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Originally Posted by Gsquare
Good post, Sabiang....most folks ARE unaware that antimatter storage is well developed as you pointed out .....and these references give some good background ...
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I don't think I'd call it "well developed." You might get the equivalent of a firecracker out of the number of anti-protons you can store for a bit (depending on how good a vacuum you have), but that's about it.
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BTW, also not so well known is the fact that the Pentagon in the 1980's was interested in developing antibeam weapons, especially space based
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Anti-particle beam weapons? References please.
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..and even antimatter bombs which had the perceived advantage of small size and being 'clean' ....you don't hear much about it today because of the 'political correctness' stuff...but it is still going on.
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You don't hear about it because it's highly impractical. For even a small yield, you would need to produce vastly more anti-matter than we can today, you would need a method for long term, safe storage that has never been demonstrated and you would need to be able to make it explode effectively. If you had a frozen ball of anti-hydrogen, and let (say) air reach it, there would be intense radiation pressure which would slow the reaction down. It would be intensely hot but it wouldn't make for a good explosion. So along with everything else, you would need to insure good matter/anti-matter mixing for an explosion.