a glimpse of antimatter energy
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Antimatter is part of an atomic nucleus that is peeled inside or its essence and antimatter is energy that can be used on earth, antimatter is better than nuclear energy because nuclear originates from a sequential atomic decay reactor which causes residual radiation of dangerous energy, while antimatter from its name is peel from the smallest atomic nucleus so it is very light and can be an excellent source of energy for a space vehicle, although many theories say that antimatter experiments will open black holes because antimatter is located throughout the galaxy and is the smallest component of galaxy calculations but that is not a theory which is permanent because antimatter can be conditioned at a certain temperature position not to become a substance that can absorb a solar system into a black hole. because we know that the black hole itself is a living energy structure because it can absorb the surrounding energy or maybe the black hole is just a transmission channel to where other galaxies are located, of course this still takes a lot of time and conditions in the discovery of conditioning materials. now here I will describe how antimatter it is possible and can replace the current energy in the future masses.
LOVE & LIGHTING
JESIISE LOVE
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ADAPTER ANTIMATTER : 9132047 0017
antimatter as an energy source for space shuttle
Hope springs eternal for die-hard Star Trek fans that scientists will one day build an actual, working antimatter propulsion engine similar to the one that powers the fictional starship Enterprise.
Introducing the Warp ship
Before everyone chimes in with a resounding "Squee !", let's back up a moment.
First, its true: matter/antimatter propulsion is not just the stuff of science fiction. As he did with many technical aspects of the series, for the Enterprise propulsion system, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry drew on science fact.
Antimatter is the mirror image of ordinary matter. So antiparticles are identical in mass to their regular counterparts, but the electrical charges of antiparticles are reversed. An anti-electron would have a positive instead of a negative charge, while an antiproton would have a negative instead of a positive charge.
When antimatter meets matter, the result is an explosion. Both particles are annihilated in the process, and their combined masses are converted into pure energy - electromagnetic radiation that spreads outward at the speed of light.
Remember in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock: when Kirk sabotages the Enterprise after surrendering his ship to the Klingons? He programs the computer to mix matter and antimatter indiscriminately.boom! The ship is destroyed.
Despite that whole annihilation thing, as recently as October 2000, NASA scientists were developing early designs for an antimatter engine for future missions to Mars.
Metamaterials Could Help Simulate Warp Drive
But these are trivial engineering concerns, surely. The point is, Keane and Zhang think they've solved one part of the conundrum. Any rocket's maximum speed depends on the configuration of the rocket stages, how much of the total mass is devoted to fuel, and a little something called exhaust velocity that provides the all-important thrust.
how fast all those particles resulting from (hypothetical) matter-antimatter annihilation are traveling as they whip out of the rocket engine. The premise relies on charged pions resulting from proton-antiproton collisions. A nozzle that emits a strong magnetic field could channel the emitted charged particles into a focused stream of charged pions, accelerating them to produce stronger thrust.
All this is old hat. And here's the sticking point to that plan. The exhaust velocity of those pions depends partly on how fast they're moving as they emerge from the annihilation event, and partly on the efficiency of the magnetic nozzle design.
Past calculations have shown that while the pions' initial speed would be over 90 percent the speed of light, the magnetic nozzle would only be 36 percent efficient, so the largest escape velocity that could be achieved would be a disappointing one-third of light speed.
There isn't much human beings can do to jack up the pions' initial speed, so clearly the way to tackle this problem is to focus on the design of the magnetic nozzle. The complex interactions between particles, matters and fields so physicists can better understand the behavior of all those particles produced in collisions at the Large Hadron Collider.
Interstellar Speed Menace For Warpships
The simulations showed that prior assessments of the magnetic nozzle's efficiency were much too low; it should be possible to build a nozzle with 85 percent efficiency using technology available to us today.
True, they also found that the initial speed of the pions was lower than previously estimated - only about 80 percent of light speed. That still averages out to a far more promising final exhaust velocity of about 70 percent light speed.
There's still the little problem of acquiring sufficient antimatter to fuel an entire rocket, even if we could work out all the engineering kinks .
Unfortunately, it only detected 28 protons over the course of its two-year mission. That's less than CERN produces each day.
Antimatter is an ideal rocket fuel because all of the mass in matter/antimatter collisions is converted into energy. Matter/antimatter reactions produce 10 million times the energy produced by conventional chemical reactions such as the hydrogen and oxygen combustion used to fuel the space shuttle.
New and Improved Antimatter Spaceship for
Mars Missions
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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).
Image right: A spacecraft powered by
a positron reactor would resemble this artist's concept of the Mars Reference
Mission spacecraft. Credit: NASA 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.
Antimatter is sometimes called the mirror image of normal matter because while it looks just like ordinary matter, some properties are reversed. For example, normal electrons, the familiar particles that carry electric current in everything from cell phones to plasma TVs, have a negative electric charge. Anti-electrons have a positive charge, so scientists dubbed them "positrons".
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.
Image left: A diagram of a rocket powered by a positron reactor. Positrons are directed from the storage unit to the attenuating matrix, where they interact with the material and release heat. Liquid hydrogen (H2) circulates through the attenuating matrix and picks up the heat. The hydrogen then flows to the nozzle exit (bell-shaped area in yellow and blue), where it expands into space, producing thrust.
"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 . lead researcher for the NIAC study.
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, according to the team.
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.
Image right: This is an artist's concept of an advanced positron rocket engine, called an ablative engine. This engine produces thrust when material in the nozzle is vaporized (ablated). In the image, the engine emits blue-white exhaust as thin layers of material are vaporized by positrons in tiny capsules surrounded by lead. The capsules are shot into the nozzle compartment many times per second. Once in the nozzle compartment, the positrons are allowed to interact with the capsule, releasing gamma rays. The lead absorbs the gamma rays and radiates lower-energy X-rays, which vaporize the nozzle material. This complication is necessary because X-rays are more efficiently absorbed by the nozzle material than gamma rays would be. Credit: Positronics Research, LLC
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.
"A rough estimate to produce the 10 milligrams of positrons needed for a human Mars mission is about 250 million dollars using technology that is currently under development. This cost might seem high, but it has to be considered against the extra cost to launch a heavier chemical rocket (current launch costs are about $10,000 per pound) or the cost to fuel and make safe a nuclear reactor. "Based on the experience with nuclear technology, it seems reasonable to expect positron production cost to go down with more research.
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 .
If this is so, perhaps the first humans to reach Mars will arrive in spaceships powered by the same source that fired starships across the universes of our science fiction dreams.
An antimatter rocket is a proposed class of rockets that use antimatter as their power source. There are several designs that attempt to accomplish this goal. The advantage to this class of rocket is that a large fraction of the rest mass of a matter/antimatter mixture may be converted to energy, allowing antimatter rockets to have a far higher energy density and specific impulse than any other proposed class of rocket .
Methods
Antimatter rockets can be divided into three types of application: those that directly use the products of antimatter annihilation for propulsion, those that heat a working fluid or an intermediate material which is then used for propulsion, and those that heat a working fluid or an intermediate material to generate electricity for some form of electric spacecraft propulsion system. The propulsion concepts that employ these mechanisms generally fall into four categories: solid core, gaseous core, plasma core, and beamed core configurations. The alternatives to direct antimatter annihilation propulsion offer the possibility of feasible vehicles with, in some cases, vastly smaller amounts of antimatter but require a lot more matter propellant. Then there are hybrid solutions using antimatter to catalyze fission/fusion reactions for propulsion.Pure antimatter rocket: direct use of reaction products
Antiproton annihilation reactions produce charged and uncharged pions, in addition to neutrinos and gamma rays. The charged pions can be channelled by a magnetic nozzle, producing thrust. This type of antimatter rocket is a pion rocket or beamed core configuration. It is not perfectly efficient; energy is lost as the rest mass of the charged (22.3%) and uncharged pions (14.38%), lost as the kinetic energy of the uncharged pions (which can't be deflected for thrust), and lost as neutrinos and gamma rays (see antimatter as fuel).[2]Positron annihilation has also been proposed for rocketry. Annihilation of positrons produces only gamma rays. Early proposals for this type of rocket, such as those developed by Eugen Sänger, assumed the use of some material that could reflect gamma rays, used as a light sail or parabolic shield to derive thrust from the annihilation reaction, but no known form of matter (consisting of atoms or ions) interacts with gamma rays in a manner that would enable specular reflection. The momentum of gamma rays can, however, be partially transferred to matter by Compton scattering.[3][4] A recent approach is to utilize an ultra-intense laser capable of generating positrons when striking a high atomic number target, such as gold.
The only concept known to reach relativistic velocities uses a matter-antimatter GeV gamma ray laser photon rocket made possible by a relativistic proton-antiproton pinch discharge, where the recoil from the laser beam is transmitted by the Mössbauer effect to the spacecraft.
Thermal antimatter rocket: heating of a propellant
This type of antimatter rocket is termed a thermal antimatter rocket as the energy or heat from the annihilation is harnessed to create an exhaust from non-exotic material or propellant.The solid core concept uses antiprotons to heat a solid, high-atomic weight (Z), refractory metal core. Propellant is pumped into the hot core and expanded through a nozzle to generate thrust. The performance of this concept is roughly equivalent to that of the nuclear thermal rocket ( ~ 103 sec) due to temperature limitations of the solid. However, the antimatter energy conversion and heating efficiencies are typically high due to the short mean path between collisions with core atoms (efficiency ~ 85%).[1] Several methods for the liquid-propellant thermal antimatter engine using the gamma rays produced by antiproton or positron annihilation have been proposed. These methods resemble those proposed for nuclear thermal rockets. One proposed method is to use positron annihilation gamma rays to heat a solid engine core. Hydrogen gas is ducted through this core, heated, and expelled from a rocket nozzle. A second proposed engine type uses positron annihilation within a solid lead pellet or within compressed xenon gas to produce a cloud of hot gas, which heats a surrounding layer of gaseous hydrogen. Direct heating of the hydrogen by gamma rays was considered impractical, due to the difficulty of compressing enough of it within an engine of reasonable size to absorb the gamma rays. A third proposed engine type uses annihilation gamma rays to heat an ablative sail, with the ablated material providing thrust. As with nuclear thermal rockets, the specific impulse achievable by these methods is limited by materials considerations, typically being in the range of 1000–2000 seconds.
The gaseous core system substitutes the low-melting point solid with a high temperature gas (i.e. tungsten gas/plasma), thus permitting higher operational temperatures and performance ( ~ 2 × 103 sec). However, the longer mean free path for thermalization and absorption results in much lower energy conversion efficiencies ( ~ 35%).
The plasma core allows the gas to ionize and operate at even higher effective temperatures. Heat loss is suppressed by magnetic confinement in the reaction chamber and nozzle. Although performance is extremely high ( ~ 104-105 sec), the long mean free path results in very low energy utilization ( ~ 10%)
Antimatter power generation
The idea of using antimatter to power an electric space drive has also been proposed. These proposed designs are typically similar to those suggested for nuclear electric rockets. Antimatter annihilations are used to directly or indirectly heat a working fluid, as in a nuclear thermal rocket, but the fluid is used to generate electricity, which is then used to power some form of electric space propulsion system. The resulting system shares many of the characteristics of other charged particle/electric propulsion proposals (typically high specific impulse and low thrust).Catalyzed fission/fusion or spiked fusion
This is a hybrid approach in which antiprotons are used to catalyze a fission/fusion reaction or to "spike" the propulsion of a fusion rocket or any similar applications.The antiproton-driven Inertial confinement fusion (ICF) Rocket concept uses pellets for the D-T reaction. The pellet consists of a hemisphere of fissionable material such as U235 with a hole through which a pulse of antiprotons and positrons is injected. It is surrounded by a hemisphere of fusion fuel, for example deuterium-tritium, or lithium deuteride. Antiproton annihilation occurs at the surface of the hemisphere, which ionizes the fuel. These ions heat the core of the pellet to fusion temperatures.
The antiproton-driven Magnetically Insulated Inertial Confinement Fusion Propulsion (MICF) concept relies on self-generated magnetic field which insulates the plasma from the metallic shell that contains it during the burn. The lifetime of the plasma was estimated to be two orders of magnitude greater than implosion inertial fusion, which corresponds to a longer burn time, and hence, greater gain.
The antimatter-driven P-B11 concept uses antiprotons to ignite the P-B11 reactions in an MICF scheme. Excessive radiation losses are a major obstacle to ignition and require modifying the particle density, and plasma temperature to increase the gain. It was concluded that it is entirely feasible that this system could achieve Isp~105s.
A different approach was envisioned for AIMStar in which small fusion fuel droplets would be injected into a cloud of antiprotons confined in a very small volume within a reaction Penning trap. Annihilation takes place on the surface of the antiproton cloud, peeling back 0.5% of the cloud. The power density released is roughly comparable to a 1 kJ, 1 ns laser depositing its energy over a 200 µm ICF target.
The ICAN-II project employs the antiproton catalyzed microfission (ACMF) concept which uses pellets with a molar ratio of 9:1 of D-T:U235 for Nuclear pulse propulsion.
Difficulties with antimatter rockets
The chief practical difficulties with antimatter rockets are the problems of creating antimatter and storing it. Creating antimatter requires input of vast amounts of energy, at least equivalent to the rest energy of the created particle/antiparticle pairs, and typically (for antiproton production) tens of thousands to millions of times more. Most storage schemes proposed for interstellar craft require the production of frozen pellets of antihydrogen. This requires cooling of antiprotons, binding to positrons, and capture of the resulting antihydrogen atoms - tasks which have, as of 2010[update], been performed only for small numbers of individual atoms. Storage of antimatter is typically done by trapping electrically charged frozen antihydrogen pellets in Penning or Paul traps. There is no theoretical barrier to these tasks being performed on the scale required to fuel an antimatter rocket. However, they are expected to be extremely (and perhaps prohibitively) expensive due to current production abilities being only able to produce small numbers of atoms, a scale approximately 1023 times smaller than needed for a 10-gram trip to Mars.Generally, the energy from antiproton annihilation is deposited over such a large region that it cannot efficiently drive nuclear capsules. Antiproton-induced fission and self-generated magnetic fields may greatly enhance energy localization and efficient use of annihilation energy.[17][18]
A secondary problem is the extraction of useful energy or momentum from the products of antimatter annihilation, which are primarily in the form of extremely energetic ionizing radiation. The antimatter mechanisms proposed to date have for the most part provided plausible mechanisms for harnessing energy from these annihilation products. The classic rocket equation with its "wet" mass ()(with propellant mass fraction) to "dry" mass ()(with payload) fraction (), the velocity change () and specific impulse () no longer holds due to the mass loses occurring in antimatter annihilation.
Another general problem with high powered propulsion is excess heat or waste heat, and as with antimatter-matter annihilation also includes extreme radiation. A proton-antiproton annihilation propulsion system transforms 39% of the propellant mass into an intense high-energy flux of gamma radiation. The gamma rays and the high-energy charged pions will cause heating and radiation damage if they are not shielded against. Unlike neutrons, they will not cause the exposed material to become radioactive by transmutation of the nuclei. The components needing shielding are the crew, the electronics, the cryogenic tankage, and the magnetic coils for magnetically assisted rockets. Two types of shielding are needed: radiation protection and thermal protection (different from Heat shield or thermal insulation).[2][19]
Finally, relativistic considerations have to be taken into account. As the by products of annihilation move at relativistic velocities the rest mass changes according to relativistic mass-energy. For example, the total mass-energy content of the neutral pion is converted into gammas, not just its rest mass. It is necessary to use a relativistic rocket equation that takes into account the relativistic effects of both the vehicle and propellant exhaust (charged pions) moving near the speed of light. These two modifications to the two rocket equations result in a mass ratio () for a given () and () that is much higher for a relativistic antimatter rocket than for either a classical or relativistic "conventional" rocket.
Modified relativistic rocket equation
The loss of mass specific to antimatter annihilation requires a modification of the relativistic rocket equation given as- (I)
The derivative form of the equation is
- (II)
Eq.II cannot be integrated analytically. If it is assumed that , such that then the resulting equation is
- (III)
- (IV)
Other general issues
The cosmic background hard radiation will ionize the rocket's hull over time and poses a health threat. Also, gas plasma interactions may cause space charge. The major interaction of concern is differential charging of various parts of a spacecraft, leading to high electric fields and arcing between spacecraft components. This can be resolved with well placed plasma contactor. However, there is no solution yet for when plasma contactors are turned off to allow maintenance work on the hull. Long term space flight at interstellar velocities causes erosion of the rocket's hull due to collision with particles, gas, dust and micrometeorites. At 0.2 for a 6 light year distance, erosion is estimated to be in the order of about 30 kg/m2 or about 1 cm of aluminum shieldingINTERSTELLAR TRAVEL
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Interstellar travel is the term used for crewed or uncrewed travel between stars or planetary systems. Interstellar travel will be much more difficult than interplanetary spaceflight; the distances between the planets in the Solar System are less than 30 astronomical units (AU)—whereas the distances between stars are typically hundreds of thousands of AU, and usually expressed in light-years. Because of the vastness of those distances, interstellar travel would require a high percentage of the speed of light; huge travel time, lasting from decades to millennia or longer; or a combination of both.
The speeds required for interstellar travel in a human lifetime far exceed what current methods of spacecraft propulsion can provide. Even with a hypothetically perfectly efficient propulsion system, the kinetic energy corresponding to those speeds is enormous by today's standards of energy development. Moreover, collisions by the spacecraft with cosmic dust and gas can produce very dangerous effects both to passengers and the spacecraft itself.
A number of strategies have been proposed to deal with these problems, ranging from giant arks that would carry entire societies and ecosystems, to microscopic space probes. Many different spacecraft propulsion systems have been proposed to give spacecraft the required speeds, including nuclear propulsion, beam-powered propulsion, and methods based on speculative physics.
For both crewed and uncrewed interstellar travel, considerable technological and economic challenges need to be met. Even the most optimistic views about interstellar travel see it as only being feasible decades from now. However, in spite of the challenges, if or when interstellar travel is realised, a wide range of scientific benefits is expected.
Most interstellar travel concepts require a developed space logistics system capable of moving millions of tons to a construction / operating location, and most would require gigawatt-scale power for construction or power (such as Star Wisp or Light Sail type concepts). Such a system could grow organically if space-based solar power became a significant component of Earth's energy mix. Consumer demand for a multi-terawatt system would automatically create the necessary multi-million ton/year logistical system
Interstellar distances
Distances between the planets in the Solar System are often measured in astronomical units (AU), defined as the average distance between the Sun and Earth, some 1.5×108 kilometers (93 million miles). Venus, the closest other planet to Earth is (at closest approach) 0.28 AU away. Neptune, the farthest planet from the Sun, is 29.8 AU away. As of January 2018, Voyager 1, the farthest man-made object from Earth, is 141.5 AU away.The closest known star, Proxima Centauri, is approximately 268,332 AU away, or over 9,000 times farther away than Neptune.
Object | A.U. | light time |
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Moon | 0.0026 | 1.3 seconds |
Sun | 1 | 8 minutes |
Venus (nearest planet) | 0.28 | 2.41 minutes |
Neptune (farthest planet) | 29.8 | 4.1 hours |
Voyager 1 | 141.5 | 19.61 hours |
Proxima Centauri (nearest star and exoplanet) | 268,332 | 4.24 years |
Another way of understanding the vastness of interstellar distances is by scaling: One of the closest stars to the Sun, Alpha Centauri A (a Sun-like star), can be pictured by scaling down the Earth–Sun distance to one meter (3.28 ft). On this scale, the distance to Alpha Centauri A would be 276 kilometers (171 miles).
The fastest outward-bound spacecraft yet sent, Voyager 1, has covered 1/600 of a light-year in 30 years and is currently moving at 1/18,000 the speed of light. At this rate, a journey to Proxima Centauri would take 80,000 years.
Required energy
A significant factor contributing to the difficulty is the energy that must be supplied to obtain a reasonable travel time. A lower bound for the required energy is the kinetic energy where is the final mass. If deceleration on arrival is desired and cannot be achieved by any means other than the engines of the ship, then the lower bound for the required energy is doubled to .The velocity for a manned round trip of a few decades to even the nearest star is several thousand times greater than those of present space vehicles. This means that due to the term in the kinetic energy formula, millions of times as much energy is required. Accelerating one ton to one-tenth of the speed of light requires at least 450 petajoules or 4.50×1017 joules or 125 terawatt-hours (world energy consumption 2008 was 143,851 terawatt-hours), without factoring in efficiency of the propulsion mechanism. This energy has to be generated onboard from stored fuel, harvested from the interstellar medium, or projected over immense distances.
Interstellar medium
A knowledge of the properties of the interstellar gas and dust through which the vehicle must pass is essential for the design of any interstellar space mission.A major issue with traveling at extremely high speeds is that interstellar dust may cause considerable damage to the craft, due to the high relative speeds and large kinetic energies involved. Various shielding methods to mitigate this problem have been proposed. Larger objects (such as macroscopic dust grains) are far less common, but would be much more destructive. The risks of impacting such objects, and methods of mitigating these risks, have been discussed in the literature, but many unknowns remain and, owing to the inhomogeneous distribution of interstellar matter around the Sun, will depend on direction travelled. Although a high density interstellar medium may cause difficulties for many interstellar travel concepts, interstellar ramjets, and some proposed concepts for decelerating interstellar spacecraft, would actually benefit from a denser interstellar mediumMechanisms responsible for the orgin and separation of matter and antimatter in the universe are discussed. Particular attention was given to coalesence. This mechanism involves annihilation production of along the boundary of matter-antimatter, high energy photons, electrons, and positrons. These particles together with secondary particles which they put into motion by collisions, carry their momentum to the matter or antimatter fluid .
what antimatter is and where you might find it.
Every elementary particle has a corresponding anti-particle, which is antimatter. Protons have anti-protons. Neutrons have anti-neutrons. Electrons have anti-electrons, which are common enough to have their own name: positrons. Particles of antimatter have a charge opposite that of their usual components. For example, positrons have a +1 charge, while electrons have a -1 electric charge.
Antimatter Atoms and Antimatter Elements
Antimatter particles may be used to build antimatter atoms and antimatter elements. An atom of anti-helium would be comprised of a nucleus containing two anti-neutrons and two anti-protons (charge = -2), surrounded by 2 positrons (charge = +2).
Anti-protons, anti-neutrons, and positrons have been produced in the lab, but antimatter exists in nature, too. Positrons are generated by lightning, among other phenomena. Lab-created positrons are used in Positron Emission Tomography (PET) medical scans. When antimatter and matter react the event is known as annihilation.
What Does Antimatter Look Like?
When you see antimatter depicted in science fiction movies, it's usually some weird glowing gas in a special containment unit. Real antimatter looks just like regular matter. Anti-water, for example, would still be H2O and would have the same properties of water when reacting with other antimatter. The difference is that antimatter reacts with regular matter, so you do not encounter large amounts of antimatter in the natural world. If you somehow had a bucket of anti-water and threw it into the regular ocean, it would produce an explosion much like that of a nuclear device. Real antimatter exists on a small scale in the world around us, reacts, and is gone.
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:
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:
Antimatter spacecraft like the one in this artist concept could carry us beyond the solar system at amazing speed
- 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.
The storage rings on the spacecraft will hold the antimatter.
Antimatter is essentially the opposite of “normal” matter. While protons have a positive charge, their antimatter equivalents, antiprotons, have the same mass, but a negative charge. Electrons and their corresponding antiparticle, positrons, have the same mass — the only difference is that they have different charges (negative for electrons, positive for positrons).
When a particle meets its antimatter equivalent, the two annihilate one another, canceling the other out. In theory, the Big Bang ( non Permanent Theory ) should have produced an equal amount of matter and antimatter, in which case, the two would have just annihilated one another.
the universe seems to have way more matter than antimatter. Researchers have no idea why that is, and because antimatter is very difficult to study, they haven’t had much recourse for figuring it out. And that’s why CERN researchers are trying to cool antimatter off, so they can get a better look.
MAGNETS AND LASERS.
Using a tool called the Antihydrogen Laser Physics Apparatus (ALPHA), the researchers combined antiprotons with positrons to form antihydrogen atoms. Then, they magnetically trapped hundreds of these atoms in a vacuum and zapped them with laser pulses. This caused the antihydrogen atoms to undergo something called the Lyman-alpha transition.
“The Lyman-alpha transition is the most basic, important transition in regular hydrogen atoms, and to capture the same phenomenon in antihydrogen opens up a new era in antimatter science,”
this phase change is a critical first step toward cooling antihydrogen. Researchers have long used lasers to cool other atoms to make them easier to study. If we can do the same for antimatter atoms, we’ll be better able to study them. Scientists can take more accurate measurements, and they might even be able to solve another long-unsettled mystery: figuring out how antimatter interacts with gravity. The plans to continue working toward that goal of cooling antimatter .
Relationship of Concept Antimatter and Electron
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What is the antimatter equivalent of the electron?
1. The "positron" is the recognised "anti-electron". It still has a negative charge but, because it is spinning in the opposite direction (confused), it's magnetic properties are reversed.
2. What is the Positive equivalent of Free Electrons?
Different dopping adds atoms that fits within silicon but do not have their outmost electrons layer complete, either miss one electron or have only one electron, in this last case the mayoritary are ¨free electrons¨ while in previous the mayoritary are ¨free holes¨ which easily traps electrons to get an evenly terminated orbital. Mayoritary electrons difuss through the junction and get holes filled up on the other side creating a potential barrier which prevents further difussion. Free holes does not migrate really but its electron starving condition helps on electrons diffusion.
3. Do free electrons have quantized energy states?
The free electron in an infinite universe does not have quantized states. In quantum mechanics, the quantization comes from having a countable basis set of states. The wave functions for a free particle are sines and cosines,
and
or, equivalently, complex exponentials,
where is the wave number and is the momentum corresponding to that state. If this wavefunction is defined on the whole real line, then all three of these wave functions satisfy the time-independent Schrödinger equation for any , with energy eigenvalues,
Thus, we have a continuum of states for the totally free particle.
However, if the particle is in a box of dimension , then we have the boundary condition that . That is, the wavefunction must go to zero at the boundary, because it is zero outside and its derivative must be finite everywhere. You can see that the only wavefunctions that will work in this case are
with
for . Now, we have the discrete or quantized set of energy eigenvalues,
So, the energy eigenstates of the free electron is quantized only when it is bound to some region. In fact, this is the general situation. Only bound states are quantized.
4. Can a photon be absorbed by a free electron?
There is no accepted mechanism for the strictly free electron to absorb a quanta of electromagnetic radiation.
How would the electron "hold on" to the photon? (Increase the electron energy perhaps?)
As far as we know, the electron has no substructure...
We say it can't happen because it violates simultaneous energy and momentum conservation.
Here's one (arguably unsatisfying) reason why:
This is a plot of the free electron and photon dispersion relations in free space, or how their energies look like at any given momentum. (The rules are set: if the particle has an energy, it has a specific momentum, and vice versa). Note that, because of the way the electrons dispersion relation is curvy shaped, there's just no way to take a given photon line and successfully slap it on the electrons curve. It always comes up short.
So the electron can't be at some energy/momentum, then fully absorb a photon and jump up to some higher energy/momentum point on the curve.
In fact, the momentum amount it comes up short by, delta p, equals hbar omega over the electron velocity.
The main consequence of all this is that a 3rd body is required nearby to provide momentum - this is where the bound electron can absorb and emit photons all day long, jumping up and down electron energy levels.
If no 3rd body is present, free electron sees the photon, get's jiggled as it passes, but then returns to exactly what it was doing after the photon is gone. No NET absorption happens, as far as we know.
As we know photons have energy and very little mass and also carry the image of an object. If one were to strike an electron in empty space, the image would be absorbed by the electron along with the mass and the energy in the photon.
Now, the interesting development would be that this image, which is a form of energy being absorbed by the electron would create a point of darkness (absence of light) around the electron, thus making the electron invisible/appear to be non-existent. Like a black hole it too would have a horizon and would keep sucking surrounding photons/energy.
Here's the deal all particles vibrate about their mean positions and so does this electron. After absorbing a photon it would gain more energy and would vibrate with a greater amplitude creating an oval shaped dark figure.
In order to get back in control/sustain it would have to lose some of its energy and to do this it will most likely release a small packet of energy and mass, less than the previous one, carrying the image of the electron to a distant viewer with the a tiny bit less wavelength of the previous photon.
All happening in a fraction of a second.
Therefore my conclusion would be that an electron would practically be absorbing a fraction of the radiation pressure exerted by the photon and not itself as a whole.
5. Why does an electron absorb a photon?
"why" questions in physics is that no matter what explanation you are given, you can just as well ask "why" to that as well. If your objective is to learn more physics, asking "why" can be useful. If you want to find some deep, fundamental meaning that will be completely satisfying without you having to ask "why" any further, then I'm afraid you'll likely be disappointed; physics probably does not have the ability to provide you with such an answer. For that you should turn to philosophy. (Not because philosophy will help you find such an answer, mind you, but because it'll help you figure out the right questions.)
Here, it's not hard to see how this is going to play out on this particular occasion. You ask, why does an electron absorb a photon. I say, because the QED Lagrangian in the Standard Model contains an interaction term,
where is the electron field and is the photon field. Such a term, containing two factors and one factor, gives rise to a vertex in which two electron lines meet a photon line.
Now you ask, "but why is there an interaction term in the Lagrangian?"
Now you know more physics, but you're no closer to answering the question "why". Better to figure out exactly what is about "an electron absorbs a photon" that you find dissatisfying, rather than asking "why" and getting answers that still will not satisfy you. in typical cases, the “electron” which absorbs a photon, but the entire atom or larger atomic system. But no explanation is provided for the mechanism. when matter (either single atoms or larger molecular systems) absorbs electromagnetic energy (you can call it photons but that will not help you understand anything), the actual mechanism of energy transfer is exactly the same as what happens when you set up an antenna and tune it to a distant radio station. The incident energy (wave or photon or whatever you want to call it) sets up an oscillation which generates new waves of its own. Those new waves interact with the incident waves in such a way as to remove power from those incoming waves and absorb it in the oscillating system.
That is how radios work and that is how atoms work. It does not help to talk about photons.
6. How many photons can be emitted by a single electron?
An electron could in principle enter a positive ion and jump down the energy levels one by one! However, it is very unlikely as it is more likely to take much bigger steps.
According :
‘The formula defining the energy levels of a Hydrogen atom are given by the equation:
, where
(
and n = 1,2,3… and so on. The energy is expressed as a negative number because it takes that much energy to unbind (ionize) the electron from the nucleus.’
Electron radiates em energy, E, in em spectral of frequency, f. So the number of photons it emitted was E=n.h.f , where n is the number of photons and h is planck constant.
So the depend on the system of which electron radiates energy, but the bottomline there is no maximum value.
We concerned that each photon carries away energy and momentum of the electron, think of that some other source of energy initially caused the acceleration of the electron. For example, an electromagnetic field that caused it should be “corrected” when the electron moves since the charge of the electron and its field is also a part of it. Pretty much equivalently, one may conceive this as scattering of external electromagnetic field (photons) at the electron.
If it is about discrete energy levels in an atom, for example, then the photon may not be emitted from the lowest energy level — only when the electron gets to an excited state by previously receiving a photon (i.e. its energy) it is capable of releasing a photon then.
7. What is electronic energy?
Electronic energy is indeed an eigenvalue of electronic Hamiltonian, and, as you correctly pointed out, it doesn't include the contribution from repulsions of the fixed nuclei (which has nothing to do with electrons).
The rest energy of any substance is defined by the Einstein's mass energy equivalence relation.
E = m.c^2
Thus the rest mass of a electron is 9.11x10^-31 kg. The speed of light is 299,792,458 m/s. Thus multiplying the square of speed of light with the rest mass of electron gives the rest energy of the electron.
That calcultes to about 0.501 MeV.
Antimatter
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The antimatter counterpart to the electron. But what is antimatter, how can it be used – and is it dangerous?
The existence of antimatter was first predicted by Paul Dirac in papers published from 1928 onwards .
Classical physics only allowed systems to have positive energy. But Dirac’s new theory of relativistic quantum mechanics allowed for a particle with negative energy solution, as a counterpart to the familiar positive-energy electron.
After ruling out the possibility that this particle was simply the proton – which has a hugely greater mass – Dirac predicted the existence of a new particle with the same mass of the electron but with a charge that was positive rather than negative.
That particle was found experimentally on 2 August 1930. Carl Anderson was observing the trails produced in the particle shower that was created in his cloud chamber when cosmic rays passed through it. His observations included a particle with the same mass as the electron but the opposite charge – its track bent in the “wrong” direction in a magnetic field. Anderson coined the name “positron” for his new discovery.
In 1933 Dirac went on to predict the existence of the antiproton, the counterpart to the proton. It was discovered in 1955 by Emilio Segrè and Owen Chamberlain at the University of California, Berkeley.
It’s now understood that all particles have an equivalent antimatter particle with opposite charge and quantum spin – although some are their own antiparticle. However hardly any antimatter is seen in the observable universe, and why there should be vastly much more normal matter is one of the great unsolved problems in physics.
Creation and destructionIt was once thought that matter could neither be created nor destroyed, but we now know that energy and mass are interchangeable. When a particle collides with its antiparticle the two annihilate each other, with their mass being entirely converted into energy.
That energy creates a shower of new particles, which serve as a hint that such an event has taken place – for example, detecting a gamma ray with an energy of 511 keV is a signature of an electron and a positron annihilating one another.
Antiparticles can be created either naturally or artificially.
Positrons are commonly produced by radioactivity – they’re a byproduct of β+ decay, in which a proton in the atomic nucleus transmutes into a neutron.
Other antiparticles result from high-energy collisions, in which the excess energy produces pairs of particles and their antimatter counterparts.
This process can be harnessed to produce antimatter artificially by, for example, colliding a stream of high-energy protons with a dense target in order to produce antiprotons.
Although it’s also possible to make whole atoms from antimatter, because they have no net charge they can’t be stored magnetically like positrons and antiprotons can, and risk annihilating with any container.
Application and speculation
Antimatter annihilations convert the entire mass of the particles involved into energy, following Albert Einstein’s famous equation E = mc2.
A great deal of energy can be produced from little mass – a kilogram of matter annihilating with the same amount of antimatter will release around as much as the Tsar Bomba, the largest thermonuclear bomb ever built.
Because of this, antimatter has been touted as a possible future weapon or source of fuel – antimatter-driven propulsion is a staple of science fiction.
However, antimatter currently takes far too long to produce, and at too high an energy cost, for either weapons or fuel to be practicable. CERN claims it has taken several hundred million pounds to produce just a billionth of a gram, and that to make a gram of antimatter would take about a 100 billion years.
And yet antimatter does have some important uses.
One type of medical scan, Positron Emission Tomography, utilises radioactive ‘tracers’ that undergo β+ decay. When the tracers emit a positron, it collides with an electron in the body and the resultant annihilation event produces a pair of gamma rays.
Detecting those gamma rays allows medical staff to build a picture of the concentration of the tracer throughout the patient’s body. Commonly the tracer used is a glucose analogue, which is taken up in high quantities by the brain, the liver and most cancers – allowing the detection of tumours.
It’s also been suggested that antimatter can be used not only to diagnose cancer but also to treat it, using a technique similar to ion therapy.
This uses a beam of protons to irradiate, and therefore destroy, a tumour without affecting the surrounding tissue, which the beam simply passes through. It’s possible that if antiprotons are used instead, extra energy would be deposited around the tumour when it annihilates with a normal-matter particle within the body, giving it two blasts instead of just one – antimatter potentially saving lives a few decades after it was first discovered.
Antimatter power goes like this.
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Positrons are contained in a vacuum chamber, probably with a magnetic field. Electrons are somehow shot into the chamber, colliding with the blob of positrons. This produces 2 gamma rays. The vacuum chamber is surrounded by solar panels, tuned to receive gamma ray frequencies instead of visible light, and thus converts the gamma rays into DC electric power.
For the sake of concreteness, let me ask 4 questions revolving around the engineering problems:
(1) Is it possible to build efficient solar panels tuned to gamma ray frequencies? They would also need a decent lifetime.
(2) How exactly would electrons be accelerated into the region containing the positrons? My intuition says that if a magnetic field is containing them, then an electron would have a hard time penetrating that field.
(3) Can we get enough power from this to self-sustain the magnetic containment field, as well as the electron accelerator, while still having a decent amount of leftover power to spare?
(4) Are electrons and positrons the best choice of matter-antimatter? From what i've read, it seems the simplest choice of annihilation---they produce just 2 gamma rays at low velocities---but perhaps other kinds of antimatter are easier to contain?
In case your wondering, i'm not trying to make a form of free/cheap power. I just think it would be great if we could replace nuclear reactors, both the plants and the naval drives, with something that has few moving parts with even better energy density. To me, that would be worth a somewhat bigger price than nuclear is today. It would also be nice if space stations and space ships were not so limited in their power generation.
There are no free floating positrons. They have been created as electron positron pairs at some point in their life line. Thus energy conservation says that you can never have "leftover power to spare" . The best you could have would be a technologically hard to create "battery", i.e. energy storage device .
The concept, but instead of heating fuel for high Isp, it should also be possible to heat water to steam and drive an electric generator. Since antimatter has such high energy densities, would this be more efficient than nuclear reactors .
Antimatter electrical generator
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The present set of complementary inventions refer to a system for the practical and inexpensive procurement of huge amounts of energy derived from the principles of matter-antimatter generation and annihilation. The generator will comprise the functions of generation, amplification, concentration and collision of photons within a specially designed self-reflective chamber; the generation of particles of matter and antimatter derived from the collision of photons; the ionization of atoms and the production of avalanches of electrons and positrons within a specialized collecting chamber; the separation of electrons and positrons by the action of powerful rotational electromagnetic fields; and, the conversion of said avalanches of electrons and positrons into electrical power. A second embodiment will separate particles of matter and antimatter generated in a similar way into antimatter fuel by the action of rotational mono polarity electromagnetic fields.
As Physicists penetrate more and more deeply into the constitution of matter, the more we have learned about the subatomic particles, forces and forms of energy of which matter and the universe are made of. Some of these particles are considered elemental particles since they have not constituents but themselves, as electrons, up quarks and down quarks. The rest of parts of the atom are made of a combination of these three elemental particles. Some others have been found or produced artificially but are unstable and are not found in nature. In the same way some forces that keep particles, atoms and molecules together have been identified and named as: Electromagnetism (which keeps particles of different charge together, and apart the ones of similar charge); Residual Electromagnetic Force (which keep atoms together); Strong Force (which keep quarks together); Residual Strong Interaction (which keeps the nucleus together); Weak Force (which holds together unstable massive quarks and leptons), etc. The Photon has been found to be the carrier particle of Electromagnetic Force, while the Gluon is the carrier particle of Strong Force, and the carrier particles of Weak interactions are called W+, W− and Z, being the W's electrically charged, and Z, neutral.
Some unstable elements may decay into other elements, liberating energetic particles in a phenomenon known as radiation. Scientists have identified three types of radiation which are called Alpha (composed of Helium nuclei), Beta (which are high speed electrons) and Gamma radiation (which is made of high energy photons). Elemental particles may decay but into a less massive particle and a force-carrier particle.
Also it has been found that every particle that exists has its own anti-particle or anti-matter, which is exactly equal but opposite. Scientists ignore where the antimatter went, since it has not been found in the universe. When a matter particle encounters its antimatter particle they both completely annihilate into a very energetic force carrier particle (Gluon, W/Z or Photon). These force carriers then transform into other particles. The antimatter phenomena has long been considered as the ultimate source of energy, but a practical or efficient way to seize it has not been yet discovered, until now.
Particle Accelerators
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Physicists use enormous particle accelerators to produce high energy particles collisions in order to study the composition of matter. There are two types of accelerators, linear accelerators which are called Linac, and circular or semicircular accelerators named Synchrotron. Synchrotrons must have a perimeter of many kilometers in order to accelerate particles near the speed of light before the collisions. The Large Hadron Collider, under construction in Europe in an international collaboration, will have a perimeter of twenty seven kilometers. Modem accelerators consist basically of: a Particle Generator; a Linac, which provides the initial linear acceleration to the particles; the Synchrotron for the grand acceleration, and the Detectors, where the collisions take place and which trace the events and register data for subsequent study and analysis.
The Synchrotron, the main accelerator, consists of a vacuum chamber, which is a metal pipe where air is permanently pumped out, that goes all along the accelerator and where the particles are accelerated to near the speed of light; vacuum pumps; dipole and quad pole magnets, which will give the particles direction and focus, respectively; radio-frequency cavities, which will accelerate the particles by transferring energy to them from powerful radio-waves amplifiers; high voltage instruments and electronic circuits, etc.
Detectors typically consist of several layers of different detecting areas surrounding the vacuum chamber: first comes the Tracking Chamber, which will show the path of some particles as electrons, positrons, muons, protons, etc, but not others as photons or neutrons, indicating their charge and momentum; second, the Electromagnetic Calorimeter, which will detect and measure the energy of light particles as electrons and photons as they interact with the electrically charged particles inside matter; third, the Hadronic Calorimeter which measure the energy of hadrons, particles containing quarks, like protons and neutrons, as they interact with the atomic nuclei; fourth, the Muon Detector, which can be gas-filled chambers that will detect the passage of Muon charged particles that normally travel long distances and pass all the way through the detector leaving only a signal on this detector.
Calorimeters may consist of layers of absorbing high density material as lead or steel, which slow down charged particles, interleaved with layers of an active medium such as solid lead-glass or liquid argon.
Special type of detectors are the Multiwire Proportional Chambers, which consist essentially of a set of thin, parallel and equally spaced anode wires, walled in between two cathode planes, in a gaseous atmosphere. When a negative potential of some level is applied to the cathodes, the anodes being grounded, an electric field develops as to attract electrons liberated by ionizing events as the crossing of charged particles. An avalanche multiplication of free electrons will then occur, amplifying the signal, which can then be measured.
Multiwire Proportional Chambers, for which the 1992 Nobel Price in Physics was awarded to Georges Charpak of CERN (European Laboratory for Particle Physics) had permitted among many other discoveries, the elucidation of the behavior and the effect of charged particles crossing masses of atoms at rest, which causes the ionization of said atoms and the generation of electron-ion pairs, this is an electron and a positron, matter and antimatter of each other. The electron pair will continue to drift, creating more electron pairs and so on, forming, under the proper circumstances, what is known as an avalanche multiplication in proportional counters.
Efficiency
The particles used for the collisions are relatively easy and cheap to produce. Electrons are produced by heating metals; Protons can be easily obtained by ionizing hydrogen; Antiparticles can be obtained by making energetic particles hit a metal target, in a process where first, carrier particles as Photons or Gluons are created and then transformed into pairs of particles and antiparticles, which in turn are separated by the use of magnetic fields. Photons are easy and cheap to produce by the trillions just by the stimulation of atoms of many materials with electric discharges or light flashes.
However, the amount of energy needed to store and then accelerate particles for the collisions is, by very far, greater than the energy obtained from the collision of the particles, making the process extremely inefficient in energy terms. In the same way, the cost of building a Synchrotron is in the order of billions of dollars. Obviously those installations are designed for research purposes, not for energy production.
Particles Collisions
When an electron and a positron (the anti-electron) collide at high energy, they annihilate releasing a tremendous amount of energy (accordingly to E=mc2) in the form of a Photon or a Z particle, which then converts into a D+ meson (a particle made of a charm quark and an anti-down quark) and a D− meson (a particle made of an anti-charm quark and a down quark).
In the same way, a quark from within a proton and an anti-quark from an anti-proton colliding at high energy will release a great amount of energy (accordingly to E=mc2) in the form of a Gluon, from which a top-quark and a top-antiquark emerge, which then decay into other particles.
Similarly, when two Photons collide they form a charm quark and an anti-charm quark, which in turn convert into a C-Jet (a beam) of particles and a C−-Jet of antiparticles of the first, releasing a formidable amount of energy, in the order of 183 to 209 GeV per collision, as consistently has been observed and recorded by scientists with the ALEPH detector at the Large Electron-Positron Collider at CERN.
Light and Photons
Photons, or electromagnetic particles, are considered packages of pure energy traveling at the speed of light, 299,792,458 meters per second in vacuum, which behave also as electromagnetic waves. The wavelength and the wave frequency is what determines the type of electromagnetic wave. Radio waves, Microwaves, Visible Light, X-Rays and Gamma Rays are all electromagnetic waves or photons. Visible light from violet to red light is just one thousand of the electromagnetic spectrum. The amount of energy of an electromagnetic wave depends on the wavelength and the frequency. Thus, gamma rays have the most energy, and radio waves have the least.
The energy of a single photon is given, in terms of its frequency, f, or wavelength, γ, as,
Wph=hf=hc/γ
were h is Plank's constant,
h=663×10−36 Joules
and c, the speed of light in free space,
299,792,458 m/s
The conversion factor from electron-volts to Joules is given by,
1 eV=160×10−21 Joules
Wph=hf=hc/γ
were h is Plank's constant,
h=663×10−36 Joules
and c, the speed of light in free space,
299,792,458 m/s
The conversion factor from electron-volts to Joules is given by,
1 eV=160×10−21 Joules
According to these formulas visible photons range in energy from 1.74 eV (700 nanometers) to 3.34 eV (400nanometers). The energy of a photon with a wavelength of 10,600 nm from a CO2 powerful laser would be in the order of 36.57 eV. The amount of energy needed to generate two photons would be twice these amounts, plus the inherent losses of the process. A 100 watts light bulb, or a CO2 laser will generate hundreds of trillions of photons per second by means of the stimulation of their filament and molecules, respectively.
How come then, a collision of two photons can yield an amount of energy in the order of 183 to 209 GeV (Giga-electron Volts) as measured with the ALEPH detector at CERN? These amounts of energy are easily billions of times the sum of two Photon's energy, as calculated before.
The apparent reason is that the quoted formulas, only refer to the kinetic energy of the photons, not its constitutional energy, in the same way that the kinetic energy in 1 Kg. of sugar falling from an altitude of 10 meters, has nothing to do with its constitutional energy given by E=mc2. Just to remember, the lack of mass of photons do not allow us to calculate their energy with Einstein's formula.
Laser Technology
Photons can be produced and directed as a beam using laser technology, or can be recovered from natural light or other sources, concentrated and redirected by the use of mirrors or lenses to form a beam of photons as dense as desired. Photon beams from lasers are monochromatic, coherent and very directional, while natural light photons are disperse, non-coherent and polychromatic.
To obtain photons from a laser system, a particular medium is “pumped” or stimulated, normally by flashes of light or by electrical discharges, to get the atoms into an excited state. Electrons from this excited atoms will jump to higher but unstable orbits. When this atoms relax, the electrons return to their normal orbit, but in the process they release energy in the form of photons. Photons, traveling at the speed of light, will stimulate new atoms, which will liberate more and more photons. The photons emitted in this way have a very specific wavelength that depends on the state of the electron's energy when the photon is released. Two of the same atoms in identical state will release photons with identical wavelengths. A system of parallel mirrors, one of them partially silvered coated, will align the photons to produce a photon beam through the partially coated mirror.
There are many types of lasers depending on the medium utilized. The Laser medium can be a solid, gas liquid, a plasma or a semiconductor. Some laser types and their wavelengths are the following:
Argon Fluoride | 193 | nm (nanometers) | ||
Krypton Fluoride | 248 | nm | ||
Nitrogen | 337 | nm | ||
Argon (blue) | 488 | nm | ||
Argon (green) | 514 | nm | ||
Helium neon (green) | 543 | nm | ||
Helium neon (red) | 633 | nm | ||
Ruby | 694 | nm | ||
Nd:Yag (NIR) | 1064 | nm | ||
Carbon Dioxide | 10600 | nm | ||
Some of this lasers are inoffensive to humans but others are dangerous as the CO2 because its wavelength is in the infrared and microwave part of the spectrum. Infrared radiation is heat and this laser can melt through whatever it is focused on.
Industrial and medical beams can be composed of electrons, positrons, neutrons, protons, hadrons, ions, X Rays, microwaves, etc. which could eventually be used as source of particles for collisions under the present invention, having in mind that their production may be far more expensive and elaborated than photon's production.
Fiber Optic Cable, a thin glass fiber cable (or a special type of plastic fiber) of just microns in diameter, can be used to transmit photons in a wide range of wavelength and frequencies. The light source can either be a light emitting diode (LED), a laser or common light properly directed. Light moves easily down the fiber-optic line because of principle known as total internal reflection, which states that when the angle of incidence exceeds a critical value, light can not get out of the glass; instead the light bounces back in. The speed of light will be affected by the medium through which it has to travel, being vacuum the best medium. The glass in the fiber-optic may reduce the speed of light to some extent, but in short distances may not be meaningful.
Electromagnetism, Electricity, and a new Theory of Electricity
Its well known that electromagnetism and electricity are interrelated phenomena, but yet our theories about how electricity forms from magnetism lack some explanations. It is believed that electricity consists of the flow of electrons traveling from the negative pole to the positive pole, phenomena some how created by the crossing of a magnetic field through a conductor. Still, there are too many unanswered questions in this theory. From what atoms or what particular matter would those electrons come from; what will be the condition of the matter that released its electrons by the trillions; in virtue of what would those electrons travel to the positive pole, to accommodate where?
Energy originates matter, and matter can transform back into energy, as we have been able to establish by scientific verification. But electrical energy has two different manifestations, equivalent but opposed, antithesis of each other, the positive and the negative.
Electricity must be the flow of both, the positive constituent and the negative constituent, created or dissociated from matter by the action of a moving magnetic field. What could be happening, is that the crossing of a magnetic field through a conductor, would create Electron Pairs, an electron (with a negative charge) and a positron (with a positive charge), which will flow in opposite directions by the action of the magnetic field movement, according to the well known rule of thumb.
It has been proven in Multiwire Proportional Chambers, that negatively charged electrons travel at much higher speeds than positrons, probably a thousand times faster, which may be the reason why we thought that only negative electrons travel in an electric circuit.
We could assert that: Electricity is the flow of both, the negative element and the positive element, the electron and the positron, in opposite directions along a conductor, induced by the crossing of a magnetic field through the conductor, in which, at the closing of the circuit, both will flow to the mutual encounter by the attraction of opposites, nullifying each other, annihilating each other, since each one is the antimatter of each other.
As electrons and positrons flow along the conductors we have the opportunity to use the phenomena in different ways, as electromagnetic force, heat, light, etc.
The present invention refers to a system for the practical and inexpensive procurement of huge amounts of energy derived from the principles of matter-antimatter generation and annihilation.
The Generator comprises several functions simultaneously: Generates photons at an exponentially increasing rate by the continuous excitement and stimulation of atoms; produces a continuously increasing concentration of photons traveling at the speed of light within a confined environment; induces forced collisions of photons at the speed of light at continuously increasing rates; generates Jets of particles and antiparticles of matter/antimatter by the collision of photons; converts particles and antiparticles' energy directly into electricity. A second embodiment will convert particles and antiparticles into antimatter fuel for propulsion purposes.
The core of the system is a micro-reactor that generates photons within a specially designed Self-Reflective Chamber that will not allow photons to escape and continuously increases their amount and concentration by the continuous amplification of said photons at increasing rates. Photons trying to escape the Chamber will be reflected back to the chamber continuously and indefinitely, at the speed of light.
Hundreds of trillions of photons traveling at the speed of light will be crossing paths with other photons in a high and continuously increasing Photon Density environment, for which it is to anticipate that myriads of collisions could be taking place simultaneously. Each of these collisions will produce Jets of particles and antiparticles, which, this time, will pass across the walls of the Self-Reflective Chamber creating a continuous flow of particles and antiparticles toward the exterior of the Chamber.
Myriads of Jets of electrically charged particles and antiparticles passing across the masses of specialized Collecting Chambers simultaneously will generate ion-pairs dissociation, this is electrons and antielectrons or positrons, which in turn will generate myriads of avalanches of the same electrons and positrons. Electrons and positrons are then separated by the action of powerful Electromagnetic Rotational Fields, generating very high electric potentials or power across the terminals of the Collecting Chambers.
A second embodiment will, instead, separate the Jets of particles and antiparticles by charge, positive or negative, without any interference with matter, by the use of powerful Monopolar Electromagnetic Rotational Fields. Particles and antiparticles thus created and separated can be used as propellant fuel for rockets or combustion engines. Antimatter fuel could then be produced in site, on demand, in practically any amount.
In essence, the Antimatter Electrical Generator converts almost ordinary matter into pure energy.
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