It increases the rate of production of neutral antihydrogen from antiprotons and positrons by a factor of 8. It doesn't increase the efficiency of production of antiprotons, which is the extremely inefficient, energy intensive part.
They cut production time to a given number of anti-atoms from 10 weeks to 7 hours by improving the electron cooling, just from this fact it is a bit rich to insist the anti-proton generation is the limiting factor.
Going to the paper itself we can observe that the CERN Antiproton Decelerator can deliver 10^7 antiprotons every 2 minutes. Remembering it previously took 10 weeks to capture 10^4 anti-atoms, I hope you forgive me for not agreeing that the antiproton generation is the source of important inefficiencies.
If you have a process where it takes 5MW to produce one component and 80KW to convert that component into the final product, and you increase the efficiency of the second step 8 times so it only takes 10KW, that's real and awesome, but still almost irrelevant to the overall efficiency of the process. I have no idea what the actual numbers are, just stating the general concept.
Conversely efficiency is a lot less important if it unlocks capability you otherwise don't have at all.
Antimatter is a unique element: nothing else can do what it does. The game changer would be producing industrially useful amounts for further experimentation.
(Antimatter chemistry would be incredibly interesting and quite possibly a practical way to actually use antimatter - shoot the beam into a reaction or solid matrix to do interesting reactions due to the electronic properties before it annihilates).
This article is about an efficiency gain, not about any new source of antimatter or any newly discovered property or reaction. And, getting industrial levels will require massive efficiency gains, so we're back to this discussion.
PET scan
(You have to wait for civic applications of the newly discovered technologies for a while, but the "technology transfer" from CERN to practical applications has a few notable examples.)
Indeed, it would be quite difficult to smuggle some antimatter to a tumor. I'm saying that research in this particular area eventually led to practical application, PET scans.
PET stands for Positron Emission Tomography. The radioactive tracers emit positrons (antimatter), which then annihilate with electrons to produce the gamma rays that are detected. So it does use antimatter, just indirectly through the decay process.
I am familiar with PET. As we both agree, PET does not use antimatter directly, so this article is irrelevant to it (which is what the original comment was asking about).
In all (realistic) interplanetary space travel - not to mention interstellar - the difference between the largest bomb/death ray anyone has ever experienced and a better drive, is purely a matter of where you aim it and when/how you throttle it up.
Not actually that different for rockets now, frankly, we just usually don’t operate direct nuclear fission/fusion drives right now for this very reason and our own sense of self preservation.
There certainly are plans on the drawing board!
It would take 23 grams of antimatter to produce the effect of a 1 megaton nuclear bomb, and the biggest factor stopping someone is both production of the matter itself (improving) and actual shielding technology (magnetic bottles good enough to effectively trap that much antimatter are huge and extremely energy consuming right now - much bigger than a fusion bomb of equivalent power).
Theoretically, it should be possible to store that much in a thermos bottle, however. We just need better superconductor technology.
The most realistic sci-fi engines are nuclear pulse engines where you ride the shockwaves of thousands of fusion bombs to reach a few percent of the speed of light. Those we could probably build right now if we were willing to spend the money. Replacing the fusion bombs with antimatter bombs would be a nice improvement for the basic design
Is there a way to slow down using fusion bombs? Even if you manage to bring thousands of fusion bombs with you? Sounds like this is only a sensible approach for sending probes, which will then zip by their target at huge speeds.
If you can get any kind of spaceship up to speeds to reach other stars within reasonable time - you've got an amazing weapon. Just ram into something at full speed. Ok, if you have enough energy to correct course to aim, only.
Going to the paper itself we can observe that the CERN Antiproton Decelerator can deliver 10^7 antiprotons every 2 minutes. Remembering it previously took 10 weeks to capture 10^4 anti-atoms, I hope you forgive me for not agreeing that the antiproton generation is the source of important inefficiencies.
Antimatter is a unique element: nothing else can do what it does. The game changer would be producing industrially useful amounts for further experimentation.
(Antimatter chemistry would be incredibly interesting and quite possibly a practical way to actually use antimatter - shoot the beam into a reaction or solid matrix to do interesting reactions due to the electronic properties before it annihilates).
Not actually that different for rockets now, frankly, we just usually don’t operate direct nuclear fission/fusion drives right now for this very reason and our own sense of self preservation.
There certainly are plans on the drawing board!
It would take 23 grams of antimatter to produce the effect of a 1 megaton nuclear bomb, and the biggest factor stopping someone is both production of the matter itself (improving) and actual shielding technology (magnetic bottles good enough to effectively trap that much antimatter are huge and extremely energy consuming right now - much bigger than a fusion bomb of equivalent power).
Theoretically, it should be possible to store that much in a thermos bottle, however. We just need better superconductor technology.
I remember there was a quote from some sci-fi universe that there's "no such thing as an unarmed space ship".
"A reaction drive's efficiency as a weapon is in direct proportion to its efficiency as a drive."
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WeaponizedExhaus...