It’s time to live your ultimate
supervillain fantasy.
Today, you’re going to unleash
your masterpiece of mass destruction.
An antimatter bomb.
Okay, so before you finalize
any plans to usher in the apocalypse,
let’s see what we’re working with.
Imagine subatomic particles
had an opposite day.
That’s antimatter.
For example,
anti-electrons, also called positrons,
are just like electrons except
they have a positive charge
instead of a negative one.
Antimatter is just matter
with its electrical charge reversed.
You with me?
I know, I know,
when do the explosions come in?
When a particle and antiparticle meet,
they will annihilate each other
in a big flash of energy.
This usually happens in the form of
high-energy gamma-ray radiation.
This all sounds wonderfully destructive.
But first,
you have to build it.
And that's easier said than done.
I hope you have steady hands
because your main goal
would be to keep antimatter separated
from normal matter
until the bomb is ready to go off.
Steady…
You want to make sure you don’t drop
(EXPLOSION)
I’m sorry, that was mean.
If you value your life
and want to avoid a premature explosion,
you may want to use something called
a Penning trap.
Using the Penning Trap,
antimatter such as positrons
will be trapped inside an electric field.
Just make sure you keep that trap powered.
If you don’t,
the electric field will stop working,
and all your antimatter particles
would come into contact
with the container walls,
which in case you forgot,
is made up of normal matter.
You know the rest.
But while you are tinkering
with the Penning trap,
we could run into another problem.
Even if you managed to pull together
all the antimatter on Earth,
you would only have ten nanograms (2.2*10-11).
For perspective,
if that amount of antimatter
exploded on your fingertip,
it would be as dangerous as lighting a match.
Okay, that’s disappointing.
"Huh?"
"I really thought that one was going to explode."
You came here for explosions,
and you're going to get them.
Let’s say you went on a shopping trip
around the Solar System
and were able to get your hands
on half a kilo (1 lb) of antimatter.
Think it’s going to be enough this time?
Well, that amount of antimatter
is equivalent to 19 megatons of TNT.
Oh yeah, now we’re talking.
So is this antimatter bomb
going to be the doomsday device you wanted?
Well, thankfully,
we’ve got a reference point.
The Tsar Bomba
is the most powerful nuclear bomb ever created.
It also happens to be as powerful
as an antimatter bomb
containing about
1.1 kg (2.4 lb) of antimatter.
You, uh, might want to stand back.
When the antimatter bomb explodes,
it will erupt into an enormous fireball,
creating a 10 km (6 mi) wide column of dust,
shooting straight up into the sky.
Next up would be the mushroom cloud
reaching 65 km (40 mi) into the atmosphere.
So good news,
it’s going to do some damage.
The bad news is,
it damaged your bank account even worse.
One of the biggest challenges
to building an antimatter bomb
would be the cost.
This is because antimatter
is the most expensive substance on Earth.
A single gram of antimatter can set you back
over $60 trillion ($1.75 quadrillion an ounce).
$60 trillion!?
So, maybe you could find another hobby
besides blowing up the Earth?
Maybe you could use
your antimatter knowledge
for something good?
What if we could create anti-gravity?
Well, that’s a story for another WHAT IF.