Air Force Researching Antimatter Weapons 1062
mlmitton writes "The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that the Air Force is actively pursuing antimatter weapons. Such weapons would easy eclipse nuclear weapons in power, e.g., 1 gram of antimatter would equal 23 space shuttle fuel tanks of energy. Perhaps more interesting, after an initial inquiry by the Chronicle in the summer, the Air Force issued a gag order that prohibits any Air Force employee from discussing antimatter research or funding."
How about research them... (Score:1, Insightful)
But destructe research wins over constructive alternatives hands down.
Really... (Score:5, Insightful)
We can not afford a mine shaft gap!
How to detonate it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Alternatively antimatter may blow up just fine without any assistance. It's all theory just now. We'll have to drop a gram of it to be sure.
Schweet! (Score:3, Insightful)
How many megatons yield per aircraft?
OK, now I'm scared.
Since we can never stop fighting with each other (Score:1, Insightful)
Funny the way the article is worded... (Score:5, Insightful)
The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that the Air Force is actively pursuing antimatter weapons. Such weapons would easy eclipse nuclear weapons in power, e.g., 1 gram of antimatter would equal 23 space shuttle fuel tanks of energy.
Are we sure they're pursuing weapons? We are talking about the Air Force, and it's funny how they'd compare the relative energy to a spaceship fuel tank, of all things...
I guess this is it (Score:2, Insightful)
"Oh, they're safer, there'll be no fallout..."
A couple pounds of antimatter, combined with matter, and there'll be no earth to fall to.
If they succeed, this is it.
In 10 billion years, some future race will detect a gamma ray burst from the Milky Way Galaxy...
Not as spectacular as you think. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wrong department (Score:2, Insightful)
Look for a patent infringement suit.
A bigger bomb isn't the answer. Guerilla warefare has shown you have to fight door-to-door. Daisy-cutters, as impressive as they were and 'Shock and awe' seem, upon reflection, to be greatly overrated in their effectiveness. People fear nuclear weapons, not just because they can kill so many, but because they can poison the land for years to come.
Re:How about research them... (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that matter + anti-matter is a purely destructive process to begin with, it isn't surprising that this is a key area of military research. On the brighter side, tons of everyday inventions funnel down from military funded projects, so it's not all doom and gloom.
Re:Really... (Score:3, Insightful)
Weapon research == Power plant research. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, it's radioactive, just like fission, but hey antimatter is cheap at $62.5 trillion per gram, and it's 10-100 times more powerful!
Not sure what the point would be in antimatter weapons, besides serious coolness. Nukes are at least stable at room temperature, and if you drop a ball of plutonium on your foot, all you get is broken toes. Wouldn't want to have a power failure anywhere NEAR antimatter.
Re:How about research them... (Score:2, Insightful)
Why positronium? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:How about research them... (Score:3, Insightful)
Any energy you have to 'make' invokes the Second Law. This doesn't mean you shouldn't bother, because we still need ways to store and transfer energy, which is what we do with hydrogen, antimatter or storage batteries. The fact they are total energy negative isn't the point, it's that they put the energy where we want it in an extractable form.
And extracting energy where you want it is what weapons technology is all about.
Lots of energy. It doesn't matter what that energy cost you in energy.
KFG
Pointless. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Energy Conversion (Score:5, Insightful)
Anti-Matter Resch. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:How about research them... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:How about research them... (Score:3, Insightful)
But destructe research wins over constructive alternatives hands down."
Um, yeah, so? Desctructive research is cheaper, and gee, that's also the job of the airforce. What do they need an anti-matter power source for? That's like complaining that cheetahs eat animals when they could be protecting them from other predators.
expensive (Score:2, Insightful)
And antimatter bombs have been proposed as far back as the 70s, but of course anything's "new" when the public hears about it regardless of when the ideas were first conceived. The militarization of space, super efficient warheads, "brilliant" weapons (as opposed to "smart"): all have been under thorough investigation by the USAF for decades. All have been underlying trends in military scientists' minds representing a natural progression in defense technology, with nothing extraordinary about them.
All of those things, in today's sensationalist world, are perceived as indicators of the US military's suddenly new drive to take over the world, when in reality, there's nothing new about them. We all gasp when we hear about them, but to the aged scientists working at Edwards, it's all old hat. The USAF's overall plans haven't changed (though they certainly have progressed), only the public's perceptions.
Re:Really... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How to detonate it? (Score:1, Insightful)
The Victorians already knew this to be false. Their problem was trying to keep propellers on their steam ships in contact with water. If the propeller was too powerful, it would push the water away from it and a bubble of vacuum would open up. It's called cavitation. If Victorian steam engines are powerful enough to create a vacuum around a propeller in water, I'd imagine that a chunk of antimatter would have no problems at all keeping air away from itself.
Wrong warriors, wrong workplace, wrong spacetime (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Evil Twin (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:If you're dropping The Bomb anyway... (Score:4, Insightful)
So lets not decieve each other about who such a weapon will be used on, nor its ultimate purpose. Such a bomb would be a weapon designed to kill off the civilian population of a country while leaving their oil fields standing. OK, maybe I'm a little cynical, but I grew up during the height of the cold war at what would have been ground 0 had there been a war. I think I've earned the right to be a bit cynical.
It's been a while, but I believe I heard about several treaties back in the day banning the research on the "Neutron Bomb." No one particularly liked the idea of a clean weapon that could kill off a large population. All you'd have to do is bomb a region, send some guys in to clear the bodies out and then start moving your own people in. I wouldn't trust the most saintly of governments with a power like that, much less my own.
I would not, however, object to a particle/beam weapon that could cut an enemy tank or missile up like a big piece of cheese.
Re:Funny the way the article is worded... (Score:3, Insightful)
Ding! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's something like 95% fuel by weight on takeoff. Now, if your engines are burning antimatter, you can replace all that weight with payload and still reach orbit!
If the antimatter could be manufactured for a reasonable multiple of the energy cost, it would cause the cost of getting stuff into space to drop dramatically.
Re:Really... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nuclear weapons were successful in ending the second world war because we were the only country that had them at the time. We couldn't use them in any cold war conflicts because our enemies could use them on us.
Likewise, the development of anti-matter weapons is useless too, because even if we develop the technology to use them, long-range nuclear weapons from our enemies can still be used against us.
Creating more powerful weapons in an arms race is kind of like seeing who can count to the biggest number faster... I doubt we'll ever reach a largest number, and eventually both people will shout out "infinity plus one!".
Re:Really... (Score:2, Insightful)
More Pentagon Bullshit (Score:2, Insightful)
Wake up, folks. It's bullshit.
Less is more (Score:3, Insightful)
If the military needs a 10MT bomb they're use a nuke. It's known, reliable technology. It's even safe... at least for us.
But if the military wants to hit a target with, oh, 100T to 2000T - that's tons, not kilotons - it doesn't have a lot of options. Conventional cruise missiles can carry a few tons (actually far less but modern chemical explosives are far more powerful than TNT). Aircraft can drop heavier bombs, up to MOAB, but that requires you to actually get a heavy bomber into the area. That can take hours, it has to get past air defenses, etc. You can't just launch a bunch of cruise missiles from a submarine or destroyer and be done with it.
This is why the military was looking at "mini-nukes"... but there's a lower limit on the size of nuclear weapons and actually testing one will cause a lot of problems on the world stage. Not that this administration gives a damn about that but it is a consideration.
An antimatter bomb can be as small as you need to disable the target while minimizing the collateral damage. It doesn't even have to be explosive - an intense "sizzling" gamma ray source may even be better than an explosion. It'll kill personnel, disable electronics, wipe magnetic media, etc. without causing the infrastructure to collapse beyond any damage caused by the initial penetration.
Re:Energy Conversion (Score:4, Insightful)
"Such weapons would easy eclipse nuclear weapons in power"
No. Such weapons would easily eclipse nuclear weapons in *fuel energy density*. They would not eclipse nuclear weapons in energy, or even overall energy density, without radical breakthroughs. Antimatter is just too expensive to produce, and requires such large containment structures, that you can't get either sizable amounts of raw antimatter energy, nor great energy density. Perhaps antimatter-catylized fusion might produce new, useful weapons (small fusion bombs that don't need a fission bomb to start the reaction), although I personally am not in favor of blurring the line between conventional and nuclear weapons.
Still, I guess there is one good thing that will come of this: I always felt we should spend more money on basic research and less on the military. Here, the military is spending its money on basic research
Re:Probably useless (Score:4, Insightful)
Interesting. (Score:3, Insightful)
Good and bad. Good is no radioactive fallout... the long term consequences of their use, and the collateral damage, are dramatically reduced.
But thats bad too, since lower consequences will likely mean more likely to use.
The vast power of a small amount is also troubling. How easy would it be to use a small amount? Sure, any amount would cause a boom, but it might not be practical to weaponize small quantities with the difficulties of safely containing antimatter for long term use. From the article, micrograms are only equivalent to about 83 pounds of TNT, so if amounts that small can be safely and effectively weaponized it could be useful. On the other hand, how far does that initial gamma ray burst travel?
Interesting technology, but there are serious questions.
No no no. (Score:1, Insightful)
If you want a super WMD (gee, didn't we invade IRAQ over those supposedly) that won't have alot of fallout, the "neutron bomb" is a better candidate (has little fallout and leaves buildings standing).
No this isn't about creating anything useful. Don't delude yourself.
Re:Really... (Score:1, Insightful)