09-05-2017, 01:09 PM | #51 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: [Spaceships] Anti-Lithium for Drives – Does this work?
You would need a much more powerful magnet than 10 Teslas to even trap a gram of antimatter. Just using a back of the envelope calculation, you would need a 1 million Telsa magnetic field to contain a gram of antimatter for a prolonged period of time (the attraction between antimatter and matter is probably one of the most powerful forces in the Universe). Anything less is just as much handwavium as force fields and other forms of superscience.
If you want hard science rockets, helium-3 fusion rockets are probably much more realistic and much more affordable (helium-3 is created in 50% of DD fusion reactions, so we will have more than enough helium-3 for propulsion purposes in a decade or two). Helium-3 fusion creates 207 GJ per gram (around 0.002% of that of an equivalent mass of antimatter-matter), which means that 1 kg of helium-3 contains as much energy as 1 gram of antimatter combining with 1 gram of matter. Helium-3 is much easier to store, its products are much easier to direct using a magnetic rocket nozzle, and it can be used for a number of other uses than propulsion. |
09-05-2017, 01:41 PM | #52 |
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Re: [Spaceships] Anti-Lithium for Drives – Does this work?
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09-05-2017, 02:11 PM | #53 | |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: [Spaceships] Anti-Lithium for Drives – Does this work?
Quote:
Any significant amount of pure charged particles requires ridiculous energy to hold together; if you could hold a gram of antiprotons in one place there'd be no point because you could just hold a gram of protons and get about the same energy storage (1g of protons is about 96,000 Coulombs). |
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09-05-2017, 02:19 PM | #54 |
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Re: [Spaceships] Anti-Lithium for Drives – Does this work?
Significantly, magnetic levitation of neutral antimatter is no different than magnetic levitation of neutral electronic matter. It is no more difficult to levitate a gram of antiwater than to levitate a gram of water.
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09-05-2017, 02:20 PM | #55 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: [Spaceships] Anti-Lithium for Drives – Does this work?
Other than rogue gas atoms escaping and colliding with the walls of the containment chamber (or rogue atoms getting into the containment chamber, colliding with the antimatter, and heating it up).
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09-05-2017, 02:23 PM | #56 | |
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Re: [Spaceships] Anti-Lithium for Drives – Does this work?
Quote:
Which might mean solid storage is better, but as you say it is trivial to freeze stuff. Last edited by sir_pudding; 09-05-2017 at 02:28 PM. |
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09-05-2017, 03:09 PM | #57 |
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Re: [Spaceships] Anti-Lithium for Drives – Does this work?
I wouldn't say trivial, but certainly straight forward and not something beyond TL8.
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09-05-2017, 03:48 PM | #58 |
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Re: [Spaceships] Anti-Lithium for Drives – Does this work?
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09-05-2017, 03:58 PM | #59 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: [Spaceships] Anti-Lithium for Drives – Does this work?
Well, assuming you have lithium to freeze. Isolating lithium is TL 5.
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09-05-2017, 06:26 PM | #60 | |
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Re: [Spaceships] Anti-Lithium for Drives – Does this work?
Quote:
And we are talking about major industrial and compact efficient drives, not just technically possible. That way leads to a breakdown of TL definitions.
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