These include an outline of a March 2004 speech by an Air Force official who, in effect, spilled the beans about the Air Force's high hopes for antimatter weapons. Still, details on the program appear in numerous Air Force documents distributed over the Internet prior to the ban. Another possibility is antimatter- powered "electromagnetic pulse" weapons that could fry an enemy's electric power grid and communications networks, leaving him literally in the dark and unable to operate his society and armed forces.įollowing an initial inquiry from The Chronicle this summer, the Air Force forbade its employees from publicly discussing the antimatter research program. ![]() ![]() More cataclysmic possible uses include a new generation of super weapons - either pure antimatter bombs or antimatter-triggered nuclear weapons the former wouldn't emit radioactive fallout. With the knowledge gained, some Air Force insiders are beginning to think seriously about potential military uses - for example, antimatter bombs small enough to hold in one's hand, and antimatter engines for 24/7 surveillance aircraft. But when matter and antimatter collide, they annihilate each other in an immense burst of energy.ĭuring the Cold War, the Air Force funded numerous scientific studies of the basic physics of antimatter. In a sense, matter and antimatter are the yin and yang of reality: Every type of subatomic particle has its antimatter counterpart. ![]() But antimatter itself isn't fiction it actually exists and has been intensively studied by physicists since the 1930s.
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