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Subject: Antimatter as a weapon.
Miles    3/22/2007 3:07:37 PM
Is it possible that antimatter could be used for weaponery? Like an antimatter bomb, which can vaporize anything in its path. How about an antimatter rifle? This weapon can turn an enemy into nothing by one shot? What do you think? Any good concepts for this type of weapon?
 
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andyf    ...   3/23/2007 10:53:56 AM
you cant turn anything into nothing. thats what E=MC^2 means.
you could turn the dude into energy- but it would make a hole in the carpet
 
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andyf    ...   3/23/2007 10:55:37 AM
you could, if its possible, have some sort of converter that turns a 2m diameter sphere into neutrinos.
'pop' gone. no flash nothing. but it would show up in the kamaokande experiment in japan
 
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flamingknives       3/23/2007 7:50:37 PM
When matter meets antimatter, it annihilates, converting the mass of both into energy. Consider that a large atomic bomb converts maybe a fraction of a gram of matter to energy and it's fairly obvious that any significant amount of antimatter is going to be a strategic weapon not unlike nuclear weaponry. Except smaller, lighter and a good deal less stable.
 
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Jeff_F_F       3/24/2007 6:10:12 AM
The problem is that only the antiparticles that actually interact with matter particles will annihilate each other. Because of this if you take a big chunk of it and put it in contact with matter only the particles on the serfaces that meet each other will interact and mutually anhilate, which will blast the rest of the antimater charge away. It has been speculated that at a rediculously low temperature that is about as close to absolute zero as is possible, matter and antimater would not explosively interact, and that nano-scale films of the two substances could be layered together, and then kept in cold storage ready to go boom. If you could manipulate black holes in some fashion, you could find an antimater black hole and a matter black hole and smash them toghether. Because each is a singularity and hence all of the matter in the black hole occupies a single point, then all of the matter and all of the antimater at each point would be able to interact simultaneously, I think. Someone who actually knows the physics might call me out though. Unfortunately black holes have other problems of their own like inexorably sucking all nearby matter into them, so you might not want to carry them on a ship.
 
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flamingknives       3/24/2007 6:16:26 AM
in practical usage, however, antimatter isn't going to go far before finding some matter to react with. As soon as its vacuum-sealed containment is breached, it's going to annihilate PDQ.

Nuclear physics isn't really my area, but I didn't think that temperature had that much of an effect. Possibly at low energies (i.e. temperature) the matter and antimatter can't overcome each other's atomic forces. Or they might actually attract.
 
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Jeff_F_F    Antimater Black Holes???   3/24/2007 6:24:09 AM
What am I thinking...? After reading Stephen Baster's book Ring my standards of what constitutes a feasible weapon are a bit warped...
 
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Jeff_F_F    Antimater Black Holes???   3/24/2007 6:38:46 AM

What am I thinking...? After reading Stephen Baster's book Ring my standards of what constitutes a feasible weapon are a bit warped...


I mean Stephen Baxter... I don't think that's a freudian slip, unless some part of my subconcious resents my world-view being turned upside down, shaken hard and the splattered across the universe. Wild book, if you can get into it.
 
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Nanheyangrouchuan       3/31/2007 12:00:58 AM
Antimatter would be the worst kind of bomb because we are no where near being able to understand the matter/anti-matter interaction.  Even a small antimatter bomb could destroy a huge area if antimatter can react with more than one equivalent of regular matter at the same time...which is a very likely scenario in real world conditions.
 
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andyf    antimatter   3/31/2007 1:17:40 PM
oh we understand the reaction alright, a- added to a+ = lots of gamma rays
very very energetic gamma rays.
which do bad things when they interact with anything.
problem with antimatter - its very energy intensive to make
                                     - its insanely dangerous to store
as a power source its too dangerous to ever use. as well as expensive
star trek is the equivalent of running a car on nitroglycerin that you made from diamonds
 
all it would take to kill your ship is a hot cosmic ray.
-- cosmic ray slams into antimatter in storage , knocks a few atoms loose, they hit containment chamber walls,  knock a lot of atoms loose,,,foooom!
 
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buzzard       4/5/2007 2:21:27 PM

When matter meets antimatter, it annihilates, converting the mass of both into energy. Consider that a large atomic bomb converts maybe a fraction of a gram of matter to energy and it's fairly obvious that any significant amount of antimatter is going to be a strategic weapon not unlike nuclear weaponry. Except smaller, lighter and a good deal less stable.

Recently in a thread on another forum where people were arguing about whether Star Trek's Federation was miltarily sound, someone pointed out how limited the yield on a photon torpedo would be. For those who's geek fu is weak, a photon torpedo is basically an anti-matter missile. The warhead (from the ST tech books) is suposed to be 1.5 kg. When you keep hearing that nukes on convert an ultra small fraction of the mass into energy, you would therefore assume that this 1.5 would be an incredible blast. However, it isn't that big really.  That is at least in terms of what we've popped off live on Earth (blasts of 50+ megatons have been popped). I ran the ol' e=mc^2 on it and it turns out to be 57 megatons, and that's assuming 100% conversion with an equal mass of matter. If someone has a hankering to check my math feel free. The value for a megaton's energy is used was from wikipedia, which may be suspect, but I can't imagine why it would be.

buzzard

 
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