What's the most expensive thing in the world? It's not talent, it's antimatter! The cost of making one gram of antimatter is as high as $62.5 trillion. What exactly is antimatter?
In the American movie "The Avengers", Thanos's snap of his fingers wiped out half of the world, and this dissipation scene is very similar to the scene after the contact between antimatter and humans in the scientific prediction. According to scientists, there is a large amount of antimatter in the universe, and once it comes into contact with our world, the two will cancel each other out. Humans have succeeded in creating antimatter at an unimaginably high cost. What exactly is antimatter, and what is the point of studying it?
What is antimatter?
Our world is made of matter, and as the name suggests, the so-called antimatter is something diametrically opposed to the matter of our world. In fact, this is not just a hypothesis, but a real thing.
When it comes to antimatter, we have to mention the British theoretical physicist Dirac. He linked the Schrödinger equation with the theory of relativity and came up with the Dirac equation.
Initially, scientists were happy about this equation, but as they studied it, they discovered a serious problem that subverted common sense, that is, according to the Dirac equation, electrons have negative energy states.
Electrons in the traditional sense are negatively charged, moving at high speed around positively charged protons, protons and neutrons form the nucleus, plus electrons to form an atom.
Whereas, according to the Dirac equation, there is a negative energy state of electrons, that is, there are positively charged electrons. According to the theory of physics, positively charged electrons can only move around negatively charged protons, and antineutrons constitute antiatoms.
When the antiatoms are combined, they form antimatter. This is a form of composition that is completely opposite to the substance of our world, which can also be called a mirror form.
According to scientists' conjectures, when matter meets antimatter, both will be annihilated, just as half of the world disappears after Thanos snaps his fingers.
Therefore, it can be said that antimatter is the most dangerous thing in the world, killing people invisibly, and the final result can only be a mysterious disappearance and an unsolved case.
In 1932, American scientist Anderson discovered antielectrons through experiments, and in 1955, Italian physicist Segre and American physicist Chamberlain discovered antiprotons for the first time.
In 1956, American scientist Cork discovered antineutrons, and antimatter was confirmed to be real. It wasn't until 1995 that CERN succeeded in creating an antihydrogen atom for the first time, demonstrating that humans have the ability to make antimatter.
However, this ability is also limited to the laboratory. After 14 years of uninterrupted efforts, this experimental equipment has produced a total of 100 trillion antihydrogen atoms.
The amount seems unusually large, but in terms of weight, it is completely negligible, because they are only 10-10 grams. According to the cost of this experiment, it would cost as much as $62.5 trillion to make 1 gram of antimatter, which is one of the most expensive substances in the world.
What is the point of studying antimatter?
As far as we ordinary people are concerned, we feel that antimatter is just like that, except for the fact that the matter of our world can disappear out of thin air, it seems that there is no other use, but in fact, if human beings really control antimatter, it will be of great significance to the future development.
Because of the particularity of antimatter, in the eyes of scientists, it is the ultimate energy source of mankind, you must know that the nuclear fusion projects that major powers are now working on have not been able to get the title of "ultimate energy", which shows the importance of antimatter energy.
It can be said that if there is a hierarchy of civilizations, then the civilization of the human world is likely to be the lowest civilization. With our current technology, nuclear energy is the highest level of energy, and as for better nuclear fusion, it is still in the thousand-second experiment.
For higher civilizations, nuclear energy is to them, just like lighters are to us, it may be used in ordinary times, but it is definitely not called energy.
Now we see American nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, which feel very advanced. But in the face of antimatter energy, nuclear energy is only slag. Why is antimatter energy so good?
First of all, antimatter energy conversion efficiency is particularly high. Only about 1 to 3 percent of the nuclear energy we currently use is converted into energy during the fission process, and the rest is lost. In the process of collision and annihilation between antimatter and matter, a large amount of energy can be released, and the conversion rate can reach 100%.
What's more, antimatter energy does not produce a large amount of waste after use, as nuclear energy does. After the antimatter collides with matter, it returns to nothingness at the same time, leaving no trace.
Second, antimatter energy can power spacecraft, propelling them to achieve faster speeds. At present, rockets and other spacecraft still rely mainly on fossil energy, and the large size and weight limit the speed of rockets.
If antimatter is used, the weight and mention of energy can be drastically reduced, and the output power is higher. Scientists estimate that a spacecraft using antimatter energy can reach a top speed of 70% of the speed of light.
This speed means that humans can travel from Earth to Mars in 45 minutes, instead of more than half a year now. Near-Earth planets will achieve a "one-hour traffic circle", and the scope of human exploration of the universe will be greatly improved.
Proxima Centauri, the closest star to Earth, is about 4.2 light-years away, which is simply unattainable at the speed of the current spacecraft, and if there is an antimatter energy spacecraft, humans can reach this region in 6 years and easily achieve interstellar leapfrogging.
In science fiction novels and movies, warp engines, jump engines, etc., which often appear, basically use antimatter as the propulsion energy source, and it is impossible for human beings to reach such a speed with the energy they currently have. Mastered by antimatter energy, interstellar travel is not a dream.
Third, antimatter can be used as an energy source, and of course as a weapon, just like nuclear energy. In many American blockbusters, antimatter bombs have been mentioned as weapons. Only a few grams of antimatter are needed to blow up a large city after detonation, and the large amount of energy released when antimatter and matter are annihilated is far more powerful than nuclear weapons such as nuclear bombs and hydrogen bombs.
Antimatter preparation challenges
In any respect, antimatter is an important energy source for mankind in the future, but at the current level of science and technology, there are still many difficulties and a long way to go to achieve large-scale application of antimatter.
First of all, antimatter preparation and preservation are very difficult. When scientists discovered antimatter, they were all excited, but in the process of trying to make it, they found it difficult. Whether a particle collider or a laser is used, the preparation efficiency is very low.
Just as CERN spent 14 years preparing 10 to the 10th power gram, it can really be described as "a meal as fierce as a tiger, looking back at only 15".
The unit after this 15 is not grams, but micrograms (1 gram = 1 million micrograms). This bit of antimatter, let alone being used as a weapon or powering a spaceship, is difficult to boil even a glass of water.
Second, if you want to make antimatter now, you need to invest a huge amount of energy. The energy produced by the prepared antimatter energy is not enough to compensate for the energy consumed in the production of antimatter. It consumes a lot of energy and a lot of money, which is the difficulty in the current antimatter manufacturing process.
Third, the preservation of antimatter is equally difficult. From the previous explanation, we can also understand that once antimatter encounters matter, it will collide and annihilate. Therefore, after the antimatter is created, it can only be stored in a special container for a few seconds, and it will disappear instantly if it collides with the wall of the cup.
The property of "ending up together" once exposed to it is a headache for scientists, and it also leads to great limitations in the research and application of antimatter. At present, it is difficult to even preserve it, let alone use it for energy, fuel or weapons.
Although antimatter has many benefits, if the above few obstacles cannot be solved, antimatter is doomed to have no chance with modern humans. However, with the advancement of science and technology, antimatter will definitely be tamed by humans and become one of the most important aids in the exploration of the universe.
The mystery of cosmic antimatter
In the entire universe, antimatter exists in large quantities, for example, when a stream of high-energy particles shuttles through the universe, antimatter can be released.
According to the characteristics of antimatter, once it encounters matter, it will collide with each other and disappear, so there can be no matter in the universe at all, but the reality is that our entire earth's biosphere is alive and well, does this prove that there is no antimatter?
In fact, although there is antimatter in the universe, its quantity is much less than that of matter, and the quantity of the two is not symmetrical, which is also one of the manifestations of cosmic asymmetry.
It is precisely because the amount of matter is much higher than that of antimatter that our world and many galaxies in the universe have a chance to exist, and finally form a magnificent universe.
However, some scientists have speculated whether antimatter is concentrated in a special region, and then an antimatter universe is formed there, that is, a universe diametrically opposed to ours.
Since life can form in our universe, does there also life exist in the antimatter universe? And then they are also studying matter? But in their case, maybe call our matter "antimatter."
The universe is so big that there are all kinds of wonders, and what we are exploring now is only a small part of it, the vast universe, and there are many secrets waiting for us to discover.
With the progress of science and technology, technologies that are difficult to achieve now will become very common technologies in the future! Just as people in the past longed to be able to fly in the sky like birds, the result is that now they can not only fly in the sky, but even fly out of the sky. The ancients used to describe the moon in their imagination, but now the moon is no longer mysterious to us. Believe in the future, and the same is true for antimatter!