NetMage said:Is there an alternative to making antimatter that would make it more cost efficient? Or is high energy physics the only conceivable possibility? Would someone mind explaining why manufacturing it would "drain the entire global power supply"?
NetMage said:Thank you for the responses. I was completely unaware antimatter was used in medical imaging. How is it stored?
ZapperZ said:They are not 'stored'. You use a radioactive tracer element that emits a positron when decay.
Zz.
Danger said:What sort of scale are you asking about? A few years back, Lurch informed me of a finding that some coronal mass discharges from the sun release hundreds of tonnes of antimatter. Catching it is the tricky part.
NetMage said:Interesting. So if a positron can be emitted from radioactive decay, why not use this technique manufacture antimatter? Its clear that it isn't feasible or I assume we would be doing it. But, I guess what I'm not understanding is how come antimatter isn't being mass produced for all of its potential uses? I read some of that article (haven't finished it yet), and it says to manufacture a gram of antimatter it costs 62.5 trillion USD. Would producing antimatter through decay be just as cost inefficient?
Nugatory said:The decay only produces positrons, not the antiprotons and and antineutrons that would also be needed to assemble antimatter, and producing the radioactive elements that decay to produce the positrons is itself enormously expensive,
You might try googling for "positron source", will get you more information more quickly than asking here.
NetMage said:Would you mind going into further detail here?
Nugatory said:The decay only produces positrons, not the antiprotons and and antineutrons that would also be needed to assemble antimatter, and producing the radioactive elements that decay to produce the positrons is itself enormously expensive
The biggest limiting factor in the large scale production of antimatter is the availability of antiprotons. Recent data released by CERN states that, when fully operational, their facilities are capable of producing 10 million antiprotons per minute.[19] Assuming a 100% conversion of antiprotons to antihydrogen, it would take 100 billion years to produce 1 gram or 1 mole of antihydrogen (6.02×1023 atoms of antihydrogen).
NetMage said:So now all I have to do is wait 100 billion years. No prob...
Antimatter is a form of matter composed of particles that have the same mass as their regular matter counterparts, but with opposite electrical charges. We need an alternative to making antimatter because the process of creating it is extremely complex and expensive, and the amount produced is not enough for practical use.
The two main methods of creating antimatter are through particle accelerators, which use high-energy collisions to produce small amounts of antimatter particles, and through radioactive decay, where certain elements naturally produce antimatter as they decay.
Creating antimatter involves using large amounts of energy to produce and separate the particles, as well as advanced technology and equipment. Additionally, antimatter particles are highly unstable and can quickly react with regular matter, making it difficult to store and use.
While there are no known risks associated with creating antimatter, the possibility of accidental reactions between antimatter and regular matter can be catastrophic. Additionally, the high cost and complexity of creating and storing antimatter make it impractical for widespread use.
One alternative being explored is the use of high-intensity lasers to create matter-antimatter pairs. Another possibility is to use existing antimatter particles from natural sources, such as cosmic rays, and find ways to isolate and store them for use in experiments. Other alternatives include using virtual particles or finding ways to manipulate existing particles to mimic the properties of antimatter.