Antimatter in Rockets

14 billion years ago, shortly after the big bang the ratio of matter to antimatter was 2:1. Scientists know that there were about 5 quintoctogillion (5^85) antimatter particles at the beginning of the universe and that they have very similar properties to matter. Quickly after the formation of antiparticles and particles, they annihilated each other, causing there to only be matter in the universe. But antimatter isn’t an exception to the law of conservation, which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be transferred. In this case the byproduct of each particle annihilation are huge bursts of gamma radiation as well as elementary particles known as quarks. A collision of 1 kilogram of matter and 1 kilogram of antimatter releases about 180 billion megajoules of energy. That’s 2,000 times more energy than an atomic bomb! 

The byproduct of the created antimatter and matter will be enough to be used as propulsion. In fact, there has been an antimatter engine that was proposed. There are 3 parts of the antimatter-matter engine. There is the magnetic storage unit, the feed system, and magnetic rocket nozzle thruster.

The magnetic storage unit is the storage that contains the anti-matter. We don’t want the matter and antimatter to collide and produce deadly gamma radiation so we need to create a storage unit. Since antimatter interacts with the magnetic field, we can use magnetism to keep it from colliding with the matter.

Then there is the feed system. The feed system is the steering wheel for the engine. It is supposed to allow the energy created by the collision to leave at a certain angle, which will be the angle that the rocket will move in.

The feed system works with the rocket nozzle thruster, where all of this newly created energy comes out of. The rocket nozzle thruster is supposed to utilize the newly created energy to launch the spaceship further in the most efficient way possible.