USAF wants AntiMatter Weapons

[yasin_khan]

No way. "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 San Francisco Chronicle reports.

Beyond the pointed-ear cool factor, antimatter would make a powerful weapon -- at least in theory. "If electrons or protons collide with their antimatter counterparts, they annihilate each other. In so doing, they unleash more energy than any other known energy source, even thermonuclear bombs," the Chron explains.


The energy from colliding positrons and antielectrons "is 10 billion times ... that of high explosive," Kenneth Edwards, director of the "revolutionary munitions" team at the Munitions Directorate at Eglin Air Force Base, noted in an address to the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC). Moreover, 1 gram of antimatter, about 1/25th of an ounce, would equal "23 space shuttle fuel tanks of energy." Thus "positron energy conversion," as he called it, would be a "revolutionary energy source" of interest to those who wage war.

It almost defies belief, the amount of explosive force available in a speck of antimatter -- even a speck that is too small to see. For example: One millionth of a gram of positrons contain as much energy as 37.8 kilograms (83 pounds) of TNT, according to Edwards' March speech. A simple calculation, then, shows that about 50-millionths of a gram could generate a blast equal to the explosion (roughly 4,000 pounds of TNT, according to the FBI) at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

Unlike regular nuclear bombs, positron bombs wouldn't eject plumes of radioactive debris. When large numbers of positrons and antielectrons collide, the primary product is an invisible but extremely dangerous burst of gamma radiation. Thus, in principle, a positron bomb could be a step toward one of the military's dreams from the early Cold War: a so-called "clean" superbomb that could kill large numbers of soldiers without ejecting radioactive contaminants over the countryside.

A copy of Edwards' speech on NIAC's Web site emphasizes this advantage of positron weapons in bright red letters: "No Nuclear Residue."


It's wet-the-bed scary, sure. But don't get out the rubber sheets, yet. Right now, only about 84 billionths of a gram of antiprotons are made worldwide, according to Los Alamos physicist Steve Howe, who's studied antimatter-driven trips to Alpha Centauri for NIAC.

"With present techniques, the price tag for 100-billionths of a gram of antimatter would be $6 billion," according to the Chron.


http://64.207.156.228/

 

[neel24neo]

its true that matter and anti-matter annihilate eachother when both come in contact.then the question arises where will they store the positrons?certainly not in vicinity of any matter...if it is a beam of positrons that is intended to be the weapon,what about the air through which it has to travel?
how can they call the bomb,if any,clean when it produces gamma ray bursts.gamma rays are known mutagens.they could lead to cancer and other abnormalities in all living organisms.

 

[adsH]

cern of Europe is way ahead the Americans. the US is probably trying to catch up with us !! we have other reasons for this technology like Unlimited source of cheap energy!!! i think were spose to have our first Antimatter particle in a Trap by 2008

 

[gf0012-aust]

adsH,. the world largest accelerometer is currently being built in australia. It will be bigger than the ring used by CERN. Due to be completed within 12 months I think.

 

[highsea]

GF, when Congress canceled the SSC project in Texas, the physics community called it "the revenge of the "C" students".

It was a shame, an entire generation of physics students had their experiment jerked out from under their feet. The politicians couldn't understand it, and the geeks couldn't explain it to them, the pols just didn't have the math. Fermi and SLAC were already fully staffed, and job openings only come up when someone dies. Lol, Expect a bunch of job applications from Yanks when you guys get your accelerator finished! Hahaha, watch out, the US is going to invade Australia. :

adsH, of course you know it's not a race. CERN is an International effort, just like Fermi and SLAC. Fortunately the physics community is good at ignoring borders, and everyone shares their findings. These experiments are very expensive, and it's not practical for every country to duplicate everyone else's efforts. So CERN works on one problem, Fermi works on another, SLAC works on yet another, etc., with everyone sharing a common objective.

But CERN gave us the Web, so thanks Switzerland! :cheers

These aren't weapons labs, they're pure physics labs. They're about studying the fundamental questions of the universe. Physicists have been playing with anti-matter for 30 years. The article in the OP is just a dorky headline. Realistically, we can look for fusion power to precede anti-matter power by at least a century or two, and we're probably 50 years away from practical fusion power. Anti-matter torpedoes and the like will remain the realm of science fiction for some time to come.

 

[adsH]

Physicists have been playing with anti-matter for 30 years . The article in the OP is just a dorky headline.

i just wanted to correct the assertions here its "toying with the Idea of Anti Matter"
Cern would be the first to have an actual Anti matter in a trap. as GF mentioned 12 months away from completions. and then the Ausies would out do us in producing something bigger!! the best thing is that every one is working together!!

so from my recollection its the Iridium that the particle is smashed onn to produce an anti matter. the velocity at impact is 10 time of the speed of light. am i wrong here correct me i would love to learn more!!

 

[highsea]

i just wanted to correct the assertions here its "toying with the Idea of Anti Matter"

Actually, anti-matter was first theorized by Paul Dirac in 1928. He was trying to reconcile some problems between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. It was first observed in experiment by Carl Anderson in 1932 (in the form of a positron). Both men won the Nobel Prize for the discovery. In 1936 Anderson discovered the muon pair (positive and negative). So Anderson is credited with the experimental discovery of antimatter. In the process he added 3 new particles to physics.

Ever since, physicists have been fascinated by the stuff. In 1955 the anti-proton was first observed in an accelerator at Berkely. Over the years, better and better detection methods were developed, higher energy colliders were built, and new antiparticles were discovered. Today we understand that every particle has an antiparticle. There are 6 quark/antiquark pairs, and 6 lepton/antilepton pairs that makeup all matter and antimatter in the universe.

One of the big problems has been how to explain why nature prefers matter over antimatter. This is known as the Charged Parity Violation. In 1964, scientists at Fermilab first observed this in the Tevatron accelerator. It's one of the biggest mysteries in physics, and maybe the Australian collider can generate high enough energies to shed some light on the subject. I really can't say, because I don't know what experiments are planned.

Anyway, as you can see, we have been "playing" with antimatter for a very long time. But you are correct, we haven't "bottled" any yet.

Cern would be the first to have an actual Anti matter in a trap. as GF mentioned 12 months away from completions. and then the Ausies would out do us in producing something bigger!! the best thing is that every one is working together!!

Like I was saying, physicists have been creating antimatter in accelerators for a long time. Preventing the particles from annihalating themselves in a very short time would be a good trick. You would have to bottle them up in a vaccuum in a very strong magnetic field to prevent them from interacting with other matter. So if CERN can accomplish this, it would be an impressive feat.

so from my recollection its the Iridium that the particle is smashed onn to produce an anti matter. the velocity at impact is 10 time of the speed of light. am i wrong here correct me i would love to learn more!!

To generate antiparticles, you slam a charged particle into a target (in you example it is iridium) and use a magnetic field to seperate the pairs that are created by the collision. But no particle that has mass can reach the speed of light, as that would mean infinite mass. (That particle would outweigh the universe!) Even massless particles like the neutrino or photon can only operate at light speed. There is nothing in the universe that can travel faster than the speed of light (except maybe the gossip of some women). To do so would mean the particle (or perhaps the universe!) would cease to exist.

In accelerators, we can bring charged particles very close, but not all the way to C. And the bigger the accelerator, the closer we can get. That's why the diameter of the ring is a limiting factor on the energy levels that can be reached. To generate higher energies, we can also accelerate heavier particles. Each experiment is designed to observe a specific interaction, so super high energies are not always needed. The electron-positron pair for example are very light particles, so they can be observed at relatively low energies.

Every new collider built is aimed at a specific set of experiments. Basically, the experiments are proposed, and the collider is designed to meet those requirements. For example, the Large Hadron Collider under construction at CERN is designed to conduct 5 specific experiments, known as ALICE, ATLAS, CMS, TOTEM, and LHC-B. For details you can go the their web page.

http://lhc-new-homepage.web.cern.ch/lhc-new-homepage/

-CM

 

[adsH]

impressive insight i didn't even get this much stuff of the New-scientist Mag i read !! highsea are you a Physicist !!

 

[highsea]

highsea are you a Physicist !!

Just a hobby. Actually I was a chemistry major in college. Lol, but chemistry drags you into physics, and then physics drags you into cosmology. The next thing you know you're trying to figure out Unified Field Theories and Superstrings, and wondering where you went wrong.

If I'd have known, I would have taken up philosophy :

Hahaha. It's okay, when my head starts hurting I just go fishing.

 

[redsoulja]

i dont think we will have an antimatterbomb for another man y centuries (my guess)
but we will probably have cheap enerywithin a centry, but the problem i have with antimatteris if the big bangtheory is right, an equal amount myst have existed in the inital "spark" that created the universe, but then all matter and antimatter would have annihialted eachother, some theorists claim that matter is in someway "heavier" than antimatter in terms of residue after annihilation, now that makesno sense to me
can some1 clarify this?

 

[highsea]

but the problem i have with antimatteris if the big bangtheory is right, an equal amount myst have existed in the inital "spark" that created the universe, but then all matter and antimatter would have annihialted eachother, some theorists claim that matter is in someway "heavier" than antimatter in terms of residue after annihilation, now that makesno sense to me can some1 clarify this?

The problem you refer to is the Charge Parity Violation that I touched on previously. i.e., Why does nature seem to favor matter over antimatter? This is one of the problems that the Large Hadron Collider is designed to examine. So rather than get into a long and complicated explanation which you won't understand, I will direct you to our friends at CERN for some insight to the problem.

http://lhcb-public.web.cern.ch/lhcb-public/html/introduction.htm

Study this until it makes sense to you. It won't give you the answer, but it may help you to understand the question.

 

[ashoaib]

Uff a lot of science..............
Everything is going above my head.

 

[neel24neo]

far from making anti-matter bombs,the CERN fermilab and others are more concerned about a quantum theory of gravity,and through it a unified field theory,i guess.

 

[EnigmaNZ]

Actually positrons have been trapped some time ago, 30 October 1995

ANTIMATTER TRAP. Theodor Hansch and his colleagues at the Max Planck Institute and the University of Munich in Germany have for the first time trapped simultaneously electrons and positively charged ions in the same small region of space. The researchers consider this to be "an important step towards the synthesis of antihydrogen." Making antihydrogen---consisting of a positron in orbit around an antiproton---would allow scientists to test the laws of physics all over again, this time with antimatter. The hybrid Munich apparatus consists of a Penning trap (a homogeneous static magnetic field and a static electric quadrupole field) for confining the ions and a Paul trap (the static electric quadrupole plus an oscillating electric quadrupole field) for confining the electrons. As practice for making antihydrogen, the German physicists intend to stimulate the generation of ordinary hydrogen from electrons and protons using a carbon dioxide laser. (J. Walz et al., 30 October 1995, Physical Review Letters; contact [email protected])
http://www.aip.org/pnu/1995/split/pnu243-2.htm

As to what a Penning trap is?
http://www.aip.org/png/html/penning.htm

Antimatter induced fission
http://www.engr.psu.edu/antimatter/introduction2.html

An article for the layperson about antimatter
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast29may_1m.htm

Funny how many questions you see in the forums that can be answered by using Google, damm good search engine, for those that may not have heard of it
http://www.google.com

 

[EnigmaNZ]

Got this from a NASA site

"You are correct in that we do believe that equal amounts of matter and anti-matter were created in the big bang. However today we see no strong evidence for anti-stars or anti-galaxies. When matter and anti-matter meet they turn into energy and we know what range that energy this energy should be seen. Although some anti-matter events are seen, they are not enough to assume that half the cosmos is anti-matter. The amount of anti-matter observed can be explained by processes that have occurred since the big bang.
So where is the anti-matter? There is no reason to think that they could have/would have separated at the time of the Big Bang, like you suggested. One theory states that anti-matter decays slightly faster than matter. Before the matter and anti-matter had a chance to recombine, some of the anti-matter decayed. So when they recombined, there was some matter left over which formed our universe."
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/980305a.html

Whats really amazing is that little bit left over, is the billions of galaxies and the greater mass of dark matter thats thought to exist, truly amazing.
Just a few little facts, if I remember correctly.
Annihilate 1/2 Kg of antimatter along with 1/2 Kg of matter, and you get a 20 Gigaton bang, if it is 100% efficient which in real life it won't be. According to Einstein's mass-energy relationship (E = mc2) thats a yield of 9 x 10^16 joules.

 

[umair]

Just a hobby. Actually I was a chemistry major in college. Lol, but chemistry drags you into physics, and then physics drags you into cosmology. The next thing you know you're trying to figure out Unified Field Theories and Superstrings, and wondering where you went wrong.

If I'd have known, I would have taken up philosophy :

Hahaha. It's okay, when my head starts hurting I just go fishing.

Man am I glad that I'm majoring in finance and economics
Though sometimes they too can make one wonder where one went wrong (In my case, "why did I ever choose these stupid subjects when I was brilliant in sciences!)

 

[aaaditya]

philosophy drags you into psychology and psychology tends to make you loony.well each subject has its drawbacks .but in this case i beleive nuclear sciences also play a part.

 

[corsair7772]

Theres a lot of stuff about this anti matter theory in that Dan Brown book Angels and Demons in which scientists manage to bottle anti matter like hi sea said. Aparently its stolen and used as a bomb.Im not exactly a Physicist but its not hard to predict its future in the real world eh? Esp if the USAF is interested now.

Oh and the star trek fans must remmeber that anti matter is supposed to power ships in that TV series.