"Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most." -Ozzy
"Cheerleaders are dancers who have gone retarded." - Sparky Polastri
"I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass...and I'm all out of bubblegum." - Frank Nada
As I understand it, they mean "pure energy" in the sense that ALL of the energy is thrown out in the form of gamma/x rays and other forms of light, unlike, say, nuclear reactions where a good chunk of the energy is lost propelling subatomic fragments away from each other.
In other words, pure energy = just EM stuff, no particles.
Baltar: "I don't want to miss a moment of the last Battlestar's destruction!"
Centurion: "Sir, I really think you should look at the other Battlestar."
Baltar: "What are you babbling about other...it's impossible!"
Centurion: "No. It is a Battlestar."
Corrax Entry 7:17: So you walk eternally through the shadow realms, standing against evil where all others falter. May your thirst for retribution never quench, may the blood on your sword never dry, and may we never need you again.
Not necessarily. For instance, baryon-antibaryon (particles comprised of three quarks) annihilation produces mesons (quark/antiquark pairs) which eventually decay to give a net product of photons, electrons, positrons and neutrinos.
This is all assuming that each particle will meet its antimatter counterpart. However in all likelihood, not all of the matter will annihilate with the antimatter due to the blast wave generated. I always though this was rather a large problem for antimatter warheads.
Doubtless someone will engineer a clever way to reduce this or perhaps eliminate the problem altogether.
Ahhhh, OK...that is what I was thinking, but wanted to make sure that I was comprehending it. Oh the book is named "The Elegant Universe" by Brian Green.
"Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most." -Ozzy
"Cheerleaders are dancers who have gone retarded." - Sparky Polastri
"I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass...and I'm all out of bubblegum." - Frank Nada
yeah, antimatter is much more useful to rad-kill stuff than to blow it up or produce energy/thrust.
In a proton-antiproton annihilation you get something like 1/3 of the output in fucking high energy gamma rays.
The detail that at least 1/3 of that goes away as neutrinos (not "pure energy" at all, the kind of particle less likely to interact even if it flies through light years of lead) and that most other stuff decays into neutrinos shortly thereafter leaves you with a power-conversion efficiency that sucks balls.
I'm nobody. Nobody at all. But the secrets of the universe don't mind. They reveal themselves to nobodies who care. -- Stereotypical spacecraft are pressurized. Less realistic spacecraft are pressurized to hold breathing atmosphere. Realistic spacecraft are pressurized because they are flying propellant tanks. -Isaac Kuo -- Good art has function as well as form. I hesitate to spend more than $50 on decorations of any kind unless they can be used to pummel an intruder into submission. -Sriad
"Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most." -Ozzy
"Cheerleaders are dancers who have gone retarded." - Sparky Polastri
"I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass...and I'm all out of bubblegum." - Frank Nada
Strictly it's a nonsense statement; photons aren't "purer energy" than massive particles. However that is not how people without much physics education perceive it.
It just means that the mass-energy of the particles is converted to gamma rays.
