The International Space Station is soon to receive an interesting technological upgrade. CERN the company behind the Large Hadron Collector have decided to install some anti matter technology onto the facility.
Anti Matter energy systems have been one of the most interesting prospects of energy research for quite some time. According to the famous equation, E=mc2, an anti matter based power provider would produce far more energy than conventional systems.
1kg of anti matter would result in an energy yield of: 50 Billion KWh
1kg of gasoline would result in an energy yeild of 12 KWh
1kg of nuclear fusion would result in an energy yield of: 722Million KWh
Now then what does that mean in real terms? Well it means 1kg of anti matter as a fuel would be enough to power approximately 9,124,087 family homes annually.
When we finally can harness this technology as a means of energy production it will quite literally overnight revolutionise our dependence on fossil fuels. Based on those figures, 6kg a year of anti matter would completely power the entire country for the whole year.
Now then the guys over at cern have been building their module for the Space station called Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) sounds really impressive doesn’t it? The goal of the unit which is due to start its trek over to the USA next week to get a lift to the space station is simple. To seek out antimatter, dark matter and do some experiments which will compliment CERNs activities here on the surface.
The unit has been at the European Space Research and Technology Center for testing and upgrading since February. Whilst there, a liquid helium cooled super conducting magnet was replaced with a permanent one which was used in the AMS unit’s predecessor. This means that the new unit can be ran and be used for experimental research indefinitely the original magnet would have ran out of coolant after about 3 years.
References
WordIq
ZDNet
University of Strathclyde
AMS02.org
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