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WRITER FUEL: How to Power Your Spacecraft With Antimatter

antimatter - deposit photos

Welcome to the latest installment of “Writer Fuel – cool real-world stories that might inspire your little writer heart. Check out our Writer Fuel page on the LimFic blog for more inspiration. Today: 

Antimatter is the same as ordinary matter except that it has the opposite electric charge. For instance, an electron, which has a negative charge, has an antimatter partner known as a positron. A positron is a particle with the same mass as an electron but a positive charge.

Particles with no electric charge, like neutrons, are often their own antimatter partners. But researchers have yet to determine if mysterious tiny particles known as neutrinos, which are also neutral, are their own antiparticles.

Although it may sound like something out of science fiction, antimatter is real. Antimatter was created along with matter after the Big Bang. But antimatter is rare in today’s universe, and scientists aren’t sure why.

Because putting matter and antimatter together produces energy, engineers have speculated that antimatter-powered spacecraft might be an efficient way to explore the universe.

Full Story From Live Science

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