Antimatter weaponry. 1,000 times more powerful than nuclear weapons

yeah and if it can produce a 90X photon effect at will that means it's internal energy is at least that big as well. so to break it down into a matter energy stream and suck it into the ship the transporters need to be at least that powerful don't they?

originally posted by: stormbringer1701
yeah and if it can produce a 90X photon effect at will that means it's internal energy is at least that big as well. so to break it down into a matter energy stream and suck it into the ship the transporters need to be at least that powerful don't they?

That's another thing that always puzzled me. But then, the energy equivalent of just matter would be very high as well. If it's converting the matter to energy at some point, that's a big load right there.

Seems we have a supply of Anti matter within reach.
i saw articles about this being in orbit above earth a 2 or 3 ago.
i came to ATS at the time a little excited to see the discussion about it. but there was none that i found.
we dont have to create it anymore just harvest it. maybe that's the secret missions of that the unmanned space vehicle they sent up in last couple of years.

its a renewable resource too.

here's couple of articles
Nat Geo

Astronomy Now

a reply to: ishum

Wait, so Earth's magnetic field "traps" antimatter?

Where did this antimatter come from?

originally posted by: ishum
Seems we have a supply of Anti matter within reach.
i saw articles about this being in orbit above earth a year or two ago.
i came to ATS at the time a little excited to see the discussion about it. but there was none that i found.
we dont have to create it anymore just harvest it. maybe that's the secret missions of that the unmanned space vehicle they sent up in last couple of years.

its a renewable resource too.

here's one article Antimatter

you need a type of bussard ram scoop and your grazers would need to graze for quite a while. but so far we cannot contain much antimatter and we cannot store it long enough to concentrate it into even a nanogram which is the minimum needed to for propulsion schemes that use it to initiate fusion of fission in a hybrid propulsion system.

Storing it is dangerous so far. but there may be ways to create it as needed at a rate that does away with the need to completely solve the containment issue. it can be done with lasers. and it just might be possible to convert regular matter to antimatter. I base that on the research that says ordinary neutrons can be converted to mirror neutrons with a mirror magnetic field. mirror matter is not antimatter. but there may be an analogous trick whose end results in antimatter.

originally posted by: MystikMushroom
a reply to: ishum

Wait, so Earth's magnetic field "traps" antimatter?

Where did this antimatter come from?

the universes particle accelerators. the sun, pulsars, black hole polar beams, super novae, the accelerator effect of the upper atmosphere. there are even more in the gas giant atmospheres and the suns "atmosphere" and the heliopause.

when cosmic rays collide with particles in the upper atmosphere they generate particle pairs just like the equivalent collisions in our research particle accelerators.

There is no theoretical limit to the yield of nuclear weapons, so anti-matter being greater, no. Current anti-matter containment disallows weaponization, and the whole system is inefficient.

Everyday uses for anti-matter include PET scan.

en.wikipedia.org...

a reply to: stormbringer1701

Yes, we may have a ways to go.
But, we all know the government has secret projects decades in advance of what we see in the public domain.

actually i don't believe that. at least not to the extent some try to have us think.

Thing is, we have a supply above our heads and knowing that i would have thought there'd be some extra effort put into getting to it and retrieving it.

Would go along way to helping with the world's energy demands or speedup the trip to mars.

With private companies working at getting into space, maybe they'll exploit it.
Just think of the possibilities.


Possibilities of benefits = Great.
Probabilities = weapons.

originally posted by: stormbringer1701

originally posted by: johnwick

originally posted by: TrueBrit
a reply to: John_Rodger_Cornman

In order to do damage using antimatter, one would have to possess enough of it to cancel out the amount of matter that one wishes to remove from the battle space. That would be several trillion times the amount of antimatter ever summoned by the technomages of this or any generation of scientists. Bear in mind, it is only very recently in terms of scientific history, that we have developed methods which might be capable of containing anti matter for prolonged periods. Magnetic vacuum flasks of some sort are not readily available.

In order to weaponise antimatter, this would need to change on a massive scale.

That is incorrect.

13 lbs of plutonium at only a few percent efficiency in turning matter to energy set off in Indianapolis Indiana would end the state of Indiana for all intents and purposes.

A few grams of anti matter which annihilates at 99.999999999999999% efficiency at turning matter to energy would be about the same damage.

So to end say new York, you don't need to create an equal amount of mass in anti matter.

You need only grams of the stuff.

1.8 × 10^14 joules 43 kt TNT equivelent = 1 gram of antimatter + 1 gram of matter

Thats about slightly less than 3 Hiroshima bombs (approx 15 KT yield. )

en.wikipedia.org...

In Hiroshima almost everything within 1.6 kilometres (1.0 mi) of the point directly under the explosion was completely destroyed, except for about 50 heavily reinforced, earthquake-resistant concrete buildings, only the shells of which remained standing. Most were completely gutted, with their windows, doors, sashes, and frames ripped out.[46] The perimeter of severe blast damage approximately followed the 5 psi contour at 1.8 kilometres (1.1 mi).

The Hiroshima firestorm was roughly 3.2 kilometres (2.0 mi) in diameter, corresponding closely to the severe blast damage zone. (See the USSBS[51] map, right.) Blast-damaged buildings provided fuel for the fire. Structural lumber and furniture were splintered and scattered about. Debris-choked roads obstructed fire fighters. Broken gas pipes fueled the fire, and broken water pipes rendered hydrants useless.[50] At Nagasaki, the fires failed to merge into a single firestorm, and the fire-damaged area was only one fourth as great as at Hiroshima, due in part to a southwest wind that pushed the fires away from the city.[52]

Radiation[edit]
Local fallout is dust and ash from a bomb crater, contaminated with radioactive fission products. It falls to earth downwind of the crater and can produce, with radiation alone, a lethal area much larger than that from blast and fire. With an air burst, the fission products rise into the stratosphere, where they dissipate and become part of the global environment. Because Little Boy was an air burst 580 metres (1,900 ft) above the ground, there was no bomb crater and no local radioactive fallout.[55]
However, a burst of intense neutron and gamma radiation came directly from the fireball. Its lethal radius was 1.3 kilometres (0.8 mi),[42] covering about half of the firestorm area. An estimated 30% of immediate fatalities were people who received lethal doses of this direct radiation, but died in the firestorm before their radiation injuries would have become apparent. Over 6,000 people survived the blast and fire, but died of radiation injuries.[54] Among injured survivors, 30% had radiation injuries[56] from which they recovered, but with a lifelong increase in cancer risk.[57] To date, no radiation-related evidence of heritable diseases has been observed among the survivors' children.[58][59][60]

conclusion: while a 1 gram antimatter bomb is not to be trifled with it would not destroy a city. our megopolises are many miles across. especially if you count incorporated borroughs and suburbs. a one gram bomb would just P*** us off.

Redo your math, I said "a few".

When "a few" grams go off scattered across new York......

The city is gone!

One gram is a catastrophic event.

A few one gram annihilations across new York.....

"A few" never not once EVER means one.

You assume...making a ass out of you and me!!!!

Divide up 13 1 gram antimatter annihilations across network.

You get a dead city.


That is at 13 grams!;;;

a reply to: MystikMushroom

Think stormbringer1701 pretty much covered it.
from what i remember reading, back 2 or 3 years ago, it would take quite a while before
we could use more than what is replaced.

you also get a dead city with a single megaton class fission or fusion weapon.

or several lower yield fission or fusion weapons.

or several low relativistic impact weapons. or one mid relativistic impact weapon.

guess which one is most probably within reach of the typical madman? Which most probably does not require the infrastructure of a modern nation state, an army of scientists and technicians, restricted materials or equipment and billions or trillions of dollars to create?

It appears that breakthroughs will make access to relativistic speeds easy and cheap. If they do the world is doomed. not just cities. Mankind in it's present mentality will use it as a weapon almost as soon as it is invented. because it will be available to the whole world every individual nearly 7 billion of us. it will not be made of rare materials or require any of the stuff needed to make a atomic weapon or an antimatter weapon. it can be made anywhere with very common materials with very little in the way of tools.

imagine something with the mass of a super tanker or Massive super cargo ship plunging into the earth at relativistic speed. 44 kilos of inert matter is enough to dwarf the hiroshima bomb's destruction at only 1.3 percent c. those ships weigh 100s of thousands of times that. imagine that and then imagine it going at 70 percent c instead of 1.3 percent.

a reply to: stormbringer1701

So its not even a rods from the gods scenario, it a a rods from every Tom, Dick and Harry that will have access or be able to afford such weaponry? Does not exactly paint a pretty picture regarding our future. Hopefully cooler heads prevail by then.

originally posted by: stormbringer1701
you also get a dead city with a single megaton class fission or fusion weapon.

or several lower yield fission or fusion weapons.

or several low relativistic impact weapons. or one mid relativistic impact weapon.

guess which one is most probably within reach of the typical madman? Which most probably does not require the infrastructure of a modern nation state, an army of scientists and technicians, restricted materials or equipment and billions or trillions of dollars to create?

It appears that breakthroughs will make access to relativistic speeds easy and cheap. If they do the world is doomed. not just cities. Mankind in it's present mentality will use it as a weapon almost as soon as it is invented. because it will be available to the whole world every individual nearly 7 billion of us. it will not be made of rare materials or require any of the stuff needed to make a atomic weapon or an antimatter weapon. it can be made anywhere with very common materials with very little in the way of tools.

imagine something with the mass of a super tanker or Massive super cargo ship plunging into the earth at relativistic speed. 44 kilos of inert matter is enough to dwarf the hiroshima bomb's destruction at only 1.3 percent c. those ships weigh 100s of thousands of times that. imagine that and then imagine it going at 70 percent c instead of 1.3 percent.

That is a great point!!!

If we ever developed any type if FTL drive....

All it would take is one disgruntled ex and a little liquor.....

The interstellar station wagon would end a world like nothing.

Hopefully the ability to move things at relativistic speeds would include some kind of mass cancellation effect, having things running willy nilly into planets at those speeds would be rather unfortunate.

a reply to: John_Rodger_Cornman

Pound for pound the Antimatter weapon would be if harnessed far more powerful by many magnitudes than one thousand time's more powerful, indeed it could be million's of time's more powerful than an equivelant nuclear device.
Now what about a Zero Point weapon should we ever harness the elusive vacuum energy?, perhaps trillion's of time's more powerful.
Turn it to something good and then the science would be worth pursuing or else the monkey brained general's and idiot politicians would be sure to wave there big stick around, to try it just once not knowing how dangerous it would be and to blow the world apart.

a reply to: LABTECH767

Personally i imagine if we ever achieve the capability to produce and store Antimatter in any sufficient quantity or indeed manage to harness the zero-point field we will choose to use such technology to open up our universe and go to the stars.

Technologies such as the above are simply to devastating to use as a weapon, it would be like attempting to destroy a pinhead by way of an atomic bomb! Overkill does not even begin to cover the destructive forces involved. Using antimatter as a weapon takes the policy of mutually assured destruction(M.A.D) to a whole other dimension never mind level.

If we're ever insane enough to make an antimatter bomb, maybe St. Patrick's Cathedral in NYC would be a good place to store it.

www.youtube.com...

originally posted by: andy06shake

Technologies such as the above are simply to devastating to use as a weapon...

Au contraire, mon frere. It's way better! Not only doesn't it leave lasting radioactive residue, you can dial it from mild radiation sickness to OMFG on demand.

It can be used to smack orbital assets, fry planes, kill troops and (more or less) leave structure, you can obliterate cities to the bedrock if you like, it'll even drill really neat holes as big as you'd like into bunkers.

It slices, it dices, it even makes Julienne fries, whatever those are. It's a floor wax, it's a dessert topping. It's the midrange future of escalated combat. You've even seen it used, and missed it.

a reply to: Junkheap

I think the weapon portrait in the above video was of the Salted Nuclear variety(containing Cobalt 60) with some hints as to it having the capability to burn off our entire atmosphere while irradiating the world at the same time. Bit counter productive really considering it would be rather hard to irradiate anything without an atmosphere to spread the radioactive particulate matter.

a reply to: andy06shake

Yeah, I know. I'm just saying in my own twisted way that an antimatter bomb could have the same potential to be a planet-killer like the Alpha Omega bomb seen in the clip.