the Three Galaxies are Crazy!

[glitterboy2098]

in my surfing the net, i often find some really nice resources for science fiction. lately, i found this neat Calculator for anti-matter blast yeilds. just punch in the mass of antimatter you want to use, and it gives you the blast value in megatons.

one thing i've found. you'd have to be insane to use as many anti-matter powerplants as the 3G's do. they have anti-matter powered backpack sized flight packs for goodness sake!

lets assume that flight pack has a mere 3 milligrams (.000003 kilograms) of anti-matter, and normally uses only a few atoms at a time. if that containment feild fails, your looking at 0.00012888 megatons, or 100 tons of explosive power. like strapping the bombload of three B-52's onto your back.

now lets look at a starfighter. lets say they carry about a quarter ton of anti-matter as fuel on average. that equates to 9760 megatons of destructive force. that's 65 times more powerful than the Krakatoa eruption.

i don't even want to think about the hundreds of tons of AM that warships will be carrying. even 100 tons of AM is equal to 3904000 megatons, or 390 times more explosive power than the entire World Nuclear Arsenal during the height of the cold war.

2580 tons has as much explosive power as the impact that killed the dinosaurs. (about 100,000,000 megatons. note that this impoact pretty much created the gulf of mexico.) i would expect this much or more at refueling stations for starships.

[Esckey]

Umm....wow.....Thats alot of destruction. But since its alot, wouldn't they need a lot less antimatter to power their ship? Assuming 100% effiency in their power source and what not.

[Pax Concord]

Yeah. You claim that the 3 Galaxy's are crazy, and then you make up your evidence for their insanity.

[glitterboy2098]

Umm....wow.....Thats alot of destruction. But since its alot, wouldn't they need a lot less antimatter to power their ship? Assuming 100% effiency in their power source and what not.

yes and no. even if we assume highly efficent systems, their drives and sheilds work on the 'space warp' principle, altering the curvature of local space-time through focused gravitic stress. the amount of energy needed to acheive such things is beleived to be horribly high. thus anti-matter is the only plausable fuel source for such level of power. it's just that the amounts involved for the ridiculous lifespans of the M/AM plants (averages 30 to 40 years), your looking at some absurd amounts of AM. (again, thats assuming near perfect efficency in all parts. the less efficent, the more you need..)

when these craft get destroyed (mainbody MDC depletion), the containment is likely to fail on that AM, and you get one huge explosion. (and probably a cloud of anti-matter that wasn't able to react before the rest of the matter gets blownaway. the cloud would become a major hazard, not only for traffic, but for anyone around it. (the explosion would dump some pretty massive amounts of deadly radiation, and the leftover AM would continously react to the stellar wind, space dust, ect, to emit even more.)



keep in mind, 1 megaton is about 1D6x100md according to SB4, with a blast radius of a few hundred feet, and additional atmospheric effects out to several miles. (doesn't scale directly though. damage would double every 5 megatons, and the blast radius would double every 10 [estimates based on nuclear testing]. but that still leaves a starfighter kamikazi able to take out small asteroids....

Yeah. You claim that the 3 Galaxy's are crazy, and then you make up your evidence for their insanity.

Would you strap into a craft that could vaporise islands if it's power system failed?

in a car, if the engine breaks, you stop.
in a jet fighter, you crash.
in a starfighter, you blow up and take out most of the region around you. you'd be vapor condensing across half the planet.


the math is real. the amount of AM is just an educated guess,and probably way underestimated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter

[glitterboy2098]

Dude, first of all, you are using sci-fi to compare sci-fi. That's like saying using a lie to prove another lie (such as Dan Brown).

actually, i'm using sci-fact to put the sci-fi into perspective.

The writers can say whatever they like, it makes little difference since anti-matter only exist as theory, so far. It's very existence is still debateable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter

Artificial production

The artificial production of antimatter (specifically antihydrogen) first became a reality in the early 1990s. Charles Munger of the SLAC, and associates at Fermilab, realized that an antiproton, travelling at relativistic speeds and passing close to the nucleus of an atom, would have the potential to force the creation of an electron-positron pair. It was postulated that under this scenario the antiproton would have a small chance of pairing with the positron (ejecting the electron) to form an antihydrogen atom.

In 1995 CERN announced that it had successfully created nine antihydrogen atoms by implementing the SLAC/Fermilab concept during the PS210 experiment. The experiment was performed using the Low-Energy Antiproton Ring (LEAR), and was led by Walter Oelert and Mario Macri. Fermilab soon confirmed the CERN findings by producing approximately 100 antihydrogen atoms at their facilities.

The antihydrogen atoms created during PS210, and subsequent experiments (at both CERN and Fermilab) were extremely energetic ("hot") and were not well suited to study. To resolve this hurdle, and to gain a better understanding of antihydrogen, two collaborations were formed in the late 1990s — ATHENA and ATRAP. The primary goal of these collaborations is the creation of less energetic ("cold") antihydrogen, better suited to study.

In 1999 CERN activated the Antiproton Decelerator, a device capable of decelerating antiprotons from 3.5 GeV to 5.3 MeV — still too "hot" to produce study-effective antihydrogen, but a huge leap forward.

In late 2002 the ATHENA project announced that they had created the world's first "cold" antihydrogen. The antiprotons used in the experiment were cooled sufficiently by decelerating them (using the Antiproton Decelerator), passing them through a thin sheet of foil, and finally capturing them in a Penning trap. The antiprotons also underwent stochastic cooling at several stages during the process.

The ATHENA team's antiproton cooling process is effective, but highly inefficient. Approximately 25 million antiprotons leave the Antiproton Decelerator; roughly 10 thousand make it to the Penning trap.

In early 2004 ATHENA researchers released data on a new method of creating low-energy antihydrogen. The technique involves slowing antiprotons using the Antiproton Decelerator, and injecting them into a Penning trap (specifically a Penning-Malmberg trap). Once trapped the antiprotons are mixed with electrons that have been cooled to an energy potential significantly less than the antiprotons; the resulting Coulomb collisions cool the antiprotons while warming the electrons until the particles reach an equilibrium of approximately 4 K.

While the antiprotons are being cooled in the first trap, a small cloud of positron plasma is injected into a second trap (the mixing trap). Exciting the resonance of the mixing trap’s confinement fields can control the temperature of the positron plasma; but the procedure is more effective when the plasma is in thermal equilibrium with the trap’s environment. The positron plasma cloud is generated in a positron accumulator prior to injection; the source of the positrons is usually radioactive sodium.

Once the antiprotons are sufficiently cooled, the antiproton-electron mixture is transferred into the mixing trap (containing the positrons). The electrons are subsequently removed by a series of fast pulses in the mixing traps electrical field. When the antiprotons reach the positron plasma further Coulomb collisions occur, resulting in further cooling of the antiprotons. When the positrons and antiprotons approach thermal equilibrium antihydrogen atoms begin to form. Being electrically neutral the antihydrogen atoms are not affected by the trap and can leave the confinement fields.

Using this method ATHENA researchers predict they will be able to create up to 100 antihydrogen atoms per operational second.

ATHENA and ATRAP are now seeking to further cool the antihydrogen atoms by subjecting them to an inhomogeneous field. While antihydrogen atoms are electrically neutral, their spin produces magnetic moments. These magnetic moments vary depending on the spin direction of the atom, and can be deflected by inhomogeneous fields regardless of electrical charge.

The biggest limiting factor in the production of antimatter is the availability of antiprotons. Recent data released by CERN states that when fully operational their facilities are capable of producing 107 antiprotons per second. Assuming an optimal conversion of antiprotons to antihydrogen, it would take two billion years to produce 1 gram of antihydrogen.

Another limiting factor to antimatter production is storage. As stated above there is no known way to effectively store antihydrogen. The ATHENA project has managed to keep antihydrogen atoms from annihilation for tens of seconds — just enough time to briefly study their behaviour.

According to an article on the website of the CERN laboratories, which produces antimatter on a regular basis, "If we could assemble all the antimatter we've ever made at CERN and annihilate it with matter, we would have enough energy to light a single electric light bulb for a few minutes."

Medical imaging

Antimatter-matter reactions have practical applications in medical imaging, such as positron emission tomography (PET). In some kinds of beta decay, a nuclide loses surplus positive charge by emitting a positron (in the same event, a proton becomes a neutron, and neutrinos are also given off). Nuclides with surplus positive charge are easily made in a cyclotron and are widely generated for medical use.
[edit]

Naturally occurring production

Antiparticles are created everywhere in the universe where high-energy particle collisions take place. High-energy cosmic rays impacting Earth's atmosphere (or any other matter in the solar system) produce minute quantities of antimatter in the resulting particle jets, which is immediately destroyed by contact with nearby matter. It may similarly be produced in regions like the center of the Milky Way Galaxy and other galaxies, where very energetic celestial events occur (principally the interaction of relativistic jets with the interstellar medium). The presence of the resulting antimatter is detected by the gamma rays produced when it annihilates with nearby matter.

Antiparticles are also produced in any environment with a sufficiently high temperature (mean particle energy greater than the pair production threshold). The region of space near a black hole's event horizon can be thought of as being such an environment (as a result of the Unruh effect), with the resulting matter and antimatter being a component of Hawking radiation. During the period of baryogenesis, when the universe was extremely hot and dense, matter and antimatter were continually produced and annihilated. The presence of remaining matter, and absence of detection of remaining antimatter,[1] is attributed to violation of the CP-symmetry relating matter and antimatter. The exact mechanism of this violation during baryogenesis remains a mystery.

antimatter is a practical reality. as are the physics behind the reactions. we just can't produce enough to actually make useof it at this time.

Don't crack your headover this. Just look at Star Trek, they use anti-matter in solid form.... where can we find solid deuterium at our current understanding of the universe? one more thing, deuterium is matter, not anti-matter.

actually, with only one exception, (which was not specifically stated to be anti-matter), it's used in dense gaseous form, or as a particle stream.

and when ST refers to Deuterium, they mean Deuterium, they're actually quite consistant with that, and tend to use real science correctly when they reference it. it's usually stored as a semi-frozen slush.

as for solid deuterium, get it cold enough, or under enough pressure, and it'll turn solid. just like any other matter.

[glitterboy2098]

the crystal is Dilithium, one of the 'unobtanium' elements invented for the show. it's supposed to regulate and direct the matter-antimatter reaction. yeah, i have no clue how it works either. though an interesting fact is that the most effective way to produce anti-protons is to bombard a lithium target with relitivistic velocity protons.


and we do use anti-matter on a regular basis. it's called a PET scan.

but you are partially correct. common usage of antimatter as anything but a low level radiation source is currently beyond our technology.

but again, the physics are fairly well understood, so we can theorize on the kinds of things you can do with AM if you had enough if it. these theories tend to spawn the Sci-Fi, so it's a good idea to actually keep the properties of the stuff in mind.

[Borast]

Don't forget, a back-pack M/AM reactoy would hold only a few micrograms of anti-matter.

A starship would carry only a few tens of kilos if 100% efficiency (and even in TNG they admit to somewhere in the neighbourhood of 50-60%).

[GhostKnight]

3G antimatter engines contain an incredibly small amount (fractions of a gram) of antimatter and are contained in a temporal shield that regulates the power output while also greatly increasing the time that power is available.

Sheesh, I thought someone would have figured that out by now.

[RainOfSteel]

1. Anti-Matter's Existence: Anti-matter was first observed in 1932, by Carl D. Anderson. "Production" for scientific use may have begun in the 1990s, but physicists have been able to make it in the lab for quite a while now.
2. Anti-Matter As Explosive: An Anti-matter/matter explosion may produce quite a bit more energy, mass-wise, than a fission or fusion reaction, in theory. However, that does not make anti-matter a useful explosive. Why? Fissionable materials, when at critical mass and imploded or otherwise showered with a mass of fast neutrons, experience a run-away chain reaction (ever-increasing and neutron-fueled) that converts the entire fissionable mass into a combination of energy and radioactive byproducts in the tiniest fraction of a second. Anti-matter and matter that are smashed together experience no such chain reaction. If two solid masses of anti-matter are collided, their masses will begin to annihilate along the surfaces of the impact. As their masses are forced against one another, all the annihilation will take place along the contact surfaces. The released energies will tend to melt the two surfaces (unevenly, most likely), though the kinetic force of the two masses will overcome that at least at first. Eventually, the kinetic forces will come to an end, and you will have a matter block in contact with an anti-matter block. The energies at the surface of contact will melt (or superheat) the material there and release a shower of radiation, possibly it will include an explosion of limited force, and then the two blocks won't be in contact with each other any more. The matter block will sit there, and the anti-matter block will be either in a vacuum (in space), or in a test chamber (in the lab), or in the open (open air test). In a vacuum not much happens. In an atmosphere the surface of the anti-matter block slowly annihilates in contact with the atmosphere, producing heat and radiation. If two gaseous masses of matter and anti-matter are injected into the same enclosed and magnetically bottled chamber . . . you are going to have problems. The magnetic field has to be there to channel the gasses together, except both gasses will have opposite magnetic charges. The magnetic field can only have one polarity, and so I have my doubts as to just how good a job can actually be done in forcing two such gasseous masses together. Even if you can somehow get the two gaseous masses together in the same chamber, they're gas. Gas is turbulent. That means some matter atoms will be bouncing off of matter atoms, and some anti-matter atoms will be bouncing off of anti-matter atoms. There is no chain reaction. It will take quite some time for the majority of the matter and anti-matter to come into contact, and the rate of that contact will govern the rate of energy release. Basically, in either scenario, all the matter and anti-matter does not come into contact all at once and annihilate, so it doesn't all go up at once in a massive energy release.
3. Anti-Matter In The Future: The scientist Robert L. Forward, in Indistinguishable From Magic, proposes that a concentrated effort to research and industrialize the production of anti-matter could reduce its cost by several orders of magnitude.

[sHaka]

In the vastness of space though explosions, even of the magnitude you're talking, are pretty minor.

[Nightshade37]

keep in mind, 1 megaton is about 1D6x100md according to SB4

SB4 calculations have 200 kilotons doing 3d4x100md. 200 kilotons is 1/5 of a megaton.

[Braden Campbell]

So 1D6x1000 is about 1 megaton.

Good to know.

That means the Kreeghor Singularity missiles are equal to 1 MT, and should have a blast radius of... what... 1000' and a total affected area of about 6 miles. Per missile. But only in an atmosphere or under water.