Air Force pursuing antimatter weapons

[Darthanime]

The U.S. Air Force is quietly spending millions of dollars investigating ways to use a radical power source -- antimatter, the eerie "mirror" of ordinary matter -- in future weapons.


The most powerful potential energy source presently thought to be available to humanity, antimatter is a term normally heard in science-fiction films and TV shows, whose heroes fly "antimatter-powered spaceships" and do battle with "antimatter guns."

But antimatter itself isn't fiction; it actually exists and has been intensively studied by physicists since the 1930s. In a sense, matter and antimatter are the yin and yang of reality: Every type of subatomic particle has its antimatter counterpart. But when matter and antimatter collide, they annihilate each other in an immense burst of energy.

During the Cold War, the Air Force funded numerous scientific studies of the basic physics of antimatter. With the knowledge gained, some Air Force insiders are beginning to think seriously about potential military uses -- for example, antimatter bombs small enough to hold in one's hand, and antimatter engines for 24/7 surveillance aircraft.

More cataclysmic possible uses include a new generation of super weapons -- either pure antimatter bombs or antimatter-triggered nuclear weapons; the former wouldn't emit radioactive fallout. Another possibility is antimatter- powered "electromagnetic pulse" weapons that could fry an enemy's electric power grid and communications networks, leaving him literally in the dark and unable to operate his society and armed forces.

Following an initial inquiry from The Chronicle this summer, the Air Force forbade its employees from publicly discussing the antimatter research program. Still, details on the program appear in numerous Air Force documents distributed over the Internet prior to the ban.
These include an outline of a March 2004 speech by an Air Force official who, in effect, spilled the beans about the Air Force's high hopes for antimatter weapons.

On March 24, Kenneth Edwards, director of the "revolutionary munitions" team at the Munitions Directorate at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida was keynote speaker at the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) conference in Arlington, Va.

In that talk, Edwards discussed the potential uses of a type of antimatter called positrons.

Physicists have known about positrons or "antielectrons" since the early 1930s, when Caltech scientist Carl Anderson discovered a positron flying through a detector in his laboratory.

That discovery, and the later discovery of "antiprotons" by Berkeley scientists in the 1950s, upheld a 1920s theory of antimatter proposed by physicist Paul Dirac.

In 1929, Dirac suggested that the building blocks of atoms -- electrons (negatively charged particles) and protons (positively charged particles) -- have antimatter counterparts: antielectrons and antiprotons. One fundamental difference between matter and antimatter is that their subatomic building blocks carry opposite electric charges. Thus, while an ordinary electron is negatively charged, an antielectron is positively charged (hence the term positrons, which means "positive electrons"); and while an ordinary proton is positively charged, an antiproton is negative.
The real excitement, though, is this: If electrons or protons collide with their antimatter counterparts, they annihilate each other. In so doing, they unleash more energy than any other known energy source, even thermonuclear bombs.

The energy from colliding positrons and antielectrons "is 10 billion times ... that of high explosive," Edwards explained in his March speech. Moreover, 1 gram of antimatter, about 1/25th of an ounce, would equal "23 space shuttle fuel tanks of energy." Thus "positron energy conversion," as he called it, would be a "revolutionary energy source" of interest to those who wage war.

It almost defies belief, the amount of explosive force available in a speck of antimatter -- even a speck that is too small to see. For example: One millionth of a gram of positrons contain as much energy as 37.8 kilograms (83 pounds) of TNT, according to Edwards' March speech. A simple calculation, then, shows that about 50-millionths of a gram could generate a blast equal to the explosion (roughly 4,000 pounds of TNT, according to the FBI) at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

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.


Interesting? I find it kinda sad that we're wasting Antimatter on more weapons when we could use to advance space travel technology and a better energy source for the country.

[kyubichan]

Interesting? I find it kinda sad that we're wasting Antimatter on more weapons when we could use to advance space travel technology and a better energy source for the country.

Such is the mystery of the human mind.

...or maybe they're building weapons to protect the antimatter first, then they'll research some more?

[Eris]

It isn't economically feasible. You don't -need- more firepower than with conventional atomic weapons, and the biggest ones will rarely contaminate the soil at all (as with the infamous Tzar bomb). In the end, the thing antimatter will be best at annihilating will be the money in your pockets.

There are no free lunches in physics. You can't just get free energy. The energy you get from blowing antimatter up will not exceed the energy required to create the antimatter in the first place, not to mention it's extremely scarce, extremely hard to create, and volatile to the extent it needs to be kept hovering in a magnetic field in perfect vacuum.

What makes nuclear weapons so good is that they're stable. Imagine a weapon that is so volatile that the slightest power-spike, the slightest dent might set of a cataclysmic chain reaction.

Antimatter weapons is sort of a fool's quest, that looks very promising to politicans and people with no background in physics.

[kyubichan]

It isn't economically feasible. You don't -need- more firepower than with conventional atomic weapons, and the biggest ones will rarely contaminate the soil at all (as with the infamous Tzar bomb). In the end, the thing antimatter will be best at annihilating will be the money in your pockets.

Governments do love spending money on things other than what their tax-paying countrymen need, don't they?

[storm sworder]

Actually, the gov. are paying for poor people's school tuitions, and for the food to disaster victims.

Back to the topic: If they actually harness anti matter, they could make invisible soldiers. Prolly in the far future when new discoveries are found.

[Eris]

Back to the topic: If they actually harness anti matter, they could make invisible soldiers. Prolly in the far future when new discoveries are found.

How do you connect invisibility to antimatter?

[kyubichan]

How do you connect invisibility to antimatter?

When the electrons/protons collide with the antielectrons/antiprotons, they go BOOM.

Gone.

Invisible.

Actually, the gov. are paying for poor people's school tuitions, and for the food to disaster victims.

Not where I'm from. Also, NGOs tend to help out on those things.

[Sagat]

This is old news..

As far as invisible soldiers ...

That's what the nanotech suits are for.

[Eris]

This is old news..

As far as invisible soldiers ...

That's what the nanotech suits are for.

Nanotech will get you invisiblish at best. Works better on vehicles than people.

[Kishiro]

Until I see an article to back up this thread, I call crap on it.
Last I heard, after the big bang, there was no no more anti-matter left in the universe, because of the surplus of matter.
However, there apparently [theoretically] is still "dark matter" left in the universe.

The article looks pretty official, as if it was written by someone else, for sure. But I'd like to see the real thing itself. It almost seems like it was written by the same people that do the Yahoo Gossip/Entertainment pages, that wrote the article about a massive Hawking Radiation cloud traveling rapidly throughout the galaxy, that will destroy the planet in 2014, on June 14th.

In other words, it sounds silly.

[Eris]

Until I see an article to back up this thread, I call crap on it.
Last I heard, after the big bang, there was no no more anti-matter left in the universe, because of the surplus of matter.
However, there apparently [theoretically] is still "dark matter" left in the universe.

Even though antimatter isn't found in nature, it can be artificially created. But it is a very slow and inefficient process. Very small quantities have thus far been created for research processes. Antimatter is real, what's questionable is it's feasibility in weapons.

In theory it sounds great, just 0.5 g antimatter would unleash the energy of 1 megaton TNT, but what they don't tell you is that you actually have to spend more than that energy to create the antimatter in the first place, not to mention that it--with today's technology--takes one billion years to make that quantity of antimatter.

[Future_Defense]

wow really? A billion years? Yikes! How small of a quantity have they "made" then? Like a billionth of a gram? How exactly do you create antimatter anyway?

[storm sworder]

How do you connect invisibility to antimatter?

Not with our current tech. I said far future. They can use the outer layer of the antimatter. Its just a theory. But we'll never live long enough. I'll never see Paris fall.

Oh. Since when did the NGO become a factor in this equation? Unless you're saying the gov. funds them too.

[WhatIsAUserName]

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.

Wait a second, this shouldn't be right. Correct me if I'm wrong, but radiation is exactly the thing that causes the blast and debris. It heats up a certain spherical volume of air, which expands, and this air blast is what causes the physical destruction.

'Superbomb' - nice word, though people might find ways of hardening against even the anti-matter weapons.

And why do the gamma rays somehow not contaminate the surroundings. Do they somehow just arrive, rip through any poor soul in their way, and dissipate?

[bakakame]

wow really? A billion years? Yikes! How small of a quantity have they "made" then? Like a billionth of a gram? How exactly do you create antimatter anyway?

When smashing atoms in a partical accelerator, you occasionally get an anti-proton as a result.

For those who are uncertain on what anti-matter is, it is essentially matter with an opposite charge of normal matter. A proton has a positive charge, an anti-proton has a negative charge. Also, for all we know, there could be entire galaxy's comprised of anti-matter, since all other properties are the same as regular matter we would have no way of telling the differance until we are able to somehow interact with them.

[WhatIsAUserName]

When smashing atoms in a partical accelerator, you occasionally get an anti-proton as a result.

For those who are uncertain on what anti-matter is, it is essentially matter with an opposite charge of normal matter. A proton has a positive charge, an anti-proton has a negative charge. Also, for all we know, there could be entire galaxy's comprised of anti-matter, since all other properties are the same as regular matter we would have no way of telling the differance until we are able to somehow interact with them.

The way to determine the existence of antimatter galaxies, according to some scientists, would be to watch for the energy explosions caused if drifting debris (read, matter, and believe it or not, there's plenty out there just floating around) somehow collided with them, therefore causing the negation-ish reaction. And of course, it could be happening right now, but maybe it's too many light-years away to see in anybody's life time.

[kyubichan]

Oh. Since when did the NGO become a factor in this equation? Unless you're saying the gov. funds them too.

You said the gov. pays for stuff. I said here, it's usually the NGOs that help out more people. If you don't live in the same place that I do, let's end the NGO discussion here. Oh, and I never said anything about NGOs being tied with the antimatter thing though, if that was what you were asking.