The recent Skeptical Enquirer article linked to this site proclaiming antimatter propulsion as “pseudoscience” was.….wrong.
Antimatter will have to be produced in quantity to be used for propulsion but very small quantities may be all that is required for an interim system using antimatter to ignite fusion reactions.
It may be that some people pushing their own miracle solutions do not like other more practical possibilities.
Unlike any type of gravity manipulation, anti-matter is a fact. Anti-matter catalyzed fusion is a possible method of interstellar propulsion; far more in the realm of possibility than anti-gravity.
What a pity, Gary Michael Church, that all you can is “is wrong”.
John Eades the author of the article (http://www.csicop.org/si/show/antimatter_pseudoscience/) received his PhD from the good University of Liverpool, UK, and then went on to become a Senior Physicist at CERN (!) where he researched antihydrogen and antiprotonic helium in collaboration with Japanese and European colleagues for several years until his retirement. And is now affiliated with Tokyo University.
The article was based on his job!
What is your pedigree to say such an esteemed physicist as John Eades is wrong? OK never mind pedigree, what experimental facts to you have to support your conclusion?
“Here I refer you once again to Robert Park’s book (Park 2008) in which he shows that travel to even a nearby star within a human lifetime would consume many thousands of times the entire annual energy production of Earth. ”
Aside from the fact that damning star travel within the lifespan of a human being does not discredit star travel that takes longer–
This article is mostly about the pseudo science attached to CERN. I am pretty sick of it myself. Eades is saying that CERN cannot be used to provide antimatter for going to other stars- it is impossible.
You are the one saying no to anti-matter propulsion on the basis of his article. I am so disgusted with the CERN conversations that have discredited this blog that if you post anything else mentioning those four letters as a comment on one of my contributions I will delete it out of hand.
I consider gravity modification on the same level of conspiracy theory garbage as end of the world CERN scenarios; neither belong on this blog.
The use of the term catalyst is inappropriate because the antimatter would participate in the reaction. Perhaps antimatter ignition of fission is more accurate. I prefer antimatter energy production. Reach for the gold ring not the brass ring!
The LHC is for research and is not designed to produce large quantities of antimatter. It should not be considered for that purpose at all.
No one has tried to produce antimatter on the scale required for interstellar travel. That does not mean that it can not be done.
A very large energy source is required to fuel the antimatter production at the scale required. The sun is a suitable source of the required energy.
Production of antimatter on a large scale should not be done on Earth. It is too dangerous. I suggest the use of Mercury as a way station to a robotic antimatter factory powered by the Sun itself. Lots of work to do to make it happen but there are really no road blocks.
“The use of the term catalyst is inappropriate”
You are correct and I imagine the term stuck due to it’s descriptive merit for the public.
It is interesting you site the factory on Mercury- the most recent and I believe the best prediction for interstellar propulsion is the small singularity drive. In this system a really tremendous amount of energy, like we could obtain from a Mercury power station, would manufacture very small black holes that would use Hawking radiation for propulsion. The interesting part is that after peer review it seems there are no road blocks for this scheme either. Though a century or more in the future, it may be a true Verne or Wells type prediction that will come to pass.
Very Exciting.
Thanks for your comment