Energy Unlimited?

In Angels and Demons by Dan Brown, (the film version of which has just been released), the plot revolves around a stolen canister of anti-matter with an explosive potential many times that of TNT! Even with its generous veneer of fiction, the story has attracted popular attention and brought anti-particle physics into discussion circles. Some cause for cheer indeed!

But what is this anti-matter? Can it solve the world’s energy crisis?

In antimatter-matter collisions resulting in photon emission, the entire rest mass of the particles is converted to kinetic energy. The energy per unit mass (9×1016 J/kg) is about 10 orders of magnitude greater than chemical energy, about 4 orders of magnitude greater than nuclear energy that can be liberated today using nuclear fission and about 2 orders of magnitude greater than the best possible from fusion. The reaction of 1 kg of antimatter with 1 kg of matter would produce 1.8×1017 J (180 petajoules) of energy or the rough equivalent of 47 megatons of TNT. Energy needs of the world could be forever solved, if only we could store the antimatter and use it in a controlled manner!

Anti-matter is composed of antiparticles in the same way that normal matter is composed of particles. For example, an antielectron (a positron, an electron with a positive charge) and an antiproton (a proton with a negative charge) could form an antihydrogen atom in the same way that an electron and a proton form a normal matter hydrogen atom.

Mixing matter and antimatter would lead to the annihilation of both in the same way that mixing antiparticles and particles does, thus giving rise to high-energy photons.

However, the biggest limiting factor in the production of antimatter is the availability of antiprotons. Recent data released by CERN states that when fully operational their facilities are capable of producing 107 antiprotons per second. Assuming an optimal conversion of antiprotons to antihydrogen, it would take two billion years to produce 1 gram or 1 mole of antihydrogen (approximately 6.02×1023 atoms of antihydrogen).

Another limiting factor to antimatter production is storage. Antimatter can be contained by a combination of an electric field and a magnetic field in a device known as a Penning trap.

Positrons were reported in November 2008 to have been generated by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in larger numbers than by any previous synthetic process. Also, antimatter is the most costly substance in existence, with an estimated cost of $62.5 trillion per gram.

According to CERN, it has cost a few hundred million Swiss Francs to produce about 1 billionth of a gram.

But that is not going to deter scientists in their attempts to cook new particles and wrench energy from the E=mc2 process. Particle physics could well be the ultimate frontier of energy studies. What do you say?