Zirias
stranger
Reged: 02/05/04
Posts: 9
Loc: south-west of Germany
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I really wonder if it is realistic what Dan Brown writes about antimatter as a source of energy. The sum of energy in every closed system is constant, the accellerator consumes huge amounts of energy to create some antimatter and some of the energy is probably lost in the electro magnets. So how could it be possible to gain even ~more~ energy back out of the antimatter? Did I miss the point, or is that part of the book just irrational?
Greets, Ziri
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Sephia
Supreme Goddess
Reged: 11/28/03
Posts: 876
Loc: MA, USA
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I think that it is the ~destruction~ of the antimatter, when it combines with matter, that is the energy source, not the anti-matter itself.
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"Your life is yours alone, rise up and live it" ~Terry Goodkind
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Zirias
stranger
Reged: 02/05/04
Posts: 9
Loc: south-west of Germany
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Oh, yes, I missed that one. The matter has the same energy as the antimatter, logically. So you need a method to produce antimatter without producing matter? It should be possible, since in big bang theory, many believe that there was much more matter created than antimatter in the beginning of the universe. I think I'll read the passage in the book again.
Greets, Ziri
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Sephia
Supreme Goddess
Reged: 11/28/03
Posts: 876
Loc: MA, USA
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I think that it said that when Vittoria created matter out of energy, she also created antimatter. How much, I am not sure...
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"Your life is yours alone, rise up and live it" ~Terry Goodkind
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sinkintothehead
stranger
Reged: 10/08/04
Posts: 7
Loc: Right now, South Korea
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I believe it is true that it can be an energy source. Brown, on his site he mentions that CERN is a real institute and that all of the experiments in the book are either identical or similair to the work they do in real life. There are even photos of the real particle accelerator.
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"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."
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DarkAnise
stranger
Reged: 06/21/04
Posts: 21
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If you want to read about CERN and antimatter just go to their website.
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danaholic
member
Reged: 10/11/04
Posts: 163
Loc: Kent, England
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Of course antimatter can be used as an energy source- its just that there's a long way to go until we discover efficient ways of producing it as well as safe ways of using it to provide energy.
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langdon_lover
journeyman
Reged: 10/11/04
Posts: 66
Loc: England UK
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perhaps danaholic, you could research into it, seeing as you are a genius when it comes to science 
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danaholic
member
Reged: 10/11/04
Posts: 163
Loc: Kent, England
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Why thank you Langdon_Lover! A-Level Physics makes everything so much easier to understand - especially when it comes to particle physics. I'm going to go and work for CERN after university so I can play frisbee with Nobel Prize winners! If anyone has questions about antimatter or particle physics, just ask me!
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Wake
stranger
Reged: 04/27/05
Posts: 24
Loc: England. East Sussex
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Actually antimatter can not and will never be able to be used as an efficient method of energy!
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Wake
stranger
Reged: 04/27/05
Posts: 24
Loc: England. East Sussex
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I was hoping antimatter would be the future answer to our energy needs. It seems more research is needed for this to happen.
No, the true answer is that it will never happen simply because of the entropy problem. Creating antimatter out of energy via E=mc2 unfortunately always produces equal amounts of normal matter and antimatter. This is fundamentally built into the universe. For any given amount E of energy you will get m/2 grams of antimatter and m/2 grams of matter. Putting these two amounts back together and annihilating them gives back E. But the process is not without loss: today the loss is enormous, but even if we could make the process very efficient, we would still not have any net gain!
It is not a matter of "more research" or "more advanced technology" to find ways around these limitations. Antimatter is a fundamental state of matter. It could only become a source of energy if you happened to find a large amount of antimatter lying around somewhere (e.g. in a distant galaxy), in the same way we find oil and oxygen lying around on Earth. But as far as we can see (billions of light years), the universe is entirely made of normal matter and antimatter has to be painstakingly created.
This by the way shows that the symmetry between matter and antimatter as stated above does not hold at very high energies, such as shortly after the Big Bang, since otherwise there should be as much matter as antimatter in the Universe. These energies are higher than any that can be achieved on Earth at present; what future research might tell us is how this asymmetry came about, although it is extremely unlikely to lead to the possibility of using antimatter as an energy source.
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Romain
stranger
Reged: 05/10/05
Posts: 6
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Wake is totally right...and even if you'd like to use the energy of antimatter disintegration, you shoulld always think you spent far more energy to produce only few antiparticles than what will ever be released...so antimatter ain't cheaper than gas, too bad ;-)
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8549176320abc
enthusiast
Reged: 05/02/05
Posts: 219
Loc: UK
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click here for more info.
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Governments offer us safety for our freedom. It is by seeing this safety as false that we are freed.
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D0CDF
stranger
Reged: 06/14/06
Posts: 2
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It's not possible, simple as that. There would have to be a way to convert matter directly into antimatter without the intermediate energy conversion. Since antimatter and matter are believed to be fundamentally opposite (meaning that no matter how small we reduce them, they are made of opposite materials, not the same), or actually more accurately defined as being fundamentally opposite, such a conversion is not possible. The only way to convert matter to antimatter is by converting it to energy, which no matter how efficient of a process will never have a net gain, as explained above by wake, or more accurately CERN :-).
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SeraphicRadiance
stranger
Reged: 09/08/05
Posts: 11
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Wake is correct. To create antimatter, you need an ammount of energy, E. In the creation process, you get E/2 from matter and E/2 from antimatter. When you annihilate, you get E back and no more. So even if we are 100% efficient with our antimatter creation, we will never have a net gain of energy.
UNLESS of course we find naturally occurring antimatter somewhere in space and harness energy from that, but that seems unlikely.
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MsKrum
stranger
Reged: 07/06/06
Posts: 12
Loc: Newfoundland, Canada
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I did a report on Antimatter a few weeks ago, and yes, antimatter could be used as an energy source-its 100% efficient, but right now there is no way to channel it!
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