Question:
I would like to know what work Argonne has done with Anti matter
and what we as a country can do with it for a power source? Like on Star
Trek.
Replies:
I cannot say what has been done specifically at Argonne (maybe
one of the locals will fill us in) but here is what I know in general about
your question: At the moment, the only way we are able to produce antimatter
(in very tiny amounts) is in high-energy collisions using accelerators. (And
some is produced naturally in certain radioactive decay processes.) There is
no known way to filter out the antimatter to prevent it from annihilating with
"positive" matter, nor do we have anything like the "antimatter containment
field" used on the Enterprise. Even if we could do these things, we have no
way of extracting usable energy from matter-antimatter annihilation. The
energy that is produced is in the form of high-frequency gamma rays. It would
be like trying to harness a thunderstorm for electricity: the energy is
simply too concentrated to be drawn off in a usable form. (So I guess we
would need something like dilithium crystals, whatever it is that they are
supposed to do!) The most "scientifically advanced" energy source we use
today is nuclear fission. And how do we use it? We boil water with the heat
it produces to make steam to turn turbines! And if we do ever achieve
controlled fusion, that energy will be used in precisely the same manner!
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