Angels and demons

[Kuciwalker]

IIRC a pound of antimatter would blow a rather large hole in the Earth's crust. You wouldn't just take out the Pope; most of Europe would go with him.

[KrazyHorse]

Kuci, a pound of antimatter combining with a pound of ordinary matter would release approximately the same amount of energy as a large thermonuclear blast.

1 megaton TNT = 10^15 calories = 4.2*10^15 J

1lb + 1lb ~ 1kg
1kg * c^2 = 9*10^16 J

so about 20 megatons

[KrazyHorse]

By the way, the quick way to realize that this must be the case is that nuclear reactions convert ~1% of rest mass to energy (quick and dirty rule of thumb). Thus 2 lbs of antimatter/matter annihilation gives the same yield as a couple of hundred pounds of fissile/fusile materials

[DaShi]

1. Can you make a pound of antimatter?

2. Can you reasonably carry such a thing around?

[KrazyHorse]

a) No, we've created like 10^12 (10^15?) times less than that throughout history. One of the biggest users of antimatter has been the Tevatron. They use ~2.5 million antiprotons per second when running at full capacity. Assuming their integrated runtime has been about 1 year they've made and used ~10^-13 kg of antiprotons

b) It's actually quite difficult to store antimatter. Antimatter traps are big, expensive, leak, and hold microscopic amounts of the stuff.

[Kuciwalker]

By the way, the quick way to realize that this must be the case is that nuclear reactions convert ~1% of rest mass to energy (quick and dirty rule of thumb). Thus 2 lbs of antimatter/matter annihilation gives the same yield as a couple of hundred pounds of fissile/fusile materials

OK. I thought nuclear weapons were a couple orders of magnitude worse than that.

[Dauphin]

it's written by the guy who made "da vinci code", of course it's ridiculous

you watched it, the joke's on you

Who admitted to watching it? I read a review from a New Scientist link.