RE: [RFC][Info] Playing with Boom-Boom (Or, Antimatter and You - A Children's Parable)
04-11-2019, 03:25 PM
04-11-2019, 03:25 PM
Two things are going to limit yield in pure AM/M reactions, and I keep seeing them ignored in these sort of things.
1) About half the energy in an AM/M reaction (I can never remember if it's as low as 40% or as high as 60%) will be as neutrinos, and as such will not be 'available' as usable energy.
2) All the math is based on perfect, 100% annihilation of Matter/Anti-Matter.
You're NEVER gonna get perfect annihilation. How efficient the reaction is, is based on total surface area for interaction. Just firing a 'glob' of anti-matter at a target (assuming total vacuum between source and target) will probably end up with said 'glob' being blown apart by the initial reaction on contact, so most of the reaction is away from the target. IIRC Photon Torpedoes have lots of magnetic packets in the intermix chamber to make the yield as big as possible (disregarding the whole Isoton yield ratings, subspace fuckery is involved).
1) About half the energy in an AM/M reaction (I can never remember if it's as low as 40% or as high as 60%) will be as neutrinos, and as such will not be 'available' as usable energy.
2) All the math is based on perfect, 100% annihilation of Matter/Anti-Matter.
You're NEVER gonna get perfect annihilation. How efficient the reaction is, is based on total surface area for interaction. Just firing a 'glob' of anti-matter at a target (assuming total vacuum between source and target) will probably end up with said 'glob' being blown apart by the initial reaction on contact, so most of the reaction is away from the target. IIRC Photon Torpedoes have lots of magnetic packets in the intermix chamber to make the yield as big as possible (disregarding the whole Isoton yield ratings, subspace fuckery is involved).