Antimatter

Over the coming decades there will be increasing discussion about sending robotic interstellar probes to nearby stars. The discovery and cataloging of inhabited planets within just a few light-years of Earth will provide the motivation -- we'll want to see ...  

Antimatter is so tantalizing a prospect for propulsion that every time a new slant on using it appears, I try to figure out its implications for long-haul missions. But the news, however interesting, is inevitably balanced by the reality of production problems. There’s no question that antimatter is potent stuff, with the potential for dealing [...]  

So it's ideally suited to Keane and Zhang's task. The new work produces some good news and some bad news. First the bad. The new simulations indicate that pions produced in this way will be significantly slower than previously thought, travelling at only ...  

In Stephen Baxter’s wonderful novel Ark (Roc, 2010), a team of scientists works desperately to come up with an interstellar spacecraft while epic floods threaten the Earth. The backdrop gives Baxter the chance to work through many of our current ideas about propulsion, from starships riding a wave of nuclear explosions (Orion) to antimatter possibilities [...]  

Matter annihilates antimatter, mostly resulting in light (no, not “pure energy”, whatever that is supposed to be). Matter and antimatter can also come into existence together via a process that is the reverse of annihilation. Yet our universe has almost no antimatter. How can such be if they come into existence in exactly equal amounts, each particle together with its antiparticle? Yes, well, they actually don’t, finished, good bye, but just...