New and Improved Antimatter Spaceship for Mars Missions

Hope this works, could be a nice advance in technology.

The NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) is funding a team of researchers working on a new design for an antimatter-powered spaceship that avoids this nasty side effect by producing gamma rays with much lower energy.

Antimatter is sometimes called the mirror image of normal matter because while it looks just like ordinary matter, some properties are reversed. For example, normal electrons, the familiar particles that carry electric current in everything from cell phones to plasma TVs, have a negative electric charge. Anti-electrons have a positive charge, so scientists dubbed them "positrons".

link

Mmmmm... low-energy gamma rays. They're like bullets that go just a little bit slower, except they're gamma rays, and they have a little bit more trouble shredding your DNA.

But seriously, this is a really cool idea. Naturally, these scientists will have the goal of achieving their stated end-result, but undoubtedly along the way they will make many important discoveries about the nature of matter and the universe that will knock our socks off.

For something as cutting-edge as anti-matter propulsion, I'd rather see a professional report submitted into a peer-reviewed journal. Journals like the International Journal of Modern Physics, or Modern Physics Letters, or The American Institute of Physics Online Journal Service. This is stuff that is too important to let anyone publish it. These peer-reviewed journals have a thorough, and often sadistic board of reviewers who meticulously scrutinize every little detail of the submitted work. Even after the work has been approved by them, various professionals are still allowed to write their own criticisms that are attached to the publication, while still allowing the original author to have the final word in a rebuttal section.

I don't want to slam on what are called "popular science" sources (hell, I read Scientific American), but honestly, nobody checks the validity of any of the claims made in them. They go through a review panel, but just one that will make sure the author has spelled everything correctly and did not include any ethnic slurs.

But it is a cool article nonetheless!

Didn't read the srticle yet but my question is: Where are they going to get this antimatter? I'm not positive but aren't we making antimatter at a rate of 1 billionth of a gram in 10 years? I know that figure is wrong but you know what I mean.

I beleieve there is a proton e=accelerator in CERN that is under construction that will produce a higher rate of positrons. We all shouldn't be naive and assume that the US doesn't have a facility underground somewhere with a Manahatan Project type crew. Remember, positrons are the most powerful energy source known to mankind. It has an explosion efficiency of 100%! Thermonuclear bombs are about 1.5 percent effecient. So basically I'm saying that if they're building larger quantities of this stuff, be SCARED! AAC