Jorcer Posted November 5, 2012 Posted November 5, 2012 But how do you generate more antimatter? Ram scoops would work acceptably well for interstellar hydrogen (matter), but antimatter...now that's tricky. Just don't let the two touch!
GreenWolf13 Posted November 5, 2012 Posted November 5, 2012 But how do you generate more antimatter? Ram scoops would work acceptably well for interstellar hydrogen (matter), but antimatter...now that's tricky. You need to use the Higgs-Boson.
SimpleGuy Posted November 5, 2012 Posted November 5, 2012 Or, if you're serious, particle accelerators. On the topic of seriousness, antimatter is produced naturally through radioactive decay.
Jorcer Posted November 5, 2012 Posted November 5, 2012 On the topic of seriousness, antimatter is produced naturally through radioactive decay. Can it be used for anything?
SimpleGuy Posted November 5, 2012 Posted November 5, 2012 Can it be used for anything? Of course, as long as it is engineered properly. If you've ever had a PET scan (or know a relative that has) then they were exposed to antimatter (positrons) and the images developed were from antimatter reactions within their body.
Jorcer Posted November 5, 2012 Posted November 5, 2012 Of course, as long as it is engineered properly. If you've ever had a PET scan (or know a relative that has) then they were exposed to antimatter (positrons) and the images developed were from antimatter reactions within their body. So I assume that the danger of antimatter and matter touching is about the same as having pasta and antipasto at the same time. (Non existent)
SimpleGuy Posted November 5, 2012 Posted November 5, 2012 So I assume that the danger of antimatter and matter touching is about the same as having pasta and antipasta at the same time. (Non existent) In small isolated reactions, it's happening in nature constantly. If you could somehow hold a jar of dense antimatter where you could spontaneously trigger many reactions at once AND somehow get daughter particles to interact with the immediate environment (this depends on the exact annihilation and surrounding material I'd imagine), it could be just as concerning as a traditional nuclear weapon.
GreenWolf13 Posted November 5, 2012 Posted November 5, 2012 SImpleGuy, you know what Muon Catalyzed Fusion is, correct? Do you think it could be feasible as a power source if the alpha-sticking problem were solved?
Jorcer Posted November 5, 2012 Posted November 5, 2012 For the uninformed (me) this is what Wikipedia says about Muon Catalyzed Fusion: Muon-catalyzed fusion (μCF) is a process allowing nuclear fusion to take place at temperatures significantly lower than the temperatures required for thermonuclear fusion, even at room temperature or lower. It is one of the few known ways of catalyzing nuclear fusion reactions. Muons are unstable subatomic particles. They are similar to electrons, but are about 207 times more massive. If a muon replaces one of the electrons in a hydrogen molecule, the nuclei are consequently drawn 207 times closer together than in a normal molecule. When the nuclei are this close together, the probability of nuclear fusion is greatly increased, to the point where a significant number of fusion events can happen at room temperature. Current techniques for creating large numbers of muons require large amounts of energy, larger than the amounts produced by the catalyzed nuclear fusion reactions. This prevents it from becoming a practical power source. Moreover, each muon has about a 1% chance of "sticking" to the alpha particle produced by the nuclear fusion of a deuterium with a tritium, removing the "stuck" muon from the catalytic cycle, meaning that each muon can only catalyze at most a few hundred deuterium tritium nuclear fusion reactions. So, these two factors, of muons being too expensive to make and then sticking too easily to alpha particles, limit muon-catalyzed fusion to a laboratory curiosity. To create useful room-temperature muon-catalyzed fusion reactors we would need to discover a cheaper, more efficient muon source and/or encourage each individual muon to catalyze myriads of fusion reactions. Though a mechanism for possible room temperature fusion, muon-catalyzed fusion is distinct from cold fusion, a controversial subject considered pathological science by the mainstream fusion community.
SimpleGuy Posted November 5, 2012 Posted November 5, 2012 SImpleGuy, you know what Muon Catalyzed Fusion is, correct? Do you think it could be feasible as a power source if the alpha-sticking problem were solved? Honestly, I don't know much about it. But going off the knowledge Jorcer provided above, all it really does it seems is replace the singular problem of requring power needed to heat up gas into plasma with the problems of: requiring an (assumedly) larger power need to continuously (due to alpha sticking) produce muons, and requiring a whole new process to adhere these muons to fuel (new fusion fuel "enrichment" stage).
Jorcer Posted November 5, 2012 Posted November 5, 2012 Yay! I helped the really smart person! Side-note: I understood everything up to this part: "replace the singular..." EDIT: after re-reading it, it makes more sense. I think you are saying that it replaces a relatively small problem with numerous bigger ones.
LazDude2012 Posted November 5, 2012 Posted November 5, 2012 What do you guys think of magnetised target fusion?
GreenWolf13 Posted November 5, 2012 Posted November 5, 2012 Honestly, I don't know much about it. But going off the knowledge Jorcer provided above, all it really does it seems is replace the singular problem of requring power needed to heat up gas into plasma with the problems of: requiring an (assumedly) larger power need to continuously (due to alpha sticking) produce muons, and requiring a whole new process to adhere these muons to fuel (new fusion fuel "enrichment" stage). If we could reduce alpha-sticking, a muon could be used for hundreds, maybe even thousands of fusions, instead of a hundred. The problem is also the fact that long term storage of muons is impossible, due to their decay speed of a few micro seconds. Injecting the muons isn't really an issue, as there are various ways to do that. The main problem is getting more fusions out of each muon, more "bang for your buck" basically.
poryy Posted November 5, 2012 Posted November 5, 2012 If we could reduce alpha-sticking, a muon could be used for hundreds, maybe even thousands of fusions, instead of a hundred. The problem is also the fact that long term storage of muons is impossible, due to their decay speed of a few micro seconds. Injecting the muons isn't really an issue, as there are various ways to do that. The main problem is getting more fusions out of each muon, more "bang for your buck" basically. You could keep them in a vacuum to store them. I understood everything up to "alpha-sticking" but in theory, if you could get an antimuon or something, you could cause an infinite reaction! Domsday weapons FTW!
GreenWolf13 Posted November 5, 2012 Posted November 5, 2012 You could keep them in a vacuum to store them. I understood everything up to "alpha-sticking" but in theory, if you could get an antimuon or something, you could cause an infinite reaction! Domsday weapons FTW! No, because they decay, even in a vacuum. The only way to increase the lifespan of a muon is to accelerate it to near-lightspeed. Because of relativity, the muon lasts longer (from our perspective. From the perspective of the muon, it still only lasts 2.2 microseconds.)
poryy Posted November 5, 2012 Posted November 5, 2012 No, because they decay, even in a vacuum. The only way to increase the lifespan of a muon is to accelerate it to near-lightspeed. Because of relativity, the muon lasts longer (from our perspective. From the perspective of the muon, it still only lasts 2.2 microseconds.) Neutrinos can travel faster then light in theory. Maybe they could help.
SimpleGuy Posted November 5, 2012 Posted November 5, 2012 Neutrinos can travel faster then light in theory. In theory, nothing can travel faster than light. EDIT: Except Tachyons. A bad joke: The bartender says "We don't serve tachyons here". The tachyon walks into the bar.
Markarthian Posted November 5, 2012 Posted November 5, 2012 No, because they decay, even in a vacuum. The only way to increase the lifespan of a muon is to accelerate it to near-lightspeed. Because of relativity, the muon lasts longer (from our perspective. From the perspective of the muon, it still only lasts 2.2 microseconds.) Like, in the earths gravitational field a muon would exist for about 8 seconds due to it's speed being enormous. There are some formulas to explain this, sadly I forgot most of them (only ones I know still are (Tv/Ta)^2/3=Gmm/4π^2 , E=dmc^2 and some others.. I'm on my phone, annoying to type formulas) A way to work around this is to create them nonstop on spot (why idk) by using either using the background radiation or simple α or β-decay.
poryy Posted November 5, 2012 Posted November 5, 2012 In theory, nothing can travel faster than light. EDIT: Except Tachyons. A bad joke: The bartender says "We don't serve tachyons here". The tachyon walks into the bar. That would be a bit derpy to recieve mail. Before the person who wrote it sent it.
Jorcer Posted November 5, 2012 Posted November 5, 2012 In theory, nothing can travel faster than light. EDIT: Except Tachyons. A bad joke: The bartender says "We don't serve tachyons here". The tachyon walks into the bar. I get it. Pretty funny. Okay, going to read it now. Eh?
Xylord Posted November 5, 2012 Posted November 5, 2012 Talking about cold fusion, I read this article about Rossi's invention, a unit able to produce energy in mysterious ways. The whole thing is very scam-ish, and Rossi doesn't have much credibility, but he hasn't been disproved yet, and his tests show that his "Black Box" does produce energy. Personally, I don't put a lot of faith in cold fusion any time soon, but it's still very interesting, and if it work? That would be amazing. What do you think about that?
Kocken926 Posted November 5, 2012 Posted November 5, 2012 In theory, nothing can travel faster than light. In theory, I could transport myself with a negative timespan, using the timedistortion of a black hole, making me travel FTL in a way.
Markarthian Posted November 5, 2012 Posted November 5, 2012 Talking about cold fusion, I read this article about Rossi's invention, a unit able to produce energy in mysterious ways. The whole thing is very scam-ish, and Rossi doesn't have much credibility, but he hasn't been disproved yet, and his tests show that his "Black Box" does produce energy. Personally, I don't put a lot of faith in cold fusion any time soon, but it's still very interesting, and if it work? That would be amazing. What do you think about that? I read about this earlier, I think it's cool as heck. It would be the solution to the worlds energy problem. Although he hasn't been proven wrong yet, I still believe I smell a rat...
Markarthian Posted November 5, 2012 Posted November 5, 2012 In theory, I could transport myself with a negative timespan, using the timedistortion of a black hole, making me travel FTL in a way. That would be very hard, especially because you weigh something. The only (right?) reason why fotons can travel so ridiculously fast is because the don't have mass.
GreenWolf13 Posted November 5, 2012 Posted November 5, 2012 Talking about cold fusion, I read this article about Rossi's invention, a unit able to produce energy in mysterious ways. The whole thing is very scam-ish, and Rossi doesn't have much credibility, but he hasn't been disproved yet, and his tests show that his "Black Box" does produce energy. Personally, I don't put a lot of faith in cold fusion any time soon, but it's still very interesting, and if it work? That would be amazing. What do you think about that? Cold fusion and Muon Catalyzed fusion are two different things. Muon Catalyzed fusion has been performed multiple times, and is a real thing, but it is (currently) not a viable source of energy. Cold fusion (which usually involves palladium as a catalyst) has never been duplicated, or if it has, it has turned out to be a scam or experimental error. The "black box" is not necessarily cold fusion, as its inventor has never revealed how it works.
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