3 ms·

One of his other books opens with a few pages on how anti-matter is the solution to the world's energy crisis due to the amount of energy stored inside it. Tota

One of his other books opens with a few pages on how anti-matter is the solution to the world's energy crisis due to the amount of energy stored inside it. Totally ignoring the efficiency issues of producing it in the first place.

saagarjha 9y ago
The book meta_AU is talking about is Angels and Demons, and while it doesn't explicitly state that it would solve all the world's energy issues it heavily implies it.
MereInterest 9y ago
I'm fine with there being an explicit deviation from reality. "Angels and Demons" has one, spending a few paragraphs about how it explicitly broke conservation of energy. I'm fine with that, as it fits with the theological overtones of the book as a whole. It's everything else that makes no sense whatsoever. * A single lone researcher getting beam time on the LHC, without anybody knowing what the experiment was doing. I don't care how brilliant a person is, you're not doing experiments at that scale without having it be approved ahead of time. * Perfect antimatter containment in large quantities. There's going to be some leakage, resulting in detectable gamma rays. * Portable antimatter containment. Penning traps require large magnetic and electric fields, not exactly conducive to transportation. * Countdown on a storage device with no safety margin. I can understand having a countdown to the engineered safe period. I cannot understand having the storage device shut off at exactly that time, rather than continuing to use whatever power it has. * Inability to track wireless cameras. There is a camera pointed at the hidden antimatter containment device, and no attempt is ever made to track the signal from that camera. * Failure to use binary search. (This is the only one that doesn't occur within the plot's setup, so avoiding giving spoilers.)

3 ms·

One of his other books opens with a few pages on how anti-matter is the solution to the world's energy crisis due to the amount of energy stored inside it. Tota

by meta_AU 9y ago

saagarjha 9y ago
The book meta_AU is talking about is Angels and Demons, and while it doesn't explicitly state that it would solve all the world's energy issues it heavily implies it.
MereInterest 9y ago
I'm fine with there being an explicit deviation from reality. "Angels and Demons" has one, spending a few paragraphs about how it explicitly broke conservation of energy. I'm fine with that, as it fits with the theological overtones of the book as a whole. It's everything else that makes no sense whatsoever. * A single lone researcher getting beam time on the LHC, without anybody knowing what the experiment was doing. I don't care how brilliant a person is, you're not doing experiments at that scale without having it be approved ahead of time. * Perfect antimatter containment in large quantities. There's going to be some leakage, resulting in detectable gamma rays. * Portable antimatter containment. Penning traps require large magnetic and electric fields, not exactly conducive to transportation. * Countdown on a storage device with no safety margin. I can understand having a countdown to the engineered safe period. I cannot understand having the storage device shut off at exactly that time, rather than continuing to use whatever power it has. * Inability to track wireless cameras. There is a camera pointed at the hidden antimatter containment device, and no attempt is ever made to track the signal from that camera. * Failure to use binary search. (This is the only one that doesn't occur within the plot's setup, so avoiding giving spoilers.)