and here i was contemplating yesterday whether interstellar rockets will ever use antimatter drives and when the technology to store and transport antimatter will ever mature ...

[–] Widdershins@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago

It's a little late to have Blast Corps ready to help out but it's never too late for a remake.

[–] aeronmelon@lemmy.world 64 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Perfect time in history to just start transporting antimatter.

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 3 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

its not like star trek, where they produces kgs at a time, which is nuclear level events if they "collide"

[–] Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world 6 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

kgs

For reference, a single kilogram of antimatter reacting with regular matter would create an explosion only slightly smaller than the Tsar Bomba, the most powerful nuclear weapon ever tested, and well over a thousand times more powerful than the atomic bombs that hit Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.

[–] Encephalotrocity@feddit.online 65 points 1 day ago (2 children)

The device on Cern’s truck will carry about 1,000 antimatter particles, weighing about a billionth of a trillionth of a gram. Should the containment fail, and the antimatter make contact with normal matter, the resulting pulse of energy would be so feeble, the load doesn’t even warrant a radioactive label.

[–] Olhonestjim@lemmy.world 2 points 15 hours ago

Still though, we need a new HAZMAT category now.

[–] obinice@lemmy.world 27 points 1 day ago (2 children)

They just need to transfer power from the car's inertial dampers to the containment field

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 1 points 16 hours ago

those constrictors keep freezing on our starships, causing an overload.

[–] AbidanYre@lemmy.world 15 points 1 day ago

car's inertial dampers

You mean the shocks?

[–] riskable@programming.dev 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Time Travelers from the future might recruit an entire school bus's worth of geriatric retirees to prevent such a thing from exploding 🙂‍↕️

[–] LastYearsIrritant@sopuli.xyz 1 points 12 hours ago

Great series. Glad it ended when it did.

[–] Randelung@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I've seen Angels and Demons, I know where this is going.

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 1 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

OR the V series, when aliens built a "anti-particle particle annhilator as a power generator for humans, which was extremely volatile(because they were planning to blow it up using the same method with "grenade".

[+] Paranoidfactoid@lemmy.world -8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

A few thousand antimatter charged particles could be used as an implosive trigger for a fusion bomb.

EDIT Source. See section 3 in general and 3.5 specifically:

https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0510071

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 3 points 16 hours ago

In conjunction with you know a fusion bomb so in and of itself not something I'd be concerned about.

It's like saying that a spark could be used to blow up a mountain, yeah it could, in conjunction with several hundred kilogrammes of C4.

[–] rain_enjoyer@sopuli.xyz 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

you're off by something like 15-18 orders of magnitude

[–] Paranoidfactoid@lemmy.world -1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

This is old, but you get the idea. See section 3.5.

https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0510071

EDIT: I'm getting bullshit downvotes from people who clearly won't read the paper and don't understand the proposed detonation model. One need not have grams of antimatter to trigger a H-H fusion detonation. A relatively small amount of antimatter is needed to trigger initial fusion of a hydrogen target, which by cascade can be used to detonate additional hydrogen. This removes the fission trigger and allows for very small fusion weapons with relatively low yields. For example, a device the size of a hand grenade with tons of TNT equivalent output - like a truck bomb in your hand. Or a rifle sized X-Ray laser is another proposed weapon.

Read the study. This technology is feasible.

[–] anton@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (4 children)

The paper you linked says "1 microgram is sufficient to trigger one thermonuclear weapon" which corresponds to 6×10^17.
This makes your "few thousand" of by 14 orders of magnitude instead of 15, I bet you feel vindicated now.

For example, a device the size of a hand grenade with tons of TNT equivalent output

A man portable nuke has existed since the 60's so it wouldn't be a game changer.

[–] gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 11 hours ago

interesting! i had wondered whether that exists. the wikipedia page on radionuclides seems to hint so since it gives 10 kg as a possible total mass of fissile material in a critical scenarion but i still had doubts till now.

[–] Paranoidfactoid@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

You're getting the microgram statement from here. You miss the point. A millionth of a gram is feasible to make and contain right now. It was predicted by 2010 in the paper using CERN, and there are much better facilities producing since then.

You're missing the point to be pedantic over a 20 year old paper. Newer approaches reduce the antimatter requirements for such weapons even more.

This might make you wonder why antimatter is being transported around. The fact is, proposals to weaponize antimatter as a fusion trigger have been around for over 40 years, and the means to achieving that from a production and engineering standpoint seem a good bet to be available today.

[–] HalfAFrisbee@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

LMAO, the little baby down voted you.

[–] AbidanYre@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I think even the TSA could tell that's a bomb.

[–] anton@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Yes, but if you take the train or a private car you won't be searched. To get it across international borders try smuggling among other cargo or by submarine, maybe even diplomatic courier.

[–] AbidanYre@lemmy.world 2 points 10 hours ago

Sure. I just thought it was funny that it looks like the suitcase a cartoon character would put a warhead in.

load more comments