Energy-to-Matter

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2002-12-21 01:53am

Ok, as far as I know, when you tear a proton apart and rip quarks from one another, the energy required to overcome the gluons/strong nuclear force is so great that it exceeds the amount of energy you could derive from the mass of the two quarks converted to energy. so what happens is that two NEW quarks form, because the energy pushes itself into matter.

ref : http://access.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Stories/Quarks/Quarkz.html
i cant find any other good reputable sources. but it should be possible to look it up in an encyclopedia or something.

now, ok, assuming this is possible, to create matter by bombarding other matter with high energy particles, now difficult would you assume it to be to create say.. 1 kilogram of matter..

i would imagine youd need to have a large enough powersource and such.

The reason i bring this up is, if we some day in the very distant future (and i mean VERY distant like 50+ million years) still exist as a species but have yet to come up with an FTL drive, and our exploits have made it virtually impossible to economically travel between stars for purposes of mining resources (possibly because weve colonized the galaxies nearest systems etc), how would we get new raw material without deconstructing what we already have.

i mean, obviously in order to get the new matter youd need plenty of energy, so we'd have to assume some radically new powersource with energy densities far in excess of what antimatter can provide.. so how would we go about building our civilisations if we've already used up all available resources (and no saying stuff about reducing population and such cause youd have a hard time getting trillions times trillions of people to stop reproducing)

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2002-12-22 11:17pm

Energy to matter? We don't know how yet, but I can tell you exactly how much energy you need to make X amount of matter.

E=MC^2

data_link · Post by **data_link** » 2002-12-22 11:43pm

The problem with this is that you would never be able to fabricate more matter than you use as fuel. Remember that the highest possible energy density for fuel is direct mass-to-energy conversion. Assuming 100% efficiency, and an antimatter or similar power source, the amount of mass you would create is exactly equal to the mass that you feed into the machine in the first place. Now recall the second law of thermodynamics: there is no such thing as 100% efficiency. Thus all you will accomplish is wasting energy. Sorry.

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2002-12-23 03:26pm

Nitram: read above. its been done.

Data: Granted. But assuming we discovered something akin to hypermatter where the energy density is orders of magnitude greater then antimatter.

data_link · Post by **data_link** » 2002-12-23 04:24pm

kojikun wrote:Data: Granted. But assuming we discovered something akin to hypermatter where the energy density is orders of magnitude greater then antimatter.

Orders of magnitude greater than direct mass-to-energy conversion? Sorry, but to do that you would have to violate the First Law of Thermodynamics. If you can do that, then interstellar travel should be easy for you.

SyntaxVorlon · Post by **SyntaxVorlon** » 2002-12-24 10:48pm

If you're looking for a way to make SW possible forget it, Lucas is not a physicist and everything in SW is roughly physically impossible. Teraton level weaponry and spacefighters that fly in space as if they are flying in standard presure? No. Just: N.O.

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2002-12-25 10:29am

Im not talking about making SW possible. I explicity said that the only thing remotely SWish is the energy density.

Illuminatus Primus · Post by **Illuminatus Primus** » 2002-12-25 02:50pm

They've forced high-energy gamma rays to become one positron and one electron.

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2002-12-25 10:31pm

Brilliant! Where? Any links? I must see!

Eleas · Post by **Eleas** » 2002-12-29 02:24pm

data_link wrote:
kojikun wrote:Data: Granted. But assuming we discovered something akin to hypermatter where the energy density is orders of magnitude greater then antimatter.
Orders of magnitude greater than direct mass-to-energy conversion? Sorry, but to do that you would have to violate the First Law of Thermodynamics. If you can do that, then interstellar travel should be easy for you.

Not necessarily, no. It is very possible (and thoroughly unlikely) that by dismantling some facet of reality we would get a commensurate release of power, and this power might concievably be greater than a given amount of matter/antimatter. But "energy density" would be a very iffy concept there, of course.

LordShaithis · Post by **LordShaithis** » 2002-12-31 07:54pm

by dismantling some facet of reality we would get a commensurate release of power

WTF?