Anti-matter R&D Funding [Draft]

[The Putsie Federation]

Fellow nations,

The development of anti-matter has reached a new stage where we must decide if it is safe to allow public and private institutions to develop anto&-matter for whatever purposes.

Anti-matter is extremely expensive, but unchecked, a terrorist organization could get their hands on even a teaspoon of anti-matter and have the capability to wipe cities completely off the map.

This proposal will:

Limits anti-matter R&D funding from the government, and completely corp ds funding of private institutions. This to guarantee the safety of anti-matter production.

Limits the storage quantity of anti-matter to one miligram, and can only be stored on highly secured government safes. This is to ensure that anti-matter doesn't end up falling into the wrong hands.

As a member of the WA, a nation must comply to saftey inspections by an international team, and anti-matter production facilities documented into the WA archives.

[Tinfect]

"The Imperium utilizes Antimatter in a number of Military Applications, and will not support any attempt to restrict our capability to do so. Especially not one so simplistic as this."

[Grays Harbor]

Category? Strength? A reason for plucking artificial numbers out of thin air? A reason this is an international issue?

[Nouvelle o France]

Fellow nations,

The development of anti-matter has reached a new stage where we must decide if it is safe to allow public and private institutions to develop anto&-matter for whatever purposes.

Anti-matter is extremely expensive, but unchecked, a terrorist organization could get their hands on even a teaspoon of anti-matter and have the capability to wipe cities completely off the map.

This proposal will:

Limits anti-matter R&D funding from the government, and completely corp ds funding of private institutions. This to guarantee the safety of anti-matter production.

Limits the storage quantity of anti-matter to one miligram, and can only be stored on highly secured government safes. This is to ensure that anti-matter doesn't end up falling into the wrong hands.

As a member of the WA, a nation must comply to saftey inspections by an international team, and anti-matter production facilities documented into the WA archives.

We fail to see how this concern the assembly as the vaaaaaaast majority of its member states have no idea what anti-matter even is, let alone capable of producing it. Rejected

[Ferret Civilization]

Anti-matter is extremely expensive, but unchecked, a terrorist organization could get their hands on even a teaspoon of anti-matter and have the capability to wipe cities completely off the map.

"Nuclear weapons can do the same thing, as well as many natural disasters. Just because it's in a smaller quantity doesn't mean that it should be not touched just because it is possibly dangerous. While many nations do not use, or even have access to it, doesn't mean that the few that do should be restricted. This would cut off so many scientific and economical pursuits. As well as limit the military for those nations that want to go there with it too. Just because it has bad potential doesn't mean that it can't be used for good too. Terrorist can use anything to cause harm, banning and removing any of those things will not stop terrorism, and it only limits the good intentions of the nations using it."

[Excidium Planetis]

Fellow nations,
This proposal will:

Limits anti-matter R&D funding from the government, and completely corp ds funding of private institutions. This to guarantee the safety of anti-matter production.

Limits the storage quantity of anti-matter to one miligram, and can only be stored on highly secured government safes. This is to ensure that anti-matter doesn't end up falling into the wrong hands.

As a member of the WA, a nation must comply to saftey inspections by an international team, and anti-matter production facilities documented into the WA archives.

"Aside from the fact that there are numerous typos and grammatical errors which interfere with reading this proposal, I see a number of problems." states Ambassador Schultz, who as someone with a number of aids from the Excidian military is quite knowledgeable about weaponized antimatter.

"First of all, do you any idea how little destructive power one milligram of antimatter has? A whole gram fired from our particle accelerators delivers only 22 Megatons TNT equivalent. A milligram would provide only 1000th of the energy, or only 22 kilotons [for reference, this is only a little over double the Hiroshima bomb, which as nukes go is extremely weak, with the Tsar Bomba having a 50 Megaton yield]. To limit our offensive capabilities as such would be awful.

"Furthermore, Excidian companies sell antimatter all the time to foreign nations. You can buy a gram for only NS$ 10 billion right now. Not like it would ruin our economy, but forbidding its sale would piss some people off.

"No. Regulation is fine, but not this."

[Imperium Anglorum]

OOC: Echoing the advice given to someone who wrote a proposal dealing with planet busters, most nations of the World Assembly don't view future-technology roleplay and its implications as entirely relevant to a World Assembly which is based on the United Nations. That's the framing device, so most of the time, those nations will also reject proposals dealing with far-future technologies like antimatter.

Currently, the amount of antimatter ever produced by humans, if all of it still existed and were annihilated at the same time, would produce about the energy necessary to power a lightbulb for one second (I think Neil DeGrasse Tyson said this in a BigThink podcast or something). Considering that is barely any energy, it really isn't very relevant and not really worthwhile to regulate.

[Caracasus]

Ambassador, Caracasus has conducted some experiments into Antimatter as part of our research into terrible and powerful weapons to strike fear into the hearts of our enemies potential energy sources. We feel that legislating funding for R&D and specifying storage of antimatter and restrictions could hamper ongoing research. Perhaps we should discover more about this potential doomsday weapon energy source before we decide to legislate it to death?

[Wrapper]

Antimatter? No, no, that's, er, that's a waste of time and resources. Zero point energy, much more practical for everyday purposes, of course. That should be your focus... when you're advanced enough technologically to understand it.

[Caracasus]

Antimatter? No, no, that's, er, that's a waste of time and resources. Zero point energy, much more practical for everyday purposes, of course. That should be your focus... when you're advanced enough technologically to understand it.

Would those be the bizarrely shaped crystal things we found on an archaeological dig?

[Wrapper]

Antimatter? No, no, that's, er, that's a waste of time and resources. Zero point energy, much more practical for everyday purposes, of course. That should be your focus... when you're advanced enough technologically to understand it.

Would those be the bizarrely shaped crystal things we found on an archaeological dig?

(Ahume nods, but Ari nudges him, so Ahume shakes his head.)

We have no idea what you're talking about. Er, why don't you come have a drink with us? This debate has made us... thirsty.

[Caracasus]

Would those be the bizarrely shaped crystal things we found on an archaeological dig?

(Ahume nods, but Ari nudges him, so Ahume shakes his head.)

We have no idea what you're talking about. Er, why don't you come have a drink with us? This debate has made us... thirsty.

Give it a few hours ambassador.... should our resolution pass we have stolen diverted some funds from the WA delegation towards "entertainment and sundries"....

[The Sheika]

*gives an acknowledging nod to the mention of zero point energy, mentally filing it for later. For now, there is a proposal to address*

"It's good to see that you are concerned about anti-matter and its potential use for weaponry. However, for some nations of this Assembly it is also a power source. For other nations, anti-matter is of little concern; such nations that either have no idea what anti-matter is or those who have surpassed and outgrown its use. For now, I think that creating any sort of legislation to regulate anti-matter may not be a wise idea."

[Tzorsland]

TZORSLAND

“Knowledge and Thoroughness”

Members of the World Assembly,

I was informed by the delegates of my World Assembly Puppet Nation (The Tzorsland Puppet Federation is a strong union of several very important nations) of this resolution which is up for proposal. As a nation with a population of population of 24.887 billion located in The Pleiades, I suppose it is only right and proper for me to come to address the technical annoyances of the text up for discussion.

I would, first and foremost, remind the delegates of a certain person who came up with the equation E=MC² (which only applies in normal space). Due to complex reasons (partly due to something known as the grand arrow of time which points forwards) there is not a lot of antimatter in the universe. Any antimatter has to be especially created from energy.

The conversion of antimatter (typically positrons) with matter (typically electrons) is not as messy as is the case with complex nuclear reactions such as fission and fusion which release a number of highly charged subparticles. In the most common case, two photons are created, each with energy equal to the rest energy of the electron or positron (511 keV).

Please observe the following slide of the Feynman Diagram of Electron-Positron Annihilation.


Now I will spare you of the technical details, but the simple fact is that antimatter, in spite of the enormous potential when used properly, merely produces an entirely random evenly distributed array of high energy gamma rays which have a tendency to rip past through things like a supersonic jet through a standard atmosphere. Conventional nuclear weapons pose a far greater risk in the hands of incompetents.

Also it is important to note that unlike other reactions there is no such thing as a critical mass. Leaking antiparticles wander randomly until they react with the corresponding particle. It is important to note that these particles are well beyond the normal energy ranges for energy transfer through Compton scattering. The overall result isn’t all that spectacular and far less effective compared to lower level gamma radiation from traditional nuclear reactions.

Therefore, given the complete misunderstanding of the problems and benefits of significant concentrations of antimatter I highly recommend that you drop this foolish nonsense immediately.

Sincerely,
The Master

[Nouvelle o France]

(Image)

TZORSLAND
(Image)
“Knowledge and Thoroughness”

Members of the World Assembly,

I was informed by the delegates of my World Assembly Puppet Nation (The Tzorsland Puppet Federation is a strong union of several very important nations) of this resolution which is up for proposal. As a nation with a population of population of 24.887 billion located in The Pleiades, I suppose it is only right and proper for me to come to address the technical annoyances of the text up for discussion.

I would, first and foremost, remind the delegates of a certain person who came up with the equation E=MC² (which only applies in normal space). Due to complex reasons (partly due to something known as the grand arrow of time which points forwards) there is not a lot of antimatter in the universe. Any antimatter has to be especially created from energy.

The conversion of antimatter (typically positrons) with matter (typically electrons) is not as messy as is the case with complex nuclear reactions such as fission and fusion which release a number of highly charged subparticles. In the most common case, two photons are created, each with energy equal to the rest energy of the electron or positron (511 keV).

Please observe the following slide of the Feynman Diagram of Electron-Positron Annihilation.
(Image)

Now I will spare you of the technical details, but the simple fact is that antimatter, in spite of the enormous potential when used properly, merely produces an entirely random evenly distributed array of high energy gamma rays which have a tendency to rip past through things like a supersonic jet through a standard atmosphere. Conventional nuclear weapons pose a far greater risk in the hands of incompetents.

Also it is important to note that unlike other reactions there is no such thing as a critical mass. Leaking antiparticles wander randomly until they react with the corresponding particle. It is important to note that these particles are well beyond the normal energy ranges for energy transfer through Compton scattering. The overall result isn’t all that spectacular and far less effective compared to lower level gamma radiation from traditional nuclear reactions.

Therefore, given the complete misunderstanding of the problems and benefits of significant concentrations of antimatter I highly recommend that you drop this foolish nonsense immediately.

Sincerely,
The Master

As a Nation who had no knowledge on this subject, we thank you for these precision Ambassador. Considering antimatter sounds more like a advanced ballistic or laser weapon than the weapon of mass destruction this resolution made it to be, our Government has decided to change its stance from Neutrality to Opposition.