Yeah, as the article here notes, the energy released is effectively an explosion, and harnessing that energy into something more useful is a substantial challenge. As is the concept of turning energy into specific (anti-)matter, which we have no idea how to do at the moment.
This is more a theoretical question of whether any law of physics makes this impossible (e.g. you can't create unpaired particles), or whether this is theoretically possible but it's difficult to get enough efficiency to make it net positive.
(We currently haven't even gotten fusion to be reliably net positive; practicality is as always a set of concerns all its own.)
> This is more a theoretical question of whether any law of physics makes this impossible (e.g. you can't create unpaired particles), or whether this is theoretically possible but it's difficult to get enough efficiency to make it net positive.
It's theoretically impossible, with the slight problem that there seems to be more matter than antimatter in the universe today and nobody really knows why.
Either the theory is wrong (and it being a conservation rule, then by Noether's theorem there's an equivalent symmetry* you'd have to violate if the conservation doesn't hold), or the initial value that's getting conserved wasn't ever zero.
* the wikipedia page says this is specific to continuous symmetry; but integers aren't continuous, so has this been generalised, or is it just assumed?
Project Orion style pusher plate nuclear pulse designs can handle turning big boom boom into space propulsion but as the parent said you are not 100% efficient.
This is more a theoretical question of whether any law of physics makes this impossible (e.g. you can't create unpaired particles), or whether this is theoretically possible but it's difficult to get enough efficiency to make it net positive.
(We currently haven't even gotten fusion to be reliably net positive; practicality is as always a set of concerns all its own.)