Is it possible to use antimatter to power a vehicle?

Question

Wouldn't this give out limitless power? I know it is really hard to make antimatter, but if there were a way to annihilate it with matter causing energy to be dispersed, is there anyway to use this energy as a fuel source? I can't wait until the future

Answer 1

If you had the antimatter and could control it, yes any energy releasinig reaction could power a vehicle. Antimatter exists, but not in any useful quantities in nature. Most of what we know of antimatter is from studying the tiny (and by tiny I mean nanograms) amounts we've made in various particle accelerators. You would also need to overcome the storage implications - seeing as matter and antimatter annihilate upon contact releasing energy, the antimatter could never touch its containment unit. This is usually done by keeping the antimatter in a helix unit stored as close to 0 K as possible, in a very powerful magnetic field to keep it in the center of the unit.

The other implications you would have to overcome is to harness the energy it released for practical application. When matter and antimatter annihilate they release a gamma wave, which will pass through most materials without even interacting with them. You would need to capture this, and convert it to heat, and from there you could convert the heat to mechanical motion.

If it were a spacecraft and you didnt need to worry about the radiation left behind, you could use the energy produced to accelerate particles which would act as your thrust (similar to an ion drive).

Answer 2

The answer is a resounding NO. A kilogram of matter meeting a kilogram of antimatter would through mutual annihilation, release about half as much energy as all the gasoline burned in the U.S. last year. But there are no known sources of antimatter, so it would have to be synthesized. The most efficient antimatter maker in the world, the particle accelerator at CERN near Geneva, would have to run non-stop for 100 trillion years to make a kilogram of antiprotons. At the current state of scientific knowledge it is therefore a non starter.

Answer 3

Yes you could use antimatter to power a vehicle. But you must realize that antimatter does not exist in significant quantities in nature. There is no place where you can 'mine' or 'drill' for antimatter. You basically have to create it in a lab, using accelerators or some other devise which requires huge amounts of energy. In fact the amount of energy required will be large then the energy stored in the antimatter regardless of how efficiently you can produce it. So no you won't have limitless energy.

Answer 4

The first thing is to prove that the antimatter exists. I think until now there are only speculations about the existence of antimatter. If it exists like it is explained in the books, I think it is impossible to use it as fuel because occurs a reaction between the antimatter and normal matter and both disappear.

Answer 5

While an antimatter powered vehicle may be possible in the future, many concerns need to be addressed. Is this going to be an atmospheric vehicle, where the air in our atmosphere could easily come in contact with the antimatter? How will you shield the machinery from the resultant antimatter reaction? Will we be able to shield a pilot from the massive almost point-blank gamma ray shower that results? Many questions, but who knows?

Answer 6

Of course if you can get an energy source, you can use the energy to propel anything. Making it work is very impractical at this time. To create and contain the antimatter would take something probably the size of a city block.

Answer 7

YES- But would you really want to ride in it?

Creating antimatter at this point in time is very energy intensive and until technology increases to make this affordable you will not see anybody commercially working this!

Answer 8

seem at it this way -- Take a ten kg mass. by some capacity get it shifting at 89% the fee of light. That 10 kg mass might now have a mass of a million.134658^17 kg. needless to say, to boost that "new" mass as much as ninety% the fee of light is going to take a great quantity of capacity. rather it would take a million.01977^34 ergs of capacity (..approximately 3.7987^20 horsepower) there is not any technologies immediately which could crank out that style of capacity, nor any interior the foreseeable destiny.

Answer 9

yes, it is theoretically possible, its still a few years away