Does anyone really understand antimatter?

This technological breakthrough seems to be falling under the same smoke screen as nuclear weaponry capabilities. Antimatter is the highest source of energy known to man. It releases energy with 100% effiecency (Nuclear Fusion is 1.5% effeicient). CERN in Geneva, Switzerland is producing small portions on an atomic level, but as they finish their moderrn particle eccelerator under ground in a few years, they will be a ble to produce antimatter at a larger rate.

If you don't know much about it, antimatter cannot be found anywhere in nature, for if it did it would immediately annihalate with everything, including air. It has all the oposites of real matter, matter has negatively charged electrons, antimatter has positively charged, positrons. Antimatter can be contained inside a magnetic field.

My point is, this weapon, with a basketball sized sphere of antimatter could destroy the entire Rhode Island. This weapon is the beginning of the end, yet it is ignored by the masses. Inevitabilities usaully are!

At the moment there is no chance at all of creating a pure antimatter weapon. When CERN talk about being able to produce antimatter at a larger rate they are still talking about miniscule amounts, around a billionth of a gram (although I could be wrong on the exact amount ).

Another problem is storage, they have to be held in position in a very high quality vacuum using magnetic fields to prevent them annihilating with stray matter that could get in.

Finally there's the cost, currently estimated at about $25 billion per gram, which would yield about the same as 43 kilotons of TNT.

This link explains a lot of it:

Antimatter Weapons

One thing I do find interesting though is the idea to use an antimatter explosion to trigger a hydrogen bomb. As far as I understand it, at the moment a fission bomb is used to heat and compress the fusion fuel to a critical mass when fusion occurs. If you replace the fission part with an antimatter explosion, you remove fallout from the equation and you'd be able to build smaller bombs that could realistically be used in battle.

The masses ignore antimatter because it doesn't exist.

Originally posted by nappyhead
The masses ignore antimatter because it doesn't exist.

You simply willed it out of existance? Or are you willing to back up that statement with some info or evidence? I would be interested to hear a counter-opinion on it.

Originally posted by whita

Originally posted by nappyhead
The masses ignore antimatter because it doesn't exist.

You simply willed it out of existance? Or are you willing to back up that statement with some info or evidence? I would be interested to hear a counter-opinion on it.

OOOh... I love debates

I shouldn't say it doesn't exist, but that it is improbable. There is not a scrap of actual evidence to prove that it does exist. You can't find anything to say there is even a hint-chance that it does exist.

The basic reason antimatter is even considered is this: scientists across the board have calculated that the Universe is missing mass. This is called the "Missing Mass Question." All of the studies on this show that the universe can't hold itself together as it does now with out this "missing mass." So the scientists invented this thing called "antimatter" to explain the problem away.

Me, being an avid creationist, have no problem with this. God holds the universe together.

This is just my little two cents.

Originally posted by nappyhead
There is not a scrap of actual evidence to prove that it does exist. You can't find anything to say there is even a hint-chance that it does exist.

Scientists have created it and observed annihilation. How much evidence do you need?

The basic reason antimatter is even considered is this: scientists across the board have calculated that the Universe is missing mass. This is called the "Missing Mass Question." All of the studies on this show that the universe can't hold itself together as it does now with out this "missing mass." So the scientists invented this thing called "antimatter" to explain the problem away.

No, you're confusing antimatter with dark matter.

Dark Matter

Originally posted by AnAbsoluteCreation
Does anyone really understand antimatter?

- Think of it as being like matter but with the opposite qualites.



(sorry, couldn't resist.)

Originally posted by Chris McGee
One thing I do find interesting though is the idea to use an antimatter explosion to trigger a hydrogen bomb. As far as I understand it, at the moment a fission bomb is used to heat and compress the fusion fuel to a critical mass when fusion occurs. If you replace the fission part with an antimatter explosion, you remove fallout from the equation and you'd be able to build smaller bombs that could realistically be used in battle.

The fusion reaction still creates neutrons that are "irradiating" everything around. So you will not have plutonium or uranium falout, but the dust and sands would still be highly radioactive. And the pics of kids with cancer and mutations are still not godd for public opinion...

Originally posted by Chris McGee

Originally posted by nappyhead

No, you're confusing antimatter with dark matter.

Yeah I agree, from what I have read I think you are referrring to Dark Matter, nappyhead, which is still (?) theoretical.

Originally posted by longbow
The fusion reaction still creates neutrons that are "irradiating" everything around. So you will not have plutonium or uranium falout, but the dust and sands would still be highly radioactive. And the pics of kids with cancer and mutations are still not godd for public opinion...

As far as I understand it, there is a large difference between neutron radiation and the usually talked about electromagnetic radiation. Neutrons are not inherently radioactive and the damage they cause is primarily due to collisions with atomic nuclei.

A neutron burst wouldn't make anything radioactive, the danger only comes in the initial release. The cancer causing radiation (gamma rays and the like) is produced as a flash (prompt radiation) and through fallout (residual radiation). The prompt radiation lasts a very short time (

Know little or nothing about Antimatter.. but heard it's the power of power to be reconed with when it collides with matter. Also heard that the usual science can only capture 1-1000 of a gram per year under known technology. As for unknown technology (black budget) who knows, except Lazar..

Dallas

I hate to revive a dead thread, but has anyone played Front Mission 3? Spoilers.

There is a bomb in it, that is more powerful then a nuke, but has no residual radiation. So I assume that it was anti matter? Its just crazy that they put this kinda hidden info in games.

reply to post by nappyhead

The masses ignore antimatter because it doesn't exist.

Hi nappy,

If you go in and get a PET Scan or Positron Emission Tomography to detect a tumor you will be injected with a chemical containing Positrons. Positrons are antimatter, specifically the electrons equivalence in antimatter. As the positrons begin to move in the tissues they inevitably encounter their counterpart, an electron, and thereby emit a pair of Gamma rays which are detected and mapped by a scanner.

Antimatter exists but it is a rare commodity for us!




This antimatter thread will get you up to speed....

Originally posted by Chris McGee

Originally posted by longbow
The fusion reaction still creates neutrons that are "irradiating" everything around. So you will not have plutonium or uranium falout, but the dust and sands would still be highly radioactive. And the pics of kids with cancer and mutations are still not godd for public opinion...

As far as I understand it, there is a large difference between neutron radiation and the usually talked about electromagnetic radiation. Neutrons are not inherently radioactive and the damage they cause is primarily due to collisions with atomic nuclei.

A neutron burst wouldn't make anything radioactive, the danger only comes in the initial release. The cancer causing radiation (gamma rays and the like) is produced as a flash (prompt radiation) and through fallout (residual radiation). The prompt radiation lasts a very short time (

Too bad America cancelled the SSC or we might have been able to find a way to increase the production of antimatter....to a slightly larger but still impossibly small amount.

Originally posted by The one?
Too bad America cancelled the SSC or we might have been able to find a way to increase the production of antimatter....to a slightly larger but still impossibly small amount.

Are you sure it was cancelled? Maybe it just went 'black'. Like all the other critically important 'failed projects'.

Antimatter is the same thing as ordinary matter, except traveling backwards in time.

Ask Mr. Feynman.

Originally posted by lpbman
Antimatter is the same thing as ordinary matter, except traveling backwards in time.

Ask Mr. Feynman.

I haven't really ever heard that. Antimatter can reside in the same realms of space-time matter can the only difference is that the properties of the actual atoms are all opposite to those of regular matter.

God I love physics class.

Anyways, Antimatter does not currently hold any merit for weapons because it is so hard to manufacture...in fact the process in which it is manufactured really involves chance more than anything; it is created in an accelerator and once in a while a piece of matter knocked off a target happens to be antimatter. While you can call it "production" of antimatter" what it really is is regular particle acceleration with the purpose of capturing any stray antimatter atoms that happen to fly off.

I heard that if all the antimatter ever produced on earth was gathered and used for energy there would be enough power to light a lightbulb for a few minutes. Not that much, eh?

That of course is with current technology.

The upside to antimatter is that it is so incredibly powerful that a basketball-sized sphere of it would most certainly do a helluva lot more than destroy rhode island were talking about obliterating it and vaporizing the ocean around it as well as blasting a hole deep enough to reach the mantle.

Remember that the best, most efficient nuclear weapons only convert 7% of their mass into usable energy, and the rest becomes radiation and other crap. On the other hand, antimatter converts 100% of its mass into energy without any biproducts.

Thus we have clean bombs that happen to be significantly smaller and more powerful than any other weapon ever imagined.

But IMHO antimatter will not be used for bombs, it will be used for propulsion. A spacecraft engine using antimatter would have to take very little and would still reach speeds well faster than any chemical propulsion available.

reply to post by BlackWidow23


Hi Black,

The problem with antimatter is that if we had a chunk of it, how could we contain it? It would react with any of our non antimatter containers. And where do you find a piece of it? On an antimatter star or galaxy (that has been postulated to exist)? But if we went there to harvest a piece we would probably be vaporized in the unhappy process.

And producing a microparticle of it at a time in a random process in a super collider is not cost effective no matte how you figure!

BTW, any production of energy involving antimatter is going to produce a tremendous amount of short wave, high energy gamma rays. Very deadly! That is how we search for antimatter in the heavens. Look for the telltale production of gamma rays, the result of collisions with matter.

reply to post by plumranch


Well I can tell you how to contain it, you do it in a complete, perfect vacuum and suspend the antimatter in powerful magnetic fields. Than to use it, bombard it with a stream of hydrogen atoms and watch as you obtain enough energy to get to pluto and back in two months.

[edit on 31-3-2008 by BlackWidow23]