Anti matter!? How does nationstates think it works?

[Dragvania]

Well I was writing a factbook about my military that includes antimatter yet how can I do this when I have so little understanding. Science has not made much progress here either and right now its still a very odd subject with many scattered and mismatched beliefs or thoughts.

I personally like the idea that antimatter dissolves regular matter and leaves behind low levels of radiation and that neutral matter can touch both normal matter and antimatter. This is probably 100% fiction for books and games so im curious what you may think about how antimatter works. I would love to see all types of ideas both fiction and non-fiction to hopefully get a better understanding of how it works in the real world and in nationstates.

[Sun Wukong]

Well I was writing a factbook about my military that includes antimatter yet how can I do this when I have so little understanding. Science has not made much progress here either and right now its still a very odd subject with many scattered and mismatched beliefs or thoughts.

I personally like the idea that antimatter dissolves regular matter and leaves behind low levels of radiation and that neutral matter can touch both normal matter and antimatter. This is probably 100% fiction for books and games so im curious what you may think about how antimatter works. I would love to see all types of ideas both fiction and non-fiction to hopefully get a better understanding of how it works in the real world and in nationstates.

Antimater is actually fairly well understood. A mater-antimater reaction produces energy. A lot of energy.

[The Conez Imperium]

I have no idea how anti-matter works.

I guess they're like negative numbers? I like to believe there are only natural numbers yet functions show me otherwise.

[Quintium]

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=STvbV1zPCRk

[Godular]

Anti matter is just particles with the charges reversed. Positrons = positive electrons, anti-protons, and (this is the funny part) anti-neutrons (opposite charge on a null value... you'd think that ain't supposed to be possible, but hey, just look at photons if you're wondering about 'impossible')

The two meet, they cancel each other out in a matter annihilation reaction. This causes a LOT of energy/light. To give some perspective: A nuclear bomb employs a reaction that annihilates about 2% of the involved matter, and a Hydrogen bomb goes somewhere around 5-6%. Imagine a 100% matter annihilation reaction, and happy fun times!

[New Werpland]

Anti Matter is the kind of thing you don't need to know about.

[United Russian Soviet States]

I don't care about it. Science is science.

[Sun Wukong]

I don't care about it. Science is science.

It's so obvious that you don't care too.

What with how you took the time to tell everyone about it.

[New Kvenland]

Matter particle hit antimatter particle. Particles go boom. Make much energy.

Seriously, though, it's when matter, such as an electron, and antimatter, such as a positron, collide. They annhialate annhialate each other, creating massive amounts of energy.

[Wisconsin9]

Matter comes into contact with antimatter. Matter and antimatter turn into energy. A lot of it, since E=mc² and c is really fucking huge.

[Kolumb]

Matter particle hit antimatter particle. Particles go boom. Make much energy.

That's about the limit of my knowledge of antimatter. Luckily, AFAIK, it's strictly subatomic particles, so even a "big" boom is manageable on our scale.

[Wisconsin9]

Matter particle hit antimatter particle. Particles go boom. Make much energy.

That's about the limit of my knowledge of antimatter. Luckily, AFAIK, it's strictly subatomic particles, so even a "big" boom is manageable on our scale.

Not very reassuring, since literally everything is made of subatomic particles. What is reassuring is that we can't make anything out of antimatter that's much bigger than that (the biggest we've seen is antihelium), and that the stuff hates existing on Earth so much that it'll be a very long time before we're able to make and hold enough of it for it to do anything scary.

[United Marxist Nations]

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=STvbV1zPCRk

Thank you.

[Shnercropolis]

every particle has an antiparticle. When they touch they create quite alot of energy, but not quite mc^2 in most cases.

For comparison, 1kg of pure electrons colliding with 1 kg of pure positrons would produce around 10^20 joules of energy. The largest nuclear bomb ever detonated released around 10^17 joules of energy.

[New Kvenland]

every particle has an antiparticle. When they touch they create quite alot of energy.

For comparison, 1kg of pure electrons colliding with 1 kg of pure positrons would produce around 10^20 joules of gamma radiation, which is higher than the total world electricity generation in 2008.

That would be quite the sight to see. Of course, if you were close enough to see it, you'd likely be destroyed by the pure energy, which wouldn't be much fun.

[Wisconsin9]

every particle has an antiparticle. When they touch they create quite alot of energy.

For comparison, 1kg of pure electrons colliding with 1 kg of pure positrons would produce around 10^20 joules of gamma radiation, which is higher than the total world electricity generation in 2008.

That would be quite the sight to see. Of course, if you were close enough to see it, you'd likely be destroyed by the pure energy, which wouldn't be much fun.

It's actually only a bit under 43 megatons.

[Shnercropolis]

That would be quite the sight to see. Of course, if you were close enough to see it, you'd likely be destroyed by the pure energy, which wouldn't be much fun.

It's actually only a bit under 43 megatons.

The petajoule (PJ) is equal to one quadrillion joules. 210 PJ is equivalent to about 50 megatons of TNT. This is the amount of energy released by the Tsar Bomba, the largest man-made nuclear explosion ever.

50 megatons ~ 2x10^17J.

[Wisconsin9]

It's actually only a bit under 43 megatons.

The petajoule (PJ) is equal to one quadrillion joules. 210 PJ is equivalent to about 50 megatons of TNT. This is the amount of energy released by the Tsar Bomba, the largest man-made nuclear explosion ever.

50 megatons ~ 2x10^17J.

Which is just about exactly what Wolfram Alpha gave me for the conversion of 2 kilos to energy.

[Shnercropolis]

50 megatons ~ 2x10^17J.

Which is just about exactly what Wolfram Alpha gave me for the conversion of 2 kilos to energy.

I did my calculations again, apparently I had bad values for converting from MeV to joules.

[Wisconsin9]

Which is just about exactly what Wolfram Alpha gave me for the conversion of 2 kilos to energy.

I did my calculations again, apparently I had bad values for converting from MeV to joules.

Math is always a pain when you're dealing with really really big or really really small numbers.

[Sun Wukong]

I did my calculations again, apparently I had bad values for converting from MeV to joules.

Math is always a pain when you're dealing with really really big or really really small numbers.

Well at least y'all didn't kill any Japanese fishermen, the way they did with Castle Bravo.

[South Pacific Republic]

It's what powers my starship.

[Shnercropolis]

I did my calculations again, apparently I had bad values for converting from MeV to joules.

Math is always a pain when you're dealing with really really big or really really small numbers.

if you learn exponentiation rules its not so bad, but still pretty bad.

[Cyrisnia]

OP, we can't agree on jack shit. What makes you think we know how to science?

[AiliailiA]

The reaction of 1 kg of antimatter with 1 kg of matter would produce 1.8×1017 J (180 petajoules) of energy (by the mass-energy equivalence formula, E = mc2), or the rough equivalent of 43 megatons of TNT – slightly less than the yield of the 27,000 kg Tsar Bomb, the largest thermonuclear weapon ever detonated.

Not all of that energy can be utilized by any realistic propulsion technology because of the nature of the annihilation products. While electron-positron reactions result in gamma ray photons, these are difficult to direct and use for thrust. In reactions between protons and antiprotons, their energy is converted largely into relativistic neutral and charged pions. The neutral pions decay almost immediately (with a half-life of 84 attoseconds) into high-energy photons, but the charged pions decay more slowly (with a half-life of 26 nanoseconds) and can be deflected magnetically to produce thrust.

Note that charged pions ultimately decay into a combination of neutrinos (carrying about 22% of the energy of the charged pions) and unstable charged muons (carrying about 78% of the charged pion energy), with the muons then decaying into a combination of electrons, positrons and neutrinos (cf. muon decay; the neutrinos from this decay carry about 2/3 of the energy of the muons, meaning that from the original charged pions, the total fraction of their energy converted to neutrinos by one route or another would be about 0.22 + (2/3)*0.78 = 0.74).[56]

What wikipedia is saying about space propulsion is quite relevant. All the energy which ends up as neutrinos is effectively lost: they leave at the speed of light with almost no effect on any matter nearby.

The yield (by weight) is still going to be enormous, far more than nuclear fission or fusion bombs, but it won't be the full energy equivalent of the mass involved.

Also note that if you used such a weapon in space quite a lot of the energy would escape as charged pions then when those decay, as muons. Those wouldn't get far in atmosphere, but in space, travelling at the speed of light they'd travel a long way from the target before decaying again (muons decay in about 2 microseconds, or 600 metres)