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."

Comments

Orion

[Scott Laird]

I think everyone's spinning it wrong. The most useful thing you can do with lots of positrons would be to build an antimater-catalyzed nuclear pulse propulsion engine. With a good source for lots of positrons, you should be able to build nukes small enough to be useful.

Re:Why, cause nuclear bombs aren't sCary enough?

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Less radioactive. Alot of what you see in a fission bomb is the "unburnt" materials being dispersed by the explosion, the fallout. This just won't exist with anti-hydrogen (I'm assuming this is the most synthesizable element). However, even with fission, not all of it exists beforehand, when you have neutrons flying fuckfast all over the place, some stick in a nucleus here and there producing what are usually small halflife radioactive elements. A m/am would produce lots of all different sorts of radiation and fast particles... there is sure to be something created that lasts longer than a split second. And of course, immediately after the explosion, everything far enough away to avoid being vaporized will be dosed heavily.

It might very well be more scary, and not just from a power perspective... assume something as big as a nuke, but as (nearly) clean as a conventional explosive. The temptation to use it might be greater, the inhibitions even less.

BTW, anyone want to speculate on H/anti-H bombs? No neutrons to shoot all over the place, but at least a few protons (I'm assuming less than 100% perfect mix). And what happens when an anti-H atom hits oxygen or nitrogen, how does that work exactly?

Plutonium

[wowbagger]

Actually, you can hold a chunk of plutonium in your hand with little side effect.

When the plutonium core of the Trinity device was delivered to the site, the commander insisted that the courier open the case containing it - he said something along the lines of "I won't sign for anything unless I have actually seen it".

So, the courier opened the case, the BC took the sphere out, held it briefly (noting the warmth and "feeling of potential"), then returned it and signed for it.

Go read "The Day The Sun Rose Twice" for the details.

Re:Plutonium

[Diamoddavej]

Tell that to Harry Daghlin. During a partial criticality test just after the war, a core slipped during a test and went full critical. Harry had to knock one of the two plutonium hemispheres apart by hand. He saw a blue flash, Harry was that quick but it was not quick enough. He died 25 days later.

Harry's right hand http://www.nmol.com/users/billp/daghlian.jpg

Re:Plutonium

[CritterNYC]

Tell that to Harry Daghlin. During a partial criticality test just after the war, a core slipped during a test and went full critical. Harry had to knock one of the two plutonium hemispheres apart by hand. He saw a blue flash, Harry was that quick but it was not quick enough. He died 25 days later.

Actually, it is Harry Dahlian for those who want to learn more about it.

Re:This is only a small part of weapons research.

[NerveGas]

If you think that 3 million deaths over 60 years makes the US government the worst in history, you should go back to the history books.

In African history, there were plenty of times when 3 million over 60 years would pale in comparison. Then, look into the colonial period of England, France, Spain, Portugal, and Belgium. Between the numbers of natives murdered, worked to death, killed by disease, and the slaves brought in to replace them, 3 million over 60 years wouldn't look so bad at all. In fact, one particularly dark period of Belgian rule in the Congo brought about 10 million deaths over 40 years.

Germany, of course, slaughtered far more than 3 million (perhaps as high as 11 million) during WW2. The Russian gulag system would rival the 3 million mark, and that was perpetrated against it's own citizens.

I'm not in any way taking any side on any part - American or otherwise. I'm just saying that your statement of the US government being the worst in the history of the world would take an awfully skewed, narrow viewpoint to accept.

steve

Re:Weapon research == Power plant research.

[Joseph Vigneau]

if you drop a ball of plutonium on your foot, all you get is broken toes.

This guy became the "first peacetime atom bomb" fatality by dropping a brick on a ball of plutonium.

Re:Anti-Matter Resch.

[Charvak]

Here is the math..
E = 2mc^2
E = h*frequency
Frequency of the photon = 2 m*c*c/h
where m = mass of electron c = speed of light
h = planck constant
Now according to google
m = 9.109*10^-31 c= 3*10^8 h = 6.63 *10-34
frequency comes out to be 2.47*10^20 hertz
which comes under gamma rays.
So indeed the positron+electron will produce gamma rays