Antimatter production

[K^2]

Easy! All you need is to make the star out of anti-hydrogen and wait until it goes supernova.

[Mazon Del]

A quick idea that immediately comes to mind, involves the harvesting of local hawking radiation around a black hole

This is actually one of the many things referred to as zero point energy. There are an unfortunately large amount of things referred to as ZPE, half of them exclusive of each other.

Right now one of the big ideas for an interstellar space probe is to design it so when it gets where it is going, it deploys ridiculously close to the star it orbits, unfolds some solar panels and use that energy to power the laser that fires at an energy density sufficient to produce the matter/antimatter pairs to use as fuel at its new location. This technolocy COULD be used to "manufacture" antimatter from the sun.

Incidentally, one of the technology challenges is storing antimatter. A year or so ago they managed to hold onto some antihydrogen for about half an hour, shattering the previous record of something around 15 seconds. The challenge is annoyingly difficult. Have you ever had one of those silly lamps that has an electromagnet that tries to levitate something (usual examples are a Tardis or the Golden Snitch from Harry Potter)? Those objects tend not to just sit around in the fields, they wriggle, spin, and bounce around. Yes it would work better with active control over the magnetic fields, but imagine trying to exert that control over millions of things at the same time! Not impossible, but annoyingly complex.

[Soda Popinski]

Reading up on Antimatter production on Wikipedia, it mentions in 2010, scientists were able to create and store 38 anti-hydrogen atoms. 38!

One gram of the stuff would be about 602200000000000000000000 atoms.

The biggest limiting factor in the large-scale production of antimatter is the availability of antiprotons. Recent data released by CERN states that, when fully operational, their facilities are capable of producing ten million antiprotons per minute.[38] Assuming a 100% conversion of antiprotons to antihydrogen, it would take 100 billion years to produce 1 gram or 1 mole of antihydrogen (approximately 6.02×1023 atoms of antihydrogen).

So not practical with today's methods.

[SargeRho]

Currently there aren't any facilities in operation built to produce antimatter in usable quantities.

[KvickFlygarn87]

Perhaps some civilization got careless while trying to produce large amounts of antimatter.

Fermi Paradox solved anyone?

[Nuke]

Easy! All you need is to make the star out of anti-hydrogen and wait until it goes supernova.

what if an antimatter star collapses into an anti black hole, then you collide a regular black hole with it?

[N_las]

what if an antimatter star collapses into an anti black hole, then you collide a regular black hole with it?

You will get a heavier black hole.

EDIT: There is no difference between a black hole that formed from matter or one that formed from antimatter. Even if one would imagine that the antimatter could annihilate with the matter behind the event horizont, the resulting radiation would still be traped in the black hole and would still have the same energy. So the mass of the black hole wouldn't disappear.

Edited July 3, 2014 by N_las

[WinkAllKerb'']

i don't see any matter in producing a large amount of anti matter, far far far only away. - han solo -

[Winter Man]

Best way to do it is with a several km-sized wire cage. Charge it up positive, positrons (and protons) will slow down but not enough to be deflected. Once they're in, they're in (kind of like the direct conversion system in a polywell, in illustration). It's just a matter of getting the voltage right. It may not be very energy efficient, but it's certainly a lot better than producing it via collisions or lasers.

[Everten P.]

Best way to do it is with a several km-sized wire cage. Charge it up positive, positrons (and protons) will slow down but not enough to be deflected. Once they're in, they're in

Like a roach hotel

[WinkAllKerb'']

yup yup, would not be remembered by any kind of far away civ who made their way to space for solar sytem extinct ... guys just leave that ²& that's and that's all folks !

this thing is totally out of any kind of control @ larger scale and you do know not now know the exact value of no return event horizon, stop looking at IT.

Edited July 4, 2014 by WinkAllKerb''
even a single photon crossed by missluck is able too to remove all frontier 4ever oh and i prefer not to speak about a Boson!