Wednesday 14 November 2018

Hephaistos And Hades

Poul Anderson, Harvest Of Stars, 58.

Hephaistos is the innermost planet of Alpha Centauri A, the equivalent of Mercury in the Solar System. Both of these inner planets are used for antimatter production. In the Centaurian System, Lunarians and Demetrians share skills, resources and robots to build production facilities either on or in orbit around Hephaistos. However, the Lunarians, possibly aiming at interstellar travel, come to need considerably more antimatter than can be feasibly stored in the kind of units used at Hephaistos.

Alpha Centauri A and B had captured the faint red dwarf, Proxima Centauri, thus wreaking havoc in the double star's outer cometary cloud and, to a lesser extent, in its inner cloud where a series of collisions possibly produced Hades:

mostly ice;
rock core;
mass nearly 1% Terrestrial;
noticeable gravitation;
no magnetic field;
too far out to be affected by solar winds.

The Lunarians put their excess antimatter, mostly antihydrogen but also some antihelium plus solid spherules of heavier nuclei, in orbit around Hades with four small asteroids functioning as stability-maintaining shepherd satellites on periodically adjusted orbits between the ring of antimatter and an outer ring of ordinary gas. Expensive but profitable.

9 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Not being a physicist, I don't pretend to claim I understand how there can be "antimatter," which seems strange and contradictory. But I'm sure HARVEST OF STARS contains a good explanation.

Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,
Particles with a reverse electric charge so that they mutually annihilate when they meet.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And in an unconnected story whose title I can't recall, we see Anderson speculating about an entire universe whose electric charges, I think, is the opposite of ours.

Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,
The hypothetical anti-matter universe has a literary history. James Blish's Okie series climaxes with a collision between the matter and anti-matter universes.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I should have remembered that example, from Blish's works.

Sean

Nicholas D. Rosen said...

Kaor, Sean!

Modern physics is weird, but at least as regards antimatter, I don’t think it’s contradictory (it isn’t bizarre at the level of 5e wave-particle duality, or trying to reconcile quantum mechanics with relativity). Positrons and antiprotons exist, and can be made in natural reactions and in particle physics experiments. Have two particles collide at sufficiently high energy, and you’re likely to get a shower of particles, antiparticles, and photons.

Best Regards,
Nicholas

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Nicholas,
5e?
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Nicholas!

You are more knowledgeable about physics than I am. I really should learn more about basic physics by reading Asimov's collection of articles about that science.

Sean

Nicholas D. Rosen said...

Kaor,Paul!

5e should have been “the”. Sorry about that, it isn’t a term from physics, just my iPadAir’s keyboard trying to be helpful.

Kaor, Sean!

Yes, even if Asimov isn’t up-to-date on everything any more, he wrote clearly, and should be understandable to the intelligent layman.

Best Regards,
Nicholas