The problem with being a science fiction writer is that those darn scientists keep leap-frogging ahead of us, discovering actual cool stuff that’s even more amazing than what we dream up.
You know what they say about truth being stranger than fiction (because fiction is restrained to the plausible, while truth doesn’t care if you can believe it or not).
Apparently, there are rings of anti-protons circling Earth (that we’ve just now discovered).
Anti-protons are the anti-matter of protons. In case you didn’t already know, anti-matter does exist and has been produced at the CERN laboratory by colliding high speed particles to produce all kinds of strangeness. In theory, anti-matter collisions with matter can produce large amounts of energy (also radiation) that could be used to power spaceships. In fact, anti-matter engines are a staple of science fiction (I put one in my middle grade SF novel, Clone Runners). But in practice, it is difficult to isolate anti-matter and even harder to generate it in sufficient quantities to power a light-bulb, much less a space craft.
Along comes Reality.
Turns out there’s a bunch of anti-matter floating around our planet, waiting to be harvested. What’s more, larger planets (say, Jupiter) would have even more of this stuff, floating around, trapped in the planet’s magnetic belt like a cosmic gas station. “Park Your Vehicle Here: Free Anti-Matter!”
Sure, there may be some technical difficulties to that. Like how do you harvest something that self-destructs and unleashes vast amounts of deadly radiation whenever it touches real matter? (This might help.) And how do you build a spaceship with anti-matter engines without frying all the passengers with radiation and also without radiation shielding that weighs more than a small black hole?
As Sheldon from Big Bang Theory says, “I leave that to the engineers.”
But for SF writers? We just got a cool new refueling idea for all those interplanetary expeditions. Until Reality one-ups us again.