Menu

Blog

Oct 24, 2022

The antimatter factory: inside the project that could power fusion and annihilation lasers

Posted by in categories: particle physics, space travel

Circa 2013 face_with_colon_three


Physicists have been chasing antimatter technology for more than 80 years now — driven by the promise of oppositely oriented particles that explode in a burst of energy whenever they make contact with their more common counterpart. If we could tame antimatter, those explosions could be used to power a new generation of technology, from molecular scanners to rocket engines to the so-called “annihilation laser,” a tightly concentrated energy beam fueled by annihilating positrons. But while scientists have seen recent breakthroughs in creating the particles, they still have trouble capturing and containing them.

Comments are closed.