Conference noted::sf

    Apparently the script writers did not.  In one episode, they
    deliberately used a small fraction of their antimatter to blow half the
    atmosphere off a planet in an effort to kill a particularly noxious
    space-monster.  (A gaseous creature, I believe.)  Presumably the full
    load of antimatter in the generator would be even worse.
    
    However, it might be that antimatter kncoked loose in a generator would
    only make a smallish bang compared to the bang produced by a deliberate
    antimatter bomb.  After all, nuclear reactors produce much smaller
    bangs when they blow up than A-bombs do.
    
    I wonder where the antimatter comes from.  This is never mentioned.  I
    would suppose it was generated, together with an equal quantity of
    matter, from some kind of energy source.  But what?  Off-shore drilling
    on the surface of the Sun?
    
    Earl Wajenberg

> Apparently the script writers did not.  In one episode, they
> deliberately used a small fraction of their antimatter to blow half the
> atmosphere off a planet in an effort to kill a particularly noxious
> space-monster.  

Well, it did kill it, didn't it? :-)  The animated version also made use of
antimatter 'bombs' for plot resolution.

> However, it might be that antimatter kncoked loose in a generator would
> only make a smallish bang compared to the bang produced by a deliberate
> antimatter bomb.  After all, nuclear reactors produce much smaller
> bangs when they blow up than A-bombs do.

Apples and oranges.  Nuclear reactors are (hopefully) controlled whereas
the bombs are not.  And then there is the small matter of critical mass.
A certain amount is of radioactive material is needed for the explosion.
That is why such bombs make use of an initial explosion to compact the
material into critical mass configurations (ok, so H bombs use A bombs for
the temperatures needed; but the A bomb use a small conventional bomb,
n'est pas?).  Antimatter itself hates ordinary matter.  Bang!

Star Trek had one extremely visible, and apparently well overlooked,
violation of this.  When The Enterprise was destroyed at the Genesis planet,
the saucer section was destroyed in space, while the rest burnt up in
the atmosphere.  Seems a whole lot of antimatter material would have been
dropped on the planet.  But alas, no Bang!.

> I wonder where the antimatter comes from.  This is never mentioned.  

Well, they always seemed to have enough of it and whenever they needed it :-)
The animated version, at least one show, had antimatter asteroids roaming the
heavens.  Perhaps they have a Zayre's :-)

-Joe

    	Why is there this almost mystic belief that any reaction of
    matter with antimatter - no matter how small - will result in an
    energy release capable of wiping out half the Universe?  The plain
    fact is that, as powerful as matter-antimatter annihilations are,
    one would still need a LOT of antimatter to do something as destructive
    as, say, destroy a planet.
                                                       
    	STAR TREK has propogated this myth in at least two episodes
    which come to mind:  In "The Alternative Factor", a humanoid from
    this Universe is out to stop his evil "twin" from an antimatter
    universe, for he fears that if both of them are in either universe
    at the same time, their reaction will destroy both entire universes!
                                                                   
    	This is utter nonsense all around, as is the case with "Obsession",
    where Kirk used an *ounce* of antimatter to destroy the vampire
    cloud, and in which episode it was stated that the explosion would
    rip away half the atmosphere of planet Tycho IV.  This is impossible
    for an ounce of antimatter to do, for even a *kilogram* of antimatter
    combined with a kilogram of regular matter will *only* (I use the
    term in relatively here) create an energy release equal to a 43
    megaton hydrogen bomb - powerful, but not enough to wipe out an
    Earthlike atmosphere. 
                         
    	And to answer directly the question asked in the Base Note,  
    if the ENTERPRISE had been pulled by some alien force onto a planet,
    the antimatter in the starship's Warp nacelles would probably not
    be released, as the nacelles were designed against just such an event
    (crashing into a planet's atmosphere).
    
    	Larry
    

    I suppose the anti-matter was kept from exploding the same way they
    keep it from exploding within the ship - by use of controlled magnetic
    bubbles.  These bottles are completely self-contained and self-powered
     I don't know if they can withstand re-entry into a planetary
    atmosphere, but, since they can withstand a controlled
    matter-anti-matter reaction, I suppose they can.
    
    As to the source of anti-matter, no one really knows.  It seems
    to exist naturally.  Minute quantities have been (I believe) isolated
    in laboratory experiments in the UK.  I would just assume that the
    UFP have more advanced methods of isolating it than we do.
    
    

    Re .2
    
    No, my comparison with nuclear reactors and bombs is NOT "apples and
    oranges."  In both cases, we have a weapon (antimatter bomb or nuclear
    bomb) DESIGNED to make a big boom when set off, contrasted with a power
    generator (antimatter or nuclear) presumably designed NOT to make a big
    boom if at all possible.
    
    Re .4
    
    They may have isolated the antimatter samples from nature, but they are
    at least as likely to have generated them in their particle
    accelerators.  Antiprotons are a fairly common product of particle
    collisions, and you can get positrons just by running high-frequency
    X-rays through some heavy metal.  Put the two together (as someone did
    recently) and you have anti-hydrogen.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    i believe antimatter has not been discover naturally but has been
    produced in the labs. to find antimatter in the universe would be
    very dificult because it behaves the same way as matter (i.e.
    antimatter hydrogen would have the same spectropic absorptions
    lines as matter). the only way you could tell the difference would
    be if it came in contact with matter and if this matter happens
    to be you or your spaceship...well. plus it would take alot of
    antimatter to destroy the atomosphere, in an article i recall about
    the energy generated by large astroroids hitting the earth (500-10000
    megatons i believe) the fireball created would expand upward till
    it became a collumn of hot plasma radiating directly into space.
    it was mentioned that such an explosion happening in the ocean would
    be far worse because most of the heat would cause a large amount
    ocean to boil into the atmosphere instead of forming that hot
    plasma collumn. not anything i would want to be near in either case.
    pete

    Re .6
    
    They haven't observed any macroscopic quantities of antimatter in
    nature, for the reasons you describe.  But I believe they have found
    individual particles of the stuff -- mostly positrons, every now and
    then an anti-proton -- in cosmic rays.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    
    I might have missed something in star treck (I started watching
    tv after Star Treck...) but anyway :
    
    I thought the enterprise ran on Dylithium Crystals??
    (Captian the Dylithium Crystals are running low - scotty any number
    of times :-)
    
    If so, were did antimatter come into play?
    
    or did the D. crystals create antimatter?
    
    (remember - spock died of "radiation" posioning, not anti-matter/matter
    reactions...)
    
    Thanks,
    
    Clark_who_is_a_fen_but_not_a_trekkie

    	Star TRECK?  Hoy...
    
    	Anyway, the starship ENTERPRISE is powered by the energy released
    in matter-antimatter combinations within the Warp nacelles.  The
    dilithium crystals "only" amplify the energy's power by having the
    energy channeled through them, helping the starship to move at high 
    Warp velocities (How it goes at faster than light speeds is another
    story).
    
    	In a recent BOSTON GLOBE article not too long ago, it was reproted
    that astronomers have discovered a fair amount of antimatter eminating
    from Cygnus X-1, a prime black hole candidate; so perhaps antimatter
    sources WILL be found naturally in the Milky Way Galaxy, as they
    are in the STAR TREK Universe.
                                  
    	Larry
    

    re "manufactured antimatter":
    
    Unless we have a 100% conversion process (not very likely), the
    only advantage antimatter would have is providing a compact energy
    receptacle (or half of one; there would have to be roughly equal
    amounts of matter mass).  Some other energy source would be necessary
    to provide the E, which, when divided by c^2, would produce the
    M of antimatter (if we use the correct system of units).
    
    So unless there's a good pile of antimatter out there ....
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

    When particles and anti-particles collide and destroy
    themselves, they give off gamma rays of a particular energy.
    This is supposed to be one of the pieces of evidence for the
    existence of black holes. Anti-particles can apparently be
    generated in abundance by matter spiralling into a hole, but
    I don't know what the mechanism is.  Such gamma rays have
    been detected coming from the core of the Milky Way. That's
    where Niven got his stories about the black hole at the
    heart of the galaxy.  If you could tame a black hole, you
    might have a way to manufacture antimatter out of regular
    matter.  Can't beat it in terms of light years per gallon. 
    
    /jlr

    As matter is drawn into a black hole, it gets violently compressed,
    even before it crosses the event horizon.  As it gets compressed, it
    heats up.  If it gets sufficiently hot, it will shine with X-rays that,
    on passing sufficiently close to atomic nuclei, spontaneously split
    into electron-positron pairs.  That's one mechanism whereby black holes
    could generate antimatter.
    
    Take the temperature up by a factor of 2000 and the same mechanism can
    produce proton-antiproton pairs, or neutron-antineutron pairs. 
    Antinucleons also appear in high-energy particle and nuclear
    collisions.  These, too, might happen in a hot accretion disc around a
    black hole.
    
    Finally, black holes can generate particle-antiparticle pairs from the
    intense energy densities of the gravitational fields.  One member of
    the pair falls into the hole and the other escapes.  This is Hawking
    radiation.  It is more intense for small black holes than for large
    ones, and has never been unambiguously observed, but the theoretical
    mechanism is there.
    
    Earl Wajenberg
    
    

    	If you will reread Note 584.9, you will see it mentioned that
    antimatter has been discovered eminating from Cygnus X-1, a black
    hole candidate.
    
    	Larry
    

Path: muscat!decwrl!pyramid!voder!tolerant!vsi1!unisv!mikevp
From: [email protected] (Mike Van Pelt)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.startrek,rec.arts.sf-lovers,sci.physics
Subject: Antimatter explosions
Keywords: antimatter
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 25 Feb 88 08:02:00 GMT
Organization: Unisys Silicon Valley, San Jose, CA
Lines: 67
 
    Just about everybody overestimates the power of antimatter.
Hopefully, this will set the record straight. 
 
    First, a one-megaton explosion is 4.2E+22 ergs.  Using the famous
E=MC^2 formula, we find that about 47 grams of matter totally
converted to energy equals a one megaton explosion.  Since in an
antimatter explosion half the converted mass is matter and half
antimatter, it comes out to a yield of roughly a megaton per ounce of
antimatter. 
 
    End pure, hard facts.  The rest of this is wild and wooly
speculation based on facts. 
 
    Take a one ounce ball bearing of anti-iron in a magnetic bottle. 
Pop the vacuum seal, (Don't run, this is a thought experiment.  It's
too late, anyway.) and *whammo*, the clean explosive equivalent of one
of our bigger strategic nukes, or one of the Soviet's smaller ones. 
 
    Or is it? 
 
    Let's take a closer look at what happens when we pop the vacuum
seal on that bottle.  Air hits the anti-iron, and immediately, outer
shell electrons and outer shell positrons vanish, resulting in two 511
KeV gamma rays.  Fairly penetrating, they will travel some distance
before interacting, eventually ending up as heat and fried
biologicals.  The nucleii are trickier.  When a proton and an
antiproton anihilate each other, the result is an average of 3.2
charged pions and 1.6 neutral pions.  The neutral pions have a
half-life of 90 attoseconds and decay into two 200 MeV gamma rays. 
These are *really* penetrating, (according to Gregory Benford, the
only shielding is 1/r^2) and in addition to heat do a lot of
ionization.  They also tend to cause particle-antiparticle creation
whenever they happen past an atomic nucleus.  Nearby biologicals, of
course, get it in the shorts again. 
 
    The charged pions, however, have a half-life of 26 nanoseconds,
lengthened to 70 ns because they're moving at about .94c.  This means
they travel about 21 meters before they decay. 
 
    That's at the proton/antiproton level, though.  In practice, not
whole nucleii, but chunks of them will be anihiliated.  The unstable
leftovers will probably exit with a fair amount of energy. 
 
    Remember, though, the whole thing doesn't go up at once.  The
reaction can only take place where the matter and antimatter are in
contact, i.e., on the surface.  The gammas and neutral pions deposit
their energy tens of meters all around, but the ripped-up nuclear
remnants won't move so far.  Maybe that "one megaton explosion" isn't
so hard a fact after all.  Depending on how fast the reaction takes
place, you might get anything from the stereotypical science fiction
detonation to a slow burn.  Quite possibly, if you dropped the
anti-iron BB on the table, it would skitter around like a water drop
on a red-hot skillet. 
 
    I kind of like to think that the result would be strongly
reminiscent of E. E. "Doc" Smith's loose atomic vortices.  Most likely
the rate of energy release would increase as the BB (now a ball of
superheated plasma) got hotter.  Pinning this down exactly would be an
interesting problem.  (Anybody got a Cray 3 I can borrow?) 
 
    Note:  I cross-posted this to sci.physics because it may be of
some interest there.  Email or followups are welcome, but PLEASE, if
your followup is SF or Star Trek related, remove sci.physics from the
Newsgroups line. 
 
              Mike Van Pelt      ...uunet!ubvax!unisv!mikevp

    re .14
    
    I've heard the waterdrop on a skillet analogy before; and have never
    decided if I like it.
    
    The matter/anti-mater reaction generates heat and particles. Particle
    generation gives a momentum term, random heat tends to vaporize
    and disperse material.
    
    The question then is; does the momentum transfer 'implode' the
    anti-matter, maintaining a small surface area and limiting the reaction
    surface, or does it contribute to the random motion effect and spread
    the reaction over a large area?
    
    Also, ONLY one megatonne per ounce? 
    
    I would personnally prefer to keep a large distance.

    re: .2
    
    Zayre's maybe....but I hear it's much cheaper at Spag's... :^)

Article: 4881
From: [email protected] (UPI)
Newsgroups: clari.tw.science,clari.local.illinois,clari.tw.education
Subject: Researchers find TV, comic books promote science
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 93 15:48:01 PDT
 
	WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (UPI) -- Parents who want their children
to learn science should set them down in front of ``Star Trek'' or
give them a comic book, Purdue University researchers said Wednesday. 

	Purdue researchers surveyed more than 30,000 students in
Indana and Chicago and found that by far the characters on ``Star
Trek'' exerted the most influence in promoting science. 

	``It's very clear these characters are the current cultural
scientific heroes,'' said Dennis Harp, coordinator of Purdue's physics
outreach program. 

	The ``Star Trek'' characters were followed by the television
show ``Beekman's World,'' NASA and astronauts, Steven Spielberg and
George Lucas movies; Mr. Wizard; authors Michael Crichton, Isaac
Asimov and Carl Sagan, scientist Stephen Hawking, and Marvel Comics
characters, especially X-Men and Spider-Man. 

	``Shows that deal with innovative science are interesting,''
said Harry Kloor, director of corporate relations for the physics
department. ``The enjoyability of the program may make the kids watch,
but it's the science that makes them ask questions. The shows spark
their imaginations, which is a big part of science.'' 

	Kloor said students often ask questions about how things work
on Star Trek. 

	``People on the show are always working with computers, so the
kids ask about what computers can actually do,'' Kloor said. ``They
also ask if there's sound in space. Even very young children have
heard about gravity and that objects in space are weightless. They ask
why the crew doesn't float around on the ship.'' 

	Kloor said even movies like ``Terminator 2'' generate
questions about liquid metal and the liquid nitrogen used to freeze
the bad guy. 

	``Whether it knows it or not, the entertainment industry is
stimulating the imaginations of these students,'' Kloor said. 

	``Kids get exposed to the words and science terms used on
television and in the movies, such as matter-antimatter power,
space-time continuum, worm holes and black holes. Though we don't have
matter- antimatter engines, they are definitely within the realm of
possibility.'' 

>>	The ``Star Trek'' characters were followed by the television
>>show ``Beekman's World,'' NASA and astronauts, Steven Spielberg and
>>George Lucas movies; Mr. Wizard; authors Michael Crichton, Isaac
>>Asimov and Carl Sagan, scientist Stephen Hawking, and Marvel Comics
>>characters, especially X-Men and Spider-Man. 
    
    Hey. those are all MY science heros (past and present)...!
    
    Monica