[RFC][Info] Playing with Boom-Boom (Or, Antimatter and You - A Children's Parable)

[Black Aeronaut]

Alright, so while I was looking through the first PMMM Movie (Beginnings) I got it into my head that at some point, Ben is going to be with Homura when they face down a Witch at some point in time.  Of course, this being post-Masu infusion, Ben is going to have MONDO FIREPOWER.

Ben will want to leave an impression at this point, so I needed to know how much of an antimatter charge he'd need to expend.

Here's the thing.  I'm not 100% sure, but I think ATC might have gotten it wrong when he had the Goodfellow yielding about 0.5 kt-TNT with 1g-AM.  Here's what I dug up on Reddit....

To my understanding when a particle and an antiparticle meet all of the mass is converted into energy. We can use an example of 1 mole of protons reacting with 1 mole of anti-protons. I gotta use x instead of * as reddit keeps making my shit italicized.

Mass of a proton/anti-proton = 1.007276466812u
1 u = 1.66053886 x 10-27 kg
Mass of a proton/antiproton = 1.007276466812 x 1.66053886 x 10-27 = 1.67262172 × 10-27 kg
Mass of a proton/anti-proton
E=mc2
Energy of 1 reaction:
E = 2 x 1.67262172 × 10-27 * 2997924582
E = 3.00655487 × 10-10 J
For a mole (we got 2) it'd just be that multiplied by Avogadro's number.
3.00655487 × 10-10 x 2 x 6.0221415 × 1023 = 3.62117977 x 1014 J

That's A LOT of energy.

I'm pretty sure that this fellow's notation was getting screwed up somehow despite their best efforts.  If someone can help me make sense of it, I'd appreciate it.  In the meantime, though, further on down in the thread, someone else boils it down...

Explosive yield is typically talked about in TNT equivalent. Thus, a single Mt of yield is 4.184PJ.

One kilogram of antimatter, reacting with one kilogram of matter (conveniently supplied by the environment), would release roughly 180PJ, or, it would have the explosive yield of roughly 42Mt. So not quite Tsar Bomba, but that's the neighbourhood.

Okay.  So let's run with that for the moment until someone can help me with the previous set of figures.  We'll be running with just Metric Tons of TNT for explosive yield, since we all understand DAKKA! pretty well, and even when we don't, there's plenty of YouTube vids of people blowing random shit up.  (Which I will demonstrate here in a moment...)

For what follows, assume an equal amount of counterpart matter is involved.

Given the above info:

42 Mt = 42,000,000 tons of TNT
1 gram AM = 0.001 kg

Thus 1g of antimatter would yield....  42 KILOTONS!?  Which would mean that Ben's entire stockpile of 5 grams is 210 kt.  Wow.  Nowhere near Tsar Bomba, but still - like Lindsey Brigman said in the film, The Abyss, that's World War III in the can!  (Or at least an adequate enough amount to get the shit show kicked off.)

Let's see how tiny Ben's expenditures have to be to get us down to 'reasonable' levels.

100 mg-AM = 4.2 kt-TNT
10 mg-AM = 420 t-TNT
1 mg-AM = 42 t-TNT
1 μg-AM = 42 kg-TNT
100 ng-AM = 4.2 kg-TNT
10 ng-AM = 420 g-TNT

Okay.  Ben has some SERIOUS FUCKING DAKKA on demand here.  The 1μg expenditure is pretty much the equivalent to getting nailed with 7 and one-third high-explosive rounds from a 5" naval gun.  ALL AT ONCE.

His 100ng and 10ng expenditure?  Let's allow this YouTube video to do the talking.



Gnarly.

What about his 1 μg expenditure?

THIS (also featuring the guys from the above video - these dudes get around!):



Badda Boom, baby.

1 milligram?

Have some old military footage of a simulated nuclear blast using 50 tons of TNT:



WHAT THE FUUU-*BOOOOOOMMMMM!!!*  *Demented laughter*

What about 10 milligram expenditure?

Say hello to Operation Sailor Hat - a test explosion of 500 tons of TNT to determine blast resistance on US Navy Warships and their systems.



So, if the above math holds out, we're looking at the following for Ben's expenditures and their effectiveness...

10ng - Anti-Mook Charge - great crowd control, can even hurt light armored vehicles to some extent.
Shots available from entire stockpile (5 grams): 500,000,000 shots (in other words, a nigh infinite supply).

100ng - Anti-Vehicle Charge - also good for those 'mid-level boss' types.
Shots available from entire stockpile (5 grams): 50,000,000 (also pretty much nigh-infinite).

1μg - The "We Need Bigger Guns" Charge - used mainly for major bosses, not for use in danger-close scenarios.
Shots available from entire stockpile (5 grams): 5,000,000...  Yeah, I'm gonna find a way to nerf this.  Stay with me here...

1mg - The "You have sub-nukes!?" Charge - for when a seriously big kaboom, but you're not ready for Hayate-levels of kaboom.
Shots available from entire stockpile (5 grams): 5,000... Definitely nerfing this shit.

10mg - The Tactical Nuke Charge - Screw it.  We need Hayate, but we don't got Hayate.  Send in the Hayate-substitute!
Shots available from entire stockpile (5 grams): 500 ....Still gonna nerf.

100mg - The "Kill All The Things" Charge - Strategic Nuke.  'Nuff said.  About 1/3rd of Hiroshima.
Shots available from entire stockpile (5 grams): 50  ...Don't tell me I'm not gonna nerf this shit!

1 Gram - The "I have Become Death" Charge - For when you REALLY need something to be dead without any question. 2x Nagasaki.
Shots available from entire stockpile (5 grams): 5

---

So.

Nerfing.

It'll be simple and easy.

The main constraint is not going to be how much antimatter Ben will have on-hand, but rather how much neutral matter he can supply.  That stuff is very finite, and he needs to expend more than a little to form a safe-to-use projectile, and this is to say nothing about neutral matter he needs to keep in reserve to protect himself from his own stockpile, reactor, and Fermion Inverter.

Additionally, in a combat situation, he's going to be burning up antimatter in order to maintain a how-energy output.  So what follows will be the real-world limitations to what he can output.

Level 00 - 1 Gram - Special Case (must refrain from weaponized use for 24-hours prior, only one shot available)
Level 0 - 100 mg - Special Case (may only fire one shot per day, and only in the case of light weaponized use within 24-hours.)
Level 1 - 10 mg - 1/day
Level 2 - 1 mg - 5/day
Level 3 - 1 μg - 10/day
Level 4 - 100 ng - 15/day
Level 5 - 10 ng - 20/day

Keep in mind, usage has effects on the quantity of the availability of neutral matter.  The above figures are soft estimates - there's no telling for sure when Ben will run 'dry'.

---

In conclusion, once Ben has the measure for his overall firepower, he will probably go "Fuck this shit", tell the girls to stand the fuck back, he's got this, and then hit the Witch with a single Level 2 shot.  Yes, it's overkill as all hell, but he's trying to make a point here: he's not the guy to fuck with, and he emphasizes this by stating that he can do even better than that on a bad day.  (And the funny thing is that he's STILL NOT the biggest fish in the pond.)

Thoughts?

[Labster]

There's a lot of extraneous information here.  The relevant equation here is E = m₀c², where m₀ is the rest mass and c is the speed of light.  Of course, not all of the mass will be lost, because you're going to produce some electron/positron pairs and neutrinos in addition to all the light.  But those are three orders of magnitude or more less massive, so we can safely ignore them for our purposes -- we're not writing physics papers.  Some will be lost to kinetic energy of neutrinos, most of which can pass through an entire planet without reacting with anything -- but they're so light-massed we're going to ignore that too.  Everything else counts as explosive power.

c² = (2.998×10⁸)² = 89880040000000000 = 8.988×10¹⁶ m²/s²

This is... a pretty big factor.  When you multiply that with kilograms, you get joules.  So for 1 gram of antimatter reacting with 1 gram of matter:

10⁻³ kg × 2 × 8.988×10¹⁶ m²/s²  = 1.7976×10¹⁴ J = 0.18 PJ

So yeah, the math is fine, but why is he screwing around with moles?  This guy sounds like a chemist pretending to do physics.

Keep in mind, usage has effects on the quantity of the availability of neutral matter.

Even at the Kármán line, you have ~10mg/m³ of matter around.  And remember, you can always use your own blood as a matter source.

[Black Aeronaut]

There's a lot of extraneous information here.  The relevant equation here is E = m₀c², where m₀ is the rest mass and c is the speed of light.  Of course, not all of the mass will be lost, because you're going to produce some electron/positron pairs and neutrinos in addition to all the light.  But those are three orders of magnitude or more less massive, so we can safely ignore them for our purposes -- we're not writing physics papers.  Some will be lost to kinetic energy of neutrinos, most of which can pass through an entire planet without reacting with anything -- but they're so light-massed we're going to ignore that too.  Everything else counts as explosive power.

c² = (2.998×10⁸)² = 89880040000000000 = 8.988×10¹⁶ m²/s²

This is... a pretty big factor.  When you multiply that with kilograms, you get joules.  So for 1 gram of antimatter reacting with 1 gram of matter:

10⁻³ kg × 2 × 8.988×10¹⁶ m²/s²  = 1.7976×10¹⁴ J = 0.18 PJ

So yeah, the math is fine, but why is he screwing around with moles?  This guy sounds like a chemist pretending to do physics.

Huh.  Was kinda wondering if he was nuking it. (Navy slang.  Navy nuclear engineers tend to overcomplicate things because they apply their school of thought to everything, hence 'Nuking it'.  Can't say as I blame them, though, as they're practically programmed to live, breathe, eat, and sleep Nuke Eng.)

Anyhow, part of what's making my head spin is that I have no idea what each of those numbers represents.  I got a basic idea about E = m₀c²...  Lemme see if I can follow along...

Okay, first bit, you're calculating the square of C...  m²/s²?  I know I've seen that before...  *Googles*  OH.  Velocity in Joules of energy.  Got it.

10⁻³ kg?  OH!  That's one gram.  Duh.  Okay, I get it now.  An equal-parts annihilation of one gram of matter and antimatter will yield about 0.18 PJ of energy...  Or about 43 Kilotons-of-TNT explosive yield.  Okay, close enough for government work!  :V

Keep in mind, usage has effects on the quantity of the availability of neutral matter.

Even at the Kármán line, you have ~10mg/m³ of matter around.  And remember, you can always use your own blood as a matter source.

Well, this is kinda the point.  The idea I'm going with is that the antimatter and neutral matter are both made within the same organ from Ben's own water.  (Keep in mind, I'm kinda rubber-sciencing this while keeping it plausible enough that people aren't just gonna bail due to SoD Failure.)  Blood glucose to fuel the Fermion Inverter and other tissues except the reactor itself.

There are two primary issues Ben can run into.  For one thing, he will need to maintain a huge caloric intake - and in his case, sugar is going to be critical in his diet.  This will be mostly when he's in a state of 'replenishment' where his M/AM organ is replenishing its stockpile of AM, so in the days immediately following action where he had to 'exert' himself, he'll probably be sipping sugary drinks throughout the day.  Probably Kool-Aid because you can load it up with sugar, and it has very little salt.

The other issue is the fluids themselves.  While the projectiles will be small, shoot enough of them and Ben's electrolyte levels can be thrown into imbalance.

But then, I did used to do plasma donation for extra money - couldn't do it anymore because of my antidepressants.  My heart rate is naturally high, and the ADs make keeping it low enough where they'll take me for donation a hit-or-miss affair.  And for legal reasons they can't make any exceptions on that matter.

ANYHOW.  Thing is that I could make two 830ml donations in a week.  So I guess we can say that the absolute limit for Ben to lose in a single day is one liter in fluid volume, but that would be beyond the 'red line', which Washu would probably put at 800ml just to be safe.  But if he needs to go beyond that, then someone had better be dying.

The only other way to nerf this, I guess, is to reduce his stockpile limit to one gram of antimatter.  It would have been nice to go with fluids being his limit, because that would mean he'd always have AM to fuel the reactor.  But it would make the limits I've set far more believable.  In fact, think I need to look at that again with a one gram limit in mind.  Pardon...

Level 00 - 1 Gram - 1/day (must refrain from weaponized use for 24-hours prior)
Level 0 - 100 mg - 10/day
Level 1 - 10 mg - 100/day
Level 2 - 1 mg - 1,000/day
Level 3 - 1 μg - 1,000,000/day
Level 4 - 100 ng - 10,000,000/day
Level 5 - 10 ng - 100,000,000/day

....That's still too much.

Okay.  New idea.  Start with the minimum and work our way from there.  Special rules are gonna apply for the stuff that goes beyond the limits.

Level 3 - 10 ng (430 g-TNT) - 100/day
Level 2 - 100 ng (4.3 kg-TNT) - 10/day
Level 1 - 1 μg - (43 kg-TNT) 1/day
Stockpile Limit: 1 μg

This should do for the rank and file.  The only issue is that if he needs to go all out on someone, he needs to be ready in advance...

Hrmm... If we say it takes 24 hours to restock to his 1 μg limit... Just did the math, it'll be reasonable to say that he can restock 1ng/minute.  So, for however many Level 3 shots he gets off multiplied by 10, plus however many Level 2 shots multiplied by 100, and that will be his cooldown time before he can pull a Level 1 shot off.  And that Level 1 will pretty much leave him on empty.  He'll still be able to fire off a few more that day, but he'll need to wait 10 minutes for a Level 3, and 100 minutes for a Level 2.

Special Circumstances
To give him more firepower if it is felt that he needs it, he can build up a supply of ready-made shots.  Trouble is, this is like going around with a loaded gun.  And by loaded gun, we mean explosive device (not quite armed, but almost there).  And it's in his chest.

Granted, the M/AM Organ does a good job keeping everything safely suspended so nothing untowards would happen in most circumstances, but there's always that slight chance, and so this will not be something that will be done lightly.

His production capacity will still be topped out at a maximum of 1μg/day, so these larger yield shots will take some time to build.

Level 0 - 5 μg (215 kg-TNT) - 5 Days Prep
Supreme Fuck-Off Shot

Level 00 - 10 μg (430 kg-TNT) - 10 Days Prep
Davy Crockett Shot

Level 000 - 20 μg (860 kg-TNT) - 20 Days Prep
"Omae Wa Mou Shindeiru" Shot

I'll wait for Rob to check in here before I go and throw all this on the Wiki.

Any other thoughts or ideas?

[Labster]

Antimatter does have a tendency to "just work" as an explosive.  Or so we think.  Honestly we haven't observed any large quantities of antimatter, like ever.  There are a decent amount of positrons coming in as cosmic rays, but no observed anti-alpha particles (antihelium nuclei).  So no evidence for antimatter stars, yet.

One of the issues is getting it to react when you want it to react, and not with the atmosphere immediately in front of your face.  Containment is a real freaking problem.  Normal matter doesn't like to touch, because all of the electrons on the outside repel each other.  The whole atom is electrically neutral, but at the border, the electrons dominate the interactions (therefore, chemistry).  So what to our mind feels like solid matter, say metal, is mostly empty space, with electrons actually flowing and exchanging photons constantly to keep from colliding.  Of course in reality it's also quantum electrical fields too, but no point repeating what you already know.

Anyway for antimatter near matter, the outer positrons electrically attract the valence electrons of matter.  When they annihilate, this exposes the nuclei, which are also electrically attractive.  Protons and antiprotons attract like a moth to a flame.  From here on out, you get total mess of baryons and sea quarks and shit, but your eventual output is gamma rays (high energy light), neutrinos, and electrons and positrons going fast enough to escape the reaction.  But the reaction as a whole is very sticky and wants to happen as fast as possible, like fluorine but thousands of times worse.  Also all* this radiation causes cancer, but unlike fission bombs you don't produce many radioactive products like iodine-131 that cause persistent pollution.

Anyway, if you need some ideas on how to contain antimatter, maybe Casey and Andy have a few ideas.  If you want to fire antimatter at your enemies, then they definitely have ideas.

* Except the neutrinos, which don't do much of anything.

[Bob Schroeck]

<FARM FILM REPORT>Whooooooeeeee! It blowed up good! It blowed up real good!</FARM FILM REPORT>

(Don't mind me. I have nothing to contribute, I just didn't want to miss a good cue.)

[classicdrogn]

All things considered, it seems like t would be a lot safer and more controllable to keep the M/AM reactions in a pocket dimension or whatever isolation your power core uses, and just use something like UV-to-visible-light fluorescence to turn the gamma rays into something less cancer-inducing to blast targets with. I mean, I'm not really familiar with fic-Ben's abilities here because I just popped in for the dakka so maybe that's more his normal mode of operation, but huge bursts of ionizing radiation within visual range of anyone you don't want to have suffer severe long term health issues even if they aren't immediately affected by the heat and force seems like the kind of bright idea that really isn't.

[Black Aeronaut]

<FARM FILM REPORT>Whooooooeeeee!  It blowed up good!  It blowed up real good!</FARM FILM REPORT>

(Don't mind me.  I have nothing to contribute, I just didn't want to miss a good cue.)

Snrk.  Yeah, pretty sure the first two videos I put up were pretty much the Finnish versions of Larry the Cable Guy.  Snrk.

Anyhow, in regards to radiation...

Best guess on how much radiation we're talking about here?  Anyone?  Last I'd heard the high-energy photons were supposed to be in the form of X-Rays and not Gamma Rays.  If I'd known that there'd be a big pulse of Gamma, then I would have killed the idea as soon as I had it.

[Bob Schroeck]

Maybe you can use the M/AM reaction to pump a gamma-ray laser? That way only the target would get the benefit with little to no spillover on anyone else.

(Okay, so maybe I do have something to contribute.)

[Black Aeronaut]

I'd be worried about the fact that Gamma Rays of sufficient intensity have this nasty tendency to ionize all kinds of things - particularly things like structural steel, for which the only way of dealing with it is to bury it in a deep hole somewhere.

It's starting to look more and more like I shouldn't pursue this as a regular weapon. It could still be an option, but it would be one with severe drawbacks to it, and therefore given the same level of consideration a tactical nuke would be.

[Labster]

Well, if you look at one definition, gamma radiation is caused by nuclear decay. And matter-antimatter reactions are a form of nuclear decay. I mean, really, gamma rays are produced by the few MeV of mass lost from converting a proton to a neutron. Like, what if you convert the whole thing?

But really, what you hit will get very very hot, and so as just ordinary blackbody radiation, it will also produce X-rays, ultraviolet, light, infrared, microwaves, and radio waves.

The discussion is somewhat academic, though. There's no clearly defined boundary between X-rays and gamma rays, and both of them are harmful to your health in sufficient quantity, as they have a tendency to ionize random molecules of the human body. Antioxidants do help, but cancer is all about breakage in just the wrong spot.

[Black Aeronaut]

So we're back to the original question then: What kind of theoretical radiation counts dosages are we looking at?

[Dartz]

Be fucked about nuking it out - but when you consider how many critically accidents that resulted in nothing more than a blue flash and maybe a little thump in a tank have still resulted in people rotting alive from the inside out- probably Lots.

Enough to get well and truly Piked if you're lucky.

Okay, so a good chunk of that is neutron radiation (which turns you radioactive so you self-fry too) there's still a blast of nice gamma rays and x-rays.... then you have shit like delta rays which are the electrons sent flying off the atoms all your hard radiation just hit like shrapnel, bremmstrahlung radiation which are x-rays caused by those electrons hitting dense shit and coming to a sudden stop.

[Labster]

I'm really not sure how much neutron radiation you'd get out of this -- the nuclei will be colliding at distances where the weak and strong forces come into play, and you'll get a few Higgses out of it too. As an armchair guess, I'd expect a zoo of mesons in just as much quantity as the neutrons that manage to escape.

[Dartz]

Ooh.... you just reminded me.

E=mc^2.

M = E/C^2

The equation works in both directions. Though, as you can see - it takes a gigaton of energy to make the tiniest amounts of mass. Even the LHC which shits outs sprays of momentary mesons is still moving individual protons with so much energy that stopping them means dissipating the same energy as stopping a USS Nimitz....

[Cobalt Greywalker]

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).

[Labster]

1) Citation needed.  No, seriously, I'd love to know about this.

2) I'm not sure what "perfect" reaction means in this sense.  The chance of an antiproton making it further than a couple meters from a target seems fairly small.  The Wikipedia page on Antimatter weapons sure seems to think efficiency is near 100%.

@Dartz: The correct way to think about it is m = c ⁻² E, because in this case the speed of light is really just a proportionality constant for converting between mass and energy.

[Dartz]

Not even space is a perfect vacuum. There's still matter for the antimatter to find. Only about 10 or 11 molecules per cm^3 but that's still matter.

That'd be an interesting fizzle to see.

I just realised that a Federation Starship doing a vent of it's antimatter would be a spectacular sight with a column of radiation bblasting into the cosmos.

[Black Aeronaut]

In Star Trek they supposedly use small quantities of antimatter as fireworks in space.

[robkelk]

This is... a pretty big factor.  When you multiply that with kilograms, you get joules.  So for 1 gram of antimatter reacting with 1 gram of matter:

10⁻³ kg × 2 × 8.988×10¹⁶ m²/s²  = 1.7976×10¹⁴ J = 0.18 PJ

So, assuming I did the basic math correctly, 66.666... mg of antimatter produces roughly the Halifax Explosion. Or thereabouts - close enough for private-sector work.



Eep.

Again, I'm glad Ben is half-a-continent away from my SI's girls.

I'll wait for Rob to check in here before I go and throw all this on the Wiki.

Don't wait for me! Keeping notes in one place is what the Useful Notes pages are for.

[Cobalt Greywalker]

1) Citation needed.  No, seriously, I'd love to know about this.

OK, I can't remember where I read about it originally (probably some post on SB years ago), so I did some searching.

SEARCH TERMS: in an antimatter reaction, how much of the energy is released as neutrinos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter#Fuel
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questi...er-annihil

SEARCH TERMS: what percentage of an antimatter reaction is neutrinos
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/ho...on.665482/
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/en...on.640940/

For those who are in tl;dr mode: Proton-antiproton reactions generate pions as a result, rather than the straight photons of electron-antielectron reactions. About 50% of proton-antiproton annihilation energy is 'lost' as neutrinos, due to the pion decay sequence.

[Black Aeronaut]

Huh.

Well, still.  Pretty damn big numbers even so...  And I think we're gonna go with Ben mostly using Beam Shots, since that will not only concentrate all that power into a much smaller area, but also direct it so he's not bathing the landscape and everyone in it in gamma ray and x-ray bursts.  The Bombardment Shots can be used on the really big targets.

Heh.  Fun thought.  Rather than shoot the projectile, he palms it and hands it over to Alisa (now a grown lady in this timeframe)... who then loads it in her Magical Winchester... And then opens a wormhole all the way through to their desired target... and then closes it again after firing.

And waaaayyyy off in the distance, somebody's base just went kerblewie, because that was a 100 nanogram shot he'd been cooking up for MONTHS.

Post Combat Banter

Ben:  *Looks relieved now*  "Hooo-weeee.  Talk about getting something off your chest!"
Alisa:  "You are one crazy bastard, Ben.  It's no wonder why Nanoha loves you.  You don't even bat an eyelash at what she can do.  You know, Madoka told me those two were planning something special tonight.~"
Ben:  "Heaven and Kaisers preserve me.  They're not going to stop until they've had their first ones, are they?"
Alisa:  "Don't just speak for yourself.  Shinobu and I have to deal with them going shopping for baby clothes.  And here I thought the nesting instinct only happened during pregnancy.  You can dress a whole platoon with what they have now...  at least if they were all one month old.  Besides, why are you complaining?  I know you wanted a big family.  And don't try to tell me you haven't been having fun."
Ben:  "It's not the exertion, Alisa.  It's the lack of sleep.  They take turns.  I don't."
Alisa:  "....I never thought of it that way.  You're a much tougher guy than I thought you were."

[Labster]

Pretty much all of the calculations I did are within 0-1 orders of magnitude, still. But I think there's a major flaw in construing the analysis in terms of antimatter weapons. If you're using it as fuel, you want to control the reaction, but a weapon is an uncontrolled reaction. Pion decay is in the order of nanoseconds and muon decay is microseconds, but if you're making tons of muons and pions, the chance of them finding their own antiparticle is probably not terrible.

So if you're not getting enough energy out, construct additional pions.

I don't think we've simulated anything close to what an antimatter weapon would do, so I suspect our theories haven't really caught up to what would actually happen. An antimatter explosion is infinitely more complex than would would happen in a particle accelerator. It's like how we go to another planet, and we think we know all the physics, and then we end up asking "wtf are these ice mountains doing on Pluto?"

[Black Aeronaut]

I guess I should get into details on what the projectiles are like and how they function

Basically, they're like elongated paintballs with a tail for stabilization purposes.  They have no guidance or propulsion - they are 100% ballistic.

The outer shell is a gel-like material that is not soluble with water.  Inside this shell is a filling of 'neutral matter'.  That is not 'particles with a neutral charge', it is the middle-ground between matter and antimatter and has been hypothesized by Albert Einstein to exist.

This filling keeps the antimatter safely out of contact with any matter and is the same consistency as uncooked egg whites.

But how things are arranged inside is where it gets interesting.  The matter and antimatter (these being simple water and antiwater) are arranged in hundreds of thousands of packets about the size of red blood platelets, alternating between water and antiwater.  Each of these alternating packets are tied together with a molecular chain that, upon the rupturing of the projectile shell, suddenly collapses and brings the two packets together.

Even with this, I know that there won't be a totally even annihilation, but it should be close enough that perfect annihilation won't be much better.

For Beam Shots, that's a bit different.  Ben will form a secondary 'reaction chamber' in his arm where a rapid but controlled annihilation takes place.  In the meantime, the energy and particles are bottle up and collimated.  Once annihilation is complete, the energy is released.  Keep in mind, that all takes place in just few thousandths of a second - the longest part is the actual release, which can take up to a second (depending on how much was annihilated) until the 'firing chamber' is clear.

Thoughts?

[Black Aeronaut]

Oh, and here's a little something that I may have posted elsewhere in the forums, but is relevant here and now.

Some enterprising fellow went and created a 3D rendered video of one of the most famous battles from the Touhou Project - Reimu Hakurei versus Utsuho Reiuji.

The thing about Utsuho is that her schtick isn't quite Ben's, but it's close enough in practice: she uses solar nuclear fusion as her kaboom of choice.

And so, I figure that after Ben has leveled up a few times, say by Season 3, that fighting him is going to be somewhat similar to this 'Dogfight' video made by Mudspike.

(One of the cool things about this video is that it uses all the music from the in-game battle with Utsuho.  The only difference being Flames in These Black Feathers by Foreground Eclipse.  It's actually a cover of the original music from that phase of the battle and approved of by the game's creator.)



Thoughts?

[robkelk]

Since (a) it looks like two spoilered sections in one post causes problems, and (b) it's drifting off-topic, what was in that post I just deleted is now on the wiki.