Anti-Matter weapon

[Invictus ChiKen]

I'm just curious what would be the result if say an anti-matter bomb was detonated in Charleston, SC (just pulling a town name out of my ass).

Or if I got pissed off somehow invented an anti-matter gun an used to blast someone. (I'm guessing overkill).

[Nephtys]

Since said weapons don't exist in reality, we can't quantify how much yield is practical (from the mixing efficiency of M and AM).

This is about as useful as asking 'what happens if a bomb goes off in XYZ'. Or 'how many people could a big sandwich feed?'

Yield is what matters, not the kind of bomb.

[Sea Skimmer]

I'm just curious what would be the result if say an anti-matter bomb was detonated in Charleston, SC (just pulling a town name out of my ass).

Or if I got pissed off somehow invented an anti-matter gun an used to blast someone. (I'm guessing overkill).

'Anti matter bomb' is a type of weapon. Saying that phrase tells nothing about how powerful it is and thus how much damage it can do. Its the exact same thing as asking what would happen if an 'explosive' was detonated in a city. You can't say anything about it without knowing how much explosive is involved.

[Invictus ChiKen]

Okay sorry to give a limit how about 15 pounds?

[SirNitram]

Okay sorry to give a limit how about 15 pounds?

15 pounds of explosive force? Same as 15 pounds of TNT.

I suspect you mean 15 pounds of anti-hydrogen. What efficiency? It'll be pathetic.

[Invictus ChiKen]

I admit I'm pathetic with this kind of thing, was whatching a show on History Channel that mentioned what would happen if matter an anti-matter mixed. They had a cgi of a mushroom cloud cover the whole of North America.

Was wondering if there was any truth to that.

[SirNitram]

I admit I'm pathetic with this kind of thing, was whatching a show on History Channel that mentioned what would happen if matter an anti-matter mixed. They had a cgi of a mushroom cloud cover the whole of North America.

Was wondering if there was any truth to that.

Enough anti-matter with a very high efficiency will do it. But it'd be a terrible waste, as you could do more damage with a larger number of smaller weapons.

[Invictus ChiKen]

Thank you ^.^

[LongVin]

By any chance before making this thread did you watch the history channels UFO show where they "reversed engineered" a hypothetical alien craft. Because in that show they covered the topics of anit matter weaponary and also anti matter as a fuel.

[Surlethe]

What efficiency? It'll be pathetic.

Wouldn't detonating an antimatter device in a matter-dense environment (like the atmosphere) result in near-100% matter-antimatter conversion efficiency, regardless of how the blast scatters the fuel? Or am I missing something?

[Kuroneko]

Wouldn't detonating an antimatter device in a matter-dense environment (like the atmosphere) result in near-100% matter-antimatter conversion efficiency, regardless of how the blast scatters the fuel? Or am I missing something?

No, you aren't, assuming reasonable yields.

[Broomstick]

First of all, you don't need a "bomb" to "detonate" antimatter. Antimatter and matter mutually destroy each other when they come into contact.

It is actually an EXTREMELY efficient reaction, with nearly 100% conversion of "stuff" into energy.

The biggest problem, from the standpoint of making it go *BOOM!*, is that there's just not much antimatter lying about. In fact, there is so little that we go through the enormous trouble and expense of making the stuff. In fact, this is done not far from where I live, at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois. They make it anti-proton by anti-proton and store it by magnetically levitating anti-protons in a specially designed steel vacuum chamber. Been doing it for decades. They still measure it in number of protons, which means we're talking a VERY small amount.

If one of those antiprotons got loose and zipped into you? (Leaving aside the question of how it would manage to get through the atmosphere without hitting any air molecules) Sure, there'd be an explosion. A very, very tiny one. Miniscule. The mass of one antiproton and one proton would convert to energy. It would be a teeny-weeny amount of energy because the masses involved are very, very, very, very, very small. You probably wouldn't even notice.

Now, if you had fifteen pounds of anti-matter, and it came into contact with fifteen pounds of regular matter - yes, that would be a FUCK of a big explosion. I'll let one of the physics wonks we have here calculate the yield of 30 lbs (or kilos, what the hell - use whatever significant quantitiy you desire) converting nearly 100% to pure energy. It would be a big blast, no doubt about it.

A mushroom cloud over all of North America? That's poetic license. Up to a point. At some point, yes, you'll get that big a boom. Again, I'll leave that to the physics guys.

The thing is, nobody has 15 pounds of antimatter. Or 15 grams. Or even 15 nanograms. And so far as we know, there's no practical way to obtain it or make it in that quantity.

[Stile]

The thing is, nobody has 15 pounds of antimatter. Or 15 grams. Or even 15 nanograms. And so far as we know, there's no practical way to obtain it or make it in that quantity.

It would probably be more feasible to use the equivalent amount of energy used to make the anti-matter into a making an equivalent amount of x-ray energy or a particle accelerator. That's a LOT of energy.

[OmegaGuy]

If I have my math right it should be about 292 megatons

[Broomstick]

The thing is, nobody has 15 pounds of antimatter. Or 15 grams. Or even 15 nanograms. And so far as we know, there's no practical way to obtain it or make it in that quantity.

It would probably be more feasible to use the equivalent amount of energy used to make the anti-matter into a making an equivalent amount of x-ray energy or a particle accelerator. That's a LOT of energy.

Very true.

In fact, the production of anti-matter is extremely INefficient - you have to accelerate hundreds of thousands of sub-atomic particles (I think they use protons) to a very high speed and smash them into a target in order to get just 1 anti-proton. There's no way in hell you're getting a good ratio of energy expended to quantity of anti-matter out of that. Fermilab is enormous - miles of electromagnets to be maintained and powered. It's like burning a million gallons of diesel fuel to obtain one gallon of high octane gasoline.

Making fusion bombs converts a much smaller percentage of matter into energy (something like 2% IIRC) but requires so much less energy to produce them that making an explosion of a certain yield with fusion bombs is actually more efficient than the 100% conversion of antimatter/matter because of the enormous energy expense of making antimatter.

Antimatter only becomes a practical "fuel" if we find a signiciantly large, naturally occuring source of it.

[Broomstick]

If I have my math right it should be about 292 megatons

Like I said - a FUCK of a big explosion, but not enough to generate a mushroom cloud over all of North America.

Oh, and for those of you who didn't pay attention in high school physics... the formula for determining the amount of energy in a lump of matter is:

E=mc^2

E=energy
m=mass
c=speed of light

The problem is, my calculator can't handle squaring the speed of light. Also, be careful you don't bollix up your units of measure. You'll get a fuck of a large number no matter what you do.

[Kuroneko]

The problem is, my calculator can't handle squaring the speed of light. Also, be careful you don't bollix up your units of measure. You'll get a fuck of a large number no matter what you do.

That's not really a large difficulty if you treat the exponent as separate. The speed of light is c = 2.998e8m/s. [(30lbm)(.454kg/lbm)] = 13.62kg, so that E = mc² = [(13.62)(2.998)²](1e8)² = (122.4)(1e16) joules. Since a megaton is 4.184e15J, [(122.4/4.184)](1e16/1e15) = (29.3MT)(1e1) = 293MT. The only thing such a calculator would have to do is what was put in square brackets.

[Ford Prefect]

Antimatter only becomes a practical "fuel" if we find a signiciantly large, naturally occuring source of it.

I remember Ender talking about magnetic monopoles a little while back. He gave me a link to site which was discussing them and their uses in catalytic converters which, in principle, allows you to make antimatter by putting matter into it.

[OmegaGuy]

The problem is, my calculator can't handle squaring the speed of light. Also, be careful you don't bollix up your units of measure. You'll get a fuck of a large number no matter what you do.

That's not really a large difficulty if you treat the exponent as separate. The speed of light is c = 2.998e8m/s. [(30lbm)(.454kg/lbm)] = 13.62kg, so that E = mc² = [(13.62)(2.998)²](1e8)² = (122.4)(1e16) joules. Since a megaton is 4.184e15J, [(122.4/4.184)](1e16/1e15) = (29.3MT)(1e1) = 293MT. The only thing such a calculator would have to do is what was put in square brackets.

Hooray! I was close!

[Kuroneko]

I remember Ender talking about magnetic monopoles a little while back. He gave me a link to site which was discussing them and their uses in catalytic converters which, in principle, allows you to make antimatter by putting matter into it.

How in the world is that supposed to work?

[Ford Prefect]

How in the world is that supposed to work?

I have no idea, sorry. I didn't bookmark the page back then, so I can't give you the link to that site either. If you like I can go and try and find it for you.

[Ford Prefect]

http://www.cea.fr/gb/publications/Clefs ... 4493a.html

That's the page right there.

[Admiral Valdemar]

There are papers out there discussing the best ways to annihilate anti-matter since any design would have to have decent efficiency to be worth it, which means getting the AM to react instantly at one point, rather than have most of it blown away. A special lattice like network that is magnetically controlled to give the largest possible surface area for hydrogen and anti-hydrogen is the ideal solution, assuming you can, as with nukes, get the stuff to react in the same timeframe.

Course, uranium and plutonium are more than enough for our needs right now with hydrogen fusion thrown in for good measure. Making AM and storing it costs a lot of energy (tis the most expensive product known to man) so a weapon using it with current technology is useless.

[Elheru Aran]

I would argue that an contemporary antimatter weapon is 'useless' per se; it is, however, a rather pointless and massively, hugely, obscenely expensive weapon, to the point where using one would bankrupt the country deploying it, which is rather counterproductive...

[Patrick Degan]

Since said weapons don't exist in reality, we can't quantify how much yield is practical (from the mixing efficiency of M and AM).

This is about as useful as asking 'what happens if a bomb goes off in XYZ'. Or 'how many people could a big sandwich feed?'

Yield is what matters, not the kind of bomb.

Actually, we can make a few rough guesses. The figure of 9E13J/g has been cited as the energy-density of a M/AM reaction. If we want to be generous and assume 5% efficency in an operational weapon, 15kg of M/AM would deliver a blast-yield equivalent to a 16MT nuclear device.