Popular Culture

The excitement caused by the discovery of the positron in 1932 had effects that stemmed further than just the realm of science. It also greatly influenced the realm of science fiction, as authors imagined anti-universes and dimensions.

Foremost amongst such fiction was the science fiction television show STAR TREK. The adventures of the Starship Enterprise and its crew developed a huge following, with devotees becoming known as "Trekkies". STAR TREK features the adventures of the crew of the Starship Enterprise on its five-year mission to explore outer space, a task that requires the travel of huge distances, creating the need for the starship to travel at speeds much greater than the speed of light.

As such, the ship was equipped with warp drive, a hypothetical propulsion system that warps space in such a way that distances between stars are, in effect, greatly reduced. Then, he resorted to a based-on-fact fuel to provide the energy needed: the Enterprise's faster-than-light engines are powered by antimatter. The mixing of matter and antimatter is almost certainly the most efficient kind of power source that a starship could use: antimatter (frozen antihydrogen) is handled with magnetic fields, and never allowed to touch normal matter.