Lets talk Anti-Matter

[AgentJean]

Hypothetically speaking, if one were to denoate a anti-matter weapon on a planet, would there still be trace radation near and around ground zero like there is setting off a nuclear device?

It is my understanding that a matter/anti-matter reaction would release gamma radation but will it linger or does it disapate rapidly?

 

[keeleysam]

http://forums.anandtech.com/categories.aspx?catid=50&flcache=9093017&entercat=y

 

[imported_LoKe]

Did you just read "Angels and Demons"?

 

[Xonoahbin]

I would think that it would dissapate quickly. Unlike regular nuclear radiation, the gamma radiation from an anti-matter weapon would simply affect all it could as fast as it could. I could be wrong though.

 

[2Xtreme21]

Yes, the plane will take off.

 

[AgentJean]

Originally posted by: LoKe
Did you just read "Angels and Demons"?

No ,why?

 

[AgentJean]

Originally posted by: 2Xtreme21
Yes, the plane will take off.

 

[Fenixgoon]

Originally posted by: AgentJean

Originally posted by: 2Xtreme21
Yes, the plane will take off.

find the thread of "will a plane take off if it's on a conveyor belt going the same speed/acceleration in the opposite direction"

anyway, as long as the anti-matter/matter reaction releases harmful radiation that's absorbed, it should stick around.

 

[MrDudeMan]

Originally posted by: 2Xtreme21
Yes, the plane will take off.

bahahaha :laugh:

antimatter is the most explosive material known in our world, and also the most exothermic of reactions when it meets matter. it would not leave any type of trace radiation because all antimatter would instantly annihilate all matter it came into contact with...there is nothing in the reaction to produce radiation that would contanimate the surrounding environment other than the release of a pair of photons.

 

[BrokenVisage]

the balogna is in the nest, and the pastrami is recyclable

 

[AgentJean]

I found this on wiki

]In any practical form however, the weapon could not simply be a ball of antimatter floating in space. There would have to be a significant amount of supporting hardware surrounding the antimatter. Also, in order to maximize the power of the bomb, it would be designed to mix the antimatter with matter in the least amount of time. The effect of a large antimatter bomb would likely be similar to that of a nuclear explosion of similar size. The reacting antimatter would release about half of its energy in a form immediately available to the environment, superheating the casing and components of the bomb and the surrounding air, and turning it into an ultrahot plasma which then emits blackbody radiation in the full EM spectrum. A quantity as small as a kilogram of antimatter would release 1.8×1017 J (180 petajoules) of energy. Given that roughly half the energy will escape as non interacting neutrinos, that gives 90 petajoules of combined blast and EM radiation, or the rough equivalent of a 20 megaton nuclear bomb.

There will be EM radiation, but it doesnt say if the area will be radioactive for a few thousand years(like when you drop a nuke)

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: MrDudeMan

Originally posted by: 2Xtreme21
Yes, the plane will take off.

bahahaha :laugh:

antimatter is the most explosive material known in our world, and also the most exothermic of reactions when it meets matter. it would not leave any type of trace radiation because all antimatter would instantly annihilate all matter it came into contact with...there is nothing in the reaction to produce radiation that would contanimate the surrounding environment other than the release of a pair of photons.

And, because of conservation of energy, E=mc^2... those two photons will have energy. And, using E=hf, you can find the frequency of those photons... Hey, how about that! Gamma radiation!

 

[MrDudeMan]

Originally posted by: DrPizza

Originally posted by: MrDudeMan

Originally posted by: 2Xtreme21
Yes, the plane will take off.

bahahaha :laugh:

antimatter is the most explosive material known in our world, and also the most exothermic of reactions when it meets matter. it would not leave any type of trace radiation because all antimatter would instantly annihilate all matter it came into contact with...there is nothing in the reaction to produce radiation that would contanimate the surrounding environment other than the release of a pair of photons.

And, because of conservation of energy, E=mc^2... those two photons will have energy. And, using E=hf, you can find the frequency of those photons... Hey, how about that! Gamma radiation!

that isnt radiation in the sense that he was describing. did you actually take any atomic or nuclear physics classes? i never seem to see you venture outside of classical physics with any depth, and thats fine, but you are trying to pick a fight with me and you didnt even understand the OP. he is talking about radiation as in decay, not radiation as a form of energy transmission. there is no particle radiation after an antimatter/matter annihilation for the most part. there are no unstable particles remaining to emit neutrons or beta particles or whatever else is typically classified as "radiation." thanks though for pointing out to me that gamma rays are radiation... :roll:

 

[silverpig]

Originally posted by: MrDudeMan

Originally posted by: DrPizza

Originally posted by: MrDudeMan

Originally posted by: 2Xtreme21
Yes, the plane will take off.

bahahaha :laugh:

antimatter is the most explosive material known in our world, and also the most exothermic of reactions when it meets matter. it would not leave any type of trace radiation because all antimatter would instantly annihilate all matter it came into contact with...there is nothing in the reaction to produce radiation that would contanimate the surrounding environment other than the release of a pair of photons.

And, because of conservation of energy, E=mc^2... those two photons will have energy. And, using E=hf, you can find the frequency of those photons... Hey, how about that! Gamma radiation!

that isnt radiation in the sense that he was describing. did you actually take any atomic or nuclear physics classes? i never seem to see you venture outside of classical physics with any depth, and thats fine, but you are trying to pick a fight with me and you didnt even understand the OP. he is talking about radiation as in decay, not radiation as a form of energy transmission. there is no particle radiation after an antimatter/matter annihilation for the most part. there are no unstable particles remaining to emit neutrons or beta particles or whatever else is typically classified as "radiation." thanks though for pointing out to me that gamma rays are radiation... :roll:

You do realize that E = mc^2 implies that mc^2 = E right? Gamma rays carry energy which may be turned back into mass.

There will probably be a huge number of weak interactions involving neutrinos. There will also probably be some changing of atomic numbers and masses as a result. These may then decay via beta, alpha, or even gamma radiation again.

 

[gsellis]

"Stamp out the Sun as any level of radiation is harmful"
- Our motto for SOTS, a splinter group of CORPSE (Committee on Ridiculous Posters, Slogans, Etc. - a Washington University (STL) group in the early 80's)

As discussed and summerized, define radiation. Yes, it has a huge amount of radiation both in particles, thermal, etc. BUT, does it have the radiation from nuclear decay after the event? No, as fissionables are not present. It would be a "clean" bomb. But like anyone in the event radius would care about the difference. Same deal with a kinetic strike. Boost a weapon to .9c and hit a target. Huge energy and 'radiation' release, but safe to walk in the blast crater after all of the ejecta finishes falling back to the ground and it has cooled (which might be more than a week).

 

[f95toli]

The problem is that with that amount of enery around at least some of it will interact with the surrounding matter causing fission of some of the heavier elements(note that I do not mean a chain reaction).
Hence I suspect you would still end up with a lot of radioactive isotopes.

 

[Gibsons]

Originally posted by: f95toli
The problem is that with that amount of enery around at least some of it will interact with the surrounding matter causing fission of some of the heavier elements(note that I do not mean a chain reaction).
Hence I suspect you would still end up with a lot of radioactive isotopes.

What happens if anti-deuterium interacts with say, iron? The positron and one electron sort of cancel out easy enough I guess, but does the antiproton... "remove" a proton from the iron nucleus? On the simplest level, that just changes the iron to manganese, but will the energy from that annihilation be enough to cause fission of the iron (or manganese) nucleus?

 

[MrDudeMan]

Originally posted by: silverpig


You do realize that E = mc^2 implies that mc^2 = E right? Gamma rays carry energy which may be turned back into mass.

There will probably be a huge number of weak interactions involving neutrinos. There will also probably be some changing of atomic numbers and masses as a result. These may then decay via beta, alpha, or even gamma radiation again.

yes im aware of that. if you will notice i said "...for the most part" since most antimatter/matter reactions leave no "radiation." the neutrinos will likely contact nothing and just zoom off into space, which is upwards of 60% of the energy transmission of this type of reaction. either way, the bomb itself would leave no radiation and that was the original question. the after effects as you said could potentially cause radiation, but that is a separate issue. do you see what im saying?

 

[silverpig]

Originally posted by: Gibsons

Originally posted by: f95toli
The problem is that with that amount of enery around at least some of it will interact with the surrounding matter causing fission of some of the heavier elements(note that I do not mean a chain reaction).
Hence I suspect you would still end up with a lot of radioactive isotopes.

What happens if anti-deuterium interacts with say, iron? The positron and one electron sort of cancel out easy enough I guess, but does the antiproton... "remove" a proton from the iron nucleus? On the simplest level, that just changes the iron to manganese, but will the energy from that annihilation be enough to cause fission of the iron (or manganese) nucleus?

Sort of. QCD is hard and it's more the quarks that will react. The exact outcomes of the reaction depend on geometry, and how the nuclei hit. You could have clean particle-antiparticle reactions, or you could end up with some u-d(bar) and d-u(bar) pions in there as well.

 

[silverpig]

Originally posted by: MrDudeMan

Originally posted by: silverpig


You do realize that E = mc^2 implies that mc^2 = E right? Gamma rays carry energy which may be turned back into mass.

There will probably be a huge number of weak interactions involving neutrinos. There will also probably be some changing of atomic numbers and masses as a result. These may then decay via beta, alpha, or even gamma radiation again.

yes im aware of that. if you will notice i said "...for the most part" since most antimatter/matter reactions leave no "radiation." the neutrinos will likely contact nothing and just zoom off into space, which is upwards of 60% of the energy transmission of this type of reaction. either way, the bomb itself would leave no radiation and that was the original question. the after effects as you said could potentially cause radiation, but that is a separate issue. do you see what im saying?

The original question was if there would be any radiation left at ground zero. And the answer to that is there probably will be.

 

[MrDudeMan]

Originally posted by: silverpig

Originally posted by: MrDudeMan

Originally posted by: silverpig


You do realize that E = mc^2 implies that mc^2 = E right? Gamma rays carry energy which may be turned back into mass.

There will probably be a huge number of weak interactions involving neutrinos. There will also probably be some changing of atomic numbers and masses as a result. These may then decay via beta, alpha, or even gamma radiation again.

yes im aware of that. if you will notice i said "...for the most part" since most antimatter/matter reactions leave no "radiation." the neutrinos will likely contact nothing and just zoom off into space, which is upwards of 60% of the energy transmission of this type of reaction. either way, the bomb itself would leave no radiation and that was the original question. the after effects as you said could potentially cause radiation, but that is a separate issue. do you see what im saying?

The original question was if there would be any radiation left at ground zero. And the answer to that is there probably will be.

no, the original question is "...a matter/anti-matter reaction would release gamma radation but will it linger or does it disapate rapidly?"meaning does the antimatter/matter reaction release lingering radiation which it does not. it might cause instability in the surrounding environment but that is a big if and does not inherently come from the initial reaction.

 

[silverpig]

Originally posted by: MrDudeMan

Originally posted by: silverpig

Originally posted by: MrDudeMan

Originally posted by: silverpig


You do realize that E = mc^2 implies that mc^2 = E right? Gamma rays carry energy which may be turned back into mass.

There will probably be a huge number of weak interactions involving neutrinos. There will also probably be some changing of atomic numbers and masses as a result. These may then decay via beta, alpha, or even gamma radiation again.

yes im aware of that. if you will notice i said "...for the most part" since most antimatter/matter reactions leave no "radiation." the neutrinos will likely contact nothing and just zoom off into space, which is upwards of 60% of the energy transmission of this type of reaction. either way, the bomb itself would leave no radiation and that was the original question. the after effects as you said could potentially cause radiation, but that is a separate issue. do you see what im saying?

The original question was if there would be any radiation left at ground zero. And the answer to that is there probably will be.

no, the original question is "...a matter/anti-matter reaction would release gamma radation but will it linger or does it disapate rapidly?"meaning does the antimatter/matter reaction release lingering radiation which it does not. it might cause instability in the surrounding environment but that is a big if and does not inherently come from the initial reaction.

From the OP:

Hypothetically speaking, if one were to denoate a anti-matter weapon on a planet, would there still be trace radation near and around ground zero like there is setting off a nuclear device?

Either way, it's just nitpicking. You're right about what you said: the reaction itself only produces ionizing radiation in the form of photons and doesn't produce any radioactive materials directly, but if you were to do this in an atmosphere, then yeah, there'd be radioactive material left over.

 

[DrPizza]

I do avoid some of the heavier stuff in here... It's simply been too many years (around 20) since I did a lot of the upper level physics stuff and EE stuff; I rarely use any of that knowledge.

Regardless, concerning the matter/antimatter annihilation: Why is it that particle accelerators give off a tremendous amount of radiation as well as other particles upon the matter/anti-matter decay? (I do realize that much of the radiation is emitted as the particles are accelerated) Last time I was at the Wilson Synchrotron Laboratory at Cornell (about 4 years ago), they were conducting a lot of experiments that were using the gamma radiation released which they considered, more or less, as a by-product. Intuitively, after touring their facility and noting all the cautions they took to make sure no one was anywhere near the collider when things were going, I figured there was a lot of radiation.

Other questions: if matter/anti-matter annihilations don't produce gamma radiation, then why have we searched the universe for the tell-tale gamma radiation that would indicate such interactions... The lack of this radiation has led us to the conclusion that the universe is, in fact, pretty much made up of matter. (Not anti-matter)

Perhaps I was a bit short in simply stating E=mc^2 and E=hf... however, I'm still fairly convinced that the annihilation does release gamma radiation.

And, if that's not enough, then how does positron emission tomography work? Does it detect the neutrinos that are given off after a positron electron reaction?


pre-empted edit: OHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhh, I see what you mean.
Trace radiation left behind as in some uranium isotopes floating around...

Sorry!! You're correct. Hey, it was almost 2am last time I checked this thead, and it's after 3am now here... I'm a bit tired... I see how I misunderstood the op.

incidentally, at particle accelerators, they commonly collide electrons and positrons, and wind up with lots of interesting particles to study... However, I've been led to believe that much of the energy to form these particles comes from the kinetic energy of the initial particles.. In the annihilation of, say, an iron nucleus with anti-iron, would/could enough energy be present to result in the creation of other particles, including some radioactive particles? Or, when looking at such an interaction, would you simply view it as a bunch of individual proton-antiproton and neutron-antineutron reactions? Or, does it go as deep as quark/anti-quark reactions??

 

[Born2bwire]

Dr. Pizza brings up an interesting point, the huge amount of energy released by a matter/antimatter reaction may form new particles. These particles can be radioactive particles or they may ultimately interact with other particles in the region and result in radioactive particle emissions.

And in regards to the Wilson lab at Cornell, is that named after the same Wilson that was the first director of Fermi Lab?

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: MrDudeMan

Originally posted by: silverpig


You do realize that E = mc^2 implies that mc^2 = E right? Gamma rays carry energy which may be turned back into mass.

There will probably be a huge number of weak interactions involving neutrinos. There will also probably be some changing of atomic numbers and masses as a result. These may then decay via beta, alpha, or even gamma radiation again.

yes im aware of that. if you will notice i said "...for the most part" since most antimatter/matter reactions leave no "radiation." the neutrinos will likely contact nothing and just zoom off into space, which is upwards of 60% of the energy transmission of this type of reaction. either way, the bomb itself would leave no radiation and that was the original question. the after effects as you said could potentially cause radiation, but that is a separate issue. do you see what im saying?

To attempt to clarify what all's been said in this thread:
Yes, an antimatter reaction produces radiation. Lots of it. Gamma radiation, which is EM radiation, like light. Very high frequency light.
But it does not leave contaminating radioactive fallout like a nuclear explosive does.

Though as noted by DrPizza, the energy may rip apart nuclear bonds of surrounding matter, destabilizing it, thus possibly turning it radioactive. So any residual radioactivity would be from "damaged" matter surrounding the explosion, not from the explosive material itself.