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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Skrittiblak" data-source="post: 3073739" data-attributes="member: 38686">Google Cache Is Awesome!!!!!LESSON 2: AntimatterAntimatter is a particle of any type matter that has the sign of one of its basic properties reversed. In every other way, they are identical to their anti-partner. An antielectron (a positron), for example, has a positive charge, instead of a negative charge. Any type of particle, even neutrally charged ones such as neutrons, can have an antiparticle, since the electrical charge is not the only possible value that can be reversed.When a particle and its antiparticle meet, they annihilate each other in a burst of energy. This reaction reaction releases the most amount of energy per unit mass in known science. Unfortunately, the reaction, as opposed to popular belief, doesn't not always completely convert the matter and antimatter into energy. Only the lightest particle-antiparticel pairs can accomplish this. An electron-positron collision, for example, produces nothing but 511,000 electron volts worth of gamma rays. Something heavier, like protons an antiprotons, will produce, in addition to high-energy gamma rays, a spray of assorted secondary particles that decay very quickly into nuetrinos and low-energy gamma rays.If they didn't, we wouldn't have been able to use proton-antiproton collisions at Fermilab to find the top quark or search for the Higgs boson.An antimatter reaction is extraordinarily efficient when converting mass to energy. The less efficient reaction of the heavier antimatter particles is actually more useful in regards to both weapons and fuel. High-energy gamma rays will pass straight through most material without interacting, unless you have a lot of shielding to abosrb it. The secondary particles produced by the heavier antimatter reactions will produce more meaningful damage, especially radiation damage as they decay.As a comparison, a nuclear fission is about 20 times as efficient as your tyical rocket fuel. Nuclear fusion is about 120 to 200 times as efficent as that rocket fuel. Matter-antimatter annihilation is 200 to 2,000 times as efficient.Antimatter suffers from two very major drawbacks... Production and containment.Production... Antimatter is expensive and excessively time consuming to make. Antimatter costs about $62.5 trillion a gram to produce. What's more, even Fermilab, currently the world's best antimatter production facility, can't make more than a couple trillionths of a gram in an hour, and can't collect more than a couple dozen trillionths of a gram at once. Even that amount of antimatter is practically harmless, as far as weaponry is concerned... It's not enough to put the slightest scratch in aluminum foil. Additionally, antimatter (antiprotons, at least) is created primarily by bombarding a solid target with high energy protons -- you shoot a slab of metal with an ion cannon (Remember all those secodary particles I talked about in Lesson 1? Antiprotons are some of them.) Realistically, in order to produce a useful amount of antimatter, you'll need ion cannon technology sufficient to drive the resultant antimatter weapon into obsolescence.Containment... Antimatter, in sufficient quantities would be very, very dangerous. Even without the danger, its simply a delicate substance to work with. Practically anything it touches destroys it. Some types of it (those with electrical charges) can be contained using magnetic fields... But that would require significant power just to hold it steady. Also, it would need to be stored in near perfect vacuum, or the antiparticles would slowly wear away.In the end, it's a matter of logistics for antimatter. It's too expensive to make, too troublesome to store, and too dangerous (in weapons-grade amounts) to use. It's the same reasons nitro-glycerin never was and never will be used as a weapon.LESSON 3: LasersLasers are just beams of light that are monochromatic, coherent and directional. "Monochromatic" means that the laser emits a single, specific wavelength of light. "Coherent" means that the light waves are all in phase, that they oscillate not just at the same frequency but at the same time. "Diretional" means that all the lightwaves are travelling in the same direction as a tightly focused beam.So, if a the light from a light bulb is kind of like a crowd of people scattering to their various homes after a football game, the light from a laser is more like the members of a marching band, all wearing identical uniforms, marching in perfect step in a straight line.Lasers, as focused beams of light, can have two major effects on the battlefield... First, the heat produced by the beam could feasibly damage equipment and kill people. Second, the light from the beam could blind people or sensitive optical equipment.This is nothing new, many militaries are already experimenting with lasers for such applications.Lasers have a few minor drawbacks, that will likely be overcome sometime within the next hundred years or so...Size... A laser of any significant power to worthwhile damage to a target is pretty big. Most experimental military lasers are approximately the size of a refrigerator, or an outdoor spotlight (not the theatrical sort, the sort you see outside circuses, carnivals and car dealerships pointing up at the sky). Lasers of this size are currently powerful enough to shoot down a mid-sized missile.Power... Unlike most sci-fi weaponry, lasers truly are an "energy weapon". They require no ammunition of any sort, aside from electrical power. Electrical power in very large quantities, however, if you want to deal any real damage. The anti-missile lasers currently being tested in Isreal fire a 1-10MW laser beam that's about three or four feet across, if I remember correctly. That's probably about the minimum power required to use a laser as an effective weapon.Fortunately, both of those problems are soluble, given time.Lasers do have one or two other quirks, that can a help or a hinderance, depending...Line of sight... Lasers shoot in a straight line. While this makes it very easy aim the laser, it also eliminates the possibility of indirect fire. Unlike an artillery shell, missile or handgrenade, if there's something between you and your target, you can't lob a shot over the obstruction to hit something you can't see behind it.Range... Lasers, especially powerful lasers, can have a pretty long range. The trouble is, even though lasers are directional, the beam still disperses as it travels. Since you're spreading the light over a wider area, it effectively reduces the damage the laser is capable of at longer ranges.Tracing... Laser beams are more or less invisible. If you can see the laser beam, you're losing damage potential. This makes it hard for enemies to see where you are shooting from, but it also makes it difficult to see where you are shooting.Continuous vs. Pulsed... A continuous laser can be turned on and left on. A pulsed laser can only be flashed in short pulses. The pulsed laser typically uses a bank of capacitors, which are charged up and then discharged to produce a more power laser pulse than would ordinarily be available with that particular power supply. The tradeoff is a series of short, more powerful pulses of laserlight, instead of a steady beam of less powerful laser light that can be swept across the battlefield or held to a particular target.No recoil... Lasers effectively have no recoil.Defense... Anything that can disperse light (like particluate clouds), reflect light (mirrors), or conduct and disperse heat (high-temperature alloys with heat sinks) will prove a good defense against most lasers.In gaming terms, a pulsed laser deals more damage with the same power supply. A continuous laser deals less damage, but could be used in "auto-fire" mode to strafe across a battlefield, much like a gatling gun.Lasers would likely be best used as point defense weapons, tracking and shooting down missiles and shells at short range as they come in, or as personal firearms, if you can develop the miniaturization and power technologies to allow it.</blockquote>

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