this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2026
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[–] Widdershins@lemmy.world 2 points 8 hours ago

It's a little late to have Blast Corps ready to help out but it's never too late for a remake.

[–] aeronmelon@lemmy.world 29 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Perfect time in history to just start transporting antimatter.

[–] Encephalotrocity@feddit.online 34 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

The device on Cern’s truck will carry about 1,000 antimatter particles, weighing about a billionth of a trillionth of a gram. Should the containment fail, and the antimatter make contact with normal matter, the resulting pulse of energy would be so feeble, the load doesn’t even warrant a radioactive label.

[–] obinice@lemmy.world 12 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

They just need to transfer power from the car's inertial dampers to the containment field

[–] AbidanYre@lemmy.world 4 points 14 hours ago

car's inertial dampers

You mean the shocks?

[–] riskable@programming.dev 1 points 10 hours ago

Time Travelers from the future might recruit an entire school bus's worth of geriatric retirees to prevent such a thing from exploding 🙂‍↕️

[–] Paranoidfactoid@lemmy.world -5 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

A few thousand antimatter charged particles could be used as an implosive trigger for a fusion bomb.

EDIT Source. See section 3 in general and 3.5 specifically:

https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0510071

[–] rain_enjoyer@sopuli.xyz 5 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

you're off by something like 15-18 orders of magnitude

[–] Paranoidfactoid@lemmy.world 1 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

This is old, but you get the idea. See section 3.5.

https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0510071

EDIT: I'm getting bullshit downvotes from people who clearly won't read the paper and don't understand the proposed detonation model. One need not have grams of antimatter to trigger a H-H fusion detonation. A relatively small amount of antimatter is needed to trigger initial fusion of a hydrogen target, which by cascade can be used to detonate additional hydrogen. This removes the fission trigger and allows for very small fusion weapons with relatively low yields. For example, a device the size of a hand grenade with tons of TNT equivalent output - like a truck bomb in your hand. Or a rifle sized X-Ray laser is another proposed weapon.

Read the study. This technology is feasible.

[–] anton@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 7 hours ago (3 children)

The paper you linked says "1 microgram is sufficient to trigger one thermonuclear weapon" which corresponds to 6×10^17.
This makes your "few thousand" of by 14 orders of magnitude instead of 15, I bet you feel vindicated now.

For example, a device the size of a hand grenade with tons of TNT equivalent output

A [man portable nuke[(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W54) has existed since the 60's so it wouldn't be a game changer.

[–] HalfAFrisbee@lemmy.world 2 points 7 hours ago

LMAO, the little baby down voted you.

[–] AbidanYre@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago

I think even the TSA could tell that's a bomb.

[–] Paranoidfactoid@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago

You're getting the microgram statement from here. You miss the point. A millionth of a gram is feasible to make and contain right now. It was predicted by 2010 in the paper using CERN, and there are much better facilities producing since then.

You're missing the point to be pedantic over a 20 year old paper. Because you originally thought I was arguing a pure antimatter weapon, which I wasn't. Newer approaches reduce the antimatter requirements for such weapons even more.

This might make you wonder why antimatter is being transported around. The fact is, proposals to weaponize antimatter as a fusion trigger have been around for over 40 years, and the means to achieving that from a production and engineering standpoint seem a good bet to be available today.

[–] Randelung@lemmy.world 1 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

I've seen Angels and Demons, I know where this is going.

[–] froh42@lemmy.world 0 points 15 hours ago