Real-life professors and scientists are grappling with real antimatter -- the particle physicists' "mirror image" of ordinary matter -- in today's laboratories to create the weapons and space cruisers of tommorrow.
Scientists are looking into a futuristic technology that could lead to interplanetary missions and significantly improve cancer treatments to boot.
NASA scientists say that spacecraft fueled by antimatter engines could be only decades away.
An antimatter-aided space drive might bring deep-space missions within our grasp. Engineers at NASA and Pennsylvania State University say that by the end of the century, spacecraft could reach the edges of the Solar System and beyond. They believe an antimatter drive could lead to a one-year round trip to Jupiter, a five-year trek to the heliopause--the boundary separating the Solar System from interstellar space--and, in a 50-year trip, the Oort Cloud, source of the comets.