what is anti-matter? And how can it be used in future travel applications?
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ELI5. Anti matter are similar to their normal counterparts except they have opposite charges (or are made of quarks that have opposite charges). One of their characteristics is that when matter and anti matter particles collide, they annihilate each other releasing a lot of energy very efficiently.
How they can be used in travel is speculative and theoretical. Anti matter is hard to contain and control in any great quantity because nearly everything around it is matter which it cannot come into contact with or it goes poof! So it needs to be contained in a vacuum and some kind of strong magnetic field.
Assuming it can ever be generated, contained and controlled reliably, one way to use it is to manage a controlled annihilation with matter thereby releasing energy that can be used to propel some kind of craft. Very little (relatively speaking) would be needed to generate a lot of energy so, in theory, it would be very efficient.
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