RE: Antimatter belt around Earth discovered by Pamela craft
August 10, 2011 at 6:02 pm
(This post was last modified: August 10, 2011 at 6:09 pm by Anomalocaris.)
Uhhhhhhh, An back of the envelope order of magnitude calculation shows that, even if the every atom in the van allen belt is made of anti-matter, one would still have to suck up every antimatter atom in 100 cubic kilometer's worth of van allen belt to equal the energy avilable from a gallon of hydrozine normally used as low power propellent in space crafts.
Since NASA seem to have a tendency to denote volumes in units of "Olympic swimming pool", as in there are 50 olympic swimming pool's worth of water in a lunar crater, I though I convert 100 cubic kilometers into units olympic swimming pools.
You have to sweep up every atom in volume of space equal to 40 million olympic swimming pools to match the energy available from vernier thrust system on a small satellite. So I don't think we'll be riding free on cosmic antimatter anytime soon.
Since NASA seem to have a tendency to denote volumes in units of "Olympic swimming pool", as in there are 50 olympic swimming pool's worth of water in a lunar crater, I though I convert 100 cubic kilometers into units olympic swimming pools.
You have to sweep up every atom in volume of space equal to 40 million olympic swimming pools to match the energy available from vernier thrust system on a small satellite. So I don't think we'll be riding free on cosmic antimatter anytime soon.
