Way to store huge amounts of energy?

[questionposter]

So atom bombs and nuclear reactors release a lot of energy, but it seems like it would be more convenient if something could store that energy. Is there some way that energy could be mechanically used to compress matter and create degenerate matter? Or would you have to constantly use massive amounts of energy to keep matter stored like that?

Because if the surface of a neutron star moves even 1 milimeter, it releases a gamma ray burst, which within our vicinity would be powerful enough to sterilize Earth, not that we could generate anything on Earth that powerful, but it seems like degenerate matter can store massive amounts of energy in a small space.

 

Now that I think about it, a degenerate matter bomb might be the solution to the meteor problem in the other thread, if you can in fact store that much energy, but there would need to be some way to release all that energy at once.

Edited April 19, 2012 by questionposter

[md65536]

I don't know of anything that can release more energy than the annihilation of matter and antimatter (if with E=mc^2 you start with exclusively mass and end with exclusively energy, then you have the largest energy gain possible?)

 

If you had equal amounts of neutrons and anti-neutrons, you'd have a pretty massive storage of easily extracted energy in a compact space.

I don't know how you would contain neutrons; I think they can slip through normal matter.

I suppose that a gravitationally bound blob of neutrons and another blob of anti-neutrons, with the blobs orbiting around each other, could be made stable, with a huge amount of potential energy but requiring no energy to maintain it.

 

I'm not sure how one would create or move such a thing, where you'd keep it (in orbit maybe?), and how you'd "trigger" a complete self-annihilation.

[questionposter]

I don't know of anything that can release more energy than the annihilation of matter and antimatter (if with E=mc^2 you start with exclusively mass and end with exclusively energy, then you have the largest energy gain possible?)

 

If you had equal amounts of neutrons and anti-neutrons, you'd have a pretty massive storage of easily extracted energy in a compact space.

I don't know how you would contain neutrons; I think they can slip through normal matter.

I suppose that a gravitationally bound blob of neutrons and another blob of anti-neutrons, with the blobs orbiting around each other, could be made stable, with a huge amount of potential energy but requiring no energy to maintain it.

 

I'm not sure how one would create or move such a thing, where you'd keep it (in orbit maybe?), and how you'd "trigger" a complete self-annihilation.

 

Anti-matter isn't efficient though, it takes large concentrations of energy to force normal matter into anti-matter or isolate anti-matter from certain reactions, so the amount of energy it releases with today's technology wouldn't be enough for the cost of the energy to make it since many reactions creating anti-matter require gamma rays. With degenerate matter though, I think it's possible not only to store energy, but to just set up a machine and sit-back and have it make degenerate matter with the energy from naturally occurring radioactive material (after a refined state though).

 

Actually it looks like they are already doing this

http://www.scienceda...90511181356.htm

Edited April 21, 2012 by questionposter