Expert: Jayendra Upadhye - 1/22/2005

Question
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Followup To
Question -

Thanx for answering the previous question but i still have one doubt i.e.
how energy from antimatter is 100% efficient whereas nuclear energy is only 1.5%.


Hello

  Would you please send me in brief about

       ANTI-MATTER

 
         Thanking you,

         raghu
Answer -
Hi Raghu,
How brief can i be?
I wonder..:)
Well raghu ill list some points..in brief ofcourse!
1 - Anti matter was also thought to have been generated in the primeval Bigbang. But there was a predominance of matter over antimatter which is why we see so little of it today. [it is a mystery why this predominance should have been there in the first place]

2 - Scientists created about 10 atoms of antimatter and succeeded in "keeping them" for a few millionts of a second, in CERN particle accelerator in Europe.

3 - Matter + antimatter is pure energy.

4 - I think it was Dirac who first thought of an antiparticle to the electron as some terms in his equations had both +ve and -ve values!

Jayen

Answer
Hi,
No!
Please understand one thing here, by efficiency if you are taliking of "usable energy", we will NOT be able to use any anti-matter-matter annihilation energy as it is many times more explosive and uncontrolled than an H-bomb!

The conversion efficiency in nuclear power is low because:-
1 - first of all the some of the fission energy is carried off as kinetic energy by the "fast neutrons" that are absorbed by moderators! (afterall it is a controlled reaction). This in the end appears as heat in the Liquid sodium heat transfer medium, and in the end is transferred to steam and thence to turbines, with all the attendant inefficiencies of the steam devices!

2 - There is NO possibility of converting annihilation energy into usable energy, so its conversion efficiency would be zero!

If you are talking about conversion of "rest mass", there antimatter comes out on top as NO residual matter remains and 100% matter (and antimatter) are converted to the energy equalling their total rest mass.
In fission and fusion reactors (hypothetical for fusion), only a fraction of the total rest mass of the reactants is converted to energy. [In fusion, it is the mass defect].
Jayen