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?
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?
