MTIHITTEI III IITI-IIIIEISES is;
Shuttle, so the data was collected for no more than a week or so.
PAMELA, by contrast, will stay in orbit for at least three years. "It is the
best detector ever constructed and we will use it for a long period," declares team member Piergiorgio Picozza of the University of Rome.
PAMELA is designed to detect cosmic rays from ordinary sources,
such as supernovae, but also from unusual ones, such as stars made
entirely of antimatter. Specifically, PAMELA will look for the signature
of anti-helium, which might be produced in the interiors of anti-stars.
Although most physicists today believe that the big bang resulted in a
near perfect cancellation between matter and antimatter, as Sakharov
believed, PAMELA is based on a different assumption-that whole regions of antimatter universe did not undergo that cancellation and
hence exist today in the form of anti-stars.
If antimatter exists in minute quantities in deep space, then it
might be possible to "harvest" some of that antimatter to use to propel
a starship. NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts takes the idea of
harvesting antimatter in space seriously enough that it recently funded
a pilot program to study this concept. "Basically, what you want to do
is generate a net, just like you're fishing," says Gerald Jackson of Hbar
Technologies, one of the organizations spearheading the project.
The antimatter harvester is based on three concentric spheres,
each made out of a lattice wire network. The outermost sphere would
be 16 kilometers across and would be positively charged, so that it
would repel any protons, which are positively charged, but attract antiprotons, which are negatively charged. The antiprotons would be collected by the outer sphere, then slow down as they passed through the
second sphere and would finally stop when they reached the innermost sphere, which would be 100 meters across. The antiprotons
would then be captured in a magnetic bottle and combined with antielectrons to make antihydrogen.
Jackson estimates that controlled matter-antimatter reactions inside a spacecraft could fuel a solar sail to Pluto using just 30 milligrams of antimatter. Seventeen grams of antimatter, says Jackson,
would be enough to fuel a starship to Alpha Centauri. Jackson claims
that there might be 80 grams of antimatter between the orbits of Venus
Shuttle, so the data was collected for no more than a week or so.
PAMELA, by contrast, will stay in orbit for at least three years. "It is the
best detector ever constructed and we will use it for a long period," declares team member Piergiorgio Picozza of the University of Rome.
PAMELA is designed to detect cosmic rays from ordinary sources,
such as supernovae, but also from unusual ones, such as stars made
entirely of antimatter. Specifically, PAMELA will look for the signature
of anti-helium, which might be produced in the interiors of anti-stars.
Although most physicists today believe that the big bang resulted in a
near perfect cancellation between matter and antimatter, as Sakharov
believed, PAMELA is based on a different assumption-that whole regions of antimatter universe did not undergo that cancellation and
hence exist today in the form of anti-stars.
If antimatter exists in minute quantities in deep space, then it
might be possible to "harvest" some of that antimatter to use to propel
a starship. NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts takes the idea of
harvesting antimatter in space seriously enough that it recently funded
a pilot program to study this concept. "Basically, what you want to do
is generate a net, just like you're fishing," says Gerald Jackson of Hbar
Technologies, one of the organizations spearheading the project.
The antimatter harvester is based on three concentric spheres,
each made out of a lattice wire network. The outermost sphere would
be 16 kilometers across and would be positively charged, so that it
would repel any protons, which are positively charged, but attract antiprotons, which are negatively charged. The antiprotons would be collected by the outer sphere, then slow down as they passed through the
second sphere and would finally stop when they reached the innermost sphere, which would be 100 meters across. The antiprotons
would then be captured in a magnetic bottle and combined with antielectrons to make antihydrogen.
Jackson estimates that controlled matter-antimatter reactions inside a spacecraft could fuel a solar sail to Pluto using just 30 milligrams of antimatter. Seventeen grams of antimatter, says Jackson,
would be enough to fuel a starship to Alpha Centauri. Jackson claims
that there might be 80 grams of antimatter between the orbits of Venus