Antimatter warp drives: “A long way off.”

LiveScience brings us their top 10 “ways to run the 21st century,” a review of possibilities for energy sources in the new millennium. Of the top 3, only nuclear power is currently feasible as a large-scale source of energy. Fuel cells are of huge interest right now, of course. But LiveScience’s love for sci-fi is evident in their #1 choice: antimatter.

“The problem with antimatter is that there is very little of it in the universe.”

Well, that’s one problem, for sure. But can we fix that?

“It can be produced in laboratories, but currently only in very tiny amounts, and at prohibitively high costs.”

Doesn’t sound promising.

“And even if the problem of production could be solved, there is still the knotty question of how to store something that has a tendency to annihilate itself on contact with ordinary matter, and also how to harness that energy once created.”

I can see how that would be problematic.

“NASA funds research into creating antimatter drives that could one day take humanity to the stars, but dreams of antimatter-powered starships as seen on Star Trek are still a long way off, all experts agree.”

So why again is this the #1 choice for your top 10 list?