Anti matter!? How does nationstates think it works?

[Wisconsin9]

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)

They're moving fast enough that time dilation kicks in, though.

[The Sotoan Union]

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.

Not really. Scientists aren't even really sure where it comes from. One of the most important questions in physics is why there is so little anti-matter compared to matter, and scientists have no idea.

[Sebtopiaris]

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

I was going to post that, you horrible person.

[Sun Wukong]

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

Not really. Scientists aren't even really sure where it comes from. One of the most important questions in physics is why there is so little anti-matter compared to matter, and scientists have no idea.

Did you read the OP? Compared to the gibberish the OP spouted, antimater is fairly well understood.

[The Sotoan Union]

Not really. Scientists aren't even really sure where it comes from. One of the most important questions in physics is why there is so little anti-matter compared to matter, and scientists have no idea.

Did you read the OP? Compared to the gibberish the OP spouted, antimater is fairly well understood.

I guess fairly well understood can be subjective. I wouldn't call it fairly well understood.

[Olthar]

You know what would be really scary? Inventing a machine that travels to alternate universes, and then accidentally landing in an antimatter universe. You'd probably blow up the entire anti-planet upon entry.

And the really scary part? What if we're the planet and someone else is the traveler?

[Dragvania]

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

Well I didnt say that this was 100% real or science, in fact i wanted to hear every theory, theorem, and non-fiction interpretation of anti-matter uses i could here but all i see here is that anti matter would not make a good standard weapon... Darn however i would make one heck of a engine or a super scary planet crushing bomb if i pushed it to hard so maybe i did get some interesting stuff here.

Ohh and great job with the math guys because i had no idea what that meant until i looked it up because i don't speak math! I think I will stick to the things i am good at.

Now as for the forum if it isn't already dead, throw some unrealistic yet cool ideas because this is nationstates not earth so bend some rules!!!

[Dragvania]

You know what would be really scary? Inventing a machine that travels to alternate universes, and then accidentally landing in an antimatter universe. You'd probably blow up the entire anti-planet upon entry.

And the really scary part? What if we're the planet and someone else is the traveler?

I had a idea that if you could project or propel a interdemensional rift you could weaponsize it. In theory you really couldn't armor yourself from that because it would simply move anything it hits to another demension. Imagine the other demension though, it just starts raining random stuff from warfare hahaha. Again though before i get flamed i like to bend rules and this idea is 100% fictional so enjoy.

[Natapoc]

Everyone else has already explained anti matter but if you are writing fiction, anti matter is far less interesting then the things you need to do to obtain or store anti matter. This is also true with real life anti matter.

How do keep it stable? How are you able to produce anti matter efficiently (current methods are extremely inefficient and only produce very small amounts)?

Are there any vulnerabilities in your mechanism for ensuring stability that can be exploited? What logistics are required to ensure continued access to anti matter for your people? Can they be disrupted by an enemy? Identify ways this could be disrupted by an enemy and ensure you've prepared adequate measures to protect against this.

What organizations are involved in the various tasks involved in production, protection, development, and distribution of anti matter technology and how are they run/structured?

[Wisconsin9]

You know what would be really scary? Inventing a machine that travels to alternate universes, and then accidentally landing in an antimatter universe. You'd probably blow up the entire anti-planet upon entry.

And the really scary part? What if we're the planet and someone else is the traveler?

Wouldn't be powerful enough, probably. Average human would only be about 1.3 gigatons, and the heaviest ever would be about 13.6.

Wait, no, it's 2.6 and 27.2 gigatons. Forgot to account for the local matter annihilated. Anyway, that's certainly a hell of a lot, but nowhere near enough to destroy the planet. The largest volcanic eruption in history was about 10 times more powerful (than the heaviest person annihilating), and the Chicxulub impact was around 100 teratons.

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

Well I didnt say that this was 100% real or science, in fact i wanted to hear every theory, theorem, and non-fiction interpretation of anti-matter uses i could here but all i see here is that anti matter would not make a good standard weapon... Darn however i would make one heck of a engine or a super scary planet crushing bomb if i pushed it to hard so maybe i did get some interesting stuff here.

Ohh and great job with the math guys because i had no idea what that meant until i looked it up because i don't speak math! I think I will stick to the things i am good at.

Now as for the forum if it isn't already dead, throw some unrealistic yet cool ideas because this is nationstates not earth so bend some rules!!!

Antimatter would be a pretty terrible weapon even if we could make enough of it to be useful. It's like having a sentient nuke that wants nothing more than to explode.


And let the record show that I love getting to talk about things that make craters larger than states in a way that makes them seem small.

[Imperial Mars Empire]

Well, I had a talk with my friend about anti-matter. I got boring and drew a random anti-matter sword....Yes, a anti-matter sword. Everything is made out of matter. Even air is a matter. Having anti-matter means that you are legit making holes in air. These wholes leads to nothing. It can also be called a 'void'. I believe ths void is a darkness of nothing. Also, anti-matter is a 'nothing'. If an object is something, then it basically is a matter. This also refers to the mystery of space and time. My friend believe anti-matter cannot cut space, because space is a 'nothing'. Refering to the void. How we see the void is also a question to consider about. The void is nothing.....i guess it is either 4D or 5D. 5D is not able go be explained.

Understand time and space and you will know life!

This is only a theory....and support to what anti-matter...

[Dragvania]

Im half tempted to try and start a union like that tag u got there about supporting thermonuclear war. I wonder if it would get anywhere?

[Wisconsin9]

Well, I had a talk with my friend about anti-matter. I got boring and drew a random anti-matter sword....Yes, a anti-matter sword. Everything is made out of matter. Even air is a matter. Having anti-matter means that you are legit making holes in air. These wholes leads to nothing. It can also be called a 'void'. I believe ths void is a darkness of nothing. Also, anti-matter is a 'nothing'. If an object is something, then it basically is a matter. This also refers to the mystery of space and time. My friend believe anti-matter cannot cut space, because space is a 'nothing'. Refering to the void. How we see the void is also a question to consider about. The void is nothing.....i guess it is either 4D or 5D. 5D is not able go be explained.

Understand time and space and you will know life!

This is only a theory....and support to what anti-matter...

Your theory is complete bunk. Antimatter isn't nothing. It is, in fact, just a slightly different version of what most matter is. And it doesn't make holes in the air. It makes explosions, at least when it comes in contact with regular matter. Your antimatter sword would blow up, and take everything within 20 miles along for the ride. Your friend is right, though, about antimatter being unable to cut space. Mostly because antimatter doesn't cut holes in reality. On the bright side, though, it probably wouldn't explode, either, since there's very little matter for it to annihilate with in space.

But yeah, long story short, literally the only thing in your post that was correct was the bit where you said that air is matter.

[AiliailiA]

Did you read the OP? Compared to the gibberish the OP spouted, antimater is fairly well understood.

I guess fairly well understood can be subjective. I wouldn't call it fairly well understood.

The properties of anti-matter are well understood. Scientists have created anti-hydrogen and anti-helium, and even before that they studied anti-matter arriving in cosmic 'rays'. Anti-matter behaves very predictably. It's ordinary in every way except for being extremely rare.

However, the wider issue of why the universe appears to be made almost entirely of 'right' matter is quite a mystery. The chirality problem.

Well I suppose making bigger quantities of anti-matter and bigger atoms than hydrogen might reveal an "un-ordinariness" about its properties and explain why it's so rare in our universe.

[AiliailiA]

Well, I had a talk with my friend about anti-matter. I got boring and drew a random anti-matter sword....Yes, a anti-matter sword. Everything is made out of matter. Even air is a matter. Having anti-matter means that you are legit making holes in air. These wholes leads to nothing. It can also be called a 'void'. I believe ths void is a darkness of nothing. Also, anti-matter is a 'nothing'. If an object is something, then it basically is a matter. This also refers to the mystery of space and time. My friend believe anti-matter cannot cut space, because space is a 'nothing'. Refering to the void. How we see the void is also a question to consider about. The void is nothing.....i guess it is either 4D or 5D. 5D is not able go be explained.

Understand time and space and you will know life!

This is only a theory....and support to what anti-matter...

Your theory is complete bunk.

Mmm, yeah. Starting with that, the only way of working up a good story is to add dragons!

[Immoren]

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)

I'd also guess that a thing that would reduce efficiency of AM bomb is that fraction of matter-antimatter in warhead is annihilated, and that annihilation energy of those particles breaks and disperses rest of AM (and matter) in warhead.
But I guess it depends and specific construction.
And I might be wrong.

[Olthar]

You know what would be really scary? Inventing a machine that travels to alternate universes, and then accidentally landing in an antimatter universe. You'd probably blow up the entire anti-planet upon entry.

And the really scary part? What if we're the planet and someone else is the traveler?

Wouldn't be powerful enough, probably. Average human would only be about 1.3 gigatons, and the heaviest ever would be about 13.6.

Wait, no, it's 2.6 and 27.2 gigatons. Forgot to account for the local matter annihilated. Anyway, that's certainly a hell of a lot, but nowhere near enough to destroy the planet. The largest volcanic eruption in history was about 10 times more powerful (than the heaviest person annihilating), and the Chicxulub impact was around 100 teratons.

Don't forget about the traveling machine.

[AiliailiA]

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)

I'd also guess that a thing that would reduce efficiency of AM bomb is that fraction of matter-antimatter in warhead is annihilated, and that annihilation energy of those particles breaks and disperses rest of AM (and matter) in warhead.
But I guess it depends and specific construction.
And I might be wrong.

Yes. I'm finding it hard to visualize, but I see secondary explosions spreading outwards at the speed of light (either gamma rays or leptons like the pion) and thermal expansion which makes a nuclear explosion look like baking a cake.

[Wisconsin9]

Wouldn't be powerful enough, probably. Average human would only be about 1.3 gigatons, and the heaviest ever would be about 13.6.

Wait, no, it's 2.6 and 27.2 gigatons. Forgot to account for the local matter annihilated. Anyway, that's certainly a hell of a lot, but nowhere near enough to destroy the planet. The largest volcanic eruption in history was about 10 times more powerful (than the heaviest person annihilating), and the Chicxulub impact was around 100 teratons.

Don't forget about the traveling machine.

It would need to mass about 1.25 trillion metric tons to blow up the planet.

[Nazi Flower Power]

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!

A neutron doesn't have a net charge, but the component parts within a neutron do have charges. If you reverse the charge of each part, they still balance each other out so there is no net charge -- but the internal composition is different than a normal neutron.

It's not impossible or confusing at all once you understand that neutrons are not the smallest possible unit of matter.

[AiliailiA]

I'd also guess that a thing that would reduce efficiency of AM bomb is that fraction of matter-antimatter in warhead is annihilated, and that annihilation energy of those particles breaks and disperses rest of AM (and matter) in warhead.
But I guess it depends and specific construction.
And I might be wrong.

Yes. I'm finding it hard to visualize, but I see secondary explosions spreading outwards at the speed of light (either gamma rays or leptons like the pion) and thermal expansion which makes a nuclear explosion look like baking a cake.

Thinking about it some more, thermal expansion doesn't matter so much. Matter or anti-matter can't retreat from the locus of the explosion fast enough to out-run pions, muons or gamma rays. Those all travel at the speed of light.

[Havenburgh]

Okay I was going to say that, but you beat me to it. Darn.

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!

A neutron doesn't have a net charge, but the component parts within a neutron do have charges. If you reverse the charge of each part, they still balance each other out so there is no net charge -- but the internal composition is different than a normal neutron.

It's not impossible or confusing at all once you understand that neutrons are not the smallest possible unit of matter.

[Galmarch]

Does it really matter?

[AiliailiA]

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!

A neutron doesn't have a net charge, but the component parts within a neutron do have charges. If you reverse the charge of each part, they still balance each other out so there is no net charge -- but the internal composition is different than a normal neutron.

It's not impossible or confusing at all once you understand that neutrons are not the smallest possible unit of matter.

I'll drink to that. Three quarks please, bartender!

[AiliailiA]

Does it really matter?

It doesn't really matter. But it certainly doesn't anti-matter!