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So, in my Science Fiction story, my character, Bryan, has just gotten (seemingly) the worst punishment anybody could ever get. A group of terrorists have just blown him out of an airlock, near the biggest Black Hole in the Galaxy. He's extremely scared and thinks that once he enters the Black Hole, he's dead. But, something incredibly strange happens.

He goes into the Black Hole, gets stretched nearly to death, and then, he comes back out. He turns around and sees a White Hole, burping out material into the....he realizes the place he is in is strange. Black dots and a white void are impossible in Bryan's Uni....he then realizes that he’s in a Universe that’s somehow a negative of the place he just left, like a blueprint Bryan once learned about in school. This Universe he’s in as made out of Antimatter, and he instantly urinates on himself.

Bryan is well versed in science and knows that when matter and antimatter come together, it causes an earth-shattering kaboom. And that is with just a few grams of Antimatter, but Bryan is a 180 lbs. grown human, if he contacts anything, without some sort of protection, it's gonna kill him. He turns on his jetpack and sees a group of junk ships and vessels. He tries to get away because he thinks their Antimatter, but he realizes it's just clutter from his old home.

He finds a man, Dr. Heinrich Von Braun, who went missing 20 years ago around the area of the Black Hole. He’s the only one, even though his ship had 13 other people on it. He tells Bryan that the other crew members went insane, got into the escape pods and tried to find a planet to inhabit. The found one and....well, you know...KABOOM. Dr. Von Braun wants to try and find a way back home, and he thinks by finding a Black Hole in this Universe, he could travel through it and get back to the normal universe. But there is a problem. The two men are made out of Matter, along with their ship, but to get to a Black Hole, they would need to travel through the Universe, which can be filled with particles rocks and other debris that would utterly destroy them if they contacted each other.

So my question is: How could two beings, made out of 100% pure Matter, protect themselves from an Antimatter universe.

  • It's okay for your answers to be out there, as long as it's grounded in real science
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    $\begingroup$ No time for an answer right now, but: Honkin' great magnetic fields, good timing and prayer. $\endgroup$
    – Joe Bloggs
    Commented Jun 15, 2018 at 16:00
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    $\begingroup$ "Black dots and a white void" is something you will not get simply by switching to antimatter. $\endgroup$
    – Mołot
    Commented Jun 15, 2018 at 16:05
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    $\begingroup$ Reminder to close-voters: The problem cannot be fixed if the OP is not made aware of it. $\endgroup$
    – Frostfyre
    Commented Jun 15, 2018 at 16:09
  • $\begingroup$ some theories of antimatter do predict that it "falls" away from normal matter, this would mean that the answer to your question is absolutely nothing. that however does not, a good story make $\endgroup$
    – Ummdustry
    Commented Jun 15, 2018 at 16:13
  • $\begingroup$ @Molot: It’s supposed to be like a Negative of the original universe $\endgroup$
    – Jasper R.
    Commented Jun 15, 2018 at 16:21

2 Answers 2

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You don't.

For stuff that is not electrically charged - and that's most things in the universe - you don't know if something is matter or antimatter until you touch it. For stuff that is charged, you'd need to first measure the charge. No matter how creative you get here, at some point it becomes unfeasible. So your characters will have to avoid touching everything.

A personal shield that keeps anything and everything away is the stuff of . So either you accept that the only possible answer is contained and sumarized in the word magic, or you accept that sooner than later the protagonist will die. At least he will go out with a bang.

Seriously. According to a XKCD What If that is tangentially relevant:

Outer space isn't really "space"; it's full of a thin gas.

The best your characters can do to survive the longest possible is to stay put. Even then they are on borrowed time, because whatever ship they are in will disintegrate after finite time.

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    $\begingroup$ No total realism and no magic are mutually exclusive. Call it Green Lantern physics if you will, it's still magic. Don't be ashamed to just state things as ypu did in the question, and throw buzzwords around - that is exactly what geniuses like Stan Lee did and still do. Or do you think people dislike the Hulk because "that's not how gamma radiation works"? $\endgroup$
    – The Square-Cube Law
    Commented Jun 15, 2018 at 16:32
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    $\begingroup$ @JasperR. I fail to see the difference. $\endgroup$
    – The Square-Cube Law
    Commented Jun 15, 2018 at 16:37
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    $\begingroup$ @JasperR. you can't get black spots in a white void, if space itself is emitting ligth you won't be able to see the dark patches, because the space between you and the black star will be emitting light. $\endgroup$
    – John
    Commented Jun 15, 2018 at 17:39
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    $\begingroup$ @then its magic, things can't emit cold, this also means the void is not white it is pitchblack like everything else. a universe without light can't have mateer, anti- or otherwise. $\endgroup$
    – John
    Commented Jun 15, 2018 at 18:01
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    $\begingroup$ It's not really funny, Jasper. People are trying to help you out and you're being deliberately vague and wasting their time. Bottom line is this: You've devised a scenario so far beyond and outside of the laws of Physics that it can't exist, so do whatever you want and please don't complain when other people don't do that work for you. $\endgroup$
    – neophlegm
    Commented Jun 15, 2018 at 20:12
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You need the strongest magnetic fields you can get to direct charged particles away, and you need strong lasers and amazingly sensitive radar to aim them to push neutral particles away. Even individual anti-neutrons must be avoided because they will ablate the hull of your ship if they hit it. And since you're in an anti-matter universe, there's no regular matter around for you to make repairs. All damage is permanent.

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  • $\begingroup$ individual anti-neutrons would not actually be found in free space since they would quickly decay to anti-protons and anti-electrons $\endgroup$
    – Ummdustry
    Commented Jun 15, 2018 at 16:15
  • $\begingroup$ "you need strong lasers and amazingly sensitive radar to aim them to push neutral particles away." And a good lawyer too, because you will need to break some of the laws of physics to have an energy source that will allow you to do that. You'd need more than the annual output of the sun just to deflect a small asteroid. $\endgroup$
    – The Square-Cube Law
    Commented Jun 15, 2018 at 16:16
  • $\begingroup$ All damage isn’t necessarily permanent. Their are hundreds of ships that have been caught in the Black Hole that they can use for repairs $\endgroup$
    – Jasper R.
    Commented Jun 15, 2018 at 16:20
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    $\begingroup$ @Renan No not necessarily. photons carry enough momentum for it to even be considered viable in the near future for space trash clearing en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_broom and if you are in the ISM (as i think the question implies) theres not much that needs to be pushed away $\endgroup$
    – Ummdustry
    Commented Jun 15, 2018 at 16:20
  • $\begingroup$ Static electric fields would be enough to divert charged particles but you'd need to vary the charge distribution to deflect either positive or negative ions (you'd need to do this anyway with a magnetic field, but with the added complication of closed field-line loops). Diamagnetism might keep some rocks away if they have enough graphite in them. Might. $\endgroup$
    – neophlegm
    Commented Jun 15, 2018 at 20:16

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