Researchers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville are trying to find a way to harness this collision and use it in engines that could propel spacecraft to speeds approaching science fiction proportions. Every thing we touch or use is matter, Martin said. Antimatter is the same as matter, but reversed - like looking in a mirror, Martin explains. On the atomic level, antimatter has an opposite charge and opposite spin. When the two collide, they destroy each other and create energy.
Antimatter is scarce.
Other than labs, it's usually only created when cosmic rays collide with particles floating in space. Martin and other Marshall researchers are working on an antimatter storage system. One theory of why antimatter is so scarce is that, at the time of the Big Bang, a bit more matter than antimatter was generated, Martin said. The annihilation of matter and antimatter is the most energy-dense reaction known in modern physics, Martin said. Antimatter packs 10 billion times more energy than a chemical rocket system such as the space shuttle, Martin said.