Antimatter at Hand?

Marshall Eubanks has posited the presence of million tonne masses of stable quark matter inside solar system objects – potentially both matter and antimatter forms of it, with the antimatter version protected from annihilation by a 100 MeV Colour-Force potential well.

Powering Starships with Compact Condensed Quark Matter

While pure antimatter/matter propulsion promises high exhaust velocities (~c) the difficulties of achieving that ultimate performance are considerable. But what if we use something else for reaction mass and use antimatter to energise that? And, instead of using it in a rocket, we use a magnetic scoop to draw in reaction mass from the interstellar medium? This is the Ram-Augmented Interstellar ‘Rocket’ – though technically a rocket carries all its reaction mass – and it promises high performance without all the disadvantages of exponentially rising mass-ratios. Mixing 1% antimatter into the matter flow could, in theory, produce an exhaust velocity of ~0.2 c. Scooping and energising the equivalent mass of ~100 times the mass of the starship would allow a top-speed of 0.999999996 c to be achieved, before braking to a halt using half that mass. This would allow, at 1 gee acceleration, a journey of ~20,000 light-years. The nearby stars would be accessible at a much lower antimatter budget.

Quark Matter in the Solar System : Evidence for a Game-Changing Space Resource

Very Rapid Rotating asteroids might be held together by the additional gravity of a mm-sized million tonne quark nugget.

Primordial Capture of Dark Matter in the Formation of Planetary Systems

Evidence for Condensed Quark Matter in the Solar System

Observational Constraints on Ultra-Dense Dark Matter

Such quark nuggets would be made in the Big Bang potentially, if antimatter is squirrelled away in such a form, the explanation of the observed lack of free-antimatter in the Universe. The abundance of such ultra-dense tiny specks, to be compatible with microlensing observations, would be in the ‘interesting’ mass-range suggested by the Solar System evidence.

2 Replies to “Antimatter at Hand?”

  1. Couldn’t the presence of this material be detected by looking at the orbits of paired NEO’s? If quark matter is present surely there would be examples of two small NEO’s orbiting each other at otherwise impossible speeds?

  2. Hi Andrew,
    What sort of configuration are you imagining for that? It’s certainly possible, though small binaries are probably created by fragmentation of larger objects. No doubt it’ll be the sort of anomaly to watch out for.

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