<< Well, it doesn't work out that way. There are failures in the analogy. First of all, it takes exactly as much energy to produce matter as you get from its annihilation. Granted that you are only producing the anti-matter, so you only need to produce half of the matter to be used in the reaction process. That means that your break-even point for sustaining the reaction is 50% efficiency. If you were to examine the geometry considerations in arranging for the creation of the anti-matter you would find that the efficiency for the production process is limited theoretically to far less than 1%. >>
To produce antimatter is inefficient, but to convert matter to antimatter would be more efficient. I say that matter is a state of energy, like ice is a state of water. And energy is not any kind of particle, it is just energy, one of 3 dimensional components that make up our universe. The other 2 components are space and time. Anyway, the properties of energy are determined by its velocity within space. There are infinite possibilities just as there are infinite velocities. In its purest form, energy travels at a constant velocity in the universe, a universal velocity. Slowing it down changes its state to what we perceive as particles, even slower and we get matter particles. Reversing its direction gives it opposite properties, and if the reversed energy does not attain the universal velocity, it will become a particle of matter.
With that said, you can see why they produce antimatter the way they do now, and why it works. The particles are collided at "near light" speeds, but not fast enough to produce "anti-energy" you just get anti-matter. The idea behind creating "true" antimatter is to take something like a rock, and reverse its universal velocity. The rock would still look like a rock and feel like a rock (if you were to touch it), but it would actually be a rock comprised of "antimatter". For better consistency, crystals would be a better candidate for antimatter conversion, due to their uniform lattice structure.
<< A car's engine produces enough energy to recharge the battery and power the car because it is able to derive that energy from the combustion of materials from an external source. If you had to use the battery not only to crank the engine over and provide the ignition spark but also to produce the gasoline (or even half of the gasoline) then you'd never get the machine on the road. If it weren't for energy stored in the form of fossil fuels, or at least the ability to get at some source of stored energy like alcohol produced from biomass, then we'd have no internal combustion systems. So far, we haven't found a way to "mine" anti-matter. >>
Yes...which is why we need to convert the matter we have into antimatter, a process that may now be easier said than done, but possible and not as complicated as it sounds. Then to fit the analogy, the converted matter, now antimatter, would be the fuel. Initiating and controlling the reaction would be as easy as directing a beam of matter at the antimatter.
<< You can never even break even in this game. If you could break even in the sense of being able, within a single self-contained system, to produce everything you needed to power your vehicle, then you would have succeeded in producing the perpetual motion machine. In order to get the energy we need to accomplish anything, we are dependent upon the "gift of fire" from the gods or from Mother Nature or from whomever or whatever is responsible. There are no free rides. It's just that some rides look as though they're free from a particular standpoint -- until you look more closely. >>
Take a short ramp, about 3-4 inches long, and put a semi powerful magnet at the top, then make a hole in front of the magnet. Next, make a curved ramp which is on a lesser incline than the first ramp. Put one end of the curved ramp under the hole and the other end back to the beginning of the longer ramp. Now take a steel BB, maybe .5" in diameter, and place it on the straight ramp. If you construct this correctly, the magnet will pull the BB up the ramp, then the BB will fall through the hole because the magnet cannot support the weight of the BB. The BB then rolls back to the starting point and the process repeats itself. And there you have it, perpetual motion. I've had one of these things going non stop for 3+ years and it's still going...the wood does show some wear, but that's it.
<< I like the simplest ideas because I find them the most elegant. Light sails could be very effective in certain space travel applications, and a number of very interesting variations on the theme have been proposed. Besides, a light sail failure doesn't convert your interplanetary "wheels" into a ball of incandescent gas. Urp! >>
I wouldn't be caught dead on a sail ship in space! I'd like a ship with some balls, and the ability to attack/defend itself from whatever may be there if necessary. It'd be kinda fun to be a space pirate. I'd probably opt for a contained black hole as my powersource...maybe 2 or 3 black holes. One of them would be there solely to power a huge cannon.
-= SsZERO =-