Anti-Matter and The Destruction Of The Universe

I've heard many rumors of anti-matter bombs on the internet and elsewhere. A few links.......

www.sfgate.com.../c/a/2004/10/04/MNGM393GPK1.DTL
en.wikipedia.org...

One rumor I'd heard was very much the same fear that scientists had with the first nuclear bombs. They were afraid a chain reaction would be set off, in turn destroying the planet and maybe the galaxy we live in. I guess it didn't bother them too much, seeing as they dropped the bomb anyway. Is it even possible for such a chain reation to occur?

Now the rumors are back with this new type of weapon, the anti-matter bomb. Some also believe that the bomb could create a black hole. I would really like to know how they will test this weapon.

I couldn't find much infomation about this so anyone with any info on the subject would be greatly appreciated.

I don't think you should worry about antimatter weapons just yet.

At the rate at which we are producing anti-matter in particle accelerators, it would take a couple of millions years to even produce one of your bombs .

And as for the black hole. As far as I know when matter collides with anti-matter it just releases energy (100% of the matter is converted into energy), nothing more. It doesn't release unusual gravitational forces or anything, so you shouldn't worry about black holes either

Koen

Our technology does advance, you know. We might be able to produce this stuff much faster in as little as little as 5 to 10 years.



Good thoughts. So since your the expert, how big of an explosion was the one you've seen? How much antimatter was used? What type of forces are at work during the explosion if gravity isn't? Can I get some evidence of some sort?

There is no need to be hostile, I merely responded to your post (for which you should be glad, mind you).



5 to 10 years? Please… Do you have any idea how advanced we are in the field of antimatter and the production thereof? You should do some research to be honest.

I’ll provide you with a quote from someone working at CERN (the facility that holds particle accelerator which has been producing antimatter for the past 7-10 years)



Kind of puts the aspect of antimatter production into a whole new perspective doesn’t it?
And this is just for production.

Storage is obstacle n° 2.
Antimatter needs a vacuum and an electromagnetic field to hold the positrons into place (so they don’t collide with the surrounding structure).

I don’t know about you but I doubt we’ll see 1kg , handheld bombs in the next 10 years.




It is science _fact_ that antimatter, when combined with matter, converts 100% of that matter into energy (to give you some perspective, fusion provides about 0.7% …).

As for black holes, the only (known) way one can form is due to a gravitational collapse of one or more stars. In other words, in order to form a black hole you need an insane amount of gravity, which is something completely different than what you would get with an antimatter/matter reaction…


[edit on 21-6-2007 by koenw]

No.

There was never any sort of issue with "the galaxy we live in".

During the design phase of the first two nuclear weapons, Teller brought up the question as to whether the weapons would put out enough energy to trigger a Bethe "solar phoenix" fusion reaction in the atmosphere using nitrogen, oxygen, carbon from carbon dioxide, and hydrogen from water vapor. The question was taken seriously, calculations were done, it was determined that there wasn't anywhere near enough energy output given the low density of Earth's atmosphere and the energy delivered by the bomb. In fact, it was decided that it was not possible to do no matter what the yield.

Fermi took bets as to whether Teller had got his sums wrong at the detonation of the first bomb.

It turns out that even the Sun isn't big enough or dense enough to use the Bethe cycle, much less the Earth's atmosphere.




Only amongst the ignorant, I'm afraid. There is no possibility for it to create a black hole, any more than it could create boxes of Girl Scout ® cookies. Matter-antimatter annihilation doesn't have any sort of gravitic effects, as koenw has said. Moreover, it happens in nature constantly, as some radioactive materials undergo "beta plus" decay which emits positrons.

That's what you do in "positron emission tomography" - give someone a radioisotope that emits positrons (an anti-matter electron) when it decays, then you use the characteristic 511keV gammas you get when it annihilates with an electron to construct an image.

Also any sufficiently energetic photon interaction may create a particle pair - one electron, one positron, which then recombine at some point also causing an antimatter annihilation.

From what I know about anti-matter, it'd be perfectly possible to cause a blackhole with it. The catch is that you'd need enough of it to create a red giant star and then collapse it, just like with regular matter. So yeah, black holes made from antimatter aren't too likely to happen unless we stockpile enough to make a star.

On to making bombs from it any time soon, not very likely. The thing about antimatter is that it's not free. Antimatter is really just a really efficient battery, to create antimatter we have to put use energy that's already availible to us. To get an antimatter bomb with a yield of roughly the Hiroshima bomb you need around a gram of antimatter, the problem is that you have to generate enough energy to match the Hiroshima bomb in order to make that antimatter. So it really doesn't do a whole lot of good when you could simply drop a nuclear warhead on the target and get the same job done.

And finally on to a chain reaction that could destroy the planet, not going to happen unless you make an antimatter bomb big enough to blow up the planet. As to how much energy that is I'm not sure, but I'm pretty certain that we won't be able to generate nearly that much power anytime soon. Aside from that, antimatter bombs would work very similarly to a nuclear bomb once the antimatter collides with the matter. There simply won't be any funky chain reaction that'll destroy everything.

So to answer your questions much the same as some of the other posters, antimatter is nothing to panic about.