In Dan Brown’s Angels and demons, the plot focuses around a small, quarter of a gram of anti matter that will be used to blow up the Vatican. Is this enough anti matter to actually do that? How much anti matter do we need to make a bomb? In a previous article, I explained how anti matter and regular matter create energy when they cancel each other out, so let’s start with that.

Back to our good old friend, that king of equations: E=MC^2* . In the previous article, we showed that this equation shows the energy that is produced by the reaction of matter and anti matter. So, therefore if we keep guessing different masses and going higher or lower, until we get a reading of energy equivalent to that of a bomb, we find out how much mass we need.

*Due to the fact that the formatting on these web pages doesn’t allow for superscript, C squared is written is C^2. It is NOT C times 2

But there is an easier way. If we know the amount of energy we need, then using algebra, we can change the equation around so that we can find the unknown value, in this case, mass! To do this, we need to keep the equation balanced, while moving M to the position that E is in at the moment. That will show us what to do to the other two figures to get M. To cut all the BS and just show you:

E= MC^2

We need to move C^2 to the other side, so we DIVIDE both sides by C2 .

E = M C^2

C^2     C^2

 Now, pick a number. Any number, and then divide it by itself. Do it again with any other number. Notice a pattern? Because dividing a number by itself always equals one, we can change the equation to this:

   E   = M x 1

C^2

 Pick any number, and times it by one. Just like with the division above, the number always remains constant. So we can drop the one because it doesn’t matter. And what are we left with?

  E    = M

C^2

So, if we divide the energy required by the speed of light squared, we get the mass! Now all we need to know is how much energy we need. A small nuclear bomb should do it. Maybe the Hiroshima device. That bomb had a yield of 15kT of TNT. Now, this equation requires us to convert that into Joules. So, let’s see… Each kilogram of TNT releases 4,184,000 Joules, so if we multiply that by (15,000 x 1000) (the times by 1000 is there to convert the tonnes into Kilograms, thanks to Jeff for pointing out that I missed this the first time around) we have our magic number to put into the formula in place of E.

62,760,000,000,000 Joules.

So therefore:

62,760,000,000,000                   = M

89875517873681764

0.007KG.

As a quick note, some of you may be wondering what this x10-7 Malarkey is. This is called standard index and is a way of writing down very large or very small numbers without the need of a stream of zeroes. In the above example, to get the actual number involved you take 6.982991 and divide it by 10 seven times. If there is no minus, then you would multiply it by 10 seven times. You can use this in formulas, and they’ll work fine. The only reason I don’t is that I want to demonstrate to you how massive or how small the numbers involved here are. It’s got nothing to do with the fact I have major trouble working out how to make them work on my calculator…

0.007 KG, ot 0.7G is slightly less massive than an American dollar.That mass of Anti matter and regular matter can produce the same effect as 60 kilograms of uranium. Not bad eh? But when you consider the difficulties of manufacturing and storing antimatter, this really isn’t worth it. Even if we use anti matter as an explosive in the more conventional sense (say for anti aircraft missiles or light anti tank weapons), the additional increase in power nowhere near outweighs the extra cost.

But we’re dealing with theory here, why let reality bog us down? Let’s see how effective antimatter would be as an antitank weapon!

Most modern antitank weapons use a dual shaped HEAT charge, an explosive that is shaped to punch through the armour of a tank by focusing all the energy of the blast forwards. These charges usually weight about a kilogram (not including the actual cartridge e.t.c). So how much energy can a kilo of combined matter and anti matter release?

E= MC^2

E=1 x C^2

 Well, that’s straight forward. One kilo if antimatter releases an amount of energy in joules equal to the numerical value of the speed of light squared. In other words:

89,875,517,873,681,764 Joules. Or 89.86 Billion Joules.

How much energy does an anti tank round produce? Well, I couldn’t find out, but we can use TNT as an example. I would assume that military grade explosives are somewhat more potent though.

4,184,000 Joules are released in a single kilo of TNT. So therefore anti matter is 21,480,764,310 times more efficient than TNT (89,875,517,873,681,764  / 4184000)

When you look at it this way, anti matter becomes an impressive explosive. In fact to get the same effect as one kilo of TNT, you would only need 4.655 x 10-11 KG of antimatter. That’s somewhere between fine sand and a human cell.

So, a cell sized blob of antimatter and regular matter can blow up a tank. Imagine how small you could build an anti tank mine.

If we’re going on pure destructive power, antimatter is unrivalled as a weapon. However, given how hard it is to manufacture and control, it is unlikely it will ever be used as a weapon. At least not any time soon.

Interested? Further reading here:

• How does Antimatter produce energy?
• The anti matter bomb.
• The anti matter engine.
• The problem with anti matter.