Antinuclear Warheads

[Vapymid]

i said nothing of anti uranium. Anti hydrogen would work just fine,...

 

No it won't. Hydrogen has just 1 proton as its nucleus - can't fission that.

 

I'm talking about splitting a single atom of antimatter the same way you would split an atom of uranium.

...

if something like the Holocaust were to happen again, we would have yet another secret weapon to use.

 

As Alphabetagamma has already explained, maximum energy you can release from a given mass is E=mc^^2

 

You get that by annihilating matter with antimatter. If you split heavy antimatter before annihilating it, all you will achieve is to release a small portion of E when the atoms split, then release the rest of E when the bomb fragments hit the normal matter. The total energy released will still be E. You can get the same result by just dropping a pile of antimatter bricks into normal matter atmosphere.

 

In other words, splitting antimatter atoms as a weapon against normal matter targets is like setting TNT in your artillery shells on fire before shooting them - difficult and dangerous but largely pointless.

 

Regards

[BTGBullseye]

i said nothing of anti uranium. Anti hydrogen would work just fine,...

 

No it won't. Hydrogen has just 1 proton as its nucleus - can't fission that.

 

I'm talking about splitting a single atom of antimatter the same way you would split an atom of uranium.

...

if something like the Holocaust were to happen again, we would have yet another secret weapon to use.

 

As Alphabetagamma has already explained, maximum energy you can release from a given mass is E=mc^^2

 

You get that by annihilating matter with antimatter. If you split heavy antimatter before annihilating it, all you will achieve is to release a small portion of E when the atoms split, then release the rest of E when the bomb fragments hit the normal matter. The total energy released will still be E. You can get the same result by just dropping a pile of antimatter bricks into normal matter atmosphere.

 

In other words, splitting antimatter atoms as a weapon against normal matter targets is like setting TNT in your artillery shells on fire before shooting them - difficult and dangerous but largely pointless.

 

Regards

I like people that have a good grasp of analogous physics.

[Doom Shepherd]

i said nothing of anti uranium. Anti hydrogen would work just fine, and yes I'm talking about splitting a single atom of antimatter the same way you would split an atom of uranium. Antimatter can be kept stable. It's hard to do but not impossible. And yes it does take alot of energy to create antimatter, but if something like the Holocaust were to happen again, we would have yet another secret weapon to use.

 

Nuclear bombs don't split single atoms of uranium. The energy released in splitting a SINGLE atom, of ANYTHING, is not that great. That is why it took a 'critical mass' of several kilograms of uranium to make an atom bomb.

 

Scientists split individual atoms all the time in colliders. You'll notice the colliders do not explode. (this is, in fact, how they make antimatter.)

 

In the "H-Bomb," the process used is FUSION, turning hydrogen into helium. You also need an A-bomb to trigger it. (Otherwise, the only way to get hydrogen or antihydrogen to fuse is by accumulating enough of it to make a STAR.)

 

Ignoring the silliness of antihydrogen fission, however, matter-matter ANNIHILATION is MUCH more powerful. A gram of antimatter colliding with a gram of matter would produce a 42-kiloton explosion, or roughly 3x the Hiroshima bomb.

 

However, currently we can only produce a few bits of antimatter. In 2008, the annual production of antiprotons at the Antiproton Decelerator facility of CERN was several picograms at a cost of $20 million. Thus, at the current level of production, an equivalent of a 10MT hydrogen bomb, about 250 grams of antimatter, will take 2.5 million years of the energy production of the entire Earth to produce.

 

Knowing these facts, I believe we can conclude that the idea lacks merit.

[Vapymid]

Just recently, it was confirmed that there is a substantial layer of antimatter (antiprotons) within the Van Allen Belts.

 

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/08/pamela_spots_antimatter/

 

There are even suggestions that there is so much of it that a possibility of "harvesting" the Belts may exist...

 

Regards

[Ecorp99]

Apologies for my ignorance, the basic idea was everything exactly like a nuckear bomb, but using antimatter in the warhead. Please forgive me, as I'm only twelve, and I have a very light grasp on physics and such this advanced.

[alphabetagamma]

Apologies for my ignorance, the basic idea was everything exactly like a nuckear bomb, but using antimatter in the warhead. Please forgive me, as I'm only twelve, and I have a very light grasp on physics and such this advanced.

No worries! It's an interesting idea, but not a very practical one.

[Ecorp99]

Perhaps have an atom of antimatter suspended in a magnetic field in the warhead, then when it hits, the magnetic field shuts down and creates an explosion. That could also work, it would create an explosion about the size of Vatican City and blind everyone around it. Of course you could always add more anti-atoms...

[Doom Shepherd]

Perhaps have an atom of antimatter suspended in a magnetic field in the warhead, then when it hits, the magnetic field shuts down and creates an explosion. That could also work, it would create an explosion about the size of Vatican City and blind everyone around it. Of course you could always add more anti-atoms...

 

Again, an atom will not do it. An atom is vanishingly tiny. You're going to need visible amounts to produce a decent explosion. As I said above 1 gram (which is a LOT of atoms) = 3 hiroshimas. To get the size explosion you "want" won't take as much, but it's still going to take a lot more than single atoms or molecules.

 

1 gram of antihydrogen would be the equivalent of roughly 600000000000000000000000 atoms of antihydrogen. (get your hands of a chemistry textbook and look up "moles" to confirm).

[Razor235]

Perhaps have an atom of antimatter suspended in a magnetic field in the warhead, then when it hits, the magnetic field shuts down and creates an explosion. That could also work, it would create an explosion about the size of Vatican City and blind everyone around it. Of course you could always add more anti-atoms...

 

Wouldn't work, a magnetic field (at least not the ones that can be generated on a warhead) doesn't keep matter separated from matter (or antimatter). It only alters the field of an atom in a way that repels certain other atoms, not all of them.

[Ecorp99]

well the way they store anti-atoms in magnetic fields (i think) and one atom colliding with one anti-atom creates an explosion thr size of Vatican City. (yes, I read Angels and Demons)

[Vapymid]

Magnetic confinement: http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/p012561.pdf

 

Quote: "This trap design may be useful for production and confinement of cold antihydrogen"

 

 

Regards

[Doom Shepherd]

well the way they store anti-atoms in magnetic fields (i think) and one atom colliding with one anti-atom creates an explosion thr size of Vatican City. (yes, I read Angels and Demons)

 

Again, no it doesn't. Angels and Demons is FICTION, and not always well-researched fiction. In fact, here's a list of some of the other mistakes.

 

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Angels_and_Demons/Divergence_from_reality

 

And also, the book says that the amount of antimatter that will be used is 0.25g. which would be 150,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms of antihydrogen. Not 1.

 

I appreciate your imagination, but seriously; I'm a librarian. I have access to vast amounts of information. I am also the son of a chemist, the guys who know all about atoms and anti-atoms and such. I'm also a science geek, and a Star Trek fan (and they use antimatter for everything!) I keep up on things. You can trust me on this one.