Antimatter

The majority of our energy still comes from fossil fuels, and fossil fuels are inefficient. Professor Kaku believes we may attain Type 1 status within a few centuries by harnessing antimatter as an energy source.

When normal matter and antimatter collide, they release an incredible amount of energy, and not in the cute and controlled way that Duracell batteries do. It’s more or less total annihilation of the particles involved.

Remember E=MC2?

In fact, if just one gram of antimatter were to come in contact with one gram of normal matter, you would have a reaction on your hands that’s akin to the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. That’s a 20-kiloton bomb.

Imagine the insurance liability requirements of an anti-matter power plant.

While scientists have stored minute amounts of anti-hydrogen, producing it is prohibitively expensive — for now. A shorter route to Type 1 may be good ol’ fashioned cold fusion.

cold fu·sion noun nuclear fusion occurring at or close to room temperature. Claims for its discovery in 1989 are generally held to have been mistaken.

It appears that scientists have been making progress on this since 1989.