Anti-matter weaponry

[megaplayboy]

Re: Anti-matter weaponry

 

Well, an antimatter-powered particle beam sounds pretty cool, but what about an AM-powered gamma ray laser("graser") beam weapon? It's difficult to come up with a more powerful hard sci-fi beam weapon than that. Enormous amounts of energy packed into a narrow beam. Someone even suggested a sufficiently powerful graser could make a star go supernova.

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: Anti-matter weaponry

 

Nitpick that you're probably not in the mood for: Electric' date=' magnetic, gravitational, and other fundamental forces are sometimes referred to as "force fields" in the literature. It's obsolescent terminology, and when it is used it's usually shortened to "fields", and it has absolutely no similarity to force fields as usually described in fiction. But, technically and pedantically, magnetic fields are a subset of "force" fields.[/quote']

 

That's true, and I understand completely. OTOH, the implication that I was either ignorant of this fact, or inadvertently contradicting myself by not using "force fields" while using magnetic fields in my setting was, in a word, obnoxious.

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: Anti-matter weaponry

 

Okay, note of bragging: Star HERO is my "thing," its my personal number one design fetish (hence, HALO HERO). That aside!

 

What do you want this to do? It's an anitmatter weapon, but I never got from your description what the actual premise/result you were gunning for is. Sure, you can slap Penetrating or the thing you cited from the APG (originally in Dark Champs 5th, I know what you mean). But what is the end result? It melts armor? It just shatters a ship? Where are you going here?

 

It's intended for ship-to-ship combat in space, and a possible ship-killer.

[dmjalund]

Re: Anti-matter weaponry

 

I don't know why people dis 'rubber science' where would tyres be without it?

 

 

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: Anti-matter weaponry

 

I don't know why people dis 'rubber science' where would tyres be without it?

 

 

 

LOL. I'm not sure if tires even have real rubber in them any more.

[Zeropoint]

Re: Anti-matter weaponry

 

Well, an antimatter-powered particle beam sounds pretty cool, but what about an AM-powered gamma ray laser("graser") beam weapon? It's difficult to come up with a more powerful hard sci-fi beam weapon than that. Enormous amounts of energy packed into a narrow beam. Someone even suggested a sufficiently powerful graser could make a star go supernova.

 

Err, wouldn't a sufficiently powerful thrown rock make a star go supernova?

 

Gamma ray lasers sound cool, but when you're talking about energy levels high enough to make things go "boom", what's carrying the energy matters less than how much there is. For example, the main armor belt on a WWII battleship would stop something like 99.9% of the energy in the gamma ray beam. Of course, if your graser delivers more than about 1.83 megajoules per square centimeter, "stops the beam" means "is vaporized by the beam" and that's not going to do your ship much good--but the effects won't be that much different than if you'd been hit by an infrared laser or a relativistic nail.

[McCoy]

Re: Anti-matter weaponry

 

Err' date=' wouldn't a sufficiently powerful [i']thrown rock[/i] make a star go supernova?

Nova. I believe there is a lower mass limit on supernovas, not all of them can do it. Or become neutron stars or black holes.

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: Anti-matter weaponry

 

Err' date=' wouldn't a sufficiently powerful [i']thrown rock[/i] make a star go supernova?

 

Gamma ray lasers sound cool, but when you're talking about energy levels high enough to make things go "boom", what's carrying the energy matters less than how much there is. For example, the main armor belt on a WWII battleship would stop something like 99.9% of the energy in the gamma ray beam. Of course, if your graser delivers more than about 1.83 megajoules per square centimeter, "stops the beam" means "is vaporized by the beam" and that's not going to do your ship much good--but the effects won't be that much different than if you'd been hit by an infrared laser or a relativistic nail.

 

According to Nyrath's site, a projectile moving at 86.6% of lightspeed will have kinetic energy equal to its rest mass, at which point its destructive force is equal to a like amount of anti-matter. (Which makes me wonder if an anti-matter beam would really be worth the trouble....)

[dmjalund]

Re: Anti-matter weaponry

 

According to Nyrath's site' date=' a projectile moving at 86.6% of lightspeed will have kinetic energy equal to its rest mass, at which point its destructive force is equal to a like amount of anti-matter. (Which makes me wonder if an anti-matter beam would really be worth the trouble....)[/quote']But the energy required to get it to that velocity is the same as creating that amount of antimatter.

[Zeropoint]

Re: Anti-matter weaponry

 

But the energy required to get it to that velocity is the same as creating that amount of antimatter.

 

That's what I was getting at--it's more about how many joules you're throwing around than anything else, at that level.

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: Anti-matter weaponry

 

But the energy required to get it to that velocity is the same as creating that amount of antimatter.

 

Good point. So anti-matter accelerated to relativistic speeds will have that much more energy invested in it.

[Tasha]

Re: Anti-matter weaponry

 

Good point. So anti-matter accelerated to relativistic speeds will have that much more energy invested in it.

 

Of course with the AM there's the hassle of getting to target without colliding with some stay atoms of regular matter.

[The Weapon]

Re: Anti-matter weaponry

 

AM is really just a nuke that is a) lighter and easier to scale down, and c) probably explodes if you shoot it. Two defences, 1) be far away when it goes off 2) lots of armor. The bigger the AM warhead the further away and thicker your armor has to be to not boil. Don't forget spalling. There are two ways to deliver AM, particle beams or missiles. Particle beams make a direct hit or you don't have to worry, missile generally explode when they think they're as close as they're going to get. Direct hits are bad because it means that about half the energy of the warhead is going into the target. Explosions further away mean that the percentage of energy the target absorbs equals the percentage of the surface area of the sphere around the explosion it subtends. I think I got that right. The energy density of AM explosions means bang even close always means something boils, the question is how much compared to the armor you've got?

 

Now it might seem counterintuitive that armor protects against AM, but that's because AM is a type not a size of weapon. Make the AM charge small enough and you can survive it bare-skinned. Any military vechicle that gets hit by a 1 kg AM warhead (43 Mt equivalent) however goes away.

 

In game terms AM weaponry is RKA*, explosion, maybe AP if you manage to design the geometry of the collision between matter and anti-matter. Shooting AM weaponry has the chance to cook off the ammunition spectacularly. Particularly since it's so compact you can carry a lot of it. It's real good for terrorist suicide squads.

 

* It can be "no range" if you can find someone willing to wear a backpack and yell "For the true faith!".

[The Weapon]

Re: Anti-matter weaponry

 

According to Nyrath's site' date=' a projectile moving at 86.6% of lightspeed will have kinetic energy equal to its rest mass, at which point its destructive force is equal to a like amount of anti-matter. (Which makes me wonder if an anti-matter beam would really be worth the trouble....)[/quote']

 

It's easier to store AM than kinetic energy. With AM weaponry if you already have the AM on hand the only energy you have to create is the energy to get it to it's target. Even if you had to accelerate the warhead 300 km/s to hit that's still orders of magnitude less energy than the warhead contains. So if you want to deliver a lot of energy in a short time with minimum mass, AM beats RelKE every time. While the huge relativistic battlewagons are charging up their capacitors (or whatever) the AM armed scoutships have launched their torpedoes and are out of there.

 

Plus relativistic weaponry may mostly blow through rather than damaging the whole ship. Sure anything in the direct line is toast but most of the ship isn't in the direct line. Not sure about this bit.

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: Anti-matter weaponry

 

It's easier to store AM than kinetic energy. With AM weaponry if you already have the AM on hand the only energy you have to create is the energy to get it to it's target. Even if you had to accelerate the warhead 300 km/s to hit that's still orders of magnitude less energy than the warhead contains. So if you want to deliver a lot of energy in a short time with minimum mass, AM beats RelKE every time. While the huge relativistic battlewagons are charging up their capacitors (or whatever) the AM armed scoutships have launched their torpedoes and are out of there.

 

Plus relativistic weaponry may mostly blow through rather than damaging the whole ship. Sure anything in the direct line is toast but most of the ship isn't in the direct line. Not sure about this bit.

 

Well, there's no such thing as too much overkill. Having some anti-matter go to waste is pretty much inevitable. Even so, the parts of the target which take the impact directly will be annihiliated completely, producing secondary effects -- explosions, hard radiation, etc. And those secondary effects will damage the rest of the target, beyond the point of impact.

[Nevelon]

Re: Anti-matter weaponry

 

From a mechanics POV I see AM as just a big RKA (explosive) One of its properties is that is reacts with the first real matter it comes into contact with. So having big, thick walls of armor should help. Yes, the outer layers are going to boil away when the beam hits, but no more then any other sci-fy ship-to-ship weapon. As others have pointed out, it's how much energy you can pour into your target.

 

How to stop anti-mater beams:

Any beam based on charged particles can be dispersed/deflected with magnetic fields.

Ablative armor: special armor designed to boil/break using the most energy possible, so less reaches the hull/important bits

Active systems: Seeing that AM converts and releases it's energy on the first thing it hits, if you vent atmosphere, or spray a cloud of some sort between you and the source, the energy will be dispersed at some distance from your hull, rather then a direct impact. You get some of this for free when your ship is being blown apart. The problem with this is it's hard to do while under power. In space opera, this is something light craft can do to protect capital ships

 

Just some random thoughts. A lot depends on what ground rules you are using.

[The Weapon]

Re: Anti-matter weaponry

 

Well' date=' there's no such thing as too much overkill. Having some anti-matter go to waste is pretty much inevitable. Even so, the parts of the target which take the impact directly will be annihiliated completely, producing secondary effects -- explosions, hard radiation, etc. And those secondary effects will damage the rest of the target, beyond the point of impact.[/quote']

 

Overkill's fine, but remember you have to lug all the energy, in whatever form, to the battlefield. So it's nice if it all goes in the enemy. Another great thing about AM, if you put it in an armor piercing warhead and it doesn't pierce no probs! All it means is the warhead is only halfway through the armor when the containment field fails. Not like nukes that have to be intact when triggered.