Humankind may dream of one day traveling to other star systems like Captain Kirk, but in reality we can barely figure out how to make it to the next planet over. The fastest we've ever flown in space was during Apollo 10 at speeds of about 25,000 mph. At that speed it would take 165,000 years to reach the nearest star system. So if we're really serious about leaving the solar system, a bigger gas tank is probably not the solution.

Gerald Jackson, a former Fermilab physicist, thinks antimatter could propel us to the nearest star system in 10 years or less. For more than a decade, Jackson and his colleague, physicist Steven Howe, have been trying to get NASA and other investors to pay attention to their idea for an antimatter propulsion system.