Originally posted by Liberator
but if they can we could just drop a few ounces of Anti-Matter. Would probably crack the planet wide open, possibly even sundering it in two, but it would definately kill/obliterate/disintigrate/atomize/cosmic dust anything within the initial blast range which would easily encompass a small continent.
Why is it that people hugely overestimate the power of antimatter? I blame Star Trek actually. People are always going on about how powerful the explosion would be if a ships engines detonate.
Posted by me on a thread a while back
E=MC^2 goes on mass. You only need avagadro's number and the weight of a proton etc to calulate the energy release per atom. Since we are talking about kilogram weights we can dispense with that and plug the numbers straight into the equation.
The yield of 2kg matter/antimatter weapon would be 1.8x10^17 Joules which works out as around 43 Megatons (roughly equivalent to the largest a modern day H-Bomb has been).
A few ounces would therefore be equivalent to the effect of a tactical nuke.
Also since antimatter bombs release all their energy as gamma rays you might not even get a large explosion. Not certain about this but you'd probably see nothing at all except everything around the bomb getting invisibly cooked by the gamma rays.
