 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Antimatter weapon" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(August 2020) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
| Antimatter |
|---|
 |
| Weapons of mass destruction |
|---|
 |
| By type |
| By country |
|
| Non-state |
| Biological weapons by country |
| Chemical weapons by country |
| Nuclear weapons by country |
| Proliferation |
| Treaties |
Anantimatter weapon is a theoretically possible device usingantimatter as a power source, apropellant, or an explosive for aweapon. Antimatter weapons are currently too costly and unreliable to be viable in warfare, as producing antimatter is enormously expensive (estimated at US$6 billion for every 100nanograms), the quantities of antimatter generated are very small, and current technology has great difficulty containing antimatter, which annihilates upon touching ordinary matter.[1]
The paramount advantage of such a theoretical weapon is that antimatter and matter collisions result in the entire sum of theirmass energy equivalent being released as energy, which is at least two orders of magnitude greater than the energy release of the most efficientfusion weapons (100% vs 0.4–1%).[2]Annihilation requires and converts exactly equal masses of antimatter and matter by the collision which releases the entire mass-energy of both, which for 1 gram is ~9×1013joules. Using the convention that 1 kilotonTNT equivalent equals 4.184×1012 joules (or one trillion calories of energy), one half gram of antimatter reacting with one half gram of ordinary matter (one gram total) results in 21.5 kilotons-equivalent of energy (the same as theatomic bomb dropped onNagasaki in 1945).[3]
As of July 2024[update], the cost of producing one millionth of a gram of antimatter was estimated atUS $62 billion.[1][4] By way of comparison, the cost of theManhattan Project (to produce the first atomic bomb) is estimated at US$23 billion in 2007 prices.[5] As such,Hui Chen ofLawrence Livermore National Laboratory dismissed concerns about antimatter bombs in 2008 as "unrealistic".[6]
Antimatter-catalyzed nuclear pulse propulsion proposes the use of antimatter as a "trigger"[7] to initiate small nuclear explosions; the explosions provide thrust to a spacecraft. The same technology could theoretically be used to make very small and possibly "fission-free" (very lownuclear fallout) weapons (seepure fusion weapon).[8][9]
An antimatter weapon is a part of the plot of theDan Brown bookAngels & Demons and itsfilm adaptation, where it is used in a plot to blow up theVatican City.[10]
TheGround Zero expansion pack of the video gameQuake II requires the protagonist to manufacture an Antimatter Bomb in the Munitions Plant to achieve the final objective.[11]
In theStar Trek franchise,Federation starships are armed withphoton torpedoes which contain antimatter warheads.[12]
| Fields |
| ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Topics |
| ||
| Technological | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sociological | |||||
| Ecological |
| ||||
| Biological |
| ||||
| Astronomical | |||||
| Eschatological | |||||
| Others |
| ||||
| Fictional | |||||
| Organizations | |||||
| General | |||||
