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when mixed with ordinary atoms). His Penning trap should be able to
store about a billionth of a gram of antiprotons. His goal is to create a
Penning trap that can store up to a microgram of antiprotons.
Although antimatter is the most precious substance on Earth, its
cost keeps dropping dramatically every year (a gram would cost about
$62.5 trillion at today's prices). A new particle injector being built at
Fermilab outside Chicago should be able to increase the production of
antimatter by a factor of ten, from 1.5 to 15 nanograms per year, which
should drive down prices. However, Harold Gerrish of NASA believes
that with further improvements the cost could realistically go down to
$5,000 per microgram. Dr. Steven Howe, of Synergistics Technologies
in Los Alamos, New Mexico, states, "Our goal is to remove antimatter
from the far-out realm of science fiction into the commercially exploitable realm for transportation and medical applications."
So far, particle accelerators that can produce antiprotons are not
specifically designed to do so, so they are quite inefficient. Such particle accelerators are designed primarily to be research tools, not factories for antimatter. That is why Smith envisions building a new particle
accelerator that will be specifically designed to produce copious quantities of antiprotons to drive down the cost.
If prices for antimatter can be lowered even further by technical
improvements and mass production, Smith envisions a time when the
antimatter rocket could become a workhorse for interplanetary and
possibly interstellar travel. Until then, however, antimatter rockets will
remain on the drawing boards.
NATURALLY OCCURRING
ANTIMATTER
If antimatter is so difficult to create on Earth, might one find antimatter more easily in outer space? Unfortunately, searches for antimatter
in the universe have turned up very little, which is rather surprising to
physicists. The fact that our universe is made up mainly of matter,
rather than antimatter, is difficult to explain. One might naively have
assumed that at the beginning of the universe, there were equal, sym-
when mixed with ordinary atoms). His Penning trap should be able to
store about a billionth of a gram of antiprotons. His goal is to create a
Penning trap that can store up to a microgram of antiprotons.
Although antimatter is the most precious substance on Earth, its
cost keeps dropping dramatically every year (a gram would cost about
$62.5 trillion at today's prices). A new particle injector being built at
Fermilab outside Chicago should be able to increase the production of
antimatter by a factor of ten, from 1.5 to 15 nanograms per year, which
should drive down prices. However, Harold Gerrish of NASA believes
that with further improvements the cost could realistically go down to
$5,000 per microgram. Dr. Steven Howe, of Synergistics Technologies
in Los Alamos, New Mexico, states, "Our goal is to remove antimatter
from the far-out realm of science fiction into the commercially exploitable realm for transportation and medical applications."
So far, particle accelerators that can produce antiprotons are not
specifically designed to do so, so they are quite inefficient. Such particle accelerators are designed primarily to be research tools, not factories for antimatter. That is why Smith envisions building a new particle
accelerator that will be specifically designed to produce copious quantities of antiprotons to drive down the cost.
If prices for antimatter can be lowered even further by technical
improvements and mass production, Smith envisions a time when the
antimatter rocket could become a workhorse for interplanetary and
possibly interstellar travel. Until then, however, antimatter rockets will
remain on the drawing boards.
NATURALLY OCCURRING
ANTIMATTER
If antimatter is so difficult to create on Earth, might one find antimatter more easily in outer space? Unfortunately, searches for antimatter
in the universe have turned up very little, which is rather surprising to
physicists. The fact that our universe is made up mainly of matter,
rather than antimatter, is difficult to explain. One might naively have
assumed that at the beginning of the universe, there were equal, sym-