The recent news that scientists have engineered a method of capturing antimatter may not have been big in the newspapers, but this little covered development may actually give us the most challenging vital component required in wormhole creation. If we can now capture and direct antimatter using magnets, one of the most incredible theoretical devices ever proposed may actually now be possible.
The capturing of antimatter and storing it using strong magnetic beams might sound like yet one small step for man, but in reality it is a partial step that may soon lead to humanity’s colonization of other worlds. There are several methods a system could exploit to utilize antimatter once this valuable material was gathered including not only energy production and deployment (through power plants or weapons systems) but also through the creation of a wormhole.
The creation of a wormhole has been proposed by physicists who suggest such a system could be generated by directing matter and antimatter beams at one another to curve around and strike at another point. United States Patent Application: 0060071122, titled “Full Human Transporter” is a device that uses a fairly similar principle to allow a human to teleport from one location to the next. It’s said the use of antimatter is just what is used to achieve goals such as this. As matter and antimatter streams intersect at a single point they create a violent energy burst so incredibly powerful that it opens up a rift in the spacetime continuum. But as ships and their passengers pass through, it’s difficult to determine where the other side of this wormhole would be. It’s possible that two wormholes, if created and then calibrated to connect to one another, would naturally open the rift between the two of them and allow people to pass through. Of course it’s also possible that this rip in the fabric of space and time would create time portals, or portals to another dimension just as well. Of course this is dealing with a realm of theoretical physics that we do not at this time firmly understand. And even what little we do understand is often interwoven so complexly with other theoretical constructs as to make it virtually impossible to fully predict.
The other way antimatter could be used for traveling through space would be by utilizing the matter and antimatter collision to create a steady stream of explosions behind a craft. These explosions would then propel the craft forward in a way that was thousands of times more efficient than the use of carbon fuels. And in order to keep this fuel inside the ship, this most recent method of trapping antimatter using a magnetic container would have to be used to keep the ship from exploding. Such a module could look a little like the engine room of Star Trek’s Enterprise with cooling units around it ensuring that no energy breached into the chamber and interacted with the incredibly volatile antimatter within. As small amounts of the material were jetted through behind the ship into the vacuum of space and hit specially designed particles the ship would be projected forward and within a relatively short period of time could even approach the speed of light. Of course exceeding it would be a different matter entirely.