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A hypothetical sketch of the future anti-matter propelled rocket developed by researchers at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center.
In the coming decades, there will undoubtedly be more and more people launching new high-tech detectors to explore the Earth. The planets, which are only a few light years away from the Earth, will continue to be viewed by humans one after another. The goal of future aerospace exploration is.
In accomplishing these goals, people will not forget to observe whether Darwin's theory of evolution can also play the same great role on the planet as it does on Earth—in other words, trying to find extraterrestrial life.
Although human-made space telescopes have become increasingly powerful, scientists believe that it may not be possible for them to directly observe alien organisms within a short period of time. It is best to observe exotic, low-level conditions under microscopes. Space life traces, and this requires our spacecraft to have enough power to reach another planetary system.
Now, more and more articles on antimatter research are intended to illustrate that humans can use antimatter as a source of new fuel. We want to know that behind this conclusion, is it a fact that is hopefully achievable or a free and unpredictable test?
Science Fiction is Responsible Pegasus
The concept of anti-matter was first proposed by British physicist Paul Dirac. In the 1930s, he predicted that each particle should have an opposite anti-particle, such as an anti-electron, whose mass is exactly the same as that of an electron, while carrying the opposite charge.
We all know that when positive substances (common substances) and antimatter come into contact with each other, they will annihilate and release a large amount of gamma rays. It can be said that this kind of abnormal metaphor with a big explosion is one of the most talked about topics of science fiction novelists.
In the famous "Star Trek" series of films, anti-matter is a kind of fuel (as the working principle of the fuel power system also requires the use of positive and negative substances to annihilate each other to release energy), and the "Enterprise" spacecraft can achieve rapid flight, The superluminal reaches anywhere in the universe and is dependent on its antimatter dynamic system.
Although this is only a plot in a science fiction work, responsible scientists infer that there is a considerable amount of antimatter that must be carried in order to carry out an interplanetary spaceflight. If it is to investigate and land another planetary system, then it still needs to carry enough. Antimatter fuels are used for deceleration. According to calculations by particle physicists, if an interplanetary spacecraft weighs 100 tons and the design speed is 40% of the speed of light, the mass of antimatter it must carry must be equal to the load of 80 supertankers. However, if the maximum speed can be reduced to 25% of the speed of light, the quality of the anti-matter fuel to be carried will also be greatly reduced.
In addition to being a fuel, in the best-selling author Dan Brown, the book "Angels and Demons," described scientists at the European Nuclear Research Centre (CERN) as extracting sufficient quantities of antimatter from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). For making a powerful bomb. Since the book borrows too many real-world scenarios (even including descriptions of CERN's gardens) and scientific data that are no exaggeration, the anti-matter bomb that was hidden in Rome has given the readers a very real shock - it can be 100% Efficiency releases energy, and 0.25 grams is enough to "wipe the Vatican from the earth."
Although the title “Angels and Demons†has its own meaning, it also describes the anti-matter bipolarity—a source of light energy that can easily destroy the world. However, even the manufacture and storage of trace amounts of antimatter is a very difficult and costly matter. Imagine being exposed to the wall of any conventionally manufactured container and it will soon disappear. So if it comes to creating super weapons, it is far from reality.
"Before the power of science and technology arrived, we have already reached those worlds." This is the true meaning of science fiction. It meets the two basic conditions that are absolutely impossible and the future must be possible. Antimatter plays a very important role in the "virtual" of science fiction. What is the situation in the "real" of the scientific world?
Theoretical exploration has always been mixed
In the laboratory, scientists are relatively familiar with anti-matter. Unfortunately, there are not many anti-matters in the current cosmic environment. Of these "miniature", the earliest people discovered were positrons, and among all antiparticles, the most readily available is positrons.
For the present Universe, human beings are undoubtedly very fortunate - although there was a lot of antimatter in the early universe, the positive matter content was slightly more than antimatter. It is so fortunate that “a little bit†has led to the evolution of the universe that has now formed the stars and planets we now see, as well as our own, all common materials.
In cosmology, an extremely important theory that explains the “material-antimatter ratio†in the universe today is “CP destruction.†Now, through a series of reasonable assumptions, cosmologists can come to the conclusion that the number of ordinary substances caused by "CP destruction" exceeds the quantity of anti-matter in the extreme case within a few seconds after the Big Bang was born. According to its description, if there is a galaxy made up of antimatter, then it is best to stay away from it as a human being.
However, due to the existence of "electron-positron" systems that are most suitable for studying the combination of positive and negative substances, the energy released during the collision quenching process can be calculated from Einstein's energy equation E=mc2. This makes more and more studies now that: anti-matter can indeed be the source of new fuel.
However, before this new concept is truly put into practice, people must solve the problem of scarcity of antimatter. According to MIT's "Technical Review," it has been estimated that the Large Hadron Collider had operated for 1,000 years, or that it would take 1000 years to pass only the current particle physics accelerator technology to produce 1 microgram of antimatter that can be used as a fuel.
From this point of view, the theoretical discussion on anti-matter has not brought more hope for its practical application. On the contrary, it has added a lot of impatience, and it is quite implied that “people ask Hanshandao and Hanshandaodaoâ€.
However, another point must be observed is that in human-built accelerators, the proton beam is increasing at a rate of 4 orders of magnitude per decade. Coincidentally, the quantity of liquid hydrogen used by the NASA fleet that has served NASA has also shown a similar increase over the past few decades. An article in the US “Exploration†magazine at the end of May pointed out that some particle physicists believe that by the middle of this century, anti-hydrogen production at the microgram level may increase exponentially.
Reality research keeps striding forward
In 2011, the physicists of the European Nuclear Center maintained the captured anti-hydrogen atoms for 1000 seconds. This is not a long time, but for scientists who preside over the project on anti-hydrogen laser physical devices, it was a breakthrough of four orders of magnitude - their previous record was to capture 38 anti-hydrogen atoms and keep it for 172 milliseconds. It has been on the order of one-tenth of a second from the earlier one-millionth of a second - and the 2011 experiment succeeded in keeping 309 anti-hydrogen atoms for 1,000 seconds, allowing for more in-depth observation of antimatter Valuing valuable time also paved the way for further proof of anti-material properties.
Outside the laboratory, PAMELA (anti-matter detection and light nuclear astrophysical payload) exploration satellites developed internationally discovered the existence of anti-protons in the Earth's magnetic field. In December 2011, NASA's Fermi Gamma Astronomical Telescope confirmed the presence of excess antimatter in the universe with the latest data, and this result was based on an extraordinary antimatter signal captured by the PAMELA satellite in 2008. .
In order to find even more incontrovertible evidence, a rather worthy detector, the AMS-02, led by Ding Haozhong and developed for $2.2 billion, was sent to the International Space Station in May last year. This powerful instrument, known as the "Science of the Future," has giant magnets that can be used to resolve cosmic rays, as well as detect positron overshoots and dips, and at the same time mark anti-particles in Earth's orbit.
AMS-02 possesses a far higher range of energy detection than Fermi's. Therefore, it is also considered as a scientific weapon that can be used to “close the case†in anti-substance mystery cases. Recent studies have found that huge planets, such as Jupiter, should have more antiprotons in their magnetic fields than the Earth.
The current trend is that scientists are increasingly interested in finding new sources of antimatter from space, not only from relatively inefficient accelerators. This is because if the amount of anti-matter acquired is too hot for a cup of coffee, let alone drive the starship “Enterprise†in Star Trek.
Another way to challenge the ultimate possibility
While the problem of anti-matter supply temporarily stagnated, scientists also chose to continue the study in other directions.
A monthly message from the online version of Microsoft's National Broadcasting Corporation (MSNBC) said that Ronan Keane, attached to the Western Reserve Institute, and Zhang Weiming, a senior researcher at Kent State University, designed a new calculation method to verify antimatter. The superiority of the rocket's performance is based on the conclusion that if the rocket is driven by anti-matter, it can approach the speed of light.
This latest research indicates that in the future, a rocket that uses a mixture of propellant and antimatter as propellant fuel can fly around 70% of the speed of light in the universe. This means that with this new type of material launch rocket, humans will only take about 6 years to travel to Centauri beyond the nearest 4.2 light years away.
According to researchers Keen and Zhang Weiming, the so-called “annihilation†phenomenon is the explosion that occurs when ordinary substances and antimatter come into contact with each other, and antimatter and positive matter thus become photons or mesons. The huge energy emitted by the annihilation of crickets is the theoretical basis for their research on "anti-matter rockets" - which sounds similar to that of the "Enterprise". According to an article published on the physics website arXiv, the energy released when 1 kg of positive and negative substances interact is more than 1,000 times that of an equivalent weight nuclear reactor fuel, and it is 2 billion times that of an equal weight of hydrocarbons.
The two researchers used a computer program to help demonstrate particle activity in large Hadron Colliders, such as protons and antiprotons. They believe that the software can now be used to design more sophisticated and sophisticated spacecraft engines. In the end, Keith and Zhang Weiming's analysis showed that the speed of the anti-matter rocket can fully reach 70% of the speed of light, which is a significant improvement over the previous 33% speed of light of other research teams.
The arXiv website explained this: The working principle of the anti-matter rocket engine is to use the force of the magnetic field to divert the charged particles generated during the annihilation. The key point of this technology is to ensure and improve the efficiency of the magnetic field to guide the flow of particles out of the engine nozzle. The arXiv website believes that once anti-matter engines become a reality, the search for anti-matter fuels can move from theoretical studies to substantive stages. Existing research has confirmed that there is a large amount of antimatter trapped in the Earth's magnetic field in the outer space around the Earth.
Interestingly, when the antimatter rocket is actually put into use, passengers must also become accustomed to the so-called relativistic effect. When approaching flying at the speed of light, time and space do not move so fast. Simply put, the Earth clock will take about six years to travel from Earth to Centaur, but it actually feels less than four and a half years.
Although all this sounds more like whimsical nowadays, great as Einstein once thought, there is no sign that nuclear power will be used by humans. Why then does the seemingly impossible anti-material fuel engine become a century away? Ultimate motivation? (Reporter Zhang Mengran)
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