dietz@SLB-DOLL.CSNET (Paul Dietz) (03/23/86)
Another (very speculative) possibility for starship propulsion is to use "nucleonic fusion". It has recently been speculated that a bag of 3n quarks, with up, down and strange quarks in roughly equal proportions can have a lower energy than a collection of n nucleons. Adding a neutron (or proton) to a lump of this "strange matter" would liberate energy, perhaps around 50 MeV worth. The specific energy of nucleonic fuel would be perhaps an order of magnitude greater than D/T fusion fuel, and would have no confinement problems like antimatter. Another possibility for powering a starship is monopole catalyzed nucleon decay. While there are no confirmed monopole sightings, some grand unified theories predict the existence of massive monopoles that catalyze baryon number changing reactions. This would make ordinary matter as potent a fuel as matter/antimatter mix. It might be possible to transfer momentum to "cosmic strings", long, one dimensional structures left over from the big bang. Again, highly speculative; how about an interstellar railroad on these things? They could be very massive, so one could conceivably push against them and accelerate with high efficiency. This assumes a string is in the neighborhood, which may not be the case; however, recent radio pictures of linear structures near the center of the galaxy have been interpreted by some as cosmic strings, so they may indeed exist. No one around here will be building a starship for a century or so, so there's a chance the physics it will use hasn't been discovered yet.