explosions - Putting grams of antimatter in the atmosphere - Physics Antimatter annihilation from anti-hydrogen is surprisingly messy: it will not be pure gamma rays. The problem lies in the efficiency and cost of antimatter production and storage. Scientists have trouble finding antimatter however it can be created for a hefty price. @Serban Tanasa: No, it's clearly not the same question. But case 2 deserves a better answer after all anti-matter is not cheap and they are always out of stock at Home Depot. The fictional bomb works by touching 1 gram of matter to 1 gram of antimatter a substance made of sub-atomic particles with properties opposite those of normal matter particles causing. It's the most expensive substance on Earth, costing quadrillions of dollars for a single gram. I mean, in the book I read, they had an antimatter device that you could hold in your hand and it would have destroyed I believe the entire Vatican City. The Antimatter Bomb: Only Weapon More Powerful Than A Nuke Converts antimatter to energy in joules. The NIAC is currently researching antimatter powered spaceships, and according to NASA it looks promising. From some rough calculations with 10g of anti hydrogen, I came out at roughly a gigatonne of TNT's worth of energy - 1.2x10^22J. Convert that into mass using $E=mc^2$ and we get $8.13710^6 kg$ divide by 2 because half that mass is coming from regular matter and we have $4.06910^6 kg$. E = mc^2 Each gram of antimatter will release roughly twice as much energy as the Hiroshima bomb. Both antimatter and matter were created after the big bang, and the universe should be made up of 50% matter, and 50% antimatter. Simple? Unfortunately that is rather slow, so a few humans will likely survive in bunkers you don't know about, for quite a long time. When a bit of matter comes into contact with its evil antimatter twin, they cancel each other out, releasing all the energy stored inside them. What differentiates living as mere roommates from living in a marriage-like relationship? When a gnoll vampire assumes its hyena form, do its HP change? An antimatter weapon is a theoretically possible device using antimatter as a power source, a propellant, or an explosive for a weapon. So far, so good. The first is that the technology developed in CERN's Antimatter Factory has been appliedin medical imaging tools calledPET scanners. The ton of TNT is a unit of energy defined by that convention to be 4.184gigajoules (1gigacalorie),[1] which is the approximate energy released in the detonation of a metric ton (1,000 kilograms) of TNT. Divide the energy put out by this annihilation and we get $\Delta K = 14000$. Even on larger time scales, creating enough anti-matter to destroy the earth will still be very difficult without invoking the drop a rock strategy. (Note that this is not creation out of nothing, but rather the conversion of pre-existing energy into matter.) To study antimatter, you must prevent it from being annihilated . This means that although equal amounts of matter and antimatter should have formed, they weren't quite equal, he adds. Some humans would probably survive this, though. Cookie Notice Particles of both antimatter and matter were created. Making 1 gram of antimatter would require approximately 25 million billion (10 15) kilowatt-hours of energy and cost over a million billion US dollars. For more information, please see our Still a big bang. Which ability is most related to insanity: Wisdom, Charisma, Constitution, or Intelligence? Using the convention that 1 kiloton TNT equivalent = 4.18410 12 joules (or one trillion calories of energy), one half gram of antimatter reacting with one half gram of ordinary matter (one gram total) results in 21.5 kilotons-equivalent of energy (the same as the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945). The reaction of 1 kg of antimatter with 1 kg of matter would produce 1.8 10 17 J (180 petajoules) of energy (by the mass-energy equivalence formula, E=mc 2), or the rough equivalent of 43 megatons of TNT - slightly less than the yield of the 27,000 kg Tsar Bomba, the largest thermonuclear weapon ever detonated. [3], The kiloton and megaton of TNT equivalent have traditionally been used to describe the energy output, and hence the destructive power, of a nuclear weapon. It's also likely the most explosive substance on the planet. Blast Radius Calculator Making statements based on opinion; back them up with references or personal experience. The OP wanted it all in one bomb, so I told him his bomb must release at least that much energy. This is not the first time Big Bang thinking has led to the conclusion that the universe shouldnt exist. This bomb was only 50 megatons. Can we add matter and antimatter to the universe? Such weapons would easy eclipse nuclear weapons in power, e.g., 1 gram of antimatter would equal 23 space shuttle fuel tanks of energy. To some degree this is just like a normal nuclear explosion of the same yield. thanks for the detailed answer! As of now an antimatter bomb, large enough to cause any damage, wont be made because its just so expensive to make. The ablative engine, which slowly vaporizes itself to produce thrust, could go as high as 5,000 seconds. These collisions produce precisely equal amounts of matter and antimatter. Could a subterranean river or aquifer generate enough continuous momentum to power a waterwheel for the purpose of producing electricity? "Bananas are a perfect unit for antimatter production. The problem you'll quickly run into is that the Earth is big. Michael Doser who works in the only factory making it describes thisreaction as "probably the most violent process you can think of because the full mass of the object disappears and transforms into energy". Did you get it? That should be a pure gamma output initially, but I'm curious as to what would happen to the atmosphere - what will happen to that much energy, will fission happen and how much life will survive? Now you can destroy all life on earth using only about 6E4 kg of antimatter, only 60 metric tons of the good stuff. All of the antiprotons created at Fermilab's Tevatron particle accelerator add up to only 15 nanograms. The antimatter we produce collides with matter and gets annihilated without us even noticing. Well, in theory if you mix one gram of matter with one gram of antimatter you should get 1.810 14 joules of energy or about 43 kilotons. Often, the responses are droll ones such as love, cocaine, cash money, computer ink, or even sex. It seems like 2, 200kg antimatter bombs, in short succession, dropped into the Yellowstone Caldera would be fairly certain to ignite a life ending volcanic eruption saving a trillion tons of antimatter, more or less. Wonder What's Next? But say I had 1 Antimatter Electron, and I just opened a container in a room, what would happen? Can antimatter projectiles work as disintegration weapons? $10^{32}J$ is simply the gravitational binding energy of the planet. Site design / logo 2023 Stack Exchange Inc; user contributions licensed under CC BY-SA. This wave leads to an abrupt increase in pressure. Would it be similarly anti-climactic? So it depends on how much anti-matter you have. The resulting temperatures would be "well beyond the upper limit for life and the surface of the Earth would have been baked free of living microbes." Strange Frontiers, episode 2:The factory where one of the most expensive and elusive materials is made. The neutrinos will carry away a fraction of the energy but the rest will heat the vicinity into a fireball. Many people have proposed that we disarm all nuclear weapons to make the world safer. Now we need to know how this works in tons. If you absolutely, positively need to sterilize the surface, you must blast it from orbit. $> 10^{32}J$. "[When] a proton and antiproton annihilate each other, their mass completely disappears," Professor Dosersays. Check the revision history; if it's appropriate, feel free to roll back my roll back! I have no idea what you're talking about. A positron powered spaceship would be simpler, and less dangerous than say a nuclear powered spaceship which comes with a lot more complications. You'll need a fair bit of antimatter, um, let's see 1 Mt is $4.1\times10^{15} J$ so the Tsar Bomba (in the tested config) at $42MT = 1.72 \times10^{17} J$ But I don't know how to calculate that. But so far, this mysterious anti-stuff remains elusive. MathJax reference. If you want to kill all humans on earth, you have a couple of options: According to this person 57 trillion annihilations at 30 cm gives you 1 rad of radiation. With ANFO or ammonium nitrate, they would require 1.0/0.74 (or 1.35) kg or 1.0/0.32 (or 3.125) kg, respectively. Generating points along line with specifying the origin of point generation in QGIS. How much antimatter would we need in order to wipe out all humans, eradicate all animals and blow up the Earth? How much antimatter would we need in order to wipe out all humans Extreme caution is advised. You can also compare energy generated from different reactions with respect to the mass of TNT using our energy conversion calculator. Antimatter - Wikipedia barrels of oil. Why is this antimatter issue a big problem for the Big Bang? Nope. Joules. There is such a thing as an antimatter trap. rev2023.5.1.43405. $361,000,000 km^2$ to cover, you'd need another 3,009 MIEVs. The shock wave is usually spherical or hemispherical in shape. A nuclear or positron reactor can make over 900 seconds. The relative effectiveness factor (RE factor) relates an explosive's demolition power to that of TNT, in units of the TNT equivalent/kg (TNTe/kg). And yes, bizarrely, energy can become the mass of matter and vice versa. This sounds like a good thing at first, but it just means that antimatter weapons could be seen as more politically acceptable, and therefore more likely to be used in warfare. 1 gram of TNT = 2930.76 joules. You might still miss a submarine or two, but without space launch capabilities, zero industrial capacity, and an all-male crew, you're set anyway. The same process happens in the human body too, so we're all creating anti-electrons. The same technology could theoretically be used to make very small and possibly "fission-free" (very low nuclear fallout) weapons (see pure fusion weapon). It only takes a minute to sign up. This form is part of the U.S. implementation of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and is submitted voluntarily by mines that conduct blasts with over 300 short tons "TNT equivalent" of explosives. Ah yes, the multi-million dollar question. Browse other questions tagged, Start here for a quick overview of the site, Detailed answers to any questions you might have, Discuss the workings and policies of this site. But I mean, I'm leaning towards Star Trek being somewhat more accurate, they gloss over how Warp Drive works in the Original Series, but by the time The Next Generation came about in 1987 they explained how Warp Drive works, and then we had a working theory on the Alcubierre Drive by 1994. If you have an absurdly large fireball it will tend to spread more upwards (less pressure, longer mean-free path) and send a big plasma cloud up - bad from an electromagnetic pulse, ozone layer and IR energy igniting stuff perspective. So ever since I read a book (Angels and Demons by Dan Brown?) It uses a magnet to keep antimatter on the inside from interacting with the walls of the trap and exploding.