Okay, I would like to know if there is a safe way of converting matter into antimatter, in the theoretical case of say, an manned expedition to a planet made of antimatter. How would I be able to turn an object or organism into antimatter without it or them annihilating, and convert them back for the voyage home? Say, for a plot point or something?
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1$\begingroup$ The only know way to convert matter into antimatter and vice versa is through the energy (and total annihilation is a necessary step in between). $\endgroup$– AlexanderCommented Dec 10, 2020 at 0:38
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1$\begingroup$ No, there isn't. As far as our understanding of physics goes, the question doesn't even make sense. But, of course, you can always introduce a magic gate, the nature of which is that anything going through it gets transformed into its antimatter equivalent. $\endgroup$– AlexPCommented Dec 10, 2020 at 1:05
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$\begingroup$ :-) Hi, Tyson. If you think about it, anyone who could provide a serious real-world answer to this question probably wouldn't post it here - they'd be too busy running to the patent office. $\endgroup$– JBHCommented Dec 10, 2020 at 3:46
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$\begingroup$ Matter might be "rotated" through a higher dimension, such that when it visibly returns to us it would be made out of antimatter.It would need to be free-floating in space and touching nothing else when this occurs. Of course, with all the particles flying through space, it wouldn't be so safe for that person... they'd be fried by radiation (a single proton won't cause them to annihilate, but when it hits one of their anti-protons, it'd release a bunch of gamma right inside them). $\endgroup$– John OCommented Dec 10, 2020 at 14:26
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4 Answers
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There is exactly this situation (not too scientifically handled) in an old episode of Space:1999 ("Matter of Life and Death"), where the transformation was caused by "an unknown form of radiation".
More to the point, this is also done in Anvil of Stars by Greg Bear, where alien technology allows to "reprogram" particles - alter their quantum state at a distance, changing their very nature. In the book, quarks and leptons are mostly always the same particle, their difference in charge and Higgs mass arising only by their state vector (this is a real thing in physics, you may want to look up Bohm's hypotheses). While it does take energy to flip a particle's vector state's bit by hijacking its entanglement channel (the book calls it no-ach), if you do so, you change that particle into something else - if you change a particle into a particle that existed elsewhere, that's the "classic" quantum teleportation. This solution could work for you.
(Of course, not only the general form of quantum manipulation is completely hypothetical; even the classic quantum teleportation hasn't been conclusively proven, and even if it was, it wouldn't be exactly what you need. But the description does come close).
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1$\begingroup$ Greg Bear does the same thing in Moving Mars, I think. And Anvil of Stars is his, not Ben Bova.You might be getting things confused... the people who are anti-mattered in Anvil don't know how it was accomplished, and they aren't able to reverse the process before they die of radiation poisoning. Maybe Bova had another similar book? I've only read a few of his. $\endgroup$– John OCommented Dec 10, 2020 at 14:28
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$\begingroup$ @JohnO You're absolutely correct. I was mis-remembering and confusing the authors. $\endgroup$– LSerniCommented Dec 10, 2020 at 20:50
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4D printing and some satanism
This is cheating a bit, but if you have antimatter available, you could rearrange it the same way as the matter in your base object is. Antimatter seems to follow all the same physics and chemistry as vanilla matter, it's just got opposite charges.
The requisite satanism is that you will need to employ the services of Laplace's demon. You need him in order to bypass Heisenberg's principle, so as to properly place every particle. Once you've made an antimatter copy of something, you can dispose of the original if you wish.
The whole process should work to convert antimatter into vanilla matter too.
answered Dec 10, 2020 at 6:04
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6$\begingroup$ Do you need to purchase the full version of Laplace’s demo to perform more than one conversion a day? $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 10, 2020 at 8:19
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$\begingroup$ @JoeBloggs Oh no! I meant DEMON, not demo XD fixed that! $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 10, 2020 at 13:57
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3$\begingroup$ Figured you did. I would have edited it myself, but it was just too good an opportunity to pass up! $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 10, 2020 at 15:20
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Traversable, Non-orientable Wormholes
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-orientable_wormhole
These wormholes reverse the chirality and electromagnetic charge of objects that pass through them. Left-handed, normal-matter gloves pushed through the wormhole become right-handed, antimatter gloves. From the Wikipedia page:
if a positron can be considered as a time-reversed electron, it can also be considered as an electron aging conventionally, but with one spatial dimension reversed. The existence of a traversable nonorientable wormhole would seem to allow the conversion of matter to antimatter, and vice versa
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There is no known way to do this.
If your work of fiction is following the laws of physics as we know them today then this cant happen.
But for fun let's imagine you could.
I'd propose build an "inertial dampening device", like what's used in sci fi to allow ships to manoeuvre better by scaling the ships mass by a factor suitable to the current plot. If you dial it up, your object gains mass, if you dial it down, it loses mass.
If you disable the safety and dial it down to -1, you'll have negative mass. Which with a cursory glance of physics is equivalent to antimatter. And negative mass times -1 is positive mass. Allowing you to convert back and forward. But Is the physics valid?
Nope. Its totally wrong by 2020s limit knowledge of the universe. Just state the device works in your work and move on, you're going to have to with inertial dampeners so might as well allow the technology to be used in fringe configurations. 2020 knowledge is going to be looked back on and laughed at as uninformed at some point in the future - perhaps this may be possible. Who knows? Aristotle would scoff at relativity and quantum physics, anything we write off as wrong with our puny 2020 minds might be equally right.
Make sure your interface has an "apply" button, rather than just a dial. If you dial it down from 1 to -1 and cross 0 for even the briefest of moments the object may cease to exist.
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4$\begingroup$ I really like this answer, however the claim that having mass of "-1" is equivalent to anti-matter is contrary to current 2020 physics. Anti-particles have the opposite charge to their partner particle, and all sorts of other opposite traits. But they have the same mass, positive in all cases. Its controversial whether you can get negative mass, but if you can it will be some strange Casimir effect thing probably, not anit-matter. $\endgroup$– DastCommented Dec 10, 2020 at 9:22
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3$\begingroup$ Antimatter does not have negative mass. As far as we know, nothing has negative mass. $\endgroup$– AlexPCommented Dec 10, 2020 at 9:46