Fusion (again)

@sonhouse said
@Metal-Brain
In a rocket, there would be antimatter stored in a magnetic trap and and then a plasma generator of ordinary matter, the two types of matter would have a controlled stream of each one on separate paths and coming together in a rocket chamber, and THERE is where the reaction would take place, and the heat from that reaction would accelerate a third stream of ion ...[text shortened]... that triple system so that is where I would place my bets as to first trip into interstellar space.

"There is no danger of an explosion because the anti matter has its own stream and it has just enough energy to zap the hell out of a propellant, maybe it would be Argon but there is much higher exhaust velocity for lighter ions so they would probably use hydrogen."


It has enough energy to blow antimatter back into matter which is what your space ship is made of. It would blow you up. You would be dead. It is also extremely difficult to get enough antimatter to do that. If it wasn't we would be building antimatter bombs and antimatter power plants.

What you are proposing is probably impossible. If not, build an antimatter power plant that will solve all of our energy needs.

@sonhouse said
@Metal-Brain
Where did you get the idea that ANY rocket could ever go faster than light?
I never mentioned that idea which so far is not going to happen and the best bet we would have for a long time to come would be the anti matter rocket which would not be able to get anywhere near say 99% of c.
Don't know why you even threw that one in. You should know with any vehi ...[text shortened]... missed those physics classes which I got into as a FRESHMAN in college, Palomar College to be exact.

Science fiction. Star Trek.
I was pointing out that Star Trek is not based on reality. Did you miss that part?
Antimatter drives are fine for Star Trek, but not in reality. DUH!

@Metal-Brain
Not sure but I THOUGHT this forum was for science, not fantasy.
Why did you even bring that up in an OP about fusion?

@sonhouse said
@Metal-Brain
Not sure but I THOUGHT this forum was for science, not fantasy.
Why did you even bring that up in an OP about fusion?

You moron. I told you not to take Star Trek too seriously.

Antimatter drives will not work in the real world. What you are suggesting is like using weapons grade uranium for nuclear power plants. You would blow yourself up.

@Metal-Brain
RIght. Suppose you have a beam of antimatter, say a total of 1 nanogram in that beam. And it meets a 1 nanogram beam of regular matter.
How much energy do you think that mix would produce?
You really need to understand about the power of antimatter but when the ionized beam of anti is being sent to meet with the regular beam you use E=MC^2.
Speed of light in meters per second, mass in kilograms.
So c is close to 300 million meters per second, squared, that number is 1E16, and the kilograms in this case, 1. So you get 1E16 Joules if you fully consume 1 kg of mass.

Now back to my 1 nanogram beam of antimatter coming into contact with 1 nanogram of regular matter, you get about 2 E^5 Joules (1.8 rounded up) and that would be about 20,000 joules, enough to maybe heat up a cup of coffee.

The beams would be steered magnetically in a vacuum chamber which I told you I have 20 years of experience with directly because of my job working on ion implanters and I guess you have no idea what that beast is so gargle it if you want to know.

The gist of it is you don't feed ten kilograms of regular matter into a mass of ten kg of antimatter which would represent an amount of energy some 2 E18 joules.
That WOULD blow you up if you released that energy all at once so you would have your ten Kg of antimatter VERY carefully herded in a magnetic trap and that would be your 'battery' so to speak. They would figure out how much in each beam needs to meet to generate thrust for the spacecraft and that would get crafts up to half the speed of light in a few months but my example of 1 nanogram beams says that much antimatter/matter reaction will not produce enough for an explosion and if it it did, it would be like shorting out a power plug in your house wiring not a real explosion.

If you feel like it, do the math yourself. Speed of light in meters per second and mass in kg. E=MC^2 C^2 is a number using meters per second of about 9E16.

It takes 4190 Joules to heat up 1 Kg of water one degree. So that 20,000 joules would heat up 1 Kg of water 5 degrees. 1/10th of a kg, 100 grams, about 5 ounces, would be heated up by about 50 degrees.

THAT is why you won't blow yourself up.

Did you actually think scientists doing this work would not know that and think they could just dump a couple of KILOGRAMS together?
ONE kg of matter converted would be equivalent to about a 25 MEGATON fusion bomb so THAT would definitely blow you and your whole city to smitheerens so you MIGHT think they would be using a bit less mass in the coversion.
That would be one half a kg of antimatter meeting up with another half kg of regular matter, total one kg converted = 25 MEGATONS of a fusion bomb explosion.
Also BTW, the actual engineering on antimatter rockets is much further along than any other kind of nuclear device used for propulsion in space.
Fusion OR fission reactions take a LOT of mechanical engineering and would be very heavy in terms of mass on the spacecraft.

An antimatter rocket would consist of a magnetic trap holding the antimatter which magentic fields can do very well and "just'' diverting that stuff to meet with a similar beam of regular matter is a LOT simpler from and engineering POV and the hard work would be mainly in the engine itself, the part that converts the resultant energy to thrust but that is pretty straight forward in terms of engineering difficulty.

It is said a few GRAMS of antimatter in a rocket could get the space shuttle into earth orbit. But the first antimatter rockets would clearly be built in space and never be designed to actually land on some planet or moon but a landing craft would be included like on Star Trek.
The elephant in the room of course is there is not much antimatter to be had right now and to MAKE antimatter which you can do in a particle accelerator, the amount of energy it would take to do that would be about a million times more than the energy you would realize in a rocket.
So scientists have come up with a way to theoretically get antimatter, the chicken wire sphere charged up to about 100 million volts with special gear inside to detect and collect the resultant antimatter in a magnetic trap.
They know that would work, since antimatter is floating around all around us in space, about on antimatter molecule for every 10 BILLION regular mass particles.
So the chicken wire sphere would be designed to reject regular matter and let anti matter pass through and thence to a magnetic trap.

Doing it that way would be WAY simpler and BILLIONS of times less energy expended because you are not CREATING antimatter but just picking up what you can from the cloud of mixed matter and antimatter.
BTW, before you start saying 'well that would mean they would just blow themselves up but there is this deal free mean travel which means if there was a cloud of matter and a cloud of antimatter at say room temperature gets together, BOOM.
But in the case of antimatter in space, the molecules are HOT, meaning they are moving in a vacuum very fast compared to stuff on Earth and THAT means the particles are separated enough they would almost never actually collide so the antimatter in space minds its own business because there are no regular matter masses close enough to get attracted to each other and go boom.

@sonhouse said
@Metal-Brain
RIght. Suppose you have a beam of antimatter, say a total of 1 nanogram in that beam. And it meets a 1 nanogram beam of regular matter.
How much energy do you think that mix would produce?
You really need to understand about the power of antimatter but when the ionized beam of anti is being sent to meet with the regular beam you use E=MC^2.
Speed of light i ...[text shortened]... another half kg of regular matter, total one kg converted = 25 MEGATONS of a fusion bomb explosion.

You are such an idiot. Antimatter is far more powerful than a nuclear explosion. Until you can prove it is possible to do the same thing with weapons grade uranium or plutonium you have nothing. Antimatter is far too explosive to work in the real world.

Answer me this: How much more powerful is an antimatter/matter explosion compared to a nuclear fission explosion?

@Metal-Brain
Before you make a real ass of yourself, a difficult project in itself, take a look, do the actual math of E=MC^2.
It doesn't matter if it is a fusion bomb or a fission bomb, they BOTH convert X amount of mass directly to energy with a big BOOM but you don't seem to understand the idea of using nano and microgram beams coming together.
The math is the EXACT same for a nuclear explosion as it is for antimatter/matter reaction but it is just antimatter reactions COMPLETELY consumes all the mass while in a fission or fusion bomb only a few percent actually gets converted so antimatter/matter reactions release 100% of the energy available making that reaction hundreds of times more energetic than fusion or fission.
I doubt you actually read all of my analysis of AM/M reactions.

@sonhouse
You didn't answer my question.

How much more powerful is an antimatter/matter explosion compared to a nuclear fission explosion? There is an answer. In an antimatter explosion 100% of mass is converted into energy. Nuclear fission explosions cannot convert 100% of mass into energy, only part of it. Same is true of fusion.

Not that any of that really matters. How are you going to get enough antimatter?

Think about it.

@Metal-Brain
It is clear you didn't bother to read my long post. Try reading the whole thing.
Do you think E=MC^2 is different for fission, fusion and antimatter reactions?
The amount of conversion of a fusion reaction is a few percent but antimatter does 100% so that makes fusion 40 ro 50 times more violent Kg for Kg.
Not sure what your objection is. And I DID cover where you get antimatter but you could not read the whole post if any,

@sonhouse said
@Metal-Brain
It is clear you didn't bother to read my long post. Try reading the whole thing.
Do you think E=MC^2 is different for fission, fusion and antimatter reactions?
The amount of conversion of a fusion reaction is a few percent but antimatter does 100% so that makes fusion 40 ro 50 times more violent Kg for Kg.
Not sure what your objection is. And I DID cover where you get antimatter but you could not read the whole post if any,

You are making my case for it blowing you up. Thank you.
Now. Are you going to admit antimatter is far too explosive to control?

@ponderable said
That was the amount of time a professor gave, when I studied at Karlsruhe about 1990.

The future is always 30 years away:

https://www.discovermagazine.com/technology/why-nuclear-fusion-is-always-30-years-away

@Metal-Brain
You seem to be unable to figure the energy released by a thin beam of not much mass.
Tell me, how much energy does one milligram of antimatter mixed with one milligram of ordinary matter, how much energy will be released?

What about one MICROGRAM of AM+regular matter?

Are you capable of at least solving E=MC^2?

It's only algebra for god's sake.

@sonhouse said
@Metal-Brain
You seem to be unable to figure the energy released by a thin beam of not much mass.
Tell me, how much energy does one milligram of antimatter mixed with one milligram of ordinary matter, how much energy will be released?

What about one MICROGRAM of AM+regular matter?

Are you capable of at least solving E=MC^2?

It's only algebra for god's sake.

Since a nuclear explosion is less explosive start there dude. The only reason nuclear power is possible is because of the impurities in uranium. Prove you can use weapons grade uranium to produce nuclear power first. That is easier than using anti matter. Start with the less explosive stuff first. Then we can talk.

The post that was quoted here has been removed

It appears you are talking to someone who cannot parse what's physically impossible from what's technically difficult.

There is no question that antimatter can be held in a magnetic bottle, thereby isolating it from matter and preventing mutual annihilation. It's already been done in a laboratory setting many times, I do believe.

Of course, there are serious technical hurdles to using antimatter to propel an interstellar spacecraft. The clown you're talking to I guess is saying it is impossible (I'm only paying attention to your half of the conversation), but there is nothing about the idea that runs afoul of physical laws.

I think there was widespread skepticism about the idea of an internal combustion engine back in the day. After all, you're talking about a mechanism that lights a petroleum product on fire in a horseless carriage, just a few feet away from where passengers are sitting. Controlled explosions.

Some people just have no imagination. The only way they can add color to their lives is to naysay or take up with conspiracy theories. The exceptionally blinkered do both.