Antimatter

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Antimatter was a generalized term used to describe a state of matter which was different in some significant way from another state of matter. The term applied to any of the following, individually or in combinations:

a subatomic particle of matter with the opposite charge of another particle that has a charge (e.g., an electron);
a subatomic particle of matter that is a variant of, but with very different properties of, another particle (e.g., a quark); and/or
matter which is physically identical at a macro level to, but exists in a parallel universe from, other matter.

Matter/antimatter reaction

See: matter-antimatter reaction

Uses

Antimatter has been used for a variety of purposes. Depending on the type of antimatter in use it can interact with, modify, or destroy normal matter. As a result it has been used for everything from a component of weapons of mass destruction, to a fuel source, to scanning technology, to medical uses.

In 2366 the non-corporeal Koinonians drained antimatter from the antimatter containment pods of the USS Enterprise-D to use it as energy to create their replica of Marla Aster. This was stopped by increasing the shield harmonics to match the antimatter containment effectively severing the Koinonian beam. (TNG: "The Bonding")

When Montgomery Scott discussed the possibility of using auto-destruct against V'Ger with another crewmember in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, he mentioned that the force of an auto-destruct for the Enterprise was around 100 Mt. Utilizing E=MC², it is estimated that the annihilation of 1 kg of antimatter would result in an explosion of about 42.96 Mt. This would mean that NCC-1701 may contain 2 to 3 kg of antimatter.Uses

[edit]Medical Antimatter-matter reactions have practical applications in medical imaging, such as positron emission tomography (PET). In positive beta decay, a nuclide loses surplus positive charge by emitting a positron (in the same event, a proton becomes a neutron, and neutrinos are also given off). Nuclides with surplus positive charge are easily made in a cyclotron and are widely generated for medical use. [edit]Fuel In antimatter-matter collisions resulting in photon emission, the entire rest mass of the particles is converted to kinetic energy. The energy per unit mass (9×1016 J/kg) is about 10 orders of magnitude greater than chemical energy (compared to TNT at 4.2×106 J/kg, and formation of water at 1.56×107 J/kg), about 4 orders of magnitude greater than nuclear energy that can be liberated today using nuclear fission (about 40 MeV per 238U nucleus transmuted to Lead, or 1.5×1013 J/kg), and about 2 orders of magnitude greater than the best possible from fusion (about 6.3×1014 J/kg for the proton-proton chain). The reaction of 1 kg of antimatter with 1 kg of matter would produce 1.8×1017 J (180 petajoules) of energy (by the mass-energy equivalence formula E = mc²), or the rough equivalent of 47 megatons of TNT. For comparison, Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated, reacted an estimated yield of 50 Megatons, which required the use of hundreds of kilograms of fissile material (Uranium/Plutonium). Not all of that energy can be utilized by any realistic technology, because as much as 50% of energy produced in reactions between nucleons and antinucleons is carried away by neutrinos, so, for all intents and purposes, it can be considered lost.[15] Antimatter rocketry ideas, such as the redshift rocket, propose the use of antimatter as fuel for interplanetary travel or possibly interstellar travel. A patent has been issued for an antimatter engine claiming speeds up to one third the speed of light.[16] Since the energy density of antimatter is vastly higher than conventional fuels, the thrust to weight equation for such craft would be very different from conventional spacecraft. The scarcity of antimatter means that it is not readily available to be used as fuel, although it could be used in antimatter catalyzed nuclear pulse propulsion. Generating a single antiproton is immensely difficult and requires particle accelerators and vast amounts of energy—millions of times more than is released after it is annihilated with ordinary matter due to inefficiencies in the process. Known methods of producing antimatter from energy also produce an equal amount of normal matter, so the theoretical limit is that half of the input energy is converted to antimatter. Counterbalancing this, when antimatter annihilates with ordinary matter, energy equal to twice the mass of the antimatter is liberated—so energy storage in the form of antimatter could (in theory) be 100% efficient. Antimatter production is currently very limited, but has been growing at a nearly geometric rate since the discovery of the first antiproton in 1955 by Segrè and Chamberlain.[citation needed] The current antimatter production rate is between 1 and 10 nanograms per year, and this is expected to increase to between 3 and 30 nanograms per year by 2015 or 2020 with new superconducting linear accelerator facilities at CERN and Fermilab. Some researchers claim that with current technology, it is possible to obtain antimatter for US$25 million per gram by optimizing the collision and collection parameters (given current electricity generation costs). Antimatter production costs, in mass production, are almost linearly tied in with electricity costs, so economical pure-antimatter thrust applications are unlikely to come online without the advent of such technologies as deuterium-tritium fusion power (assuming that such a power source actually would prove to be cheap). Many experts, however, dispute these claims as being far too optimistic by many orders of magnitude. They point out that in 2004; the annual production of antiprotons at CERN was several picograms at a cost of $20 million. This means to produce 1 gram of antimatter, CERN would need to spend 100 quadrillion dollars and run the antimatter factory for 100 billion years. Storage is another problem, as antiprotons are negatively charged and repel against each other, so that they cannot be concentrated in a small volume. Plasma oscillations in the charged cloud of antiprotons can cause instabilities that drive antiprotons out of the storage trap. For these reasons, to date only a few million antiprotons have been stored simultaneously in a magnetic trap, which corresponds to much less than a femtogram. Antihydrogen atoms or molecules are neutral so in principle they do not suffer the plasma problems of antiprotons described above. But cold antihydrogen is far more difficult to produce than antiprotons, and so far not a single antihydrogen atom has been trapped in a magnetic field. One researcher of the CERN laboratories, which produces antimatter regularly, said: “ If we could assemble all of the antimatter we've ever made at CERN and annihilate it with matter, we would have enough energy to light a single electric light bulb for a few minutes.[17] ” [edit]

Antimatter and Time

23rd century Federation starships discovered that there was a relationship between some types of antimatter – most notably that used on board – and time. What was observed was that certain controlled implosions of antimatter could result in time disruptions, including travel forward and backward in time. This was experienced in 2266 by the USS Enterprise. (TOS: "The Naked Time")

In 2364, Data had to realign one of Dr. Manheim's systems on Vandor IV with antimatter in order to stop a series of time distortions known as the Manheim Effect. (TNG: "We'll Always Have Paris")

Background

This article does not attempt to explain antimatter solely in the way we understand it in the 21st century. For instance, in the real world antimatter can also be any of:

a subatomic particle of matter with the opposite linear and angular momentum (which include energy and spin) of another particle that has a linear and angular momentum (e.g., a photon);
a subatomic particle of matter with the opposite magnetic moment of a particle that has a magnetic moment (e.g., a neutron);
a subatomic particle of matter with the opposite baryon number of a particle.

So each of the types of antimatter in the body of the article either is known of today and is consistent with Star Trek, or has been seen in Star Trek and is unknown to or different from 21st century science. For example, today we would say that because it just has mass and directional velocity that the anti-particle of a photon is itself, yet in VOY: "Flesh and Blood" the USS Voyager is able to produce anti-photons from the deflector dish; clearly a different thing in the episode than a regular photon. Also, the anti-particle of an electron is called a positron these days; by the 24th century it seems to mean something else, hence the alternative term "antielectron".

References

Matter/antimatter engines, containment fields, and the like are in far too many episodes to enumerate. Pertinent references for this article, however, are:

TOS:
- "The Alternative Factor"
- "The Immunity Syndrome"
- "Obsession"
TNG:
VOY: "Flesh and Blood"

External link

Antimatter at Wikipedia