Antimatter Bomb: Real or Fiction?

[hagopbul]

i have this simple and easy Q

is the antimatter bomb real or fiction

i will say fiction But...:(

 

[DavidSnider]

The concept is real. In practice nobody knows how to make one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter_weapon
"At the current level of production, one gram of antimatter would cost $100 quadrillion (100,000,000,000,000,000) and would take 2 billion years to produce"

 

[Bob S]

Fermilab usually has over 10¹² antiprotons (about 0.2 microCoulombs) circulating in the 6,280-meter-circumference Tevatron (beam tube diameter about 7.5 cm) at about 980 GeV (gamma = 1044, beta = 0.999 999 5). Each annihilating antiproton at rest would release about 3 x 10^-10 joules, so 10¹² annihilating antiprotons will release about 300 joules of energy (note: TNT has about 4000 joules per gram). You cannot store antiprotons in a suitcase for very long.
See http://www.fnal.gov/

 

[maverick_starstrider]

I should point out that there are already many times as many nuclear bombs (fission and fusion) in the world to irradicate the entire surface of the Earth many times over. I've never understood why the prospect of a bigger sort of bomb was so scary to people. OH NO! We can destroy the Earth now... oh... wait... we could already do that. But ya, as has been pointed out, at the moment we don't know a good way to make that much antimatter. I imagine a customized "antimatter producing facility" could generate and store it much better than CERN but it would still take millions of years to accumulate enough to make a bomb that was simply EQUALLY as powerful as a nuke.

 

[Bob S]

... I imagine a customized "antimatter producing facility" could generate and store [antimatter] much better than CERN but it would still take millions of years to accumulate enough to make a bomb that was simply EQUALLY as powerful as a nuke.

CERN started making and using an antiproton beam many years ago, but they turned if off as soon as they realized that the antimatter production rate at Fermilab was much higher, and also that the Tevatron collision energies were much higher.

Question: How would you store and transport 1000 Coulombs of antiprotons? (This about 0.01 moles, so their mass is about 0.01 grams).

 

[kasun bandara]

protons and positrton ?

 

[Hootenanny]

protons and positrton ?

Is that a question or a statement?