How close is the human race to perfecting an anti-matter space travel engine?

I've heard the ion engine is close, but anti-matter is apparently superior as far as distance traveled, and effiecency. I reach out to anyone that loves the thought of finding another intelligent civilitation.

Not even close, humans have longs ways. Anti-matter at this point doesn't exist that we presently know. Reaching out to another intelligent cilization would mean an end to human race as we know it. Any intelligent specis would take advantages of this poor human race that can never out match aliens. We would be doomed.

Man has not even started work on an anti-matter engine..
Anti-matter engines are still beyond the theoretical stage,
they are in the imaginary stage..

24 hours after next week

Far away, very hard to accumulate large amounts of anti-matter,and anit matter is very volatile

>A long way to go. Remember this is the species that is still arguing religion and killing each other over it. Cures for diseases (including old age) are possible too, but not as long as we haven't evolved past "My God is Better than Your God"!

I suspect other intelligent species will find us, if we manage to live that long.<

It's already been done...
http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/s/secret_bases_on_the_moomn_and_mars%20.html
http://www.crystalinks.com/phila.html

Well, looks like I'll be disagreeing with the majority, again :)

Antimatter propulsion is possible and has a bright future.

Similar in design to the Orion Project designed 50 years ago and using nukes, the Antimatter pulse engine has advantages and disadvantages. See the links below.

The major drawback is in the supply of antimatter... it is difficult to produce and contain... but they're working on it!` Eventually we'll be able to produce antimatter in quantity... where there's a will there's a way!

Astro-physics shows us that the key to inter-galactic space travel technology is not in how fast we can go but how smart we can become to reduce the distances involved.
Einstein proposed in the Theory of GR, the mathematical probability of the Einstein-Rosen bridge, However, in 1962 John A. Wheeler and Robert W. Fuller published a paper showing that this type of wormhole is unstable, and that it will pinch off instantly as soon as it forms, preventing even light from making it through.
We have since then learned that with the help of quantum mechanics, which Einstein completely disregarded, we can create a traversable wormhole held open by a spherical shell of exotic matter, as referred to as a Morris-Thorne wormhole. Later, other types of traversable wormholes were discovered as allowable solutions to the equations of general relativity, such as a type held open by cosmic strings.

This is the future of space travel, not propulsion devices!

John T is right....

Except I believe we can see the first anti-matter space travel engine being put into regular use in as little as a century from now....I don't think we will have that much trouble coming up with the fuel for the engine (cylindrical plutonium pellets??? I read somewhere some physicist came up with the idea of using a blast plate to propel the starship...a small cylindrical shaped charge of plutonium would be ejected out the rear end and an explosion would occur, the blast then would move the ship forward. Such explosions could occur seconds or even miliseconds after one another??? Is this Project Orion that we are talking about here??)

On the other hand I do believe we could use wormholes as a means of transportation...but I do believe near-LT propulsion engines will be the norm until we can better understand the physics of wormholes.....