Anti Matter Bombs - The Science of Angels and Demons

Antimatter was a lethal weapon. Potent, and unstoppable. Once removed from its recharging platform at CERN......a blinding light. The roar of thunder. Spontaneous incineration............

From Angels and Demons.


This is a thread that I have been meaning to start for a while. I imagine that when the Da Vinci Code was first published, the conspiracy theory world was bombarded with people looking to find out more. As the new Dan Brown movie, Angels and Demons is released, I'm sure there will be a surge of traffic and new members here at ATS and other sites looking for the 'Truth' behind the Illuminati. I cannot give any answers in that field - I can however shed some light on antimatter......................

Anti matter is being made at CERN, they are creating anti-hydrogen, the simplest anti-atom possible, consisting of an antiproton and a positron bound together. These experiments require a perfect vacuum, and need a way of containing the antiparticles in an electric or magnetic field. Antihydrogen has been isolated, but as it has no charge, it cannot be contained in these fields.

So at the moment we can find antimatter, but have no way of containing it, certainly not as a bomb in a briefcase!

Rolf Landua is a physicist at CERN who advised on the Angels and Demons film and is rumoured to be the inspiration for Leonardo Vetra, a physicist in the original story. He also only has good news fro us when it comes to antimatter.

In the novel, a quarter gram of antimatter is all it takes to destroy the Vatican. According to Rolf the total amount of antimatter created in thirty years of experiments at CERN is ten billionths of a gram. This would be no more explosive than lighting a match.

Then you must allow for the cost, a gram of antimatter would cost somewhere in the region of a million billion dollars! And only take ten billion years to produce! I bet the Vatican are quaking!

I hope that this has been of some interest to you all, and if you see any 'US developing Antimatter' esque threads, I would be glad if you could point them this way.

I remember watching a documentary a while ago about anti matter being created in the US. apparently if the atoms that speed around the tubes were to ever touch, it would destroy more than 40% land mass. Its crazy to think that we are living in an area that could be destroyed in a matter of seconds by the 'powers that be'

For what its worth IMO the LHC will be used for other purposes other than to create anti matter. But thats another thread.

reply to post by franspeakfree


This is exactly the opposite of what I was trying to achieve in this thread. The antimatter that we have at present is in no way capable of these sort of events. It cannot destroy 40% of the land mass of America!

We have produced a ten billionth of a gram of antimatter in thirty years. Unless we find a lump of antimatter that has been naturally produced over the last 15 billion years, which is highly unlikely, we cannot at present harness any destructive or constructive uses for it.

There's a good reason they call it Science Fiction........................................

i dont know why they made this into a move, read the book and THB the ending is complete SHI*. i think dan brown is ovehryped.

They are also using the exact same ambigrams from the book wich is kinda boring, if you read it then see the film.

[edit on 14-5-2009 by MR BOB]

The energy in anti-matter made in a particle accelerator comes directly from the energy of the collided particles, which comes from the electric grid. The theoretical absolute maximum efficiency of antimatter generation is 50%, since equal quantities of matter are created in the process. In practice, it's more like a billionth or less of a percent efficient.

I think it's giving the French and Swiss too much credit to say that in a fairly short time span, their electric grid puts out enough power to blow up the Vatican city a few billion times over while still powering all of France and Switzerland.

Anyway, antimatter is potent stuff, but it's rather over-hyped. a large part of it's energy goes into harmless neutrinos when it annihilates with matter, so it's only good for about 30 megatons of TNT equivalent per kilogram of antimatter. More than enough to annihilate any city, but less than the largest atomic bomb ever detonated. That's a few thousand times as powerful per weight as the best atomic bombs, but on the other hand you'd need quite a bit of machinery to contain a kilogram of antimatter.