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Anti-matter in traveller?

The Thing

SOC-13
Since scientists on earth have been making anti-particles for decades now, and recently created the first complete antimatter atom, I was wondering what the status of anti-matter in traveller was and has anything even been done with it?

As I see it, anti-matter is a nightmare to make in quantity, both in terms of cost and labor, and it's only use is to carry around a tremendous amount of energy is a small package.

The issue is how small a package. While enough antimatter to replace a couple tons of liquid hydrogen in terms of energy production output may only weight a few pounds, you have to carry it in a pretty elaborate containment system that will likely outweigh the antimatter and consume power on it's own.

I'd imagine in traveller a special multi-gravity system could contain antimatter bu projecting gravity field at it from 6 directions, keeping in in the middle of a cubical vacuum chamber.

The good thing with antimatter is that a little produces a ghawdawful amount of energy, meaning you could use a few pounds of it to replace maybe hundreds of tons of liquid hydrogen to fuel your jump drive, meaning you'd still need LH for the coolant and the jump bubble, altho maybe you could use the vented coolant LH for the jump bubble. So maybe a ship could carry enough of it to make several jumps in the space it normally carried the LH for one jump, maybe, depending on how much LH was needed for coolant/the jump bubble.

It also, as a weapon, has all the power of a nuke with none of the radiation/fallout issues to contend with as an anti-matter blast is pretty much clean. (There are reasons the enterprise carries "photon torpedoes", after all.)

The military might have a real love for anti-matter given these issues, but then again it's expensive, dangerous, complex and you can't 'wilderness refuel" an anti-matter system like you can a hydrogen fusion one. Plus one slip in the containment system and you probably die instantly, tho painlessly.

Another use for antimatter, leaving out anti-matter WMDs for a moment, is as anti-particle beams. Those would do unholy damage, and likely be almost as nasty as a meson cannon and less complex to aim/use.

So has any version of traveller done much with anti-matter and if so what did they do with it?
 
AM

Hi !

In MT antimatter stuff is covered in the high TL design sequence ... and there are AM warheads, too.
Anyway technically AM could be considered more as a storage technology as primary power source, because you perhaps have to put more energy into the creation process than you get back....
Well but perhaps the ancients discovered a new antimatter source in another dimension.

Regards,

TE
 
AM

OK. Containment maybe a problem, but gravitics will only use a small proportion of the energy held. As far as production, since you are mainly interested in a convenient energy storage format, if you were to use LOTS of solar powere, or more likely, a fusion reactor parked in orbit about a gas giant and used as a power plant, you would have access to the power you need. The big problem is coolant. Perhaps a more efficient method developed by that TL?
 
IIRC, as a quick rule of thumb, fusion reactions produce about 1 percent of mc^2, so antimatter reactions should be about 100 times more fuel-efficient. A simple grav module will suspend the stuff in a (hopefully jettisonable) tank. I believe LBB3 had it enter use at TL 17, which is why not much is made of it in normal Traveller campaigns. How many TL17 Class A Starports do you have in your TU to produce the stuff?
 
IIRC, as a quick rule of thumb, fusion reactions produce about 1 percent of mc^2, so antimatter reactions should be about 100 times more fuel-efficient. A simple grav module will suspend the stuff in a (hopefully jettisonable) tank. I believe LBB3 had it enter use at TL 17, which is why not much is made of it in normal Traveller campaigns. How many TL17 Class A Starports do you have in your TU to produce the stuff?

Sorry to burst your bubble, but Anti-Matter conversion will not be 100% efficient either (nothing in the universe is 100% effecient). If I remember correctly, I think 10%-20% is more reasonable number. There are a LOT of particles that will never "hit" another, even in a dense condition.

Black Holes consuming matter can produce energy in the 50%-60% efficiency range and that is as high as I have heard of.
 
"And the Arm-Chair Scientist Steps into the Ring, Ladies and Gentlement!"

While it is true it won't be 100% efficient it will be a lot more than any old fusion plant. For one thing if you can keep a decent vacc then your biggest worry (outside the obvious) is how much do you lose to Quantum Flux and Zero-Point Particles, not that much, unless the Ref is rolling dice.:devil:

Also you don't lose so much as you use the M-Grav to push the H right into the Interaction/Radiation Conversion Chamber with the same done for the AM packets.

Honestly the big problem is creating radiovoltaic cells to absorb and convert the various EM spectra coming off the Center of Annihilation.

Or how it would sorta work for now IMTU, if I had an Active one.

And what the hell letter is this 17 anyway, where's my Hexidecimal?!
 
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*not sure if I like this kid*

*grinning*

Hey, kid, don't I Know you from somewhere?!

*consults his IMI-6 Issue PDA (read 'handcomp') for records*

But, I have to admit to liking a good bomb!
 
Adventure 3, Twilight's Peak, had a nice antimatter battery (must be, what, TL24 or better?). Advanced technology must be able to produce far more energy than it can easily or readily consume -- perhaps it has high-power but very large generator plants. MegaTraveller (I think) talks about antimatter 'pods', which seem to be lower-tech (TL17+) versions of antimatter batteries.

So I can see factories churning these out, like some kind of multi-use, disposable 'fuel' tanks -- only they're really more like superbatteries, aren't they?

If that's true, then I expect that in the vastness of space in the Domain of Deneb there are a number of jettisoned, mostly empty pods which have been floating around for 300,000 years. Not much chance of finding one, but how's that for a plot hook?
 
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OOOO Plot Hooks...

Groovy, I will have to use this with permission and an understanding that you as a Player/PC won't know where they are, but I as Ref do. You understand?
 
...I expect that in the vastness of space in the Domain of Deneb there are a number of jettisoned, mostly empty pods which have been floating around for 300,000 years. Not much chance of finding one, but how's that for a plot hook?

And of course the Ancients had a favorite nothing system as a dumping ground/collection site for recycling these pods at the time. After hundreds of millenia they have slowly accumulated dust (attracted by the pod's hull) which has fused to the outer hull. These ancient pods are extremely unstable and found in quantity in (and looking like the rest of) the Shionthy asteroid belt making it a valuable if hazardous resource.

You say anti-matter I say contra-terrene :)
 
Strikes me that the pods need a power source to maintain the AM containment. Even assuming they use the AM as fuel for the containment system, I figure there's a high chance the 'batteries' will be flat after 300,000 years, especially if they were jettisoned near end of useful life...
 
Ooh, I lost this thread.
Incidentally, Plankowner, I wasn't suggesting that AM drives would be 100% efficient, I was just placing a limit on how many tons of fusion fuel could be replaced with AM.

As you and Magnus correctly pointed out, efficiency will be way below 100% thanks to incomplete burning and collection/storage/utilisation difficulties.

However, I'm not sure whether the 1% figure I quoted for fusion took account of efficiency either, so you could be looking at anywhere between 10 and 100 times more power than fusion from a working reactor, but not thousands. That was the point I was trying to make.

Now IMTU, AM energy density is the key to a new Jump Drive, teleportation and pocket universes, but that's another story, and very much ATU. :)
 
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