Antimatter!

[Lord_Gareth]

According to a story in the Witchita Eagle, Antimatter has been contained long enough for meaningful study to take place.

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

[Moff Chumley]

Woo!

...right? :smallconfused:

[golentan]

Meaningful study meaning what particularly?

And how much antimatter of what sorts are we talking? A handful of positrons, or a teeny mass of anti-atoms?

[Lord_Gareth]

Meaningful study meaning what particularly?

And how much antimatter of what sorts are we talking? A handful of positrons, or a teeny mass of anti-atoms?

Full blown anti-hydrogen; specifics were not given in the Eagle's article.

[factotum]

The article I read suggested a grand total of 38 atoms of anti-matter were involved, and they weren't all contained at the same time--so I'd stop dreaming about the Enterprise's warp core for the moment. :smallwink:

[Lord_Gareth]

The article I read suggested a grand total of 38 atoms of anti-matter were involved, and they weren't all contained at the same time--so I'd stop dreaming about the Enterprise's warp core for the moment. :smallwink:

Hey, I can wait. I'm young with my entire life ahead of me. I'll dream of empires amongst the stars in worlds undreamt of if I wanna :p

[Lady Moreta]

The article I read suggested a grand total of 38 atoms of anti-matter were involved, and they weren't all contained at the same time--so I'd stop dreaming about the Enterprise's warp core for the moment. :smallwink:

But but... to boldly go... :smallcool:

[mucat]

Yeah, it's a little too early to invest in warp core futures, but it's a cool accomplishment.

The thing that makes this experiment unique isn't just that they created antimatter -- that's totally routine these days; positrons and antiprotons are easy to create in any decent particle accelerator.

What they did that's not easy was to get the antiprotons and positrons moving slowly enough relative to one another, so that the positron could be captured by the antiproton, and together they could form an antimatter hydrogen atom.

However, even that had been done before. What had never been done was keeping an antihydrogen atom suspended and isolated from normal matter (which would annihilate it on contact), for long enough to study it in more detail.

So here's to being 38 antihydrogen atoms closer to Star Trek! :smallwink:

[The Succubus]

I'm still holding out hope that the CERN will rip open a portal to other planes.

[Brother Oni]

But but... to boldly go... :smallcool:

That split infinitive has been making me crying for years... :smallsigh:


I'm still holding out hope that the CERN will rip open a portal to other planes.

Don't worry, Gordon Freeman's real life counterpart will save the day, especially since it appears he's been getting in crowbar practice thanks to gamers. :smallbiggrin:

[Lord Raziere]

According to a story in the Witchita Eagle, Antimatter has been contained long enough for meaningful study to take place.

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

awesome. Science progresses. The world shall someday be greater. :smallcool:

[hamishspence]

That split infinitive has been making me crying for years... :smallsigh:

It's worth remembering that there isn't necessarily anything inherently wrong about splitting infinitives:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split_infinitive

[Marnath]

Hey, I can wait. I'm young with my entire life ahead of me. I'll dream of empires amongst the stars in worlds undreamt of if I wanna :p

Lol, dream all you want, you know as well as I do the first thing people are going to do once we can make stable antimatter is make a freaking huge bomb out of it.

[Elfin]

Probably true, unfortunately.

But for now - a really amazing discovery! Very exciting news, all in all.

[mucat]

Lol, dream all you want, you know as well as I do the first thing people are going to do once we can make stable antimatter is make a freaking huge bomb out of it.

Unwise even by the standards of our admittedly crazy species. While the bomb was sitting in your arsenal, you would have to be continually pumping energy into whatever field was holding it stable...and if at any point this system fails, the thing goes off in your face. (Which does not mean that the research they're doing now is dangerous; individual atoms of antimatter don't do a hell of a lot of damage when they annihilate.) :smallwink:

And y'know, as I write this, I'm struck by the corollary...there would be no point in building such a weapon, unless you had plans to use it right away. Ah, well, so much for optimism...

(For what it's worth, though, there's no technology even on the horizon right now that would make it possible to stabilize enough antimatter to act as a weapon. I would worry a lot more about the destruction we're already capable of...)

[Dada]

(For what it's worth, though, there's no technology even on the horizon right now that would make it possible to stabilize enough antimatter to act as a weapon. I would worry a lot more about the destruction we're already capable of...)

Yeah, we're already able to blow the earth up totally and completely, whats the point of making even bigger bombs? It's not like anyone who doesn't fear/respect nuclear warheads would respect antimatter bombs.

[hamishspence]

Yeah, we're already able to blow the earth up totally and completely, whats the point of making even bigger bombs?

Blow up the ecosystem completely, yes.

Blow up the Earth completely- definitely not. All the bombs, detonated simultaneously, would produce far less energy than the gravitational binding energy of the Earth.

[Dada]

Blow up, as in destroy human civilization completely :smallwink:

[hamishspence]

It's been a while since I looked up the nuclear winter theories- so I don't know how much radiation release and drift would be produced in a full-blown present-day exchange,

nor whether that much radiation and dust would cause civilization across the globe to go into a dark age, or whether only the northern hemisphere would suffer, with southern hemisphere civilization surviving.

Maybe someone who specializes in this would know.

(This question is supposed to be entirely physics, biology, and ecology-based, of course).

[TSGames]

And y'know, as I write this, I'm struck by the corollary...there would be no point in building such a weapon, unless you had plans to use it right away. Ah, well, so much for optimism...


While you make a sound point, one that is surely based in logic, I can't help but feel that the people who approve construction of the weapons probably do not feel the same way. After all, America had the atom bomb first, which was plenty destructive, and then along came the hydrogen bomb, of which America then built plenty, and we've still continued to build new bombs, none of which are cheap to maintain. Your logic is sound, but there is a strong philosophical predisposition in America to stockpile weapons, in the hopes that they will never be used, and damn the cost. I'd be quite surprised if antimatter based weapons turned out to be the sole exception.

[averagejoe]

My understanding goes like this:

The anti-electron is called a positron. Physicists are generally logical people, and it would only be logical to call the anti-proton a negatron. Which seems an awful lot like pro-deceptacon propaganda to me. Scientists really are trying to ruin the world I GUESS.

[Emperor Ing]

Stupid antimatter, why do you have to make things so complicated? :smallannoyed:

Out of curiocity, what's the anti-neutron? I know neutrons have no charge, but still...

[averagejoe]

Stupid antimatter, why do you have to make things so complicated? :smallannoyed:

Out of curiocity, what's the anti-neutron? I know neutrons have no charge, but still...

The anti-neutron is the antineutron. The main thing is it's made of antiquarks instead of quarks, so it has an opposite Baryon number. (SO MEANINGFUL to the layman.)

They also have opposite magnetic moments.

[mucat]

My understanding goes like this:

The anti-electron is called a positron. Physicists are generally logical people, and it would only be logical to call the anti-proton a negatron. Which seems an awful lot like pro-deceptacon propaganda to me. Scientists really are trying to ruin the world I GUESS.

Well, in our defense, the positron was the first type of antimatter to be detected and studied, back in the 1930s. Physicists then knew that positrons were the antimatter counterpart of electrons -- Dirac had predicted their existence, and people were actively looking for them in cosmic ray showers -- but the convention of naming things "anti-whatever" hadn't yet caught on. By the time the naming conventions were established, everyone was used to saying "positron", so they didn't go back and rename it the "anti-electron."

[Kislath]

Hmmm... would anti matter devices be radio active? Would using them be dirty, or clean? Could they be environmentally friendly, and thusly freely useable?

[WalkingTarget]

Hmmm... would anti matter devices be radio active? Would using them be dirty, or clean? Could they be environmentally friendly, and thusly freely useable?

I don't think that antimatter itself is radioactive (at least the types we've created so far - well, no more than normal hydrogen is) a problem is that, at least for electron-positron annihilation, the result is high energy photons (i.e. gamma rays). That's just the nature of the reaction. I don't know what the annihilation reaction of the heavier particles would give off.

Edit - and looking through the Wikipedia pages on annihilation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annihilation) it seems that proton and neutron versions also give off gamma rays as well as the possibility of some light bosons (pions seem most prevalent) depending on the relative energy levels of the reactive particles.

[mucat]

Hmmm... would anti matter devices be radio active? Would using them be dirty, or clean? Could they be environmentally friendly, and thusly freely useable?

When antimatter and matter annihilate and release energy, they can be dangerous to people standing nearby -- gamma rays aren't good for you, as WalkingTarget said -- but they don't produce any sort of long-term pollution or contamination; all they give off is high-energy light. So you would need to put careful thought into how to keep the operator and bystanders safe, but you wouldn't be doing any ecological harm.

Ecologically, the process of producing the antimatter itself is more of a problem...mainly because of the sheer amount of energy it takes to run a particle accelerator, not because of any specific form of waste it produces. So you wouldn't want to use antimatter as an everyday power storage device; you would be putting far more energy into running the accelerator that produces your antimatter than you would get out when the antimatter annihilates.

[Manga Shoggoth]

I don't think that antimatter itself is radioactive (at least the types we've created so far - well, no more than normal hydrogen is) a problem is that, at least for electron-positron annihilation, the result is high energy photons (i.e. gamma rays). That's just the nature of the reaction. I don't know what the annihilation reaction of the heavier particles would give off..

Annihilation reactions themselves will always give off high-energy photons (gamma rays) as all the matter from the particles will be converted into energy. In the case of heavier antimatter atoms you would also get lower level energy from the binding energy of the nucleus.

Edit: And yes, the heavier anti-matter atoms would be just as radioactive as their normal counterparts. In fact their chemistry should also be the same as should their physcal properties(*) apart from this distressing habit of annihilating whenever they touch normal matter.

(*) It may be that anti-matter is slightly more unstable than normal matter, which is why our universe seems to have mostly the normal stuff (as far as we know, at any rate. The trouble is that at range we can't tell if a celestial body is antimatter or not).

[Kislath]

I wasn't concerned with safety. I actually meant using them instead of conventional nuclear weapons. Could we blast an area to bits with no risk of fallout & lingering radiation contamination?

[Dogmantra]

This is interesting and all, but when you look at it in the context of today's society, it's quite unimportant. One could even say it hardly matters.

:smallcool:

[Asta Kask]

I wasn't concerned with safety. I actually meant using them instead of conventional nuclear weapons. Could we blast an area to bits with no risk of fallout & lingering radiation contamination?

You would produce a lot of gamma rays, but I don't know if it lingers. I suppose it could...

[mucat]

I wasn't concerned with safety. I actually meant using them instead of conventional nuclear weapons. Could we blast an area to bits with no risk of fallout & lingering radiation contamination?

...yes.

If you annihilated one kilogram of antimatter with an equivalent amount of matter, the energy released would be

E = mc^2
= (2 kg) (3x10^8 m/s)^2
= 1.8 x 10^17 Joules.

Which in turn, is a little shy of 50 Megatons of TNT, or about the same as the biggest hydrogen bombs developed during the cold war. And as you said, there would be no fallout or contamination.

Now, the good news: there's no way in hell anyone will be making these things in any foreseeable era of the future. First of all, no one can stabilize and store large quantities of antimatter for any length of time; the CERN physicists have managed to briefly suspend one atom of antihydrogen at a time, which is a hell of a long way from the 6x10^26 atoms that would make up a kilogram of antihydrogen.

Even more reassuring is the fact that -- unlike a fusion bomb, which releases nuclear energy already stored in hydrogen -- to build an antimatter bomb you would have to put in enough energy to create the antimatter in the first place, which barring a vast increase in energy production capability, would be absolutely prohibitive to pull off.

Now, when I say "absolutely prohibitive," that's just words; let's run some numbers and see how prohibitive. CERN, the world's biggest particle accelerator and a place whose existence you absolutely could not hide -- its tunnels are many miles long, it uses as much energy as a small city, and at any given moment it's home to thousands of civilian scientists from all over the world -- is capable of producing about 10^5 antiprotons per second. If you could collect and store every one of them, and if every human being on earth owned and operated their own personal CERN-like accelerator center (that would be fun :smallsmile:) then it would take about 20,000 years to produce and store 1 kg of antimatter.

So yeah, Dan Brown writes fiction.

[averagejoe]

Well, in our defense, the positron was the first type of antimatter to be detected and studied, back in the 1930s. Physicists then knew that positrons were the antimatter counterpart of electrons -- Dirac had predicted their existence, and people were actively looking for them in cosmic ray showers -- but the convention of naming things "anti-whatever" hadn't yet caught on. By the time the naming conventions were established, everyone was used to saying "positron", so they didn't go back and rename it the "anti-electron."

I will admit that particle physicists, or their equivalents back before particle physics was a thing, haven't had the best luck when it comes to naming things. (I'm looking at you, the atom!)

[mucat]

I will admit that particle physicists, or their equivalents back before particle physics was a thing, haven't had the best luck when it comes to naming things. (I'm looking at you, the atom!)

You mean the way its name means "can't be cut"? Yeah, that's kinda quaint nowadays... :smallsmile:

[Eldan]

I think we should just adopt Terry Pratchett's "Reson".

[_Zoot_]

Hey, I can wait. I'm young with my entire life ahead of me. I'll dream of empires amongst the stars in worlds undreamt of if I wanna :p

Would you mind overly much if I siged that? It is just such a fantastic sentence :smallbiggrin:

[Teddy]

I will admit that particle physicists, or their equivalents back before particle physics was a thing, haven't had the best luck when it comes to naming things. (I'm looking at you, the atom!)

Oh, I shouldn't even get started on my pet peeve that is the direction of the electric current and the whole positive-negative confusion. I know the reasons for this, but couldn't they just have flipped it around to avoid this total confusion?

[Dr.Epic]

Auntie-Matter:smallwink: Uncle Atom:smallwink: (I could go on, I got pages of this stuff)

[mucat]

Oh, I shouldn't even get started on my pet peeve that is the direction of the electric current and the whole positive-negative confusion. I know the reasons for this, but couldn't they just have flipped it around to avoid this total confusion?

I agree; we should flip the convention, and call protons negative and electrons positive. By the time the electron and proton were discovered, though, it was kind of too late to reverse the charge names...and today, it's definitely too late. Think of the chaos if we suddenly declared that the "negative" terminal of every battery generator, and electrical device in existence was now called the "positive" terminal. Until the new convention settled in, people would be routinely electrocuting themselves and/or blowing things up by wiring them backwards.

[FoE]

It doesn't matter. There's no way we get to warp capability before the zombie apocalypse in 2012.

[averagejoe]

I agree; we should flip the convention, and call protons negative and electrons positive. By the time the electron and proton were discovered, though, it was kind of too late to reverse the charge names...and today, it's definitely too late. Think of the chaos if we suddenly declared that the "negative" terminal of every battery generator, and electrical device in existence was now called the "positive" terminal. Until the new convention settled in, people would be routinely electrocuting themselves and/or blowing things up by wiring them backwards.

Truly this is one of the great tragedies of our time. (Or at least the one that has most inconvenienced me personally.)

[mucat]

Truly this is one of the great tragedies of our time. (Or at least the one that has most inconvenienced me personally.)

Randall Munroe agrees (http://xkcd.com/567/).

[Lord_Gareth]

So yeah, Dan Brown is an idiot.

Fixed, my friend.



Would you mind overly much if I siged that? It is just such a fantastic sentence :smallbiggrin:

Feel free ^_^

[Rob Roy]

While this is amazing, it won't matter much until someone creates a viable way to get massive amounts of energy from it without blowing up the reactor, or until someone makes a bomb out of it. Still, it's awesome.

[faceroll]

I wasn't concerned with safety. I actually meant using them instead of conventional nuclear weapons. Could we blast an area to bits with no risk of fallout & lingering radiation contamination?

Yes. Radiation is caused by decaying matter, like plutonium falling apart. Decaying anti-matter would produce anti-whatever when it fell apart, which would just annihilate it's opposites, so wouldn't contaminate anything for more than a few picoseconds.


Fixed, my friend.

He's got two best sellers and a major motion picture with Tom Hanks in it. If that's being an idiot, I don't want to be smart.

[Lord_Gareth]

He's got two best sellers and a major motion picture with Tom Hanks in it. If that's being an idiot, I don't want to be smart.

Success and intelligence are not necessarily related.

[TSGames]

Success and intelligence are not necessarily related.
Supporting exhibit A)

http://smallscreenscoop.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/the-situation-jersey-shore.jpg

The defense rests.

[Jimorian]

One science article in Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine was basically about what it would take to have a starfaring civilization given what we know. That is, assuming we could conquer the engineering hurdles of long-term space voyages, but stick to the physics we know.

It boiled down to the fact that if we wanted relatively fast transport to nearby stars (5-10% of light speed), we would need the kind of stored energy that could only come with antimatter.

To get enough, we would need to build dozens of planet-diameter sized cyclotrons in orbit around the sun drawing solar energy to drive the particle accelerators. Since you're already out in a vacuum, you just need magnetic containment to store it up out there, but obviously something more robust for transferring it to your starships and using it for fuel.

Then once we reached other stars, we'd need to build that same infrastructure out there as well to fuel the trip back.

Again, very BIG engineering, but he stuck with what might be possible in the future given reasonable improvements in materials and methods, which wouldn't be something we could jump straight to, but would need all the baby steps in between of colonizing the solar system, and learning to do stuff on larger and larger scales until we were ready to build these gigastructures.

[mucat]

Then once we reached other stars, we'd need to build that same infrastructure out there as well to fuel the trip back.

Or just carry twice as much fuel. I know that's a non-trivial thing, but it could be a lot easier than requiring the exploration crew to replicate an engineering project that took serious effort even back in their home system, with the resources of an entire civilization behind it.

[hamishspence]

Thing is, it requires a lot more than twice the fuel, to make the return trip- assuming the trip out and the trip back are at the same speed.

Say it requires 9 times the mass of the ship in fuel, to accelerate it all the way up to 1/10 the speed of light, and decelerate it back down to zero at the end.

Then, for a return trip, it would not take double the fuel (18 times the mass of the ship)

It would take (9x9) times the mass of the ship.

That is, 81 times the mass of the ship.

[mucat]

Thing is, it requires a lot more than twice the fuel, to make the return trip- assuming the trip out and the trip back are at the same speed.

Say it requires 9 times the mass of the ship in fuel, to accelerate it all the way up to 1/10 the speed of light, and decelerate it back down to zero at the end.

Then, for a return trip, it would not take double the fuel (18 times the mass of the ship)

It would take (9x9) times the mass of the ship.

That is, 81 times the mass of the ship.
True, that.

(Though it would be the outbound trip, not the return, that would burn all that extra fuel.)

[Calmar]

Lol, dream all you want, you know as well as I do the first thing people are going to do once we can make stable antimatter is make a freaking huge bomb out of it.

Yeah! We are humans! :smallcool:

[Dada]

I seem to remember that magnetic sails or solar sails are one of the more promising methods for interstellar travel, since they reduce or even eliminate the need for the spacecraft to carry fuel. Also, if I recall correctly, they should be able to reach speeds above 0.10 c.

[hamishspence]

(Though it would be the outbound trip, not the return, that would burn all that extra fuel.)

Yup- the extra fuel is to ensure that, at the end, you have one stationary capsule, with 9 times its own weight in fuel, ready to make the journey back.

I think The Physics Of Star Trek provided figures for how much antimatter would be needed to accelerate a ship up to a given speed (say, half the speed of light) assuming perfect matter/antimatter annihilation, and the reactant leaving the rear of the ship at effectively near-lightspeed.

[Lost Demiurge]

This is interesting and all, but when you look at it in the context of today's society, it's quite unimportant. One could even say it hardly matters.

:smallcool:

....

My, how short-sighted a view. I really hope you're kidding.

[Science Officer]

....

My, how short-sighted a view. I really hope you're kidding.

Ugghhh, I know.

Such flippant disregard of scientific advancement should be punishable in some rules or other.

Really, I think we should be looking for the sort of rhetoric that could puncture this world-view.

I mean, this is clearly a home-run for science, but he's treating it like it's a punt or something.

[Dada]

I think it was just a setup to the pun..

[Telonius]

Dammit scientists, think of the poor writers. What are they going to power our sci-fi rocketships with, if you keep on actually discovering things that we can use?

[Comet]

Ugghhh, I know.

Such flippant disregard of scientific advancement should be punishable in some rules or other.

Really, I think we should be looking for the sort of rhetoric that could puncture this world-view.

I mean, this is clearly a home-run for science, but he's treating it like it's a punt or something.

Just popping by to say that this was very well played, sirrah. Good day :smallcool:

[Meirnon]

If there is an antimatter weapon, it would be a portable (or space-mounted) weapon that converted matter into antimatter during activation. It wouldn't have the antimatter stored, instead creating it all and having it annihilate the surrounding matter almost instantaneously after activation.

Now, as for current nuclear war scenarios, they are grossly over-exaggerated. Nuclear Winter hypotheses are often inconclusive when given actual testing, especially when given examination with empirical evidence such as recent asteroid/comet collisions that created as much force as upwards of hundreds of millions of megatons of explosives. Nuclear Fallout is also over-exaggerated, as the entire earth would have to be pocked by bombs for actual fallout extinction.

As for the radiation itself, it can be beneficial for the ecosystem: look at Chernobyl for example. The generation of fauna and flora during the disaster were riddled with cancer and disease. However, the very next generation was not only healthier and more resistant to the radiation, but lived longer and had a higher cellular regeneration rate. Couple that with the fact that humans could no longer interact with that environment, and you have a wildlife haven. The strongest argument anyone who nay says this fact is that "there is no long term conclusive evidence". In other words, "it's only been a couple dozen years". Maybe it's just me, but I think the fact that it's been so short of a time, and animals have adapted to resist the radiation and fungi developed to become radiotrophic inside of the old reactors is even more reason to disbelieve nuclear eco-holocaust. The earth would have to be blasted barren and glassed for this to happen.

That said, the antimatter is pretty cool. Maybe if we could get a Higgs-Boson now?

[mucat]

If there is an antimatter weapon, it would be a portable (or space-mounted) weapon that converted matter into antimatter during activation. It wouldn't have the antimatter stored, instead creating it all and having it annihilate the surrounding matter almost instantaneously after activation.
Can't be done. (Barring fundamentally new physics, of course.)

You can't turn matter into antimatter; you have to create equal quantities of both at the same time...and to do that, you need to supply energy at least equal to the combined mass energy of the matter and antimatter you create. Which, in turn, is exactly as much energy as will be released when they annihilate...

In other words, in order for your weapon to create antimatter on the spot, it would have to already contain at least as much usable energy as the antimatter annihilation will release. If the machine has access to that much energy, it would be every bit as destructive to just release it, instead of mucking around with antimatter.

The fact that you didn't know that, but still spoke with an authoritative voice on it, kinda calls into question the rest of your equally authoritative-sounding pronouncements. (Not that I necessarily think your follow-up points are incorrect...but when you open by getting a piece of well-understood physics wrong, you lose your credibility to speak with authority on much harder-to-answer questions.)


That said, the antimatter is pretty cool. Maybe if we could get a Higgs-Boson now?
Workin' on it...give the LHC folks a year or two, and we'll see what they've got. :smallsmile:

[Meirnon]

Can't be done. (Barring fundamentally new physics, of course.)

You can't turn matter into antimatter; you have to create equal quantities of both at the same time...and to do that, you need to supply energy at least equal to the combined mass energy of the matter and antimatter you create. Which, in turn, is exactly as much energy as will be released when they annihilate...

In other words, in order for your weapon to create antimatter on the spot, it would have to already contain at least as much usable energy as the antimatter annihilation will release. If the machine has access to that much energy, it would be every bit as destructive to just release it, instead of mucking around with antimatter.

The fact that you didn't know that, but still spoke with an authoritative voice on it, kinda calls into question the rest of your equally authoritative-sounding pronouncements. (Not that I necessarily think your follow-up points are incorrect...but when you open by getting a piece of well-understood physics wrong, you lose your credibility to speak with authority on much harder-to-answer questions.)


Workin' on it...give the LHC folks a year or two, and we'll see what they've got. :smallsmile:

Physics has been changed before. Maybe the discovery of the Higgs-Boson would warrant the equal conversion and necessary energy, yeah? :smallwink:

Or, maybe we could find a way to utilize tachyons to harness infinite 4th dimensional energy. How this would be possible, I have no clue. :3

[mucat]

Physics has been changed before. Maybe the discovery of the Higgs-Boson would warrant the equal conversion and necessary energy, yeah? :smallwink:

Or, maybe we could find a way to utilize tachyons to harness infinite 4th dimensional energy. How this would be possible, I have no clue. :3

Granted, our understanding of physics has gone through revolutionary changes before, and we expect and hope there are more revolutions to come. Some yet-unknown model may suggest a way to convert matter to antimatter, rather than creating both in equal amounts. We already know that nature (specifically the electroweak force) doesn't quite respect an exact symmetry between matter and antimatter...and we also know that somehow, in the very early universe, there somehow developed a slight imbalance between the two (about ten billion and one particles of matter for every ten billion particles of antimatter...which, after the universe cooled a bit and they all annihilated, left a tiny remaining residue of matter...a damned fortunate break for us, because it's what we're made of. :smallsmile:)

I would still say, though, that it's a little early to try to design technology based on yet-undiscovered physics. Also, if there is a way to convert matter to antimatter, it almost certainly happens only at very high energies, far greater than CERN or the LHC can now reach. Which returns to the question...if you want a weapon that carries enough energy to manage on-board creation of antimatter, why not just release that energy instead?

[Teddy]

[...]Maybe it's just me, but I think the fact that it's been so short of a time, and animals have adapted to resist the radiation and fungi developed to become radiotrophic inside of the old reactors is even more reason to disbelieve nuclear eco-holocaust.[...]

Well, there are animals who've failed horribly at adapting to the radiation too. The swallows that live close to the reactor have expended all their anti-oxidants during their migrations, and thus haven't got any protection against the radioactivity. Because of this, they show a lot of mutations and tumors over their bodies. If it wasn't for the constant immigration of swallows each year, the swallow colonies at Chernobyl would go extinct pretty fast. :smallsigh:

[Meirnon]

Well, there are animals who've failed horribly at adapting to the radiation too. The swallows that live close to the reactor have expended all their anti-oxidants during their migrations, and thus haven't got any protection against the radioactivity. Because of this, they show a lot of mutations and tumors over their bodies. If it wasn't for the constant immigration of swallows each year, the swallow colonies at Chernobyl would go extinct pretty fast. :smallsigh:

Yes, I know about the swallows. The majority of that problem, however, is that they insist on living in the broken down old buildings with thousands of tons of radioactive ash inside of them. I know quite a bit about this as my debate coach debated this exact same part about the swallows in his day (specifically that if left unabated, the structures would collapse and send the radioactive ash into the atmosphere, and then it really would be a human extinction). The simple solution is to fill the structures with a type of poly-foam resin to contain the ash and to keep the birds out. I believe some kind of action like this has already been taken, in fact. As for the birds themselves, it may take them a bit longer to adapt to this adversity of theirs, but I do not doubt at all that they eventually will if left to their own devices.


Granted, our understanding of physics has gone through revolutionary changes before, and we expect and hope there are more revolutions to come. Some yet-unknown model may suggest a way to convert matter to antimatter, rather than creating both in equal amounts. We already know that nature (specifically the electroweak force) doesn't quite respect an exact symmetry between matter and antimatter...and we also know that somehow, in the very early universe, there somehow developed a slight imbalance between the two (about ten billion and one particles of matter for every ten billion particles of antimatter...which, after the universe cooled a bit and they all annihilated, left a tiny remaining residue of matter...a damned fortunate break for us, because it's what we're made of. :smallsmile:)

I would still say, though, that it's a little early to try to design technology based on yet-undiscovered physics. Also, if there is a way to convert matter to antimatter, it almost certainly happens only at very high energies, far greater than CERN or the LHC can now reach. Which returns to the question...if you want a weapon that carries enough energy to manage on-board creation of antimatter, why not just release that energy instead?

Two things: 1) Is this a job or a hobby? :D
2) I believe I read in a science journal that the ability to flip matter through the 4th dimension is a possibility of converting it into antimatter. As for the energy needed, there would absolutely need to be some way to harness it in a (relatively) small package. One theory is infinite 4th dimensional energy... harnessing entropy or some awesome science stuff that my philistine knowledge cannot completely explain in the (also relative) technobabble you could easily include in your vernacular, with the use of Tachyons. Maybe even the Higgs Boson. Since time theoretically goes on forever, there would be infinite harness-able energy. The viability and science for this is (again, relative) light-years ahead of what we have now... but it shouldn't be too long as technological innovation follows an exponential curve.

[Lost Demiurge]

Ugghhh, I know.

Such flippant disregard of scientific advancement should be punishable in some rules or other.

Really, I think we should be looking for the sort of rhetoric that could puncture this world-view.

I mean, this is clearly a home-run for science, but he's treating it like it's a punt or something.

::Winces:: Ow. I owned myself.

I blame it on being too early in the morning at the time, and a general lack of caffeine... :smallbiggrin:

[Deth Muncher]

Waiiiiit...I have an idea. And this isn't a currently feasible idea, but:

If anti-matter makes anti-radiation, shouldn't we just dump a bunch of it on places like Chernobyl or in places where nuclear waste is created to dampen radiation? (or at least convert it to light)

[WalkingTarget]

Waiiiiit...I have an idea. And this isn't a currently feasible idea, but:

If anti-matter makes anti-radiation, shouldn't we just dump a bunch of it on places like Chernobyl or in places where nuclear waste is created to dampen radiation? (or at least convert it to light)

Well, first you'd have to be able to generate radioactive antimatter (anti-Uranium or some such), and then you're probably mostly worried about anti-alpha and -beta particles which I'd imagine would, instead of knocking your DNA nucleotides out of whack and causing mutations, would annihilate with whatever part of your body they hit, releasing more gamma rays, probably causing mutations anyway. I doubt it's the best way to go.

[Meirnon]

Well, first you'd have to be able to generate radioactive antimatter (anti-Uranium or some such), and then you're probably mostly worried about anti-alpha and -beta particles which I'd imagine would, instead of knocking your DNA nucleotides out of whack and causing mutations, would annihilate with whatever part of your body they hit, releasing more gamma rays, probably causing mutations anyway. I doubt it's the best way to go.

Even if it's in the name of SCIENCE!?

[Teddy]

Well, first you'd have to be able to generate radioactive antimatter (anti-Uranium or some such), and then you're probably mostly worried about anti-alpha and -beta particles which I'd imagine would, instead of knocking your DNA nucleotides out of whack and causing mutations, would annihilate with whatever part of your body they hit, releasing more gamma rays, probably causing mutations anyway. I doubt it's the best way to go.

Well, to be more precise, there are three kinds of radiation: alfa (a helium nucleus), beta (a free electrone) and gamma (electromagnetic waves, i.e. a kind of light). Radioactive anti-matter would create anti-alfa and anti-beta radiation, but the same gamma radiation. You wouldn't remove the radiation, you would just blow up whatever particle it first hit, which probably would be the air or the ground. And that's assuming that that you'd managed to isolate the original chunk of radioactive anti-matter. The chance of it hitting your body would, however, be nearly nonexistent, since there's so much matter between you and it.

[factotum]

Well, to be more precise, there are three kinds of radiation: alfa (a helium nucleus), beta (a free electrone) and gamma (electromagnetic waves, i.e. a kind of light). Radioactive anti-matter would create anti-alfa and anti-beta radiation, but the same gamma radiation.

And also note that the gamma radiation is by far and away the most dangerous. Alpha particles are blocked by a few centimetres of air, and a car door would be sufficient to stop a beta particle, whereas gamma radiation can penetrate deeply and travel for long distances--you need thick lead walls to block that! Therefore, adding to the most dangerous type of radiation at the site in the vague hope of destroying some of the weaker stuff doesn't seem like a good proposition.

[Teddy]

And also note that the gamma radiation is by far and away the most dangerous. Alpha particles are blocked by a few centimetres of air, and a car door would be sufficient to stop a beta particle, whereas gamma radiation can penetrate deeply and travel for long distances--you need thick lead walls to block that! Therefore, adding to the most dangerous type of radiation at the site in the vague hope of destroying some of the weaker stuff doesn't seem like a good proposition.

Well, one of the greatest dangers that comes with radioactive contamination lies in inhaling or swallowing radioactive particles (especially radioactive iodine is a huge danger), and when it comes to these, the alfa and beta radiation is much worse than the gamma radiation, as these first two are pretty much guaranteed to hit something in your body, whereas the gamma radiation mostly will pass straight through it.

[Eldan]

True, true. But somehow, annihilating the radioactive dust doesn't seem like he most efficient way of dealing with fallout.