The U.S. Air Force is quietly spending millions of dollars investigating ways to use a radical power source -- antimatter, the eerie "mirror" of ordinary matter -- in future weapons. From the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle, October 4, 2004.
From the same article: About 0.00005 grams (fifty one millionth parts of a gram) of antimatter could generate a blast equal to 4000 pounds of TNT, or about the same explosion as destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.
But it would be premature for anyone to panic. That's just the explosive charge. Even assuming that the antimatter bomb becomes a reality, who could say yet what the equivalent of an antimatter fuse or detonator would come to in size and weight? Maybe something the size of Arizona? (Just speculating!) Does anyone recall some time ago when there were news (?) stories circulating aboout secret DoD projects involving Hafnium, which is a chemical element? They sounded like hoaxes to me. I wonder if anyone on OB also saw any of those stories. Of course, I could probably "google" my way to further enlightenment.
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