Page 38 - Grasp English C1 (Workbook)

4 Energy

Fans of Star Trek will be familiar with antimatter. It is the energy source that powers the warp drive, which allows
space ships to travel from one side of a galaxy to another. Warp drives are, currently at least, just science
fiction. Antimatter, however, is not, and it does indeed hold the potential to create massive amounts of energy.
So, could Antimatter be the power source of the future?

Matter is a physics term, referring to the things around us. It’s made up of atoms, which are made up of
electrons, protons and neutrons. Antimatter is made up of particles that are the opposites, or antiparticles,
of the building blocks of matter – antiprotons, antineutrons and positrons (the antiparticle to electrons).
Antiparticles are identical to particles but have the opposite charge. Theoretically, if particles and antiparticles
could be brought together, there would be a giant release of energy.
Antiparticles do exist in nature, but only in tiny amounts. For example, they are created above storm clouds and
inside the sun and some other stars. On Earth, they are created experimentally in the high-energy collisions
that take place inside particle accelerators, such as the Hadron Collider.

The main problem with using antimatter as a power source is that it is impossible to obtain enough of it to
sustain a reactor. Although scientists have been able to create antimatter, including positrons, antiprotons,
anti-hydrogen atoms and even a few anti-helium atoms, these are in such insignificant amounts that they
couldn’t power anything. In fact, if engineers gathered all the antimatter that had ever been created artificially,
it would only be enough to light a standard light bulb for a few minutes. Furthermore producing antimatter is
extremely expensive. The European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN) estimates that to produce just one
gramme of antimatter would take 100 billion years and cost 100 quadrillion dollars. Clearly then, with today’s
technology, antimatter is not going to power our world.

However, NASA is currently investigating the possibility of capturing naturally created antimatter. The
antimatter above storm clouds may be a possible source, although inevitably this will react with matter
in our atmosphere before it can be captured. The Van Allen radiation belts, which are rings of charged
particles surrounding the earth, are another potential source, as these contain a significant amount of
antiparticles which form when high-energy charged particles from the sun interact with Earth’s magnetic
field. So, although these ideas are still in the research phase, it may be possible one day to create energy
from the antimatter in space. Then the energy sources depicted in sci-fi could actually become our reality.

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