I see a photon torpedo in our future.

Dart

Dart

Final Approach
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Dart said:
For science geeks this is really cool news:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/11/18/switzerland.cern.antimatter/index.html?hpt=Sbin

A magnetic bottle filled with anti-matter hurled at an enemy.
It touches the enemy vessel and spills its contents.
In a nanosecond matter and anti-matter annihilate each leaving nothing but a burst of light!


Of course, we will only use this knowledge for "good". :ihih:
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By the time we can store antimatter in any container we'll have various energy beams that don't have ballistics or range and windage issues. The whole concept of throwing or launching something will be long gone.

Dan
 
Dan Thomas said:
By the time we can store antimatter in any container we'll have various energy beams that don't have ballistics or range and windage issues. The whole concept of throwing or launching something will be long gone.

Dan
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Yeah, and honestly, I wouldn't want to be within my throwing range of any meaningful amount of antimatter when it is no longer contained.
 
There will always be ballistics - throwing or launching gets ordinance over the horizon or over barriers. Beam weapons are line of sight, so if you can't see it, you can't hit it.
 
Jeeze you guys take things literally.

I have the feeling this is going to be a huge boon to physicists, since they've been predicting the existence of the stuff for decades, but this is the first time anyone has had a ghost of a chance of examining it. I suspect practical applications will be much grander than photon torpedos, if I don't miss my guess.
 
cameronbm said:
There will always be ballistics - throwing or launching gets ordinance over the horizon or over barriers. Beam weapons are line of sight, so if you can't see it, you can't hit it.
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Plus, everyone knows that photon torpedos are MUCH more effective against deflector shields than phasers are.
 
cameronbm said:
There will always be ballistics - throwing or launching gets ordinance over the horizon or over barriers. Beam weapons are line of sight, so if you can't see it, you can't hit it.
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You could gravity-well sling an antimatter package at a far, far away enemy and it will arrive with full lethality intact. The beam weapon would get their faster but, the power loss over distance means to hit really distant enemies you would need an enormously powerful coherent beam.

Not that any of this will happen; as Steingar points out, scientists will only develop peaceful, virtually inexhaustible cheap energy sources for all. :thumbsup:
 
Dart said:
Not that any of this will happen; as Steingar points out, scientists will only develop peaceful, virtually inexhaustible cheap energy sources for all. :thumbsup:
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Well of course. I thought that was obvious. Since when has science ever been used to creates more efficient means of killing? :dunno::dunno:
 
Oh there will be superweapons eventually. But our biggest concern right now is energy. If you really have a fundamental understanding of how matter is put together, you gain a better understanding of what it take to rip it apart, in say, a fusion reactor. That's kind of what I'm thinking.
 
Dart said:
For science geeks this is really cool news:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/11/18/switzerland.cern.antimatter/index.html?hpt=Sbin

A magnetic bottle filled with anti-matter hurled at an enemy.
It touches the enemy vessel and spills its contents.
In a nanosecond matter and anti-matter annihilate each leaving nothing but a burst of light!


Of course, we will only use this knowledge for "good". :ihih:
Click to expand...

Of course, we have to look at some history, as well. As the joke went in Army ROTC back in the early 1970s - "The Army has perfected the atomic hand grenade. It has a kill radius of 50 meters. Unfortunately, the average soldier can only throw it 25 meters."

And just what would the kill radius of your anti-matter device be? :hairraise:
 
steingar said:
But our biggest concern right now is energy. If you really have a fundamental understanding of how matter is put together, you gain a better understanding of what it take to rip it apart, in say, a fusion reactor. That's kind of what I'm thinking.
Click to expand...

All joking aside, Steingar is correct that this is a wonderful step forward in tapping a new energy source. It really is amazing; holding, long enough for study, something not seen since the first minute of time. We've made anti-matter before but, it was like the smoke that powers all electronics. Gone before you could put it back in the box.

But, if in a few minutes a gaggle of prop-heads can come up with half a dozen weapon ideas, imagine when the pro's get to work. We thought the H-Bomb was terrifying....:hairraise:
 
Dan Thomas said:
By the time we can store antimatter in any container we'll have various energy beams that don't have ballistics or range and windage issues. The whole concept of throwing or launching something will be long gone.

Dan
Click to expand...

To my understanding, we currently have some sub-minute quantity of antimatter stored.
 
Ghery said:
Of course, we have to look at some history, as well. As the joke went in Army ROTC back in the early 1970s - "The Army has perfected the atomic hand grenade. It has a kill radius of 50 meters. Unfortunately, the average soldier can only throw it 25 meters."

And just what would the kill radius of your anti-matter device be? :hairraise:
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I always thought it was a 1:1 ratio. So, however many atoms you can compress into said container.
 
EdFred said:
I always thought it was a 1:1 ratio. So, however many atoms you can compress into said container.
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Yes, but there must a blast associated with the release of energy when the matter and anti-matter annihiliate each other. That's got to do some damage at a distance.
 
Anti matter has some practical applications now. Nuclear Medicine for example. Cyclotrons are used to create isotopes of common elements like carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and fluorine that produce positrons (anti-electrons) when they decay.

When these positrons come in contract with an electron they decay producing 2 510Kev photons that can be detected.

Joe
 
bbchien said:
Dude, antimatter in a bottle- that's the basis of Warp drive....
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One small bottle on each wing... you've got the most reliable Seneca in existence!
 
Even the large Hadron collider won't generate sufficient antimatter to blow up anything meaningful. I can't think of a worse explosive or power source, since it will release huge amounts of energy if not properly contained. And truly, who needs and antimatter bomb when we have perfectly good fusion bombs as it is? Same for propulsion, would you really want something that would blow the ship to smithereens if you lost power for even a microsecond?

But you can learn a great deal more about most anything if you can actually have it in observable form.
 
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