Antimatter has unparalleled energy! How can we "control" it?

Modern science believes that only a little bit of antimatter can release huge energy, which is the most ideal and perfect energy. So, if this energy is seized by KB molecules, wouldn't the people of the world be miserable? Seeing the worsening situation in the world, such as the situation in the Middle East, many people are worried about it.

The reason why antimatter is the ceiling of energy is that when antimatter and matter meet, annihilation will occur. What is annihilation? It means to become nothing and disappear. In the brief moment of annihilation of matter and antimatter, a violent explosion will occur, releasing all the energy of the superimposed mass of matter and antimatter. The total amount of this energy is equal to Einstein's mass-energy equation: E=mc^2, which means that energy is equal to the mass of matter multiplied by the square of the speed of light.

That is, when 1 gram of matter collides with 1 gram of antimatter, all the energy of 2 grams of matter will be released. According to the mass-energy equation, 1.8^14 J (joules) of energy can be released, which is equivalent to 50 million kilowatt-hours of electricity or the energy of 43,000 tons of TNT explosion.

If humans want to reach Mars now, the chemical fuel consumed by the starship will need to be tens of millions of tons, while the use of antimatter energy will only be counted in grams. What a huge revolution and progress this is.

The cleanest and most efficient energy that humans have discovered and are trying to use is nuclear fusion. If this huge energy can be used for social production and life, human civilization will leap to a new level. However, the mass-energy conversion rate of this energy is only 0.7%, which is not even a fraction of the 100% conversion rate of antimatter and matter annihilation.

Therefore, the annihilation of matter and antimatter is a perfect conversion of mass and energy, and after the conversion, no trace is left in the world, that is, no pollution. If this energy can be used for human survival and development, it will certainly be the ceiling of energy utilization.

So, does antimatter exist in this world?

Of course it exists. Scientific research has proven that all the basic particles that make up all the matter in the world have their antiparticles. Scientists have captured antimatter in the laboratory. Although these antimatter are currently only at the atomic and subatomic levels, they are enough to prove that antimatter really exists.

The so-called antimatter is the opposite of the positive matter in our world. This opposite is not in appearance, but in essence. For example, all visible positive matter is composed of atoms, and atoms are composed of nuclei and electrons. The protons in the nucleus are positively charged, and the electrons moving around the nucleus are negatively charged. When the positive and negative charges cancel each other out, the matter becomes electrically neutral. Although antimatter is also composed of atoms, its nuclei are negatively charged and its electrons are positively charged, which is exactly the opposite of positive matter.

In our world, antimatter is actually everywhere. For example, the human body and bananas both release positrons. A banana can release 19 positrons a day. This is because both the human body and bananas contain a small amount of potassium-40, which is a natural isotope of potassium and releases positrons during decay.

Positron emission tomography (PET) used in medicine to detect cancer uses the principle of antimatter. The positrons generated by the instrument annihilate after contacting human matter, producing gamma rays. By capturing and analyzing these gamma rays, doctors can understand the physical condition of the person being examined.

But the ubiquity of antimatter does not mean that it is easy to obtain. In other words, obtaining antimatter is even more difficult than going to space. Now the world's aerospace industry is developing rapidly, and landing on the moon and Mars are becoming a reality, but the scientific and technological community has exhausted everything and cannot obtain a gram of antimatter, not even a milligram.

First, because there is too little antimatter in our world, it can only exist in subatomic form. Antimatter particles discovered so far include antihydrogen atoms, positrons, negative protons, anti-alpha particles (antihelium-4), etc. The heaviest antimatter is antihelium-4, which requires 150.5 trillion such particles to have a mass of 1 gram.

Now, these antiparticles are almost all artificially produced by consuming huge amounts of energy, and the number produced is calculated in units.

Secondly, it is extremely difficult to preserve antimatter because positive matter is everywhere in our world. Antimatter will immediately annihilate with positive matter as soon as it is born and cannot exist for even a millisecond.

Scientists have racked their brains to preserve and create the antimatter particles they have collected. Currently, at least two conditions need to be created to allow the captured antimatter particles to stay in this world a little longer.

The two conditions are: first, the temperature of these particles must be lowered to 0.5K, which is minus 272.65 degrees Celsius, extremely close to absolute zero, so that these antiparticles are in a low-energy state and move slowly, even if they are "caught"; the other is to use the weak magnetism of these particles to create a magnetic field trap, also called a magnetic trap or magnetic bottle, to bind these antiparticles in it. They cannot come into contact with any matter, so that they can barely survive.

Why can they only barely survive? Because the technology is too difficult to preserve these particles in a magnetic trap for a long time. Scientists have worked hard for decades, and the preservation time of antiparticles has increased from 0.17 seconds in the early days to 1,000 seconds now, and it is difficult to extend it any further. This time can only meet the needs of some research. If it can be extended to 30 minutes, it can meet the needs of most research.

Even so, they can only catch a few particles for research, and are still far from obtaining visible antimatter. According to relevant information, scientists around the world have used the world's vast resources and spent countless money on research for decades, but the total amount of antimatter obtained is only 15 nanograms, which is 1.5 billionths of a gram. The energy from the annihilation of all these antimatter particles is not enough to boil even a cup of water.

The only way to produce antimatter particles with current human technology is to use a large hadron collider. According to scientific calculations, a large hadron collider can produce one microgram of antimatter after colliding for a thousand years. To produce one gram of antimatter, 2.5*10^16 kWh of electricity is required. If the electricity cost is calculated at 1 yuan per kWh, the electricity cost of producing one gram of antimatter is 250 trillion yuan, not including the staggering operating costs such as manpower and material resources.

What does this mean? The world's GDP in 2022 is about 100 trillion US dollars, equivalent to about 730 trillion yuan. The electricity cost of producing one gram of antimatter requires 34 times the world's GDP, which means that the people of the world have to work every day for 34 years without food, water, clothing or shelter to produce one gram of antimatter.

Therefore, before the existing theory and technology have breakthroughs, the vision of human beings using antimatter can only be a dream and cannot be realized. Therefore, it can be seen that at this stage, the worry that terrorists will get antimatter and use this terrifying energy to kill people is completely unnecessary.

It seems that the utilization of antimatter is just an unrealistic fantasy. Isn't it a waste of time and money for scientists to keep on pursuing this research topic?

I don't think so, because there are still many unknown areas in our world, and antimatter is one of the unknown worlds that still needs to be explored. This issue may be related to the ultimate mystery of the universe. Clarifying it will play a vital role in the future direction and continuation of human civilization.

Moreover, just because we cannot use antimatter energy now does not mean we will never be able to use it in the future. As long as we actively explore and research, we will one day be able to figure it out and use it for human civilization.

In our world, the amount of antimatter is extremely small. So, is there a large amount of antimatter, or even a planet-level amount of antimatter, in our universe? This is still controversial in the scientific community. After years of exploration and research, the current consensus is that, at least in the universe at a considerable distance from us, there is no large amount of antimatter. Otherwise, our solar system and the Earth would be in danger.

In April 1997, American astronomers announced that they had discovered an antimatter fountain 3,500 light-years above the Milky Way using a gamma-ray detection satellite. Chinese scientists also participated in the research, but it was ultimately not confirmed.

Nobel Prize winner and Chinese-American scientist Samuel Ting was very interested in this and spent the rest of his life immersed in this research. With his participation, the United States launched the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer into space on the Discovery Space Shuttle in June 1998, specifically to search for antimatter in the universe.

However, there is no reliable evidence to prove that there is a large amount of antimatter in the universe, and the exploration is still ongoing. Some scientists believe that even if there is an antimatter world or antimatter galaxy in the universe, it is at least 35 million light-years away from us.

Even if it can be confirmed in the future that there is an antimatter world 35 million light years away, using it is still an unattainable dream.

Because human space technology is still at a very primitive stage: manned spaceflight has not yet escaped the Earth's gravity. Even if an unmanned probe flies out of the Earth's gravity, it will take tens of thousands of years just to fly out of the solar system's gravity range. The radius of the solar system's gravitational circle is only one light year. Even if a light-speed or sub-light-speed spacecraft is invented in the future, it will take more than 35 million years to fly to 35 million light years away.

Only when human civilization can use space-time folding technology to travel at warp speed or achieve wormhole travel can such long-distance space-time exploration be possible. But even so, how to get close to the antimatter area without being annihilated, and how to collect a large amount of antimatter and store it for use is also an extremely difficult problem to overcome.

Of course, all these concerns may be due to the crude cognition that human civilization is still at a low level. Once we break through the second level of Kardashev civilization, or even reach the third level, theoretically there will be a major breakthrough. Perhaps at that time, the use of antimatter will no longer be a problem.

According to the Kardashev index, human civilization is only at level 0.73. Scientific predictions show that it will take another 200 years to develop to level 1 civilization, at least 5,000 years to develop to level 2 civilization, and how long it will take to develop to level 3 civilization is still an unknown unknown. Therefore, I believe that it will take at least 5,000 years for humans to achieve the ability to use antimatter on a large scale.

What do you think about this? Feel free to discuss.

This is an original article from Space-Time Communication. Please respect the author’s copyright. Thank you for your understanding and support.