Antimatter weapons

[Hunter Parasite]

You know, like when you combine matter with antimatter, like hydrogen and antihydrogen, it sometimes makes an explosion? Well, we can use that to say, fire bullets faster than a CO2 or gun powder shot. Or, we can make bombs useing that explosion on a massive scale.

[Dollan]

Yeeees.... I would want a gun fired with an antimatter catalyst....

Why would one need a gun to fire a bullett at a higher rate of speed? When the catalyst has a higher energy potential than the actual weapon projectile, you'll likeley get destruction of the weapon itself. For that matter, why would one even wish to bother making weapons, when the same application could be used for highly efficient (theoretically) STL vessels?

...John...

[Tanketai]

In theory, it is possible. However, there are a series of practical issues that make the use o antimatter as weaponry a little too difficult.

- Production: Nowadays one can only create antimatter using giant particle acellerators, where it is created in infimous amounts.

- Storage: As the positrons of the antimatter would react with any electron of a physical container, antimatter can only be stored in a vacuum, held by strong magnetic fields. The more antimatter you need to store, more energy is required to contain it.

- Transport: would be like nitroglicerin, except there is no chemicals to make it more stable.

- As a weapon: what would stop the antimatter from annihilating with the interveining matter, such as the atmosphere between the weapon and it's target?

- As an energy source: antimatter requires so much energy to be produced that it's impracticable to use it as fuel, like in Star Trek.

As a bomb, though, might be feasible in a not-so-distant future.

[ajtribick]

Given the amount of energy you need to make antimatter, and the fact that a significant proportion of the energy given out would quite happily pass through a couple of metres of lead without being absorbed (that's gamma rays for you), an antimatter gun would be fairly useless as a weapon.

[Hunter Parasite]

If you were to shoot a projectile at a higher fire velocity, you would more likely hit the target if it is say, moving, then you would with a slower fire velocity because it would get to the target quicker. Next the military in th future, could somehow develop some way of storing massive amounts of antimatter, creating it and using, without compromising the weapon itself.

[Dollan]

We already have fast weapons capable of hitting moving targets. They're called missles

...John...

[Malenfant]

If you were to shoot a projectile at a higher fire velocity, you would more likely hit the target if it is say, moving, then you would with a slower fire velocity because it would get to the target quicker. Next the military in th future, could somehow develop some way of storing massive amounts of antimatter, creating it and using, without compromising the weapon itself.

That'd be great. Forget Chernobyl, if the containment goes on pretty much any 'massive' amount of antimatter, it's curtains for the whole Earth!

[Don. Edwards]

The whole idea of Anti-matter weapons is an oxymorron. Anyone to even consider it is out of there mind. It simply would be the device to end mankind and all life on this planet, not usher in a new age. Now anti-matter for power generation and space-flight is a totally differnt thing and the only logical use of it.

Don.

[Malenfant]

The whole idea of Anti-matter weapons is an oxymorron. Anyone to even consider it is out of there mind. It simply would be the device to end mankind and all life on this planet, not usher in a new age. Now anti-matter for power generation and space-flight is a totally differnt thing and the only logical use of it.

Don.

Well, you could argue the same for nuclear weapons vs nuclear power or nuclear drives too.

Problem is, you can't really have one without the other.

[Le Chacal]

If you were to shoot a projectile at a higher fire velocity, you would more likely hit the target if it is say, moving, then you would with a slower fire velocity because it would get to the target quicker.

Indeed, some guns can fire supersonic projectile (the french FAMAS I think, and others that I don't remember) However, the problem is a high-velocity is useless if the projectile passes through the target. A projectile must loose all its cinetic energy into the target. With a too high velocity, you make a hole and that's all...

[Tanketai]

A projectile must loose all its cinetic energy into the target. With a too high velocity, you make a hole and that's all...

I guess I hole through somebody's head would be more than enough wouldn't it? (That sounded evil, didn't it?)

[Hunter Parasite]

Making a hole would be good! Like you shoot a guy inm the arm, there would be a chunk of his arm missing! and he probably would die of blood loss.

[WildMoon]

The fact that humans cannot resolve their big issues without killing off a billion innocent people and for anyone to have to experience the pain and terror of getting a bullet shot at you or having a limb blown off by a nade is bad enough, we don't need to go around making antimatter machine guns that blow alotta holes through people.

Besides, if the bullet went through somebody, then wouldn't it hit the person behind that poor person you just blew a hole through? I can imagine alot more accidents due to bullets going through somebody.

For the production of antimatter couldn't we build some power plant (absolutly NOT fossil fuel) that could be used specifically to power the production of anitmatter only? Then that'd solve power issues.

[WildMoon]

And about the nuclear thing...

Now that nuclear missiles (nukes) are around, it's not gonna be as easy as people think to get rid of them. There's only two possible ways that the thought of prohibiting nuke use around the world will get into politician's head are:

1. Abolish all remaining communist governments and replace them with governments that won't likely go sour, make sure all other countries have certain laws that the government cannot override, and then get all countries to be allies and solve all problems that countries have between each other. Like that'll ever happen...

2. Make a weapon more devastating than a nuke. Anyone against nukes because of their destructiveness that thinks making a weapon more destructive than a nuke is gonna solve the problem is nuts.

So unfortunatly, getting rid of nukes is impossible. But getting rid of nuclear fission power plants might be possible. In fact, though they may produce lotsa energy and are better than fossil fuel plants (*cough*Ihatethemmore*cough*) I don't like the possibility of meltdown. And also they'd be pretty high on a terrorist's list of targets to bomb, since blowing up a nuke fis power plant is pretty destructive.

Though now having mentioned fossil fuel plants a couple of times, I must say that I think they need to be gotten rid of first. They are polluting our atmosphere, destroying the ozone (effects of ozone going bye-bye: glaciers start melting raising sea level and flooding all cities by the water and complete islands to be below the sea, more exposure to radiation, more heat, more sunburns and skin cancer, climate changes, did I miss anything?), contaminating land and water with mercury, shall I go on? I think that they need to be gotten rid of first.

Until (and, I hate to say it, if) we perfect fusion power so that it makes more power than it takes to keep it going, then fusion power will be a great replacement for fossil fuels and nuclear fission.

*crosses and hopes that fusion power will be prefected soon*

Note: If I seem angry, it's only because I'm extremely against stuff that screws up the Earth and kills off animals. I seem to have trouble understanding why the crud anyone would wanna do something that kills off living beings and screws up the Earth.

[eburacum45]

Here is an example of an antimatter weapon system from Orion's Arm, illustrated using Celestia.
http://www.orionsarm.com/tech/MASS.html

It is currently very expensive to make antimatter using today's technology.
In OA it is assumed that the generous amounts of energy available near to a star's surface will allow high energy physics to be carried out cheaply, essentially manufacturing antimatter from sunlight. There are a few speculative methods of carrying out such manufacture, but most of them are quite inefficient. Nevertheless the Sun gives out energy equivalent to two million tonnes of antimatter per second; if only a trillionth of this energy can be captured and turned into antimatter that will be a couple of kilograms manufactured every second.