Bob Schroeck Wrote:Well, as I recall, matter/antimatter particle pairs form spontaneously out of the fabric of space all the time -- it's the very reason why small black holes "evaporate". It's a long step from that to a practical system for doing so, but basically that means it's possible to do like those black holes and yoink one particle into containment while letting the other wander off on its own, before the two mutually re-annihilate. It should be cheaper, energywise, to harvest spontaneous antiparticles than it would be to make them. Might not be practical, timescalewise, but it's possible.Yes, but the particles that spontaneously come into being are the size of quarks. Harvesting them for this kind of power would not only require skipping past stuff like the Uncertainty Principle (ie, how the hell would you know where, when and in what direction the antiquarks were coming into existence...) but it would be like trying to feed the entire population of the planet earth by growing individual grains of rice.
I mean, it possible that all the matter in my computer desk will spontaneously rearrange itself into pure gold. Is it practical for me to base my economic decisions on it?
No, for the foreseeable future unless we find some massively more efficient method of creating them antimatter power is beyond our means.
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