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Air Force Researching Antimatter Weapons
mlmitton writes "The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that the Air Force is actively pursuing antimatter weapons. Such weapons would easy eclipse nuclear weapons in power, e.g., 1 gram of antimatter would equal 23 space shuttle fuel tanks of energy. Perhaps more interesting, after an initial inquiry by the Chronicle in the summer, the Air Force issued a gag order that prohibits any Air Force employee from discussing antimatter research or funding."
e.g., 1 gram of antimatter would equal 23 space shuttle fuel tanks of energy
How much energy is that in Burning Libraries of Congress? I'm not entirely up to speed on these new-fangled measurements. Rods an' hogsheads, for me!
SSFTs are now units of energy?
In other news... The air force research center suddenly dissappeared along with 200.000 square kilometers of land. Nobody from the research center was available for comment.
Shouldn't that be -1 gram of anti matter?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
No no you're thinking of naquadria.
Mole problems? Call Avagadro, 602-1023
Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.
> I'm generally pretty high on national defense
Careful...it's a gateway policy. Before you know it, you'll be mainlining the hard stuff like trade agreements.
this should be "from the stuff-that-antimatters dept."
> The first seems impossible, unless you has some kind of containment where the anti-matter doesn't actually touch anything.
Clearly our containment systems must be made of antimatter cats with pieces of antimatter buttered toast strapped to their backs.
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.
As depressing as it sounds, this is probably a Good Thing.
If we take as fact that militaries exist to kill, then it follows logically that they will develop tools to kill as effectively as possible. That's how we've ended up with uranium fission bombs, then plutonium fission bombs, then hydrogen fusion bombs.
Someone, somewhere, will eventually decide that they need to neutralize their enemy bad enough to accept the consequences of a nuke. It may even be us -- if Bush hadn't restarted research on nuclear bunker-busters, someone else would have eventually.
So if you accept the depressing notion that use of massively destructive weapons is inevitable, you *want* this research to go forward. At least, this way, you *can* go back home.
Kind of ironic... for all the talk about "WMD"s, this would be a real Weapon of *Mass* Destruction... or at least, a Weapon of Mass Conversion Directly To Energy.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Dear US Air Force. Please don't blow up the planet.
Thank You,
A Concerned Citizen
Interviewer : Do you have the power to destroy the Earth?
The Tick : Egads! I hope not. That's where I keep all my stuff!
Too late...I've been freebasing Nafta all day... Sweet, sweet NAFTA.
If you keep enough of it around to use as fuel for a power plant then you have a chance of the magnetic containment field failing and your facility converted to component atoms.
At least it won't have all that nasty residual radiation. Sure, there will be one big-ass hole in the ground, but I suppose we could just make a lake out of it.
6kT is just a scosh? Thats an interesting defintion of scosh...
So what I've done is taken this .."anti-matter" and mounted it in a giant conical cannon. I shall call it.. The "Anti-Matter Horn".
Mwa ha ha ha!
This isn't really that interesting or even unusual: Uncle Sam frequently limits what military folks can say about ongoing projects. There is a classification called "Sensitive But Unclassified", or SBU, whcih means the info is not classified as such (Secret, TS, etc.) but it is still not for public disclosure. (Years ago SBU was called "For Official Use Only" or FOUO.) Budgets are generally considered at least SBU, so it should be no suprise that the budget is not publicized.
Well, since they just telling employees not to talk about it, the proper designation is Sensitive Topic For the Uninitiated, or STFU.
That whole ying and yang thing of matter/antimatter got me thinking about my evil self in the other universe. Since I have a goatee, does that mean that my evil twin is clean shaven?
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
Okay I'm just as confused as the next person about that unit of measure. But I am sure there are real much smarter people here that could enlighten us.
Could someone convert that into units of "can of whoop-ass?"
.yaw ralucatceps yllear a ni lla ti dne ot detnaw ew sselnu retemirep tnemenifnoc eht evael reven dna pu tuhs ot su dlot yehT !bal eht ta ereh tnempiuqe retupmoc ruo htiw elbuort fo stros lla gnivah erew ew deciton neht tub gninnur retrevnoc rettamitan eht tog eW
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
.....will my tinfoil hat still work?
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
----
WWJD...For a Klondike Bar?
What do violas have to do with it? Did Stradivarius use antimatter to achieve his results?
~*~ Tara
if you drop a ball of plutonium on your foot, all you get is broken toes.
All 7 of them...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
What I meant was 1 burning library of congress should be enough to satisfy the current administration.
"Piter, too, is dead."
This raises an interesting question: why aren't "units" like "Library of Congress", "VW Bug", and "human hair" included in the "units" program?
www.eFax.com are spammers
Exactly what military threat do they envision where they need a bigger "boom" than what they have now?
Actually, as others have posted, it seems to be more that it's a different kind of boom -- one which doesn't throw lots of radioactive contaminants into the atmosphere, for one. It just, you know, kills everybody nearby with X-rays (I believe).
I can't help but assume that half the impetus behind this research are the Trek geeks in the Air Force wanting to be the first one to say "We've got an antimatter containment breach." They know they'll be dead shortly afterwards, but they're okay with that. Kind of like the geek equivalent of dying for the glory of God.
Don't worry, we've got it covered. You ever see one of those aerodynamic trick gadgets where a balloon is suspended in an updraft from a fan? You push the balloon to one side, it recenters itself over the fan.
Now take out the balloon and put in a blob of antimatter. If the antimatter is too heavy to float in the breeze, duct-tape the antimatter to the balloon.
WWJD for a Klondike Bar?
What? You have a problem with Footbal Fields Squared?
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
But storage is EXTREMELY tricky. If the antimatter ever contacts the edges of its container, boom.
Simple solution: store the anti-matter in an anti-matter container. Duh.
Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
That's because the existence of the SBU classification is itself classified SBU. The grandparent poster has been detained and is currently "assisting authorities with their inquiries".
Now, (/me puts on MIB sunglasses), if you and the rest of the /. readers would all look over here at this pen-like object in my hand...
A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.
A co-worker's husband runs a Septic Tank clearing business. When we asked what a shitload was we were told "1600 gallons".
Sean D.
"Hmm. I am to metaphor cheese as metaphor cheese is to transitive verb crackers!"
no, but your antitinfoil hat might!! ;-)
Correction - The bomb needs 23 space shuttles to deliver it...
--- This
...what do you want more doomsday weapons for? You hardly play with the ones you've got!
Such weapons would easy eclipse nuclear weapons in power
Thank goodness. One of the biggest problems with nuclear weapons is their lack of power.
Whooah... For a second my mind thought my eyes saw:
"Anti-Matter Reich."
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Or imagine buying a motor vehicle that already has enough fuel to run it for the rest of its' usefull life. And then image that car getting into an accident and removing Cleveland.
this sig is deprecated
Yahoo! Pipes are awesome. How awesome? http://pipes.yahoo.com/jesdynf/slashdot
The guy who died of overexposure was played by John Cusack.
And another renowned Hollywood nuclear expert, Jane Fonda, was in The China Syndrome. No doubt they will both be testifying before Congress on the dangers of these weapons.
Wow, killer helium that finishes you off if you inhale or digest it. Almost as bad as Dihydrogen Monoxide.
"America, we're not quite as bad as Stalin or the Nazis"
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
There is 58 megatons of books there we could drop on 'the enemy'.
So, roughly speaking 1.5g of antimater, is equivelent to just dropping the entire contents of the Library of Congress, on a 1cm-odd square...
Your "beyboard"?
Ummm... exactly.
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc