Antimatter bullets: the end of war? A terrorist wet dream?

[Enros]

Before I continue, it's obvious looking at any graph that war has been declining since prehistory.

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Right now antimatter is only produced a few particles at a time in particle accelerators. But it's almost certain we'll learn how to produce lots of it in the future, to power spacecraft and possibly as a weapon. Annihilating 0.7 grams of antimatter with 0.7 grams of normal matter would release the energy of Little Boy, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima: 15,000 tons of TNT.

The 5.56x45 mm NATO bullet commonly fired by assault rifles weighs about 4 grams. You could hollow out the bullet and line the inside with tiny magnets. Half a milligram of antimatter could float between the magnets without touching the walls. When the bullet hits something, the magnets will break and the antimatter will annihilate. This tiny rifle bullet could explode with the energy of over 10 tons of TNT. How would this change war? It seems like war would have to change hugely, and between developed nations might be too costly to ever happen. Though in the hands of terrorists a crate of rifle magazines could rival the destructive power of a nuclear weapon.

This all depends on two things, an factories producing antimatter on an industrial scale and much more advanced magnets. These things won't happen in my lifetime but they will eventually happen. Of course, war might have been almost eliminated by then.

[GrnEyedDvl]

You cant make a magnet strong enough to maintain the bullets integrity when it fires. Not one that will fit inside a bullet anyways. You would pull the trigger, the bullet would accelerate but the floating anti-matter would lag a bit behind so the back of the bullet would hit the antimatter and immediately explode. Just like when you put the gas pedal in your car all the way to the floor, it pushes you back in the seat a bit until the acceleration of your body catches up to that of the car.

Good idea. I say we make them and hand them out to terrorists all over the world.

[Enros]

You cant make a magnet strong enough to maintain the bullets integrity when it fires. Not one that will fit inside a bullet anyways. You would pull the trigger, the bullet would accelerate but the floating anti-matter would lag a bit behind so the back of the bullet would hit the antimatter and immediately explode. Just like when you put the gas pedal in your car all the way to the floor, it pushes you back in the seat a bit until the acceleration of your body catches up to that of the car.

Well, there are two solutions to this problem. The first is to simply have the magnets so powerful that the antimatter is forced along with the bullet. You are right we can't make magnets this powerful but who's to say what will be invented the future. The second is to have the bullet speed up more slowly, as a rocket rather than instantly. Of course, the magnets would still need to be more powerful than anything we make today.

[GrnEyedDvl]

I like my plan better. Terrorists with guns that explode and kill them. We could probably do that now, just engineer some rounds designed to explode when the primer goes off. Manufacture them and dump them into the international arms market by the billions.

[hellheaven1987]

I thought the current issue is antimatter is not stable?

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

We can't store it for long periods stably, no. Much of that issue stems from the reason why Nuclear Fusion is so hard to do: EM fields leak when you try to store (especially compress) plasma/antimatter/etc. in them.

You could, in theory, have an anti-matter gun/cannon, where you suspend a solid mass of antimatter using an electromagnetic field in the center of the barrel and accelerate it that way using a multi-stage coilgun. But storing a large mass of antimatter like that (let alone making that much antimatter) would require inordinate amounts of energy.

[classical_hero]

I think we are stuck in a time warp. I wonder how many will get that reference.

[trance]

I like my plan better. Terrorists with guns that explode and kill them. We could probably do that now, just engineer some rounds designed to explode when the primer goes off. Manufacture them and dump them into the international arms market by the billions.

Heh, iirc Israel have experimented with faulty mortar shells to good effect .

[Enros]

But storing a large mass of antimatter like that (let alone making that much antimatter) would require inordinate amounts of energy.

A good post full of good points. You make one mistake here though. The magnets will required no energy or power supply, no more than a neodymium magnet today does.

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

Superconducting Electromagnets take a lot of energy...

[Aanker]

Regardless of the specifics of antimatter storage, the poster makes a good point in regards to nation versus nation warfare. The historical trend is that warfare will involve increasing amounts of (destructive) energy, though maybe also more focused/concentrated (directed explosive power in bombs and shells, etc). Either way, that trend has already arguably prevented conflict between greater powers, such as the nuclear weapons for any potential U.S-Soviet confrontation.

Whether the access of the individual (as opposed to entire nations with the necessary funding and know-how) to that same increasingly energetic weaponry has increased and thus is also a trend, I'm not sure. Nobody has so far constructed, for instance, the much feared "dirty bomb". Biological and nuclear weapons are related to production and transportation hazards that terrorists may just not know how to avoid or prevent.

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

Nobody has so far constructed, for instance, the much feared "dirty bomb".

I'd imagine it's probably happened but they got the guy before it was detonated/etc. and then covered up.