Anti-matter

----- Original Message -----
From: "Roger Books" <books@jumpspace.net>

> On 18-Jun-02 at 10:37, steve@pugh.net (steve@pugh.net) wrote:
> > The energy needed to 'create' the anti-matter has to be greater than
> > the energy contained within the anti-matter. (Conservation of
Energy,
> > etc.) The energy released in the matter/anti-matter explosion is
> > twice the energy contained in the anti-matter. (E=mc^2, etc.) So the
> > energy stored in this mine when it's just sitting there is at least
> > half the energy of the resulting explosion.
>
> That's the beauty of this.  The energy is already there in the
> form of matter.  If you flip one gram of matter to anti-matter
> you have neither created nor destroyed energy or matter.  When
> the anti-matter interacts with matter it goes boom.  Matter
> turned into energy, nothing created or lost.
>
> It's just another name for direct matter to energy conversion.
>
> Roger

A bit late in answering...
Actually, Steve is closer to the truth (as we physicists know it,
i.e.without PSB). There is no known way to convert matter into
anti-matter.

The only known way to produce anti-matter is to produce is together with
normal matter as pairs of matter and antimatter particles and then
separate
the two. You have to provide the energy of the explosion beforehand,
plus
all the extra energy to account for inefficiencies in the process.

The other possible option would be to find antimatter in space and
collect
it. So far, there is no trace of substantial quantities of anti-matter
out
there. If there were a body of antimatter, cosmic dust and gas colliding
with it would produce characteristic radiation which has not been
detected.

Greetings