what is anti-matter? And how can it be used in future travel applications?
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Anti-matter is the same as regular matter, but has the opposite charge. For example, an electron is negatively charged. It’s anti-matter counterpart, the positron, has a positive electric charge. Aside from that, there’s not much practical difference between the two. In other words, an antihydrogen molecule should be identically to regular counterpart. Like if you combined two of it with an antioxygen atom, you’d get anti-water. Which should behave like regular water.
Now, if you remember your grade school chemistry, opposite charges attract while like charges repel. A positron and an electron will attract each other, and when they collide, they “annihilate” each other. This matter then gets converted into energy. Usually in the form of other quantum particles like photons, because remember, matter cannot be created or destroyed.
Now, there’s a tremendous amount of energy in an atom. So if you can harness that, it would have limitless potential. Like running a nuclear reactor or powering a rocket. Per kilogram, the energy density of this fuel would be far higher than anything else we have, including nuclear fusion, which the sun uses. In theory, it could even be used to power an Alcubierre (warp) drive, like on Star Trek, if you had enough of it. (It’s still being heavily debated, but the math seems to work.) But you would need A LOT.
The problem is there’s very little natural anti-matter out there in the universe, and physicists don’t actually know why. According to our current understanding, Big Bang should have created equal parts regular and anti-matter. And they can’t have annihilated each other, because there’s still a ton of regular matter floating around. So, unfortunately, you can’t just mine it. Anti-matter can be manufactured in particle accelerators here on Earth, but it’s an expensive and energy intensive process, only resulting in a few atoms at a time. Not enough to actually be useful.
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