NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #16/NN_1992_16.iso/spool/sci/space/10658

Text File | 1992-07-22 | 1.6 KB | 40 lines

Newsgroups: sci.space
Path: sparky!uunet!wupost!udel!rochester!cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!crabapple.srv.cs.cmu.edu![e-mail]
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: antimatter explosions
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 92 18:33:52 GMT
Organization: [via International Space University]
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According to Dr. Forward, antimatter explosions of small quantities
are not a big problem.

Anti-matter doesn't make a good bomb because it doesn't really
detonate. It blows itself into a cloud that annihilates over too
large a space and time to cause damage commenserate with its' energy
density. ie, it is a big fizzle.

Also, it is fairly clean because there are not lots of heavy
nucleotides created. So you get a slow flash with a nasty dose of
line of site gammas. The neutrinos flash off into the universe and
not much else happens. If you are close enough to get hit by the
muons,etc you are probably close enough that the muons were the least
of your worries...

As to the Kg on the farside: It probably would not be quite the
damaging GT explosion you are imagining. It would blow itself and the
plant to kingdom come, but it would still be reacting as peices went
upwards. Since the moon is surrounded in vacuum, I would guess that a
great deal of it would not even annihilate at all, unless it went
suborbital. If that were the case, we could follow the bouncing
antimatter fragments...