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Most of us have heard of it, specially the fans of Star Trek who know that anitmatter is the substance that powers the starship Enterprise across the galaxy. How many times have we heard those immortal words, "captain, the containment field around the antimatter pod is failing, we'll have to jettison it"? Scotty must have have said it quite a few times and Geordi in Star Trek The Next Generation also was fond of stating those immortal words. So we know that a fictional material called antimatter is powerful enough to send a vehicle hurtling across the galaxy at warp 9 or greater.

Well, I have to tell you all that antimatter is real. It is so real that it is being manufactured at the Fermi National Accelerator. Well, maybe manufactured is not the correct term in this case, since so little can be made at a time. They are able to make one atom of antimatter for every 500,000 atoms that they smash. It has been estimated that it would take several millions years, at this rate, to manufacture enough antimatter to make a pound of the stuff. So what exactly is it? It has the opposite electrical charge of the same type of atom it represents. For example if we had a hydrogen atom, its antimatter equivalent would be a anti hydrogen atom. Antimatter has a very special characteristic. When antimatter meets matter, the two atoms annihilate each other releasing 100% of all their energy. Nothing else is this powerful and most other forms of energy pale in comparison.

Can you imagine if the military built an antimatter bomb? Knowing how the military thinks, if they could, they would love to. Some people wonder if a big enough antimatter explosion could trigger the creation of a tiny black hole? I sure wouldn't want to find out, would you? I can hear the military arguments right now, Hey we don't want to build a super bomb, "..we just want to put a little antimatter in a bomb and that would allow us to carry hundreds of tiny bombs on a plane rather that just a few big ones..."

It used to be thought that there was no antimatter on Earth. But there are some very tiny amounts that only last for an instant because of the annihilation factor. It is very lucky for us that the universe is composed mostly of matter, because if it was equally divided into matter and antimatter we would be in grave danger. Think of it this way, we send astronauts to the moon, which happens to be an antimatter moon, but we didn't know it. As soon as the travelers came into contact with antimatter atoms, the atoms would annihilate each other in an explosion of 100% energy killing the astronauts and destroying any evidence of their landing including their ship. Not a very nice picture is it? If other dimensions exist, as stated in string theory, and some of them are antimatter dimensions, we might have a problem in the future. If an antimatter you, touches the normal matter you, that would be the end of both of you and the massive explosion would destroy a huge amount of territory.

I read something very interesting the other day about the uses of antimatter. In the article was a reference to a PET scan. That is a medical scan that many of us get. The article stated that the way the PET scan works was that it causes antimatter to be released in our bodies. The article went on to state that antimatter was also used to characterize the surface of minerals, I am not exactly sure what this means. This was all news to me. The amount must be so miniscule that it is hardly detectable. Australia has an institute known as the The Center For Anti-Matter Studies known as CAMS. I think that we will be hearing a lot more about advances in antimatter from there in the future.

The real advance will come when we figure out how to produce this stuff in large quantities. With that advance will come more problems for the human race. I have a hunch that antimatter will become just like the discovery of nuclear fission and fusion. We will use it to create awesome weapons and then worry about the rest of the world wanting them too. There is one thing about the human race as a whole, it never seems to learn any useful lessons from its history. We should know by now that some things, such as nuclear bombs, were not helpful in the long run. They may have initially seemed to increase the power of our arsenals, but the big picture showed us that this discovery has put us in danger. The same will be true of antimatter weapons, only they will be even more dangerous.

One of the biggest questions on antimatter is how does it exist in our universe if it is destroyed instantly when it comes in contact with normal matter? One way we get antimatter is when sub atomic particles collide. The resulting antimatter is gone in an instant. We know it was there by the release of gamma rays. A second way that we know of for the creation of antimatter is with the PET scanner. PET stands for Positron Emission Tomography. A patient is injected with glucose that contains a radioactive isotope that emits positrons. The human body will send glucose to the areas of high metabolic activity. Positrons are emitted by the isotope which combine with electrons, they annihilate and give off gamma rays. These positrons and electrons usually meet in areas of high metabolic activity such as tumors. Sometimes an area is indicated that has a high blood flow.

The PET scanner has been around for awhile, but we don't fully understand how it works. It is sort of like trying to understand electricity. Everyone is familiar with electricity, but no one knows exactly what it is. Will antimatter be the do all material of our future? Will we all be driving cars and flying planes powered by this stuff? Somehow I really don't think so because it is so dangerous and hard to contain. Another reason is that we might discover other forms of energy that are just as powerful and less volatile. Maybe sheer power will not be needed to power things like the space ships of the future and some other method will be used. The future holds many secrets that we are just not privy to.