Antimatter weaponry

Hey today I was thinking about anti-matter. Our currect understanding is that for every element there is the same element with an opposite charge (atleast I believe) So couldn't you do this, build an fission bomb out of the antimatter of Uranium or plutonium, then wouldn't it not only have the nuclear reaction, but when all of that stuff gets into contact with normal matter have another reaction?

The effect would be a very large explosion, with the anti-matter annihliating itself with the closest normal matter.

Also, it would take a long time to make an adequat amount.

I don't believe that anti-matter comes in elemetal form (uranium or plutonium). Instead it is the very basic particles of all matter that have a corresponding opposite. The proton's counterpart is the anti-proton, and the electron's counterpart is called a positron. You are correct about them having an opposite charge of the original particles. Also, anti-matter is in very short supply. We wouldn't have access to enough of it to make much of a weapon.

Antimatter has tremendous energy potential, if it could ever be harnessed. A solar flare in July 2002 created about a pound of antimatter, or half a kilo, according to new NASA-led research. That's enough to power the United States for two days.

Laboratory particle accelerators can produce high-energy antimatter particles, too, but only in tiny quantities. Something on the order of a billionth of a gram or less is produced every year.

www.space.com...

They are working on anti mater H-bombs. By using a small amount of anti mater to triger a thermonukular bomb it would still do masive damage with very very very little fall out. IE a very clean nuke....... If the USA is able to do this then it will open a hole new arms race. Making it posible to carpet bomb a hole country and not worry about the after effects besides the burning of everything...

shadarlocoth,
Do you have a link for that?
To my knowledge the amount of power and the tech needed in which to create and hold anti-matter for any time longer than a few microseconds is enormous.
As far as technology goes today, we are no where near being able to create a bomb of any kind using anti-matter.

looking for the link it was not directly on use as a weapon they where planning to use the anti mater trap to bombard a pelit of H3 and H2 with a stream of antimatter being released from the trap. The antimatter would inisiate the fusion prosses. But if you really think about it it would not be that hard to put antimatter trap at the center of a bomb with H2 and H3 surounding it with a convential shaped charge around H2/H3 chamber and trap. when the charge goes off in a cobalt shell containing and configing the blast forceing the H3 and H2 implode on the anti mater trap as the trap is crushed by millions of pounds of force the H3 and H2 go streaming in and contact the antimatter realeasing massive amounts of energy and because all the H2 and H3 are being smashed into the center the can't excape and are heated just like in a normal thermo Nuke.... Ie A nuke with no fall out. You can also look up antimatter fusion drive systems also cover the basic princilbe.... If I can find the link I will post it for you...

Cameo,
there is an anti-matter equivilewnt for every element.

Kenshiro,
I believe the place in sweden keeps a few anti-hydrogens in a magnetic storage.

Now I am scare, antimatter H-BOMB, that is terrible. The reason why cold war never turn into 'heat' war is because of the nuclear fall-out. The nuclear fall-out make government think twice before act as the nuclear fall-out will affect them when the wind blow the radiation to their soil. With such a weapons of having little fall-out. Chances are weapons will be use more often.

We wouldn't need to build it out of that type of antimatter for it to be a powerful weapon. Antimatter in its self is far, far more powerful than nuclear weapons. EXTREMELY hard to weaponize because of the need to be in a vacuum all the time.

this is really weird I just read this topic and forgot that it was mine because I posted it a while ago, I answered my own question,

There really is no point in making an anti-matter nuke, and if anything it might make it less powerful.

A nuclear reaction is actually not very efficient method of producing energy. In our best fusion weapons less than 2% of the mass is converted into energy.

Compare this to the efficiency of a super massive black hole where about 74% of matter is converted to energy. That doesn't sound that awesome but let me put it in perspective, throwing a marshmallow into a black hole would produce the same amount of energy as our earlier Fission nuclear weapons like the ones dropped on Japan.

Now an antimatter reaction, to our best knowledge, is a perfect conversion of mass into energy 100%. Probably a few mg of antimatter would produce the same energy as a atomic weapon!

back to the question, if you made an antimatter nuke (assuming laws work the same for antimatter) Which would be a ridiculous amount of antimatter anyways probably enough to blow up a few solar systems, and "detonated it" you would get that 2% energy conversion but then as soon as the rest of the antimatter particles hit regular matter the other 98% of it would annihilate as well. So it really doesn't do you any good to build an antimatter nuke which is probably hard as hell.

All you need is a few grams of antimatter of whatever, anti-carbon and throw it in the air then bam!.

I wouldn't lose too much sleep worrying about antimatter weapons.

The biggest limiting factor in the production of antimatter is the availability of antiprotons. Recent data released by CERN states that when fully operational their facilities are capable of producing 107 antiprotons per second. Assuming an optimal conversion of antiprotons to antihydrogen (which is far from true) it would take two billion years (give or take a few thousand) to produce 1 gram of antihydrogen.

Another limiting factor to antimatter production is storage. As stated above there is no known way to effectively store antihydrogen. The ATHENA project has managed to keep antihydrogen atoms from annihilation for tens of seconds - just enough time to briefly study their behaviour.

en.wikipedia.org...

It took 30 years to make 5 particles of Anti-matter by colliding Anti-protons and protons together. Anti-matter is it's own material, but there is an ANTI to everything out there.

Anti-matter hydrogen bombs? No, I think before we start making weapons with Anti-Matter we will be employing the Anti-matter(what little we can make) to advance the human race towards a prosperous society.

Shattered OUT...

Originally posted by El Tiante
I wouldn't lose too much sleep worrying about antimatter weapons.

The biggest limiting factor in the production of antimatter is the availability of antiprotons. Recent data released by CERN states that when fully operational their facilities are capable of producing 107 antiprotons per second. Assuming an optimal conversion of antiprotons to antihydrogen (which is far from true) it would take two billion years (give or take a few thousand) to produce 1 gram of antihydrogen.

Another limiting factor to antimatter production is storage. As stated above there is no known way to effectively store antihydrogen. The ATHENA project has managed to keep antihydrogen atoms from annihilation for tens of seconds - just enough time to briefly study their behaviour.

en.wikipedia.org...

Yeah im not saying its practical especially given current technology but in time who knows. Also something to think about our best estimates of the day reveal that the universe is only 4% matter, protons, nuetrons, electrons. Theres alot of weird stuff out there.

The air force is working on antimatter weaponry:

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

But they're still a long way off:

Why so far off? One reason is that at present, there's no fast way to mass produce large amounts of antimatter from particle accelerators. With present techniques, the price tag for 100-billionths of a gram of antimatter would be $6 billion, according to an estimate by scientists at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and elsewhere, who hope to launch antimatter-fueled spaceships.

Another problem is the terribly unruly behavior of positrons whenever physicists try to corral them into a special container. Inside these containers, known as Penning traps, magnetic fields prevent the antiparticles from contacting the material wall of the container -- lest they annihilate on contact. Unfortunately, because like-charged particles repel each other, the positrons push each other apart and quickly squirt out of the trap.

I think an anti-matter weapon is a waste of a valuable research....imagine having such a powerful fuel source? Might be possible to generate enrgy required to fly to stars etc.

Physics is our hope, or our destruction......

From my understanding, an antimatter reaction would be far, far, far from "clean". The output of such a high-energy reaction would not be heat and fire like that of a conventional or nuclear detonation. It would be a staggering emission of pure gamma radiation, cooking everything in its radius. I'm uncertain there would be much of an "explosion" at all.

Regardless, it is pointless to worry about such a weapon. There is no nation on earth that could ever afford to produce one. At present, antimatter costs $62.5 trillion per gram, and one gram of antimatter holds (after a quick google search) the energy equivalent of a 42.9 kiloton warhead. Hardly impressive.

Not a good idea in my opinion, the whole thing is being considered by the Air Force. Already it has potential good uses, soon that will change given results.

The experiments, which are slated for the year 2000, will attempt to measure the energy produced when antimatter and matter combine.

www.af.mil...

Or the Navy even, they seem to have found potential "factories".

The nature of the furious activity producing the hot antimatter-filled fountain is unclear, but could be related to prolific star formation taking place near the large black hole at our galaxy's center. Other possibilities include winds from overweight stars or black hole at our galaxy's center. Other possibilities include winds from overweight stars or black hole antimatter factories.

www.nrl.navy.mil...

That would not be good if in the wrong hands. Can any one imagine extreamists with a space program. One that is farming space to boot, anti matter suicide bombers!

The practical use is not going to happen, in these times. It costs way too much for what is measured in micrograms. Conventionally, still not cost effective to be useful, there is much more that happens to be practical.

Originally posted by ADVISOR
That would not be good if in the wrong hands. Can any one imagine extreamists with a space program. One that is farming space to boot, anti matter suicide bombers!

Well that was a purely inflammatory statement built from pure speculation, now wasn't it?