How long until my computer runs on antimatter, /g/?

We haven't even had the degree of technology development in human history to make the most naive prediction. More than one hundred years probably.

First, we'd have to figure out an efficient way to make anti-matter in something like bulk. Right now, we can make nano-grams and the energy cost is something like a full fifty times what the annihilation would release (much less what you'd be able to capture from an annihilation).

Take note, anybody that's curious anti-matter will always take more energy to create than it would release; it's good for fuel, not for actual power generation. And so far we're not likely to find some kind of anti-matter mine hidden in a nebula.

We'd have to make isotopes amenable to whatever manipulation would be necessary and possible. Probably magnetic, but who knows, maybe the best way would be some kind of anti-plasma manipulated electromagnetically.
For large quantities, like what we'd use to fuel interstellar ships, anti-hydrogen is perfect, we'd be able to compress it until it became magnetic and store it that way. But maintaining metallic hydrogen at a small scale... I feel like it'd be more difficult than just making a heavier element, but we don't know how we'd make anti-matter
I haven't looked into it specifically, but I seem to recall that our best bet for small quantity anti-matter power would be super-cooled lithium.

And then we have to figure out a way to efficiently capture all the energy output of anti-matter annihilation, which is one of the broadest spectrum energy releases imaginable. I mean, the only way we can efficiently capture the energy from nuclear decay is by heating up stuff and driving turbines. Maybe that's seriously what we'd do, some kind of nanoscopic molten salt turbine. Or maybe some kind of magnetic lithium gas turbine, that's an interesting idea.

Anonymous 2016-10-06 03:11:08 Post No.56945465
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Anonymous 2016-10-06 03:11:08 Post No.56945465 [Report]

>>56945406
(cont) anyways I'm not sure it would ever make sense; except maybe in the way that you'd be in a military or deep space vehicle powered by anti-matter that leaches a little of that juice off to run its computer systems.

Plus, it's not likely to even be necessary. A portable nuclear "battery" would need a thin wrapper of lead or something, instead of complex cooling and magnetic manipulation systems, and would have, by a very rough calculation, well over a million times the unit energy per unit weight of lithium.

Anonymous 2016-10-06 06:10:34 Post No.56946992
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Anonymous 2016-10-06 06:10:34 Post No.56946992 [Report]

>>56945121
Looks like finding a result using the derivative of a density-time graph.

>>56943279
Most likely never since they'll annihilate with their corresponding particle (electron and positron), just like >>56944910 said.

>>56945406
You could try and hope that a pair-production occurs, however there is an large element on unreliability in that course since there are no known conditions for pair-production to occur.