Newtonian Aurora

[Eseraith]

I believe that Anti matter is produced naturally in the Van Allen Belts around earth and also found in larger quantities in the much bigger radiation belts around planets such as Jupiter.  I could be possible to harvest these belts.

[Theeht]

Possibly you could have a antimatter plant component, that takes a lot of minerals to build (neutronium?), but can provide antimatter for the ship it's on.  Probably be very explosive.

[bean]

Regarding the safty of nukes i want to point you at two incidents that happend in the 60s. Number 1. Almost made a big crater into the beautiful landscape of Goldboro in North Carolina.  The second almost sank spain.

Anyway the newer Bombs are far saver thanks double and dripple point explosives still a thread thought if the computer screws up and arms these guys. What might be also interresting is the recovering of nukes from the enemys wreckage or if you could arm those boys from affar. Imagine a *Spoiler* putting its eggs into one of your disabled cruisers which tiggers the bombs proximity sensor.

I'm aware of both of those, and neither had a serious chance of causing mass destruction.  The only bomb that was ever in service that would have behaved like that was little boy.  (Admittedly, any gun-type nuke.  However, those were generally only used in artillery shells.)

It's not known what happens when you explode a thermonuke next to another thermonuke. There is no reason to assume that the fuel inside will NOT take part in the reaction.

There are two problems with this statement.  First off, we have no evidence it will explode.  Second, do you know anything about nuclear physics?  Fusion is quite difficult to initiate compared to fission, which only happens in properly working bombs.  Otherwise, we would have fusion power now.

I intend that reactors may explode in Honorverse-style, although I haven't written any code yet. I am not an expert but I understand that nuclear weapons are difficult to detonate accidentally. In fact, they can be difficult to detonate on purpose . Perhaps a low chance might be fun for the occasional catastrophic hundred megaton blast. If I class some weapons as anti-matter, they might be considerably more temperamental. One reason for avoiding anti-matter might be its unfortunate tendency to explode at inconvenient times

Steve

Antimatter would be a good alternate warhead, too.  It's expensive and dangerous, but has a very high energy density.  As for reactors, if you have enough plasma, then losing containment (which is what happens in Honorverse) would be a bad thing.  There's also a lot of energy stored in the bottle's magnets.  Possibly a minute or more's worth.  And if that all lets go at once...
You could also use antimatter-initiated fusion, which puts probably several kilotons of boom on each ship in an unstable form.

[UnLimiTeD]

So, would shooting a blast of Anti-matter at a planet result in an EMP on the surface from the resulting explosion?
Or will it all dissipate way too high in the thinner regions of the ionosphere?^^

[Rastaman]

There are two problems with this statement.  First off, we have no evidence it will explode.  Second, do you know anything about nuclear physics?  Fusion is quite difficult to initiate compared to fission, which only happens in properly working bombs.  Otherwise, we would have fusion power now.

I did not say that the secondary bomb will "detonate" in the sense of a controlled reaction. I said that the fuel inside could well contribute to the first reaction. If you have nuclear fuel next to a neutron source like an H-Bomb, a reaction will occur, so secondary effects are in the realm of possibility for Newtonian Aurora. I am talking about the difference between "cannot explode when chucked out of a plane in an unarmed state" and "vast stockpile of thermonuclear weapons suffers direct hit by another thermonuclear warhead". This is enough for my sense of realism.

[Din182]

So, would shooting a blast of Anti-matter at a planet result in an EMP on the surface from the resulting explosion?
Or will it all dissipate way too high in the thinner regions of the ionosphere?^^

No.
Yes.

[bean]

I did not say that the secondary bomb will "detonate" in the sense of a controlled reaction. I said that the fuel inside could well contribute to the first reaction. If you have nuclear fuel next to a neutron source like an H-Bomb, a reaction will occur, so secondary effects are in the realm of possibility for Newtonian Aurora. I am talking about the difference between "cannot explode when chucked out of a plane in an unarmed state" and "vast stockpile of thermonuclear weapons suffers direct hit by another thermonuclear warhead". This is enough for my sense of realism.

Again, I'm going to say the effect will be negligible.  I could almost see some effect on the fission cores, but I expect that effect to be minor, as there aren't going to be enough for major energy release before the plutonium is blown apart.  You might get the equivalent of a conventional missile exploding out of it.  As for fusion, it really isn't going to do anything.  Hitting fusion fuel with neutrons does next to nothing, and certainly won't induce mass fusion.  And contrary to earlier statements we do know enough about nuclear physics to have a fair idea of how this sort of thing would work.

[UnLimiTeD]

I suppose no one will actually test it, either. 
Well, let's just assume that short of a high energy laser hit, nothing noticeable will happen.
As in, the starting explosion blows the ship apart anyways.

[Bremen]

Seconding that nukes would not sympathetically detonate under any reasonable circumstances.  The missiles might well explode when their conventional trigger charges go, but it would just be a smallish normal explosion.  That happens to be radioactive.

As for antimatter; I remember in the Starfire books there was mention that warships carried fission/fusion (I forget) warheads under normal circumstances, but could be armed with special antimatter weapons during wartime in areas where battle was imminent; the antimatter weapons were considerably more effective but no one wanted to fly around with them because even a tiny glitch (which *would* happen eventually) destroying the ship.  This could kind of be an interesting mechanic; you can choose to load a ship with antimatter missiles, but if it has a maintenance failure of the magazine (even if it has the supplies to repair it) the component explodes for extremely high damage.

[Rastaman]

Let's just agree to disagree then. Even though it hurts me that there is somebody wrong in the internet.  

(Btw the properties of antimatter are unknown too, because we can only observe singular particles. Who knows what will happen when you have a slab of frozen antihydrogen in your weapon. Can't really assume that there is going to be a multimegaton explosion)

[Din182]

Well, considering that when antimatter and matter meet, all their mass is converted to energy, a multi megaton explosion is a safe bet.

[bean]

Let's just agree to disagree then. Even though it hurts me that there is somebody wrong in the internet.  

(Btw the properties of antimatter are unknown too, because we can only observe singular particles. Who knows what will happen when you have a slab of frozen antihydrogen in your weapon. Can't really assume that there is going to be a multimegaton explosion)

Please learn more about nuclear physics before you say this kind of thing.  By definition, matter and antimatter will turn into energy when they meet.  The only way you wouldn't get an explosion is if there was some form of barrier formed, and that has been proposed.  From my reading, though, that's not likely to happen on weapon scales.
For more information see:http://www.yarchive.net/space/exotic/antimatter_bomb.html

[HaliRyan]

The bigger issue with antimatter is actually getting it all to annihilate. For example - If you have a block of antimatter, the portion that makes contact first will annihilate and the energy released (the explosion) will blow the rest of the block away before it can contact the target. Sort of like a super-destructive bouncy ball!

Also kicking a dead horse, but nukes will not sympathetically detonate.

[Elouda]

As discussed in the link byron posted, shaped implosion devices ejecting matter onto a suspended AM core would result in good annihilation ratio; once the core grows above a certain size, its no longer as efficient, at which point you use two smaller ones, etc.

No doubt this can be represented adequately with various level of AM warhead tech...

[bean]

The bigger issue with antimatter is actually getting it all to annihilate. For example - If you have a block of antimatter, the portion that makes contact first will annihilate and the energy released (the explosion) will blow the rest of the block away before it can contact the target. Sort of like a super-destructive bouncy ball!

You obviously didn't read my link.  However, I'll post the summary, because I'm feeling nice.  The above analysis is true for large masses (cosmic scale) but not for masses on the scales in question here.  The boundary layer will likely be on the same order of thickness as the deposition length for the reaction products, which is on the order of hundreds of meters.  That means that a warhead would be unaffected.