AdvertisementInterstellar travel is only something humanity has achieved in science fiction — like Star Trek's USS Enterprise, which used antimatter engines to travel across star systems. "Annihilation of antimatter and matter converts mass directly into energy," Weed, cofounder and CEO of Positron Dynamics, a company working to develop an antimatter propulsion system, told Business Insider. Space travel at record speedProxima's star system, shown here, could be reached in just five years with antimatter-powered technology. For example, let's take a trip to our nearest star system, Proxima, about 4.2 light years away. And since the '80s, there's been talk of thermal antimatter engines, which would use antimatter to heat liquid, gas, or plasma to provide thrust.

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Persons: Elon Musk, Ryan Weed, Weed, Brice, Maximilien, Gerald Jackson, Forbes, It's, Jackson, he's, Eugen Sänger, there's, Paul M, Sutter, Steve Howe, Howe Organizations: Enterprise, Dynamics, Southern, NASA, CERN, Fermilab, Hbar Technologies, Space, Alpha Locations: Switzerland, Austrian