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CONTENTS
Objectives
What is antimatter?
Antiparticles
Annihilation
Artificial production
Applications
OBJECTIVES
To understand the basics of antimatter
technology.
WHAT IS ANTIMATTER?
PET Scan
Particle physicists regularly use collisions between electrons and their
high energies, can rematerialize as new particles and antiparticles. This is what
happens at machines such as the Large Electron Positron (LEP) collider at CERN.
At low energies, however, the electron-positron annihilations can be put to
different uses, for example to reveal the workings of the brain in the technique
called Positron Emission Tomography (PET). In PET, the positrons come from
the decay of radioactive nuclei incorporated in a special fluid injected into the
patient. The positrons then annihilate with electrons in nearby atoms. As the
electron and positron are almost at rest when they annihilate, there is not
enough annihilation energy to make even the lightest particle and antiparticle
(the electron and the positron), so the energy emerges as two gamma rays,
which shoot off in opposite directions to conserve momentum.
Antimatter as a propulsion system
if we are enable to develop a propulsion system which
uses antimatter as the source of energy in the future it
will surely render any other Newtonian rocket obsolete
overnight, the system has the highest predicted
efficiency, specific impulse and probably the highest
thrust to weight ratio. There does seem to be a serious
amount of disagreement over this last point, the general
feeling seems to be that the thrust to weight will at least
comparable to today's very powerful chemical rockets.
What this means is that only 100 milligrams (1/10 gram)
of antimatter would be needed to match the total
propulsive energy of the Space Shuttle (all those huge
tanks of fuel!).
Antimatter propulsion system
Estimates for travel times to Mars for an
advanced antimatter rocket are anywhere from
24 hours to 2 weeks, it is probable that it will
be somewhere in between. Compare this to the
space shuttle using its conventional chemical
propulsion when a trip to Mars would take
between 1 and 2 years !!!
CONCLUSION
Antimatter indeed has the potential of
becoming the most efficient source of energy.
But as the artificial production of antimatter
has made it the most expensive substance on
earth , we still have to wait until we find it
naturally . In sometime in future we can hope
that we will be capable of travelling anywhere
inside our galaxy with the help of antimatter
spaceships.
QUESTIONS!!!!!
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