5 ms·

You can't pull apart quark pairs because the energy involved is so large it will create new quarks to pair up with the ones you're separating. Antimatter would

You can't pull apart quark pairs because the energy involved is so large it will create new quarks to pair up with the ones you're separating. Antimatter would make a great energy storage medium, if we could create it efficiently and in bulk.

_kst_ 6y ago
It would be great if (a) you could safely prevent it from releasing its energy when you don't want it to (KABOOM!), and (b) you could efficiently capture and use the energy it releases, which is going to consist largely of gamma rays. Now where did I leave that dilithium?
- fnord77 6y ago
  CERN manages to safely capture antiprotons and move them around
  - _kst_ 6y ago
    Sure, but not nearly enough for practical energy storage and retrieval.
  - konjin 6y ago
    I can safely move around three eggs at a time, moving 3e9 eggs at a time is slightly more difficult.
    - robocat 6y ago
      A container ship loaded up with packaged eggs in containers could move 3e9 eggs. https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/49v7ik/request_how_many_trucks_full_of_eggs_would_be/ https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/49v7ik/requ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_ship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_ship
phkahler 6y ago
>> You can't pull apart quark pairs because the energy involved is so large it will create new quarks to pair up with the ones you're separating. What if baryons are electrostatic black holes? No quark can escape. Any infalling particle would slow down and never cross the event horizon as far as an outside observer could tell. Stuff like that...
- pdonis 6y ago
  > What if baryons are electrostatic black holes? They can't be the equivalent of black holes because things can escape from them in nuclear reactions.
  - phkahler 6y ago
    Do we know that things get inside them? What would the predicted diameter be?
    - pdonis 6y ago
      > Do we know that things get inside them? Of course. Experimentalists have been shooting electrons and muons and other things inside hadrons since the 1960s (hence the "Decades-Long Quest" in the title of the article). That's how we gained pretty much all of our knowledge of the internal structure of hadrons and how the current theory of QCD was developed. > What would the predicted diameter be? A hadron is roughly a femtometer (10^-15 meters) in diameter.
nine_k 6y ago
Antimatter is a pretty poor energy storage (or spaceship fuel), because annihilation produces high-energy electromagnetic radiation which is hard to handle or put to any productive use. It just pierces matter and carries the energy away. It's the ultimate in energy density, though.
- kardos 6y ago
  On the other hand, we tamed nuclear fission, which is also pretty hard to handle. So I am optimistic that we'll sort something out when the time is right
- frongpik 6y ago
  Unless antimatter is stored within some medium. Wikipedia mentions a few exotic particles, one of them is a pair of electron and positron revolving around each other.

_kst_ 6y ago

It would be great if (a) you could safely prevent it from releasing its energy when you don't want it to (KABOOM!), and (b) you could efficiently capture and use the energy it releases, which is going to consist largely of gamma rays. Now where did I leave that dilithium?

fnord77 6y ago
CERN manages to safely capture antiprotons and move them around
- _kst_ 6y ago
  Sure, but not nearly enough for practical energy storage and retrieval.
- konjin 6y ago
  I can safely move around three eggs at a time, moving 3e9 eggs at a time is slightly more difficult.
  - robocat 6y ago
    A container ship loaded up with packaged eggs in containers could move 3e9 eggs. https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/49v7ik/request_how_many_trucks_full_of_eggs_would_be/ https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/49v7ik/requ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_ship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_ship

phkahler 6y ago

>> You can't pull apart quark pairs because the energy involved is so large it will create new quarks to pair up with the ones you're separating. What if baryons are electrostatic black holes? No quark can escape. Any infalling particle would slow down and never cross the event horizon as far as an outside observer could tell. Stuff like that...

pdonis 6y ago
> What if baryons are electrostatic black holes? They can't be the equivalent of black holes because things can escape from them in nuclear reactions.
- phkahler 6y ago
  Do we know that things get inside them? What would the predicted diameter be?
  - pdonis 6y ago
    > Do we know that things get inside them? Of course. Experimentalists have been shooting electrons and muons and other things inside hadrons since the 1960s (hence the "Decades-Long Quest" in the title of the article). That's how we gained pretty much all of our knowledge of the internal structure of hadrons and how the current theory of QCD was developed. > What would the predicted diameter be? A hadron is roughly a femtometer (10^-15 meters) in diameter.

nine_k 6y ago

Antimatter is a pretty poor energy storage (or spaceship fuel), because annihilation produces high-energy electromagnetic radiation which is hard to handle or put to any productive use. It just pierces matter and carries the energy away. It's the ultimate in energy density, though.

kardos 6y ago
On the other hand, we tamed nuclear fission, which is also pretty hard to handle. So I am optimistic that we'll sort something out when the time is right
frongpik 6y ago
Unless antimatter is stored within some medium. Wikipedia mentions a few exotic particles, one of them is a pair of electron and positron revolving around each other.