Voyage of the Stars.

Chapter 659: Building an Antimatter Factory

While some teams of scientists in the School of Life Sciences are digging deeper into new discoveries in mind imprinting technology, other scientific teams are also working on other areas.

As we all know, the symbol of the fourth-level civilization is the grand unified theory, and the grand unified theory is the theoretical basis of gravitational potential well technology. With the gravitational potential well technology, human beings can preserve antimatter on a large scale.

So where does the so-called massive antimatter come from?

It must have been created by humans themselves; it can't just appear out of thin air and be given to humans.

So after the realization of the grand unified theory, some human scientists and engineers have devoted themselves to the production of antimatter.

So how to create antimatter?

The method of producing antimatter is not to simply write on a sack: "A bag of antimatter", and then you can immediately produce a sack of antimatter. No.

Humans said we don’t know this method, so we can only do it step by step.

Everyone knows the composition of matter. Atoms are the basic particles that make up matter. Atoms are composed of atomic nuclei and extranuclear electrons, and the atomic nuclei are composed of protons and neutrons.
The concept of antimatter has existed since the Earth era, and humans also have the corresponding process to produce charged particles such as positrons and antiprotons. The positron cannon is a sign that humans have the ability to produce large numbers of positrons.

Then electrically neutral antimatter can also be produced according to this idea.

Humans call this method gamma ray bombardment.

First, human engineers need to build a gamma particle stream generator. Gamma particle stream is produced by the process in which radioactive atomic nuclei at high energy levels transition to low energy levels after alpha decay and beta decay. Generally speaking, a nuclear explosion itself is a gamma ray source.

This is not difficult for humans who have mature controlled nuclear fusion and fission technology.

The gamma particle flow generator is the first and key step in producing antimatter. After completing the gamma particle flow generator, humans can separate positive and negative electrons through various scientific and technological means.

The principle is that heavy elements have an anomalous absorption of gamma rays, accompanied by energy release, and this energy release is the light radiation produced by the annihilation of positrons and electrons. Therefore, human engineers can add a magnetic field constraint in this process to separate the positrons and electrons.

The next step is to add a magnetic confinement device to the environment where the gamma-ray bombardment method produces positrons. Then, a proton synchrotron accelerator is built. The purpose of this accelerator is to accelerate protons to a sufficient energy level and then bombard them on a copper target, which will produce various mixed particle objects such as antiprotons, protons, neutrons, and various mesons.

Then human engineers need to build a star-shaped magnetic confinement separator and connect it to the previous link. The function of the star-shaped magnetic confinement separator is to separate antiprotons from these particles. Theoretically, about 30,000 particles can produce one antiproton.

Antiprotons can now be produced.

The third step is to use a particle accelerator to accelerate antiprotons, because antiprotons are negatively charged, using the same counter method, and let them bombard protons. During this high-energy bombardment, neutrons and antineutrons will be produced and then separated.

Finally, assemble these devices and allow the separation pathways of antiprotons and antineutrons to enter the same magnetic confinement storage, where they will form an anti-nucleus. After the positrons are produced, they will be introduced into the storage simultaneously with the first two. These mixed antiparticles will be like particles in real life. In the special environment of human creation, through various interactions in nature, such as the strong interaction force, antiprotons and antineutrons will be firmly bonded together to become anti-nuclei. Positrons will also enter the outside of the nucleus according to the Coulomb law of charge due to the electromagnetic force and become extranuclear electrons.

At this point, human civilization can create an anti-atom, yes, just an anti-atom.

Now that the first anti-atom has been created, as long as this method is used to continue to create it, as more and more atoms are created, they will form molecules and macromolecules under various interactions. Then human civilization can obtain anti-molecules composed of anti-atoms.

Antimolecules finally aggregate together to form antimatter.

The antimatter produced by this method is generally hydrogen molecules. A large number of hydrogen molecules gather together to form hydrogen gas, and humans will get a lot of antihydrogen gas. Of course, the formation conditions are not so easy to control, so antihelium may also be produced in this process.

But whether it is antihydrogen or antihelium, or the formation of other elements to form other macromolecules, they are all antimatter needed by humans, and will undergo annihilation reactions with normal matter.

It's harmless.

After these antimatter are prepared, they will be stored in a gravitational potential well confinement container. They will be compressed into high-density hydrogen or helium, floating quietly in the container without any contact with the container wall. Because once they come into contact with anything in the material world where humans live, a positive and negative matter annihilation reaction will occur, and then there will be a mass-energy equation. An ocean of energy!
From this we can see that antimatter is not an energy source, but a highly efficient energy, because its preparation requires more energy. Why does it take more energy to produce it? Because of the second law of thermodynamics.

It is impossible to transfer heat from a low-temperature object to a high-temperature object without causing other changes.

The entropy of an isolated system can never decrease automatically. The entropy remains unchanged in a reversible process and increases in an irreversible process.

The increase in entropy predicts the heat death of the universe.

The antimatter production process naturally cannot escape the clutches of the second law. Its use is also a process of using energy to gather and release it. It’s just that compared with other forms of energy, antimatter has a higher energy level and a greater energy density.

But if it is so difficult, why do we need to create antimatter? It is like asking why we need to work hard to create a battery to power a small light bulb when we can use dozens of tons of wood to light a fire and illuminate your beauty. No one is willing to carry dozens of tons of wood around in the dark, but there are people everywhere who are carrying a flashlight.

So this is a kind of highly efficient energy. Human civilization needs it, and even level 4 civilizations need it to truly drive the warp engine.

Human beings need to build an antimatter factory, and then use matter in the universe as energy to continuously produce antimatter for themselves, and use it as fuel for various new creations, new warships, and new spaceships.

Such great efforts are made just to obtain more antimatter. It is conceivable that the materials required by the fourth-level civilization are incomparable to those of the third-level civilization. It can even be foreseen that the fourth-level civilization may hollow out the rock of a planet, burn it with heavy nuclear fusion technology, and then convert it into a new energy form of antimatter.

Antimatter factories must be built and construction must begin immediately because humanity's demand for antimatter is already enormous. All future warp engines will need it, and all new warships and new spacecraft will need it as fuel.

This is a gap in the entire civilization, and it is something that is bound to occur after upgrading to a level four civilization.

(End of this chapter)