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." http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/10/04/MNGM393GPK1.DTL
LOL. The gamma radiation alone will be enough to exclude any portable hand weapon use... And then there's the containment field...
My understanding was that for antimatter to destroy matter, it would have to be the same exact particle of matter to its antimatter counterpart. According to Hawking, antimatter can coexist, so why would that weapon work? Oh well, this is good news. The weapons we have just aren't deadly enough in my opinion.
True, but we can only make anti-hydrogen at the moment (at great cost-- the output is way smaller than the input). I see this reacting quite easily with spare hydrogen atoms floating around in the athmopshere... Then there are the roaming electrons in lots of materials who'd just love to get up-close and personal with positrons (anti-electrons). The gamma radiation released would be a... problem. Anyway, we don't deserve more deadly weapons. We could have blown up the planet 100 times over in the 60's to 90's, and we let that opportunity tragically pass. those no-good peace-lovin' beatnik hippy presidents Reagan and Gorbatchev just took the fun out of everything...
Good point. ? I know. We could have destroyed ourselves ten times over by now, but we're just too lazy to commit. Damn.
Not so, I'm afraid. Gamma radiation is electromagnetic radiation, on the same spectrum like visible light but way, way up there beyond ultra-violet and X-ray; i.e. it's made of photons. When a particle and anti-particle come into contact they annihilate each other releasing two high energy photons in the process: gamma radiation.
Why would the possibly need anti-matter weapons??? The only thing that kind of power would be useful for would be destroying planets, or asteroids. If they could harness the power for world electricity demands that would be utterly amazing, but I'm arfraid that may never be possible. The only other thing that it would be truely good for is space/time travel. You could open a wormhole big enough for a person to travel through, although you need a chunk of anti-matter literaly the size of Jupiter.
The only other thing that it would be truely good for is space/time travel. You could open a wormhole big enough for a person to travel through, although you need a chunk of anti-matter literaly the size of Jupiter. Didn't know antimatter could 'open a wormhole'. Thought wormholes were theoretical, nanoscopic and lasted for millionths of a second.....if they exist As far as I know, using antimatter as a fuel source is not possible as its hard to collect (normally only and intermediatary of larger reactions) and difficult to make (if input is greater than output then nothin's made). Antimatter weapons would be cool but very dangerous. If the antimatter was released from its vacuum magnetic trap then anyone within a looooong way would be in BIG trouble
ok let me clarify... hehe. Theoretically, the ENERGY created by a jupiter sized matter/anti-matter interaction, would be enough to "stretch" the mouth of a worm hole to the size where a person could pass through it. As I understand it, these wormholes originate from quantum foam, which has tiny "tunnels" in it. When something enters one end of the "tunnel" it instantly appears on the other end. It is thought that these could be used for instant travel to anywhere... if you have the technology and power.
Last time I checked the two fundamental principals of time travel were breaking the light barrier and using a wormhole. In essence, for time travel to be possible (and this is forward only, mind you), a craft would have to be traveling greater than the speed of light. Due to "E = mc^2" any carft going at or beyond the speed of light would have a nonexistent mass (infinitely small). We don't have to worry about this because we have no way of propelling a spacecraft at the speed of light. Based on Newton's third law and the theory of relativity, this will NEVER be possible. Besides, by the looks of things, we will have used antimatter to destroy ourselves before we use it to explore the cone.
You seem to assume that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line...not so. Imagine the universe we know or the dimension we exist in is actually curved in like a circle similar to a C. Hard to imagine 3D space curved but bear with it...now our understanding to get from one end to the other involves traveling the circumference of this curve...wormhole is simply a 'shortcut' through the middle (so-to-speak). Taken a step further - instead of a 2d curve like the letter 'C' imagine if it were a swirling sphere or twisted (constantly twisting?) space-time...now the distance from here to the next galaxy could be a few meters through one of these wormholes.
Alternately if the universe was a circle or a donut, the same would be true. Just rip through the middle.
OK, so this object traveling through said wormhole would be traveling from one point in the universe to the other at an undefinable rate of speed? PS: I'm a math guy, not physics, so equations help.
Actually, the closer you get to the speed of light the MORE massive you get. At the speed of light you would be infinitely massive, and this is why you'd need infinite energy to propel you. In theory if you could pass through a wormhole you would not necessarily be "moving" faster than light, yet the distance you could cover in a given amount of time would be greater than the distance light could travel.
check out the september issue of scientific american for lots of mind-bending essays/theses on relativity and Einstein. I got as far as the practical application of lasers etc. before my brain started to bleed! More confusing than wormholes is the concept of inter-dinensional travel. Ooof! /science kicks ehrnam's arse!
no, 100% of what is created in a matter-antimatter reaction is gamma ray photons. Thats why when at CERN they collide matter an anti-matter, the chamber where its reacted is a LONG way from where all the scientists are!
