# Can antimatter be used as rocket fuel? | Don Lincoln and Lex Fridman ## Метаданные - **Канал:** Lex Clips - **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6NkU8cT6QY - **Дата:** 03.06.2026 - **Длительность:** 6:24 - **Просмотры:** 2,315 - **Источник:** https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/52267 ## Описание Lex Fridman Podcast full episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1M3Vdl6DRkU Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/cv9858-sb See below for guest bio, links, and to give feedback, submit questions, contact Lex, etc. *GUEST BIO:* Don Lincoln is a particle physicist at Fermilab who has spent decades working at the frontiers of high energy physics. *CONTACT LEX:* *Feedback* - give feedback to Lex: https://lexfridman.com/survey *AMA* - submit questions, videos or call-in: https://lexfridman.com/ama *Hiring* - join our team: https://lexfridman.com/hiring *Other* - other ways to get in touch: https://lexfridman.com/contact *EPISODE LINKS:* Don's Facebook: https://facebook.com/Dr.Don.Lincoln/ Don's Website: https://drdonlincoln.com/ Don's LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/4nHeNiF Don's YouTube Playlist: https://bit.ly/3PCIW67 Don's X: https://x.com/DrDonLincoln Don's Books: https://amzn.to/4uYbkOZ Don's Great Courses: https://shop.thegreatcourses.com/don- ## Транскрипт ### Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00) [] This is a NASA estimate of how much it cost to produce antimatter. So, looking at all the cost of the accelerator, all everything combined together to do enough for a 1 megaton antimatter bomb, which I should think it would be even possible on the order of 25 g like we mentioned, will cost about uh based on a NASA estimate uh 1. 5 quadrillion dollars. By the way, uh NASA wasn't talking about a bomb. It's just me adding. NASA was talking about the estimate the cost of 62 to 63 trillion dollars per gram of antihydrogen. Actually, is what they're referring to. — [snorts] — Uh so, compared I was looking at estimates, the current best estimate of how much it takes to produce a 1 megaton nuclear warhead. Everything combined is about 10 to 50 million dollars in the United States. So, you're talking about difference in terms of a weapon with the equal power. 50 million dollars versus 1. 5 quadrillion dollars. To me, what's interesting weapons is just one uh indication of this. One other possibility, and NASA also writes about this, is the use of antimatter in propulsion systems. Right. Uh just like you can use uh nuclear fission and maybe even nuclear fusion down line in the propulsion systems. I saw that 1 g can help get us to Alpha Centauri star system if we can get to 0. 2 times the speed of light in 20 years. Uh meaning it would take us 20 years to get to Alpha Centauri. Is any of this a possible future? The use of antimatter for generation of energy. Because we should mention that it's extremely compact. It has the obvious downsides that it's extremely costly to produce. We don't know how to do that kind of scale. Right. The upside is it's compact. — So, the short answer is it is not a physics problem, it's an engineering problem. So, I have people for that. — Um okay, but no, no. Yeah. Um the truth is that antimatter, if you are able to uh assemble it and store it, sure, it would be able to take that antimatter, heat up matter, and shoot it out the back of a rocket, and it would you know, do what rockets do. It would make dust go quick, and that would be fine. I would say mention the thing that you just mentioned is correct. One of the hugest challenges is the containment because antimatter when it comes in contact with matter uh is a problem. Right. So, if you were unable to uh to contain your trip to Alpha Centauri for even a millionth of a second, boom. And that would not be good. Um you know, it reminds me of the uh the Star Trek where Scotty's saying, "Captain, you know, the antimatter pods are about to look We're losing containment. It's going to blow. " And that's exactly what would happen. So, the short answer is, yes, antimatter as in principle, we could make and use as a source of energy, but there are probably far less expensive sources of energy. Um you know, it depends on what you need to do. The Voyager probes are still chugging along with plutonium now. They're running out of energy at this point, but we could, you know, presumably do a somewhat better job if we needed to. So, I like the idea of antimatter, you know, but the reality is the danger, not the obvious danger of weapons, but the danger of if you wanted to be in a ship run by antimatter, if it ever got loose, well, you would never know it. — [snorts] — That would be that. The reason I I find this kind of inspiring. Is antimatter is in the space of physics that has a lot of mysteries. There's a lot of exploration to be done. And so, this kind of connection to energy means that uh if we have a bunch of breakthroughs on the antimatter side, that might lead to a better propulsion system, better energy generation systems. In principle. There's some combination of engineering here, but understanding the fundamental physics. I mean, we know how to do this. You know, we know you take energy, you make antimatter. You have to contain it, you have to store do all the hard things. But I would be shocked if there was some like new addition to the theory that made antimatter production easier. Interesting. So, we know how to produce antimatter with accelerators. You're saying there's not breakthroughs in physics that could lead to different mechanisms for the generation of antimatter. You have to concentrate energy. Well, that's it. If there's another way to concentrate energy, that would work, too. And our best knowledge of how to concentrate ### Segment 2 (05:00 - 06:00) [5:00] energy is the accelerator. And remember, we're talking concentrating it into um volumes the size of a proton. I mean, if you concentrate it to the size of your thumb, well, then, you know, it's really the density that matters, the local density. And so, when you smash two protons together, all of that's occurring in a tiny volume. So, it's the local density of energy that matters. If you had a lot of energy in a thimble or something, uh it's you're probably not dense enough. You know, it really has to be in close proximity for that to happen. And then, when it does, it it's okay. So, so if there's another way, we know how to do it to make that density thing with accelerators, if someone has a bright idea on how to make highly dense energy, then yeah, making antimatter is a piece of cake. But that's the crux, concentrated energy. Yeah, and how to do so in a cost-efficient manner, not trillions of dollars. Well, yeah.