• mildseason@sopuli.xyz
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    14 hours ago

    Ah sorry i get you! Yeah like how long could we go? Indefinitely?

    Looking at the photo the equipment does seem quite large, it takes up the whole room. Can say for sure they don’t have the funding to dedicate that much equipment to a static experiment.

    Do agree with you though. Would be interesting to see the numbers for long term storage.

    • HubertManne@piefed.social
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      14 hours ago

      yeah and you might be on to something. they might already have ideas to reduce the size or complexity and might follow up using a different design. I have been involved in a lot of projects with a large and ugly prototype to prove some stuff and then greater effort is put into design once they know the idea works.

      • mildseason@sopuli.xyz
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        14 hours ago

        Aw yeah for sure they could make it more compact! Would love to see it. If we could actually make meaningful quantities of anti-matter. Could we use it for power? What would transport look like? Anti-matter is one of my favourite subjects lol

        • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz
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          10 hours ago

          Once we unlock antimatter-fueled propulsion we could send a probe to the Proxima Centauri system.

          If we try sending one now, even if it escapes the sun’s gravity well, it would easily be passed by a future probe if antimatter propulsion is invented within the next century or so.

          Once the probe reaches the system, it would take a little over a decade for a radio signal to reach us. So it would need some built-in automation to run research missions because the latency is just too high for remote control from Earth. Unless some sort of quantum entanglement technology enables instantaneous communication, but that might just be scifi…