4 ms·
It's much harder to come by then traditional "incredibly hard to come by" substances like precious metals or coral snake venom; harder to store, harder to study
by M_Grey 10y ago
It's much harder to come by then traditional "incredibly hard to come by" substances like precious metals or coral snake venom; harder to store, harder to study, and consequently much more expensive. Keep in mind that something like a coral snake's venom goes for more than $1000 a gram (Platinum being ~$30), but antimatter according to NASA estimates? $62.5 trillion USD per gram.
- Twisol 10y agoGosh, I can only imagine how terrifying a whole gram of antimatter would be. It's kind of a good thing we can only generate it in such minuscule quantities.
- ben_w 10y agoOne gram would be about as bad as the Nagasaki nuke, so not that terrifying. Sure, it's bad, but I only sometimes lose sleep over all the nukes, so…
- eganist 10y ago> One gram would be about as bad as the Nagasaki nuke, so not that terrifying. There's something fascinating about this sentence, but I can't quite put my finger on what it is.
- eternalban 10y agosomething to do with anti- ...
- eganist 10y agoIs it something material?
- eternalban 10y agoIn a continental sense.
- M_Grey 10y agoI just want to say how much I appreciate you leaving the ~50% of energy released as neutrinos out of your explosive yield estimate, you almost never see that.
- ufmace 10y agoAt least nuclear weapons only go off when the detonation explosives are triggered in exactly the right way. Anti-matter goes boom if anything goes wrong with the confinement system.
- ben_w 10y agoI do not recommend spending a large percentage of Gross World Product on antimatter weapons. Or even a small percentage, if antimatter becomes cheaper. In fact, I'd go as far as to suggest that — if you can figure out how to make and keep it — world peace is much better than having any military.
- M_Grey 10y agoOf course this leads into the realistic aspect of science fiction... sufficiently advanced drive technology is indistinguishable from a weapon of mass destruction. We love to talk about fusion drives or antimatter reactions propelling us beyond Earth, but the truth is that such technology has a very dark side and one we're historically likely to exploit.
- danbruc 10y agoLittle Boy was 0.7 gram mass equivalent, Fat Man was 1.0 gram. So you are looking at almost three times Hiroshima or two times Nagasaki.
- nickpsecurity 10y agoSeveral militaries are looing into making it happen anyway: http://cui.unige.ch/isi/sscr/phys/anti-BPP-3.html http://cui.unige.ch/isi/sscr/phys/anti-BPP-3.html https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0507125 https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0507125 Note: The second one has very interesting implications for safety of citizens in countries possessing such devices. Especially given the number of accidents in nuclear transportation and command/control. ;)