AM containment?

[Sackett]

OK. I was a biology major, so forgive my lack of physics grok.
Most of the references that I can find refer to magnetic bottles to contain anti-matter (CTmatter, whatever), but doesn't a mterial have to be ferrous or some other such substance to be affected to that degree by magnetic attraction/repulsion?
Wouldn't gravitic containment make much more sense in a Traveller universe?

 

[aramis]

Hydrogen is magnetic when not solid. Antimatter is usually going to be anti-hydrogen or just anti-protons... and thus pretty well manipulatable with magnetic fields of high strength.

 

[Commander Truestar]

Not to beat a dead horse but we all know that everything solid breaks down to molecules which then brak down to atoms that, themselves, break down to particles. To paraphrase one of my past science teachers, you can eternally break something into equal parts and never get to "nothing". But very quickly you transition into energy and, despite the blind eye many sciences have towards this, then the sub-components of energy and beyond...

That said, everything is energy.

As a result, have always looked at the "magnetic bottle" as an energy barrier much like the experimental work being done on plasma portals. Like the tech in Star Trek, these may one day allow astronauts to look directly out into space through an energy barrier without risking decompression.(though not wanting to be to Micheal Crichton, I'd not wanna be there when the generator fails...)

Marc (IIRC the currently extiant plasma window is inches across, which is in itself a major triumph)

 

[Andrew M]

A magnetic field is generated when a charged particle moves through space. This field is perpendicular to the direction of travel. Because of this that charged particle is affected by other magnetic fields. A magnetic bottle is a magnetic field which forces electrically charged particles into a looped path.

The magnetism in iron is due to electrons orbiting the atom. Any atom with an odd number of electrons can have a magnetic charge (pairs of electrons will always cancel each other). In magnetised materials the polarity of individual atoms are aligned to some degree. How this happens is beyond (me) the scope of this post.

 

[Lycanorukke]

Most of the references that I can find refer to magnetic bottles to contain anti-matter (CTmatter, whatever), but doesn't a mterial have to be ferrous or some other such substance to be affected to that degree by magnetic attraction/repulsion?

It gets complicated very quickly (and I happily admit to not understand more than a fraction of it), but every molecule has a tiny amount of magnetism inherent to its structure - due to a combination of a combination of electron spin and nuclear spin (the "magnetic moment"). Magnetic Resonance Imaging for example, works by using a powerful magnetic field to align hydrogen nuclei (in water) in the body, and then manipulates the alignment via RF to generate an image. So with a strong enough field, atoms can be considered 'magnetic' even if they are electrically neutral.

The ATHENA project at CERN is working on creating small (_really_ small - awful fiction books not withstanding) amounts of anti-hydrogen gas and store it in specialised magnetic devices called Penning traps. A Penning trap is a combination of electric and magnetic fields aligned "just so" and the tiny inherent magnetism of hydrogen molecules results in the molecules being forced into a looping circular path.

So we know magnetics can work for very small amounts - I do have doubts that you would be able to use Penning traps for large amounts (micrograms or greater) as then gravity starts becomming a serious problem, but this is rampant speculation by me.

 

[atpollard]

Magnetic confinement also becomes unnecessary when you can control Gravity (as Traveller postulates) since gravity is the warping of the fabric of space-time. Thus Anti-Matter could be contained in a halo orbit around an artificial gravity point source. A 'bowl' of space-time to hold the AM.

 

[aramis]

MRI works by vibrating hydrogen and causing it to emit RF; the RF is read, and analyzed, to form images. MRI's biggest weakness is that it excites mostly hydrogen and iron.

 

[fiat_knox]

Superconducting materials trap and contain magnetic fields; this is known as the Meissner effect.

Basically, a superconductive substance expels magnetic fields from its interior, which means that properly shaped, a superconductive object could concentrate a magnetic field in such a way as to levitate objects. Maglev operates on this principle - so do gauss weapons, railguns and Ortillery railgun mass drivers in Traveller.

A charged, ionised bar-H plasma could be held in check by a superconductive bottle which concentrates the magnetic fields pumped into it through a magnetic cycle "airlock" system, allowing the magnetic field to overwhelm the repulsion of all those H^- ions, or antiprotons, for one another.

So all you would need would be a form of room-temp+ switchable superconductor where the superconductivity could be switched on and off in a controlled manner, and where the superconductive material remained effective at room temp or, preferably, higher temperatures.

Who knows. Maybe by boosting the Meissner effect with a superconductive sheath, grav and damper box technology, a decent TL 17 culture might make antimatter power plants doable.

Now all one has to do is wonder how the Ancients did it ... especially containing sizable masses of pure anti proton - which, of course, could be used as a weapon ...

 

[Icosahedron]

As described above, Hydrogen is readily contained by magnetic fields. A magnetic bottle is essentially a cylindrical magnetic field pinched off at both ends.

They are used today to contain plasma in fusion reactors since nothing else will withstand the temperature, but for AM the high temperature is not necessary.

In RL, at TL7, you would (do) need magnetic bottles to store AM as there is no other way to keep the AM from touching normal matter, but as you say, in the Traveller Universe a 'simple' G-field could be made to levitate the AM away from matter, or as another poster suggested, a superconductive levitation would do the same thing (if the AM were in a magnetic form) I'm not sure how either of these would cope with a dissipative form of hydrogen, though - superconductive levitation and Traveller G-tech both deal mainly with solids.

All you are doing is keeping the stuff from contacting matter, so it has to be in a vacuum and not resting on anything. Any tech that accomplishes this requirement will suffice to contain AM.
With grav-tech available, solid AM would be the easiest to contain; without it, solid AM would probably be impossible to contain and a magnetic bottle may be the only way to contain a non-solid.

Of course, gravity is a weak force and I'm not aware of any canon that claims anti-G stronger than about a dozen gs exists in the OTU. There are therefore limits on what G-tech can contain/stop - you can forget grav-armour, for example...