SciFi/Theoretical Power Sources?

[His Divine Shadow]

To convert gamma rays to usable energy you'd need an incredibly dense blanket of, say, hydrogen, or some heavy inert gas maybe, like xenon or radon. The heat from the gammas would also vaporise any metal so a metal gas could also be used, but you'd need a buffer to begin with. maybe an ablative metal interior, perhaps made of lead, that will vape. also the use of very small quantities would help.

M/AM rocketry would be very similar to pulse detonation nuclear rockets, both internale and external, tho external wastes ALOT of energy.

Wouldn't it work to just heat a solid surface(spheroid mayhaps?) by having a slow tricke of MA/AM particles heat it up slowly by reacting inside it? The use that to run a turbine.

[Aeolus]

7. Various Great Machine generators —usually the artefacts of long-dead races; tapping colossal energies from unknown or unspecified sources. The movie Forbidden Planet has one of these, which in turn inspired the Great Machine in Babylon 5.

I thought the machine in Forbidden Planet (I own the DVD...love it )was basically a geothermal tap of some kind.

[Darth Wong]

7. Various Great Machine generators —usually the artefacts of long-dead races; tapping colossal energies from unknown or unspecified sources. The movie Forbidden Planet has one of these, which in turn inspired the Great Machine in Babylon 5.

I thought the machine in Forbidden Planet (I own the DVD...love it )was basically a geothermal tap of some kind.

You're not going to get much net energy from geothermal. When you factor in Carnot cycle efficiency and gravitational potential-energy costs alone, you've lost most of your incentive right there. That's why geothermal is only feasible in real-life for unusual environments such as Hawaii, where the resource is easy to reach. I know there are idiots out there who think you can dig through the middle of a continental plate to harvest vast amounts of energy from geothermal, but they're usually enviro-fascists whose knowledge of science is pretty much limited to what they learned on Sesame Street.

[Aeolus]

3. Matter/antimatter annihilation —theoretically, one of the best SF energy sources as it does derive from present-day physics. Features extensively in Star Trek.

Isn't matter/antimatter quite dangerous due to the nature of antimatter??


As a side note, I've read about something called "negative matter." It's something which has been theorised to exist, but it has never been observed and it's likely that negative matter is entirely hypothetical.

Negative matter is something which is repulsed by all normal matter as well as antimatter, and it has been suggested that if negative matter exist, it would make a good way of propelling a spaceship because the acceleration would be very fast and constant.... unfortunately, the acceleration would not be stoppable.

I seriously doubt that this "negative matter" exists (it's extremely "edgy science") but it's worth a mention nonetheless.

[monty python] AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!! [/monty python]

Some of the weirdest sci-fi power generation ever is the "psychic electricity" in Warhammer 40K, where one of the Eldar's many weapons are the so-called "Wraithcannon."

A Wraithcannon is used by a Wraithguard, a robotic warrior piloted by a dead soul, and the Wraithcannon uses the "psychic energy" of the Wraithguard's inhabitant soul as ammo. Doesn't make sense? Not my fault.

All high energy power sources are almost by definition dangerous. Antimatter is probably the best we can do in the foreseable future. Just build some Antimatter factories near Mercury safely away from Earth.

[Darth Wong]

All high energy power sources are almost by definition dangerous. Antimatter is probably the best we can do in the foreseable future. Just build some Antimatter factories near Mercury safely away from Earth.

Not true. A working fusion reactor would not be dangerous to its surroundings.

[Aeolus]

Antimatter has to be carefully contained, as the typical antiproton or antineutron, or positron does not care if the proton/neutron/electron it's annhilating belongs to the annhilation target, or the reactor walls. And matter/antimatter reactors are more of the ultimate in battery technology. It's obscenely expensive to produce antimatter. It's not like other power generation technologies, where the cost of producing the consumables is less than the energy extracted by consuming the consumables.

So is it really worth it to use antimatter/matter?? Well, definately not in the near future. Until it becomes safe, nuclear fusion would probably do a better job.

On negative matter. If you didn't know, negative energy does exist, as is seen in the Casmir effect.

Yes, negative energy, but....

Not to sound like an idiot, but is matter the same as energy?? Or is energy a type of matter?

Antimatter really is more of a battery than a power source. It would be useful in areas where large power plants are ruled out. Fuel for vehicles is the most obvious use. Or weapons of course.

[Aeolus]

7. Various Great Machine generators —usually the artefacts of long-dead races; tapping colossal energies from unknown or unspecified sources. The movie Forbidden Planet has one of these, which in turn inspired the Great Machine in Babylon 5.

I thought the machine in Forbidden Planet (I own the DVD...love it )was basically a geothermal tap of some kind.

You're not going to get much net energy from geothermal. When you factor in Carnot cycle efficiency and gravitational potential-energy costs alone, you've lost most of your incentive right there. That's why geothermal is only feasible in real-life for unusual environments such as Hawaii, where the resource is easy to reach. I know there are idiots out there who think you can dig through the middle of a continental plate to harvest vast amounts of energy from geothermal, but they're usually enviro-fascists whose knowledge of science is pretty much limited to what they learned on Sesame Street.

Yes but what do you believe the creators of the movie thought? Geo? Nuclear? Somthing entirely exotic?

[Aeolus]

All high energy power sources are almost by definition dangerous. Antimatter is probably the best we can do in the foreseable future. Just build some Antimatter factories near Mercury safely away from Earth.

Not true. A working fusion reactor would not be dangerous to its surroundings.

But don't they require tritium?

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Also, there is the question of where the hell you get antimatter from.

By smashing heavy particles into other heavy particles. Some of these collisions produce antimatter as a by-product. This is energy intensive, mind you. Another way to do it would be to try to preferrentially capture antimatter particles as a black hole produces Hawking radiation. (Virtual particle pairs pop into existence around the event horizons of black holes all the time. Normally they annhilate each other and pop right back out of the universe again, but occasionally, one of the virtual pair gets a burst of energy, kicking it free from the black hole while it's counterpart goes away. By this method, black holes will eventually evaporate.) Of course, the second method involves getting close to a black hole, which isn't exactly high on anybody's list of priorities.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

All high energy power sources are almost by definition dangerous. Antimatter is probably the best we can do in the foreseable future. Just build some Antimatter factories near Mercury safely away from Earth.

Not true. A working fusion reactor would not be dangerous to its surroundings.

But don't they require tritium?

They require something that can be readily fused into something heavier. Usually deuterium. Tritium has the nasty disadvantage of being both radioactive, and having a relatively short half-life (about twelve years.) And fusion reactors would tend to have a habit, in some cases, of making the structures around them mildy radioactive due to neutron absorbption (though one can minimize neutron production in a fusion reaction.)

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

To convert gamma rays to usable energy you'd need an incredibly dense blanket of, say, hydrogen, or some heavy inert gas maybe, like xenon or radon. The heat from the gammas would also vaporise any metal so a metal gas could also be used, but you'd need a buffer to begin with. maybe an ablative metal interior, perhaps made of lead, that will vape. also the use of very small quantities would help.

M/AM rocketry would be very similar to pulse detonation nuclear rockets, both internale and external, tho external wastes ALOT of energy.

Wouldn't it work to just heat a solid surface(spheroid mayhaps?) by having a slow tricke of MA/AM particles heat it up slowly by reacting inside it? The use that to run a turbine.

I wouldn't want to have a M/AM reaction anywhere near me. Proton/antiproton and neutron/antineutron reactions tend to produce a whole zoo of energetic subatomic particles (heavier antiparticles do not annhilate cleanly with heavier particles. Only positrons and electrons become just photons when smashed together.)
<edit>
And worse, the photons M/AM reactions produce are highly energetic gamma ray photons.
</edit>

[Arrow]

Also, there is the question of where the hell you get antimatter from.

By smashing heavy particles into other heavy particles. Some of these collisions produce antimatter as a by-product. This is energy intensive, mind you. Another way to do it would be to try to preferrentially capture antimatter particles as a black hole produces Hawking radiation. (Virtual particle pairs pop into existence around the event horizons of black holes all the time. Normally they annhilate each other and pop right back out of the universe again, but occasionally, one of the virtual pair gets a burst of energy, kicking it free from the black hole while it's counterpart goes away. By this method, black holes will eventually evaporate.) Of course, the second method involves getting close to a black hole, which isn't exactly high on anybody's list of priorities.

Those virtual particle pairs are positive and negative energy. When they annihilate, they don't produce energy, they simply disappear. Its not samething as matter and antimatter (both of which are positive energy/mass).

[Eleas]

Isn't matter/antimatter quite dangerous due to the nature of antimatter??

Yes, touch antimatter with your hand and you'll be turned into a sheep.

That's only fatal if the Baron's nearby.