Air Force pursuing antimatter weapons Program was touted publicly, then came official gag order

The U.S. Air Force is quietly spending millions of dollars investigating ways to use a radical power source -- antimatter, the eerie "mirror" of ordinary matter -- in future weapons.

The most powerful potential energy source presently thought to be available to humanity, antimatter is a term normally heard in science-fiction films and TV shows, whose heroes fly "antimatter-powered spaceships" and do battle with "antimatter guns."

But antimatter itself isn't fiction; it actually exists and has been intensively studied by physicists since the 1930s. In a sense, matter and antimatter are the yin and yang of reality: Every type of subatomic particle has its antimatter counterpart. But when matter and antimatter collide, they annihilate each other in an immense burst of energy.

During the Cold War, the Air Force funded numerous scientific studies of the basic physics of antimatter. With the knowledge gained, some Air Force insiders are beginning to think seriously about potential military uses -- for example, antimatter bombs small enough to hold in one's hand, and antimatter engines for 24/7 surveillance aircraft.



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sorryif I put it in the wrong section..


[edit on 5-10-2004 by MarkLuitzen]

great...and all that for what? to kill people...they could use it to make energy or something but NO!!! we need antimatter to fight terrorism or 3 rd world countries that are threatening the americans

of course it's all for liberty...

and they gripe that Saddam wanted nukes....
I can't see them spending that kind of money to have a better way of killing people, not when we have enough nukes to obliterate the planet a few times over....

What, in a few decades, will we be invading some other country, because they want antimatter bombs?

I think maybe they should worry about securing their nukes first, spend the money helping Russia get theirs under control, ect.

Typical. We seem to want to create devices of destruction when we find or master a new, vast energy source. Why not put that tech into energy production for the U.S. or the world? Why not use it to power a new generation of spacecraft? I know, there is no money in altruism.

Its just spending millions, not billions. Which tells me that there not developing a weapon just seeing if its possible.

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I,,,,,,kinda think that the whole weapons trip is about disabling more that destroying. think "Magnetism" Much more effective in putting a whammy on electronic devices! [Careful, "They" might interupt your phone calls, and change your channels if they dont like what they see or hear]
HA, HA, HA, HA ,HA! Im new, and I'll be back!

Well i think its a great idea!!!!!!!!!!!(note the sarcasm)- global warming, bio-weopons, nukes and now antimatter weopens come on then lets just think of another way to blow us all to hell!!!!!!!!
FOOOOOLSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Speculation is futile

I honestly didn't know that positron reactions yielded that much energy. Last I heard it was significantly less in practice. Perhaps the numbers are idealistic amounts of energy, but if the military is starting to push big money into its storage the BIG numbers are probably more realistic than ever.

Essentially, most matter-antimatter reactions don't yield total annihilation, but since positrons and electrons are Leptons, force carrier particles, they don't have mass to decay into (as I understand it). Thus, the packets of force are released as 'pure energy', if such a thing exists. This also means a nuclear reaction to the nth power. Ouch!

I really do want to see faster than light travel in my lifetime. Maybe this technology will give me that chance. Who knows?

Geesh, I just discovered this information today in an article in the San Francisco Cronicle

sfgate.com.../c/a/2004/10/04/MNGM393GPK1.DTL

of all places. To qoute the article "The energy from colliding positrons and antielectrons "is 10 billion times ... that of high explosive," Edwards explained in his March speech. Moreover, 1 gram of antimatter, about 1/25th of an ounce, would equal "23 space shuttle fuel tanks of energy. " AND "One millionth of a gram of positrons contain as much energy as 37.8 kilograms (83 pounds) of TNT"

If I have this straight, we could take a gram or less of this stuff once we get all the storage bugs out, put it into a remote controled rodent ...yeah, we can already do that to rodents, at least to some extent, maybe to a great extent...and send it anywhere we want and...POOF!

What a nice flippin thought!

All we need is for governments to find another way to kill bunches of us all at once!

Ghostwolfemoon