What would you take?

[Mikey]

... and some other types of EM, I thought; but the point is that plasma is a state of matter - how would energetic annihilation of M/AM spontaneously produce it?

[Bryan Moore]

Replicator. Then I'd be able to produce an item on a regular basis...like AK-47s or an endless amount of other valuable materials like gold or titanium.

I intitially said this, but this would be assuming that there was a massive power source to supply the proper matter. Even the replicator cannot make matter out of nothing; some sort of power is needed, as it is basically a molecular converter, no? Not to say we couldn't tap this into geothermal energy or the like, but it would still be quite a drain at first to get things up and running.

[ultron2099]

As for the creation of plasma, take a micro-gram of anti-matter and introduce it to a micro-gram of matter and watch the fun begin. Just don't shut down the magnetic containment system.

Where exactly would the plasma come from? M/AM reactions release their energy in the form of gamma radiation.

hell, how do they create the plasma from a matter/antimatter reactor in star trek?!?!

[Mikey]

I don't know. That's why we're asking how to do it in "RL." The unfortunately truthful answer to how they do it in 'Trek: technobabble.

[ultron2099]

I don't know. That's why we're asking how to do it in "RL." The unfortunately truthful answer to how they do it in 'Trek: technobabble.

Alright, lets pull out good old fashioned quacky engineering on our part and see what we can come up with.

Anti-matter, when it comes in contact with any matter mutually annihilates each other completely. However it only completely destroys an equal amount of matter as there is anti-matter. So, in a vacuum chamber with a set amount of liquid hydrogen you drop in a particle of anti-matter. The instant explosion flash heats the hydrogen causing a chain reaction converting it into plasma. The chamber is bathed in running water which saps away the plasma heat and converts to steam which then drives turbines producing electricity.


Question: Any of that sound like it could work?

[Mikey]

Yeah, but it doesn't sound like you'd need to bother with converting anything into plasma at all.

[ultron2099]

Yeah, but it doesn't sound like you'd need to bother with converting anything into plasma at all.

please explain.

[Mikey]

If you have enough energy coming out to heat a gas enough to create a plasma, then you probably have enough to create steam directly.

[ultron2099]

If you have enough energy coming out to heat a gas enough to create a plasma, then you probably have enough to create steam directly.

Interesting. So what your saying is instead of liquid hydrogen in a vacuum chamber, you leave it as regular water in a vacuum chamber, drop the particle of anti-matter into the water, and boom instant steam energy .... thats a possibility.

[Thorin]

Currently the production of anti-matter is created at a huge net loss, and indeed it can't be stored. Someone said earlier that we produce it at about a gram a year - well - only about a billionth of a gram a year
The act of converting matter to anti-matter doesn't have to require a pre-set/specific energy - currently it takes more energy to convert it than the mass-energy of the anti-matter itself - but increasing efficiency could bring it down to requiring less and less. It could take 1 eV to convert it - people are confusing the act of converting matter to anti-matter with the act of the anti-matter reacting with matter.

There are two separate things going on.
1) Converting one form of mass-energy (matter) into another form of mass-energy (anti-matter).
2) The afore mentioned anti-matter reacting with matter
The amount of energy input into either of them are independant.
The amount of energy output into either of them are independant.

Converting thermal energy into kinetic energy - and the energy required for the conversion - has no bearing on the amount of thermal/kinetic energy. Just as converting matter into anti-matter - and the energy required to do that - has no bearing on the amount of mass-energy.

So, the amount of energy put into the creation of anti-matter does not have a bearing on how much energy the anti-matter has.

The fact is, anti-matter is created on board starships from deuterium. The amount of energy input into the process of coverting matter to anti-matter can be relatively tiny. Effeciency has no context here. The net loss/efficiency only comes into the equation when the amount of input [ie mass-energy] in the reaction (NOT the conversion) must be greater than usable output (heat? 'plasma energy'?) .

I've repeated myself about 5 times there but I was trying to get the point across that the the creation of anti-matter is independant to the reaction of anti-matter. The amount of energy input/output for either are not related.

[ultron2099]

Currently the production of anti-matter is created at a huge net loss, and indeed it can't be stored. Someone said earlier that we produce it at about a gram a year - well - only about a billionth of a gram a year
The act of converting matter to anti-matter doesn't have to require a pre-set/specific energy - currently it takes more energy to convert it than the mass-energy of the anti-matter itself - but increasing efficiency could bring it down to requiring less and less. It could take 1 eV to convert it - people are confusing the act of converting matter to anti-matter with the act of the anti-matter reacting with matter.

There are two separate things going on.
1) Converting one form of mass-energy (matter) into another form of mass-energy (anti-matter).
2) The afore mentioned anti-matter reacting with matter
The amount of energy input into either of them are independant.
The amount of energy output into either of them are independant.

Converting thermal energy into kinetic energy - and the energy required for the conversion - has no bearing on the amount of thermal/kinetic energy. Just as converting matter into anti-matter - and the energy required to do that - has no bearing on the amount of mass-energy.

So, the amount of energy put into the creation of anti-matter does not have a bearing on how much energy the anti-matter has.

The fact is, anti-matter is created on board starships from deuterium. The amount of energy input into the process of coverting matter to anti-matter can be relatively tiny. Effeciency has no context here. The net loss/efficiency only comes into the equation when the amount of input [ie mass-energy] in the reaction (NOT the conversion) must be greater than usable output (heat? 'plasma energy'?) .

I've repeated myself about 5 times there but I was trying to get the point across that the the creation of anti-matter is independant to the reaction of anti-matter. The amount of energy input/output for either are not related.

I thought antimatter AND deutrium were loaded aboard starships. as for the antimatter creation process, this debate started because the technology i would want to take from the star trek universe WAS the antimatter creation system they use. which then led to how to utilize it. my theory was to employ it much as we do nuclear reactors, only using the antimatter to create the steam to drive the turbines to generate the electricity we use.

[Thorin]

Anti-matter is anti-deuterium. Voyager, for example, was seen looking for deuterium fuel on countless occasions - they must have ran out. If they ran out of dueterium (as per a 1:1 annihilation rate) they must have ran out of anti-deuterium - so they also needed that. Half of the deuterium they collected must have been converted, on the ship, to anti-deuterium. This must mean the process of creating anti-dueterium requires an input (on 1:1 atom basis) less than the output of the warpcore - otherwise they wouldn't be able to convert it - they wouldn't have sufficient energy. And this does not mean that energy has come from no where - it doesn't mean that that this is a spiral of increasing energy - they still need the fuel (mass-energy) which both powers ship systems and powers the 'conversion machine'.

You see, the problem we currenty have [present day] - the amount of energy to convert/create anti-matter is greater than the mass-energy of the anti-matter, so it's not worth converting it, as we can't do it in great enough amounts to build it up and store it. Similarish to nuclear fusion - the amount of energy required to power everything is greater than what nuclear fusion can give out. In the future, the amount of energy to convert/create anti-matter is less than the mass-energy of the anti-matter, so it is worth converting it.

[ultron2099]

i thought they didn't load up as much deutrium as they did anti-matter, being that deutrium they could collect easier then manufacturing antimatter. sort of long a ratio of 80% anti matter was loaded and 20% deutrium and then as they putted around the galaxy they just constantly collected deutrium and purified it.

[Thorin]

Well it's possible but there's no on screen support for that. Besides that, there's a limit to how much anti-matter you could get onboard, even if it was 99% anti-matter, it's still only 99% of the total fuel capacity, which may not be too much. If it were a 80:20 as you say, that would only be 60% more anti-matter than if it were a 50:50 ratio. Which would still mean that, if your 80:20 were the case, a quarter of all Voyager's deuterium refuels would also be anti-matter refuels... And you can't pick up anti-matter from a nebula, so they must have converters onboard.

[ultron2099]

Well it's possible but there's no on screen support for that. Besides that, there's a limit to how much anti-matter you could get onboard, even if it was 99% anti-matter, it's still only 99% of the total fuel capacity, which may not be too much. If it were a 80:20 as you say, that would only be 60% more anti-matter than if it were a 50:50 ratio. Which would still mean that, if your 80:20 were the case, a quarter of all Voyager's deuterium refuels would also be anti-matter refuels... And you can't pick up anti-matter from a nebula, so they must have converters onboard.

yeah, you must be right, because as i remember the entire trip through the delta quandrant they didnt once run into a friendly species they could barter for antimatter with.