Re: [4th AASP] OOC Thread
Okay, for clarity's sake, I'm going to give everyone a little bit more info on this because I think it is important for everyone involved to be informed, especially since a lot of us have antimatter weapons.
EDIT: Also, I think it should be restated here again that energy and matter are essentially one in the same. Energy can not be created or destroyed, but it can be hyper-condensed into solid matter. When matter is destroyed, it releases all of the energy that it was made up of, usually in the form of an explosion. Unless, of course, it is destroyed slowly, in which case it burns and releases the same amount of energy, but over a longer period of time (such as in the case of fuel in an engine.)
I'm sure you guys have heard the phrase "splitting the atom." In nuclear physics and nuclear chemistry, this refers to either a nuclear reaction or a radioactive decay process in which the nucleus of an atom splits into smaller parts (lighter nuclei), often producing free neutrons and photons (in the form of gamma rays), and releasing a very large amount of energy. This is the process of nuclear fission. An antimatter/matter reaction is similar, but releases a lot more energy because it is a lot more efficient (it completely annihilates two atoms at once).
Rather than a single atom being "split," an antimatter/matter reaction causes two atoms to be completely annihilated down to the basest particles, releasing all of the energy stored within at once and producing a far greater amount of gamma ray radiation. To put it in perspective, in the Fat Man bomb used on Nagasaki at the end of the second world war, about 1 kilogram (2.2 lb) of the 6.2 kilograms (14 lb) of plutonium in the pit (about 17%) achieved nuclear fission. In this process 1 gram (0.035 oz) of matter in the bomb was converted into the active energy of heat and radiation (see
mass-energy equivalence for detail), releasing the energy equivalent of 21 kilotons of TNT or 88 terajoules.
That's 2.2 POUNDS of Plutonium achieving nuclear fission. According to
Wikipedia (if you don't like that I'm using wiki as a source, you can look this stuff up yourself), 250 grams of Antihydrogen annihilating with regular hydrogen would release as much energy as 10
megatons of TNT, or over 40 PETAJOULES of energy. This means that, for example, a single gram of antihydrogen annihilating hydrogen would release the equivalent amount of energy as 40 kilotons of TNT, or about 200 terajoules, while a gram of plutonium achieving fission would release 21 tons, or 88 gigajoules of energy.
That in mind, this means that the efficiency of antimatter/matter annihilation versus plutonium fission is about 2500:1 making the energy release potential of antihydrogen reactions approximately 2500 times higher than plutonium fission. An antimatter bomb with as much antimatter in it as Fat Man had plutonium would have been nearly equivalent to the Tsar Bomba, which means that the
epicenter of the explosion would be about two kilometers wide. This doesn't even take into account the other effects of an explosion that huge.
Now, I'm not entirely certain how much antimatter our weapons have in them or what specific antielement is used (this does have a drastic effect on the amount of energy released), but it is entirely possible that Sawyer's AOP could kill all of the marines in the room, or blow up the entire building, like Sigma had happen.
EDIT: I also want to clarify that Centurion's above post is correct. The largest amount of antimatter we've made at once in real life is a single antihydrogen atom.
EDIT: Another edit, only because it just occurred to me that some people might have this question. In regards to radiation, antimatter reactions do create a significantly larger amount of gamma ray radiation at the moment of their occurrence than fission reactions do, however, this does not mean they produce fallout. Nuclear fallout generally results from two things: radioactive material that did not achieve fission being tossed up into the atmosphere by the force of the release of energy, or radioactive particles produced by the lighter nuclei expelled in the splitting of an atom. Since it is possible to create an antimatter reaction with non-radioactive elements (and even if radioactive antielements were used, they would still completely annihilate their positive counterparts), it does not create any fallout or persisting radiation whatsoever.
