe to start with, those are all that's left. There may be no naturally-existing anti-particles in our universe today. However, scientists discovered a possible deposit of antimatter near the center of the galaxy in 1977. If that does exist, it would mean that antimatter exists naturally, and the need to make our own antimatter would be eliminated.
For now, we will have to create our own antimatter. Luckily, there is technology available to create antimatter through the use of high-energy particle colliders, also called "atom smashers." Atom smashers, like CERN, are large tunnels lined with powerful supermagnets that circle around to propel atoms at near-light speeds. When an atom is sent through this accelerator, it slams into a target, creating particles. Some of these particles are antiparticles that are separated out by the magnetic field. These high-energy particle accelerators only produce one or two picograms of antiprotons each year. A picogram is a trillionth of a gram. All of the antiprotons produced at CERN in one year would be enough to light a 100-watt electric light bulb for three seconds. It will take tons of antiprotons to travel to interstellar destinations.
NASA is possibly only a few decades away from developing an antimatter spacecraft that would cut fuel costs to a fraction of what they are today. In October 2000, NASA scientists announced early designs for an antimatter engine that could generate enormous thrust with only small amounts of antimatter fueling it. The amount of antimatter needed to supply the engine for a one-year trip to Mars could be as little as a millionth of a gram, according to a report in that month's issue of Journal of Propulsion and Power.
Matter-antimatter propulsion will be the most efficient propulsion ever developed, because 100 percent of the mass of the matter and antimatter is converted into energy. When matter and antimatter collide, the energy released by their annihilation releases about 10 billion times the energy that chemical energy such as hydrogen and oxygen combustion, the kind used by the space shuttle, releases. Matter-antimatter reactions are 1,000 times more powerful than the nuclear fission produced in nuclear power plants and 300 times more powerful than nuclear fusion energy. So, matter-antimatter engines have the potential to take us farther with less fuel. The problem is creating and storing the antimatter. There are three main components to a matter-antimatter engine:
Magnetic storage rings - Antimatter must be separated from normal matter so storage rings with magnetic fields can move the antimatter around the ring until it is needed to create energy.
Feed system - When the spacecraft needs more power, the antimatter will be released to collide with a target of matter, which releases energy.
Magnetic rocket nozzle thruster - Like a particle collider on Earth, a long magnetic nozzle will move the energy created by the matter-antimatter through a thruster.
Approximately 10 grams of antiprotons would be enough fuel to send a manned spacecraft to Mars in one month. Today, it takes nearly a year for an unmanned spacecraft to reach Mars. In 1996, the Mars Global Surveyor took 11 months to arrive at Mars. Scientists believe that the speed of an matter-antimatter powered spacecraft would allow man to go where no man has gone before in space. It would be possible to make trips to Jupiter and even beyond the heliopause, the point at which the sun's radiation ends. But it will still be a long time before astronauts are asking their starship's helmsman to take them to warp speed.
Ashish said :
"Anti-atoms - ........
When antimatter comes into contact with normal matter, these equal but opposite particles collide to produce an explosion emitting pure radiation, which travels out of the point of the explosion at the speed of light. ........ Scientists believe that this energy is more powerful than any that can be generated by other propulsion methods."
It is not possible to power a spaceship by just radiating energy from the tail.
Why? Try it yourself. Actually you need to either shift some mass (the Chinese rocket, or the tipu sultan style) or use shockwave impulses (Orion / Medusa) to shift another mass (the spaceship).
Ashish also said :
"So, why haven't we built a matter-antimatter reaction engine? The problem with developing antimatter propulsion is that there is a lack of antimatter existing in the universe.If there were equal amounts of matter and antimatter, we would likely see these reactions around us. Since antimatter doesn't exist around us, we don't see the light that would result from it colliding with matter. "
Not really, once you are in space, that is out of the earth's atmosphere, you are gonna have of antimatter. Though not a lot, but enough to weigh 10 gram-weight collectively.
Space dot com says :
"Antimatter is around us each day, although there isn't very much of it," says Gerald Share of the Naval Research Laboratory. "It is not something that can be found by itself in a jar on a table"
Also too much heat, the spaceship may melt away. I have doubt, whether there are some new material discovered or not.
Comments invited please.
"Not really, once you are in space, that is out of the earth's atmosphere, you are gonna have of antimatter. Though not a lot, but enough to weigh 10 gram-weight collectively."
Yeah, but where do we find some close to Earth? My thought is it's going to have to be made here on Earth (or on a base on the moon, maybe) and then put into the propulsion system.
"Also too much heat, the spaceship may melt away. I have doubt, whether there are some new material discovered or not." I'm sure there is. There's material research being done at many universities.
as it has been discussed that anti-matter is also present in space, not much but in the amout e.g 10 grams which has been told is enough to produce energy to rech out of rays of sun. so, if we have that much amount of antimatter in space, then wat is the use of its preparation here on earth???? if we need it in space or moon habitat, we can get that matter directly from space........ can collect it from there and can get energy for everything we want to be done in space or on the moon. creating antimatter on earth would be more time consuming then collecting it from space. so why dont we go for that???
Can you please tell me about the energy released while the reaction between matter and antimatter. how amount of release of energy can be calculated while reaction??? it has been discussed that mass will be negative of antimatter than matter. so if we apply
E=mc2
then how we will be calculating 'E'????
mass of both 'm' and '-m' if added will give zero.
and if we take energy separately, then
E= mc2
and, E=-mc2
that too will be zero if added.
Or, it has been told that amount of energy released is large. so are the masses multiplied???
if we multiply them, then also we get
E=-m2c2
this energy is in negative.
so, i dont find this formulae working with it. so is there any way to calculate the amount of energy???
The key thing here is that you are no longer dealing with Newtonian physics or Einstein's laws. When you get into trying to understand antimatter, you are dealing in non-euclidean space, quantum and particle physics, and other areas that are very high level that even physics PhD students to not get into unless it is part of their disertation.
Yes, but he was asking about the annihilation between matter and antimatter. The result is the annihilation of both, resulting into pure energy in the form of photons. That's from Einstein's equation E=mc^2.
"Positrons slow down in a material to the point where they annihilate with electrons producing two gamma quanta, each with 511 keV and traveling in opposite direction. This energy is equal to the electron rest mass." http://www.yu.edu/faculty/afrenkel/EMP/annihilation.html
And an entire article about matter-antimatter propulsion with a section on the energy produced by M/AM annihilation: http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/A/antimatterprop.html
Kaveri said:
"Can you please tell me about the energy released while the reaction between matter and antimatter. how amount of release of energy can be calculated while reaction??? it has been discussed that mass will be negative of antimatter than matter. so if we apply
E=mc2
then how we will be calculating 'E'????
mass of both 'm' and '-m' if added will give zero.
and if we take energy separately, then
E= mc2
and, E=-mc2
that too will be zero if added.
Or, it has been told that amount of energy released is large. so are the masses multiplied???
if we multiply them, then also we get
E=-m2c2
this energy is in negative.
so, i dont find this formulae working with it. so is there any way to calculate the amount of energy??? "
Actually mass of antimatter is not -m, it is also m, then the e=mc^2 law holds.
The mass of antimatter = the mass of matter = m.
so total annihilated mass = 2m
so energy = 2m*(c^2) as usual. :-)
Kaveri and Quantump7 said:
"
Yeah, but where do we find some close to Earth? My thought is it's going to have to be made here on Earth (or on a base on the moon, maybe) and then put into the propulsion system......................................... AND ........................................ as it has been discussed that anti-matter is also present in space, not much but in the amout e.g 10 grams which has been told is enough to produce energy to rech out of rays of sun. so, if we have that much amount of antimatter in space, .....................................earth would be more time consuming then collecting it from space. so why dont we go for that???
Getting antimatter from moon base is a good idea. I think, after the launch with conventional things, you can just start collect antimatter from space itself, no gas stations (pfft antimatter refueling stations :-) ) required.
Immediate question is how to fish antimatter out from space? What kind of nets required etc... Ideas?
Hmm, Penning trap is a good pot, i asked about the net,
Means, penning trap is basically a storage(pot) device, how to collect(fish :D ) things with it?
I have been trying to find out the present ways, and i didn't find a suitable already developed way.
Read this : http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7538&feedId=space_rss20
We can add such a thing, for in space, shape does not matter much :D
More ideas?
My question is, how would the antimatter get from the traps into the propulsion systems on the spacecrafts. The solar sail idea for this method sounds better than making some kind of instrument for collecting the antimatter from the net and putting it into a Penning trap-like propulsion system. But for this to work the spacecraft would need to gather up all the antimatter it needs near the trap and then go on on its mission, but it would still need an onboard trap. Because the antimatter, according to the article, would need to interact with normal matter on the spacecraft's solar sail. This is an instantaneous process, not one that can take place gradually over the duration of the trip. Is the energy from these processes somehow stored in the spacecraft for further use?
Also, I don't see how antimatter caught and stored in these nets could be effeciently delivered to a spacecraft that is far away that might need refueling.
Am I making any sense?
I don't know. I don't see how the process described in that link could work.
I think somehow the "net" should be attached to the spacecraft. And a mechanism should be built to deliver the trapped antimatter, magnetically, to the propulsion system. Whether the propulsion system is a solar sail or whatever. But the actual "net" described in the link sounds like a good idea. How the antimatter would be delivered from the "nets" to the spacecraft doesn't.
Quantump7 said :
"My question is, how would the antimatter get from the traps into the propulsion systems on the spacecrafts. The solar sail idea for this method sounds better than making some kind of instrument for collecting the antimatter from the net and putting it into a Penning trap-like propulsion system. But for this to work the spacecraft would need to gather up all the antimatter it needs near the trap and then go on on its mission, but it would still need an onboard trap. Because the antimatter, according to the article, would need to interact with normal matter on the spacecraft's solar sail. This is an instantaneous process, not one that can take place gradually over the duration of the trip. Is the energy from these processes somehow stored in the spacecraft for further use?
Also, I don't see how antimatter caught and stored in these nets could be effeciently delivered to a spacecraft that is far away that might need refueling.
Am I making any sense?
I don't know. I don't see how the process described in that link could work.
I think somehow the "net" should be attached to the spacecraft. And a mechanism should be built to deliver the trapped antimatter, magnetically, to the propulsion system. Whether the propulsion system is a solar sail or whatever. But the actual "net" described in the link sounds like a good idea. How the antimatter would be delivered from the "nets" to the spacecraft doesn't."
Right you are.
!. it's a very instantaneous, there is apparently no way to divide the process in a slow manner. But perhaps this may produce large shockwave, and using that shockwave, we can try to propel the spaceship.
@. The link is basically about a "net", and we can design a way to transport the antimatter to the "reactor".
#. One comment: The pure radiation may heat up some "pulse material" which may expand hugely to push the spacecraft.
Comments pls
thank you Mr.Tiffany D. Frierson for your nice support also to participant of this forum , yes antimatter propulsion is eligible technology that can take us in interstellar space........with high speed ...recently i have given seminar on solar sail and antimatter propulsion system in my college and i have discuss about it with my sir lot..they enjoyed this seminar and encourages more me about this system....
Hey, these are great and interesting conversations, but its time to start thinking about what this topic really is for, that is creating a competition.
Look at the main page for this group at http://www.spacegeneration.org/index.php?q=node/40 and start thinking along those lines.
Cheers.
the energy release from the collision of matter-antimatter was used to heat the working fluid like hydrogen which explode and produces high velocity gases which pass through convergent divergent nozzle and provide tremendous thrust to rocket......antimatter is not readly availble in space(universe), it have to produce ........their are material present on earth like tungsten are able to sustain the heat produce by antimatter collision
Ashish said:
"
the energy release from the collision of matter-antimatter was used to heat the working fluid like hydrogen which explode and produces high velocity gases which pass through convergent divergent nozzle and provide tremendous thrust to rocket."
Thanks for that.
But that means, you need another source for hydrogen (whew, another tank)
And antimatter *IS* available from space.
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.
However, in reality this power comes with a price. Some antimatter reactions produce blasts of high energy gamma rays. Gamma rays are like X-rays on steroids. They penetrate matter and break apart molecules in cells, so they are not healthy to be around. High-energy gamma rays can also make the engines radioactive by fragmenting atoms of the engine material.
The NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) is funding a team of researchers working on a new design for an antimatter-powered spaceship that avoids this nasty side effect by producing gamma rays with much lower energy.
When antimatter meets matter, both annihilate in a flash of energy. This complete conversion to energy is what makes antimatter so powerful. Even the nuclear reactions that power atomic bombs come in a distant second, with only about three percent of their mass converted to energy.
Previous antimatter-powered spaceship designs employed antiprotons, which produce high-energy gamma rays when they annihilate. The new design will use positrons, which make gamma rays with about 400 times less energy.
The NIAC research is a preliminary study to see if the idea is feasible. If it looks promising, and funds are available to successfully develop the technology, a positron-powered spaceship would have a couple advantages over the existing plans for a human mission to Mars, called the Mars Reference Mission.
The most significant advantage is more safety. The current Reference Mission calls for a nuclear reactor to propel the spaceship to Mars. This is desirable because nuclear propulsion reduces travel time to Mars, increasing safety for the crew by reducing their exposure to cosmic rays. Also, a chemically-powered spacecraft weighs much more and costs a lot more to launch. The reactor also provides ample power for the three-year mission. But nuclear reactors are complex, so more things could potentially go wrong during the mission. However, the positron reactor offers the same advantages but is relatively simple.
Also, nuclear reactors are radioactive even after their fuel is used up. After the ship arrives at Mars, Reference Mission plans are to direct the reactor into an orbit that will not encounter Earth for at least a million years, when the residual radiation will be reduced to safe levels. However, there is no leftover radiation in a positron reactor after the fuel is used up, so there is no safety concern if the spent positron reactor should accidentally re-enter Earth's atmosphere.
It will be safer to launch as well. If a rocket carrying a nuclear reactor explodes, it could release radioactive particles into the atmosphere.Our positron spacecraft would release a flash of gamma-rays if it exploded, but the gamma rays would be gone in an instant. There would be no radioactive particles to drift on the wind. The flash would also be confined to a relatively small area. The danger zone would be about a kilometer (about a half-mile) around the spacecraft. An ordinary large chemically-powered rocket has a danger zone of about the same size, due to the big fireball that would result from its explosion.
Another significant advantage is speed. The Reference Mission spacecraft would take astronauts to Mars in about 180 days.Our advanced designs, like the gas core and the ablative engine concepts, could take astronauts to Mars in half that time, and perhaps even in as little as 45 days.
Advanced engines do this by running hot, which increases their efficiency or "specific impulse" (Isp). Isp is the "miles per gallon" of rocketry: the higher the Isp, the faster you can go before you use up your fuel supply. The best chemical rockets, like NASA's Space Shuttle main engine, max out at around 450 seconds, which means a pound of fuel will produce a pound of thrust for 450 seconds. A nuclear or positron reactor can make over 900 seconds. The ablative engine, which slowly vaporizes itself to produce thrust, could go as high as 5,000 seconds.
One technical challenge to making a positron spacecraft a reality is the cost to produce the positrons. Because of its spectacular effect on normal matter, there is not a lot of antimatter sitting around. In space, it is created in collisions of high-speed particles called cosmic rays. On Earth, it has to be created in particle accelerators, immense machines that smash atoms together. The machines are normally used to discover how the universe works on a deep, fundamental level, but they can be harnessed as antimatter factories.
Another challenge is storing enough positrons in a small space. Because they annihilate normal matter, you can't just stuff them in a bottle. Instead, they have to be contained with electric and magnetic fields.We feel confident that with a dedicated research and development program, these challenges can be overcome.
Ashish said:
"The most significant advantage is more safety. The current Reference Mission calls for a nuclear reactor to propel the spaceship to Mars. This is desirable because nuclear propulsion reduces travel time to Mars,....."
If we are to use the nuke powered ships, then I personally recommend the Orion (The old one) and/or Medusa type pulsed nuke prop motors.
Wikipedia for the details.
antimatter propulsion system is for future spacecraft it is more safer than nuclear prop. system
"It will be safer to launch as well. If a rocket carrying a nuclear reactor explodes, it could release radioactive particles into the atmosphere.Our positron spacecraft would release a flash of gamma-rays if it exploded, but the gamma rays would be gone in an instant. There would be no radioactive particles to drift on the wind. The flash would also be confined to a relatively small area. The danger zone would be about a kilometer (about a half-mile) around the spacecraft"
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