anti-matter matter collisions?

i've been told that a collision of anti-matter and matter particles could cause a massive explosion, because all the mass would be converted to energy.

I never found out why the mass would convert to energy, and has this ever been observed? (in space i assume, as if it were to happen on earth we'd know about it)

 

depends on the matter\anti matter


and it has been witnessed a lot, cern is practically an anti-matter factory thanks to ATHENA

 

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in other words, it happens almost every day and star trek told you shit happened way bigger then it actually does......

 

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Just to tidy up the initial concern about conservation laws, energy must always be conserved. However by Einsteins famous equation E=mc^2 mass is a large amount of energy this total energy must be conserved. So matter can be turned into energy or back again (although this is harder to do) so long as total energy in the system never changes.

 

100% effiency. So, how do we find a way to get even more energy; gravity seems to produce the most, but it'd be hard to harness a quasar?


And, we need more energy, I wanna go to the stars...

 

well its only 100% efficiency if you can convert the gamma rays produced completely into elecricity. Unfortunately gamma rays have a nasty habit of going through pretty much everything without interacting this makes them hard to harness. Finding energy isnt particularly difficult finding an efficient way to convert it to something useful is incredibly challenging.