so i have been in a discussion witha a friend who claims 1 atom of antimatter (hydrogen in this case) could destroy a cityblock. is that true?
now since i am not smart enough to figure this out i wondered if you people can figure it out. can you help me?
E=mc^2
???am I right????
>
isnt one of those time? i dont know where to get any numbers about time in the question (as i mentioned im not smart enough concerning maths or physics to answer the question)
Proton mass is 10^-27 something
c^2 is 10^16ish, almost 10^17
Leaving us with 10^-10 joules of energy from an anihilation
We'll be fine
>10^-10
whats that comparable to in heat? like a candle?
One positron (which is the antiparticle to the electron) has a mass of 511 KeV. When an electron and a positron annihilate (both have the same mass), this energy is released. We therefore have a released energy of ~1 MeV. Now the antiproton and proton anihilation should yield arround 2000 times that amount of energy. that would be ~2 GeV. That would be arround 3*10^-10 Joule. You can clearly see, that this is definitly not enough energy to destroy a cityblock. That amount of energy is barely enough to lift one eyelash hair by a mm.
HOWEVER it should be noted, that the amount of radiation can cause severe damage in a body by ionizing critical parts in a cell and thereby causing cancer.
Like a nothing. It's the energy required to move a grain of sand upwards a single millimeter.
ok thanks for the comparison
Somewhat related
So if [math]E=mc^2[/math] therefore [math]m ={\frac{E}{c2}}[/math]. What makes the m become anti-matter vs matter?
m is not the (anti-)matter, it's a property of it, like electric charge and spin
So then it's about the properties of [math]E[/math]?
Matter and antimatter are just the two kinds of things that stuff can be made of. The E=mc^2 just tells you how much energy is stored in the mass of something, whether it be matter or antimatter. The reason we used that equation to solve the problem is that when the matter and antimatter collide, their mass is converted into other forms of energy, so E = mc^2 tells us how much energy.
Got it. Just wondering how anti-matter was actually made. If it was from transforming energy into (anti-)matter or from some other process.
Matter and anti-matter were made at the same time at the start of the universe, in the same proportion as regular matter. However, right now there seems to be much more regular matter than anti-matter in the universe, and nobody really knows why.
As for why it was created and where it came from, that's like asking why the big bang happened, so "we just don't know".
It's possible right now to create anti-matter in the lab using extreme collisions with massive energy release. For example the Large Hadron Collider creates anti-matter in some experiments. It's basically the opposite of a collision, where energy is converted into matter, creating a particle and an anti-particle
In addition to what the other user said, sometimes antimatter (in the form of positrons, antimatter electrons) is formed when certain radioactive elements decay. The reason why is too far beyond my understanding to provide a satisfactory answer.
Fun Fact: Bananas produce a very tiny amount of antimatter from this decay. If you have a truck full of bananas then you can even set off very sensitive radiation detectors!
As others proved, a single hydrogen atom would annihilate with very little energy.
I would be more worried about relativistic projectiles (which can be, theoretically, ridiculously small)
why would you think one of those terms is time
Energy
Mass
C speed of light constant
>I would be more worried about relativistic projectiles (which can be, theoretically, ridiculously small)
Fortunately we can use the physicists cheat. Since the projectile wouldn't have more total energy in its motion than the energy of annihilation, which we showed already was very small, we don't have to worry about it.
Well what if it was very sharp and went right in your eye, Mr. Weisenheimer?
>truck full of bananas
You just made a dozen government watchlists.
That calculation was for a stationary antimatter atom.
I was talking about an object made of regular matter. Not antimatter.
What you say sounds weird anyway. Do you some source for the claim?
He doesn't have a source at all. [math]E=\frac{m_0 c^2}{\sqrt{1-\frac{v^2}{c^2}}}[/math] goes to infinity as v->c, regardless of the value of [math]m_0[/math]