A Way to Reach the Stars

 

Everything that you see around yourself - may it be the phone, your table, chair, door, dress, potted plant and even you is ALL Matter. 

Life in the old days was simple enough people found out about matter and then they realized that it did matter! 

Soon people began counting but negative integers were not considered as they were not considered practical numbers. A shepherd can easily count 10 sheeps, even 100 sheeps and more but negative 1 sheep well it was a bit difficult to comprehend. Negative numbers were only accepted when money came into play. Then only we understood it by the concept of negative numbers. 

A similar dispute erupted with the mathematical question of perfect square roots.

_/25 = +5, -5 

But we usually forget the negative sign in such questions.

Turns out this negative sign was pretty much ignored until Paul Dirac declared the importance of this negative sign.

He mentioned that mathematics was pointing out a bigger concept of science.

He then incorporated the theory of relativity into the equation that describes the motion of electrons in an electromagnetic field.

The result meant that there existed some negative quantity of matter as well. This very negative or opposite of matter is Antimatter.

Matter is made up of atoms whereas antimatter is made up of anti-atoms. The terms here are a bit similar, so we can consider matter and antimatter as twins. They may have similar faces but their qualities are very different. 

These anti- atoms are made up of positrons which are the ‘twins’ of electrons.

These positrons are the same as the electron in  terms of mass, spin number and other characteristics except the charge. Electrons are negatively charged whereas positrons are positively charged. 

So, you might be wondering where you can find this antimatter. As I already mentioned that everything around us is made up of matter, sadly antimatter is not near you. But if you are in a laboratory and watching the anti-hydrogen atom then it is near you. 

The problem with these twins is that when they get together they create a huge trouble. Matter and Antimatter meet and KABOOM! There is an explosion.

So, antimatter is not present here on earth for a long time. Synthesizing even milligrams of it requires huge costs and efficient technology. 

Antimatter may be found out there amongst the stars. Who knows, an entire anti- universe is waiting for us, made up of anti- galaxies, anti-planets, anti- stars and anti-you and me.

Seems like a multi universe concept? Well Antimatter too developed from fiction. 

How to prove it’s not just a theory. Well antimatter does occur naturally on earth even though for a very few milliseconds. 

The fact that some of the antimatter comes from the cosmic rays hitting the earth’s magnetic field or it originating in the suns and supernovas make antimatter a real thing.

Even we experience antimatter in our daily life sometimes. Next time you hear the thunder rush out to look at the lightning bolt. The lightning channel is composed of millions of positrons. Though they get quickly destroyed colliding with ordinary matter. 

Another source of antimatter is the Banana. This yellow slender fruit has got antimatter with its yummy taste. Bananas have Potassium-40 ions. This unstable isotope decays to form positrons.

So, why are we even making or looking for antimatter? Because antimatter can be a way to reach to the far of stars.

To reach far out in outer space you need a good rocket. But the rocket won’t be best without a great propulsion. The problem in space is that there is no GPS to guide us to the next petrol pump (no petrol pumps are visible too there). So, we need to carry tons of fuel with us.

Using normal fuel it would take generations and generations and generations of human beings to reach the nearest solar system let alone the places which even the unmanned probes haven’t discovered. 

That is why we need antimatter to reach the stars. Antimatter propulsion would decrease the reaching time. If cost was kept aside then this idea is surely appealing. 

This concept was even displayed in The Star Trek movies and television series. This sci-fi show had it’s spaceships moving on antimatter propulsion.

Antimatter annihilation is the basis of this propulsion. As electrons and positrons have opposite charges hence they are meant to attract each other. When they meet ‘the KABOOM’ is their conversion into pure energy. 

Two gamma photons appear after this annihilation.

electron(e) + positron(e') = +  

The energy remains conserved in this system. This energy released during annihilation is humungous. 

It is 9 BILLION times more than the energy produced in a common chemical reaction.

Also, antimatter annihilation is spontaneous. No big reactors are required to get it started. Hence, antimatter propulsion has a really good scope.

But the above reaction can’t take place on earth; we need to make laboratories on dwarf planets to do that. So, we need to focus on proton and anti- proton annihilation which tends to give us possible results. The energy produced with their reactions gives us the required thrust. 

To make the core there are many concepts. The beamed core concept is the most famous engine for an antimatter spaceship. This concept uses annihilation products in a direct manner to produce thrust. It can produce speedy missions at 60% speed of light.

This will reduce the trips to our nearest solar system, The Alpha Centauri to only 10 years or even less. We can make more than one trip to Alpha Centauri in our lifespan.

The irony is that this concept will take less time to reach other solar systems but a huge amount of antimatter particles would be required.

(100 ton payload for Alpha Centauri) Building up this much antimatter would take hundreds of years.

So, we look up to the Antimatter Catalyzed Micro- Fusion (ACMF) concept to build our engines. Though not as powerful as the beamed core concept it at least has the potential to be built up with the present supplies.

Many theoretical antimatter propelled interstellar spacecraft models have been designed like Project Valkyrie, ICAN, AIMStar.

Antimatter is a hope for new scientists to explore the universe. Gone are the days when man knew stars to be only navigators. Now we know more about them and have even learnt how to leap away from earth. With the recent inputs and hard work a day would surely come when we ride a spacecraft propelled by antimatter in the quest of antimatter galaxies and finding antimatter life.