Anti-Matter weapon

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Winston Blake
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Post by Winston Blake »

drachefly wrote:Re: sticking AM in a polarized container: There is no electrostatic bottle. In order to confine something you need magnets.
If the particles were cold enough, why wouldn't an electrostatic kind of bottle work?

In any case, superconducting coils can confine particles indefinitely, and in the future we may have room-temperature superconductors to play with.
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Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Ummm...I'm writing a story and I really need to know...how big a boom would a hundred tons of antimatter make? :)
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Admiral Valdemar
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Post by Admiral Valdemar »

Shroom Man 777 wrote:Ummm...I'm writing a story and I really need to know...how big a boom would a hundred tons of antimatter make? :)
There's a clever formula for this, you may have heard of it: E = mc².
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Post by The Grim Squeaker »

Ummm...I'm writing a story and I really need to know...how big a boom would a hundred tons of antimatter make?
m=100*10^3kg=1e5kg
c=2.997e8
Therefore the energy is: E= 8.98755179 × 10^21 (Joules)
or the equilevent of 2.6 Teratons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaton wrote:(A megaton of TNT is 4.184 × 1015 joules = 4.184 petajoules (PJ).)
The main site yields the following figures:
Thermal radiation radius (3rd degree burns) 4618.7 kilometres
Air blast radius (widespread destruction) 890.2 kilometres
Air blast radius (near-total fatalities) 337.3 kilometres
Ionizing radiation radius (500 rem) 49.9 kilometres
Fireball duration 3193.9 seconds
Fireball radius (minimum) 147.9 kilometres
Fireball radius (airburst) 180.8 kilometres
Fireball radius (ground-contact airburst) 238.3 kilometres

Or in other words a really fucking big crater :wink:.
PS, is ther ea convenient way to copy the numbers from the explosion calculator, rather than just the name of what each number stands for?
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Post by GrandMasterTerwynn »

DEATH wrote:
Ummm...I'm writing a story and I really need to know...how big a boom would a hundred tons of antimatter make?
m=100*10^3kg=1e5kg
Not to nitpick, but the mass would be 200 tons converted to energy, since antimatter by itself won't turn into gamma rays unless it meets an identical quantity of matter . . .
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Post by The Grim Squeaker »

Not to nitpick, but the mass would be 200 tons converted to energy, since antimatter by itself won't turn into gamma rays unless it meets an identical quantity of matter
Hmm, thought he meant a bomb made of anti-matter with a mass of 100 tons, thanks for pointing that out for me.

m is linear (not squared) so it doubling merely doubles the E making the effect that of a 5.2 Teraton bomb.
I'm Not going to copy all the explosion figures over myself Just input:
8987551.79810^15 in the calculator
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Post by The Grim Squeaker »

Gah, I meant 2*8987551.79810^15 in the nuclear explosion calcualtor. (Forgot to add the updated number :oops: ) :x .
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Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Woah...5.2 teratons...that's big, right? :shock:

Anyway, thanks, bro! :D

Btw, is there an antimatter weight to explosive yield calculator?
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Post by Surlethe »

Shroom Man 777 wrote:Woah...5.2 teratons...that's big, right? :shock:
It's an order of magnitude more powerful than an Acclamator's heavy guns. Yes, that's big.
Anyway, thanks, bro! :D

Btw, is there an antimatter weight to explosive yield calculator?
Yes. (9m)e16 J, where m is the mass of the antimatter, assuming it's not exploding in a vacuum.
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Post by drachefly »

Winston Blake wrote:
drachefly wrote:Re: sticking AM in a polarized container: There is no electrostatic bottle. In order to confine something you need magnets.
If the particles were cold enough, why wouldn't an electrostatic kind of bottle work?
Because the term 'electrostatic bottle' is meaningless.

Consider: what would an electrostatic bottle look like? There would be some central region of inwardly directed electric field (or outward, depending on the sign of the trapped charge).

That means that at some point in the middle there needs to be a charge so the field can switch direction... and this charge can't be the one that is trapped.


You need magnets and such to do this sort of containment, and though it can be done it is not exceptionally easy. Anyway, you need to keep it under EXTREMELY high vacuum, and no extremely high vacuum systems are really really shock resistant. Whack it and air is getting in... kablooey.
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Post by Qwerty 42 »

^ I am of the opinion that an electrostatic bottle would bear a shocking resemblance to a Jolt Cola bottle.

To help the person doing the story, in my story I had a pro-military regime switching over to antimatter grenades so they look like they're designing superior weaponry, since it takes place a long time after their last real war. The people in the solar system they invade take advantage of the antimatter grenades by blowing them up while they're still strapped to the person using them. Since the large-yield weapons would be impractical for foot soldiers, they eventually wind up switching over to conventional grenades that have the same yield, but the transition isn't completed by the end of the war.

Basically, any civilization that uses antimatter weapons with great regularity hasn't seen a whole lot of combat, especially if foot soliders are using it.
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Post by Patrick Degan »

Qwerty 42 wrote:^ I am of the opinion that an electrostatic bottle would bear a shocking resemblance to a Jolt Cola bottle.

To help the person doing the story, in my story I had a pro-military regime switching over to antimatter grenades so they look like they're designing superior weaponry, since it takes place a long time after their last real war. The people in the solar system they invade take advantage of the antimatter grenades by blowing them up while they're still strapped to the person using them. Since the large-yield weapons would be impractical for foot soldiers, they eventually wind up switching over to conventional grenades that have the same yield, but the transition isn't completed by the end of the war.

Basically, any civilization that uses antimatter weapons with great regularity hasn't seen a whole lot of combat, especially if foot soliders are using it.
Even considering the objections already listed for antimatter weaponry, if such things could exist, their design and application would be purely strategic. Personal AM weapons like grenades are about as feasible as breeding armies of sentient killer cardboard boxes.
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Post by Xon »

Broomstick wrote: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.
Google is wonderfull for this.

Do a search for "(mass) * (speed of light) ^2" and it'll spit out the answer in joules
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