About 1 * 10^19 Joule explosion, according to E=mc^2. Since in antimatter reactions (unlike standard nuclear bombs) 100% of the fuel is converted into energy (compared to up to something like 7% of the best of thermonuclear bombs and under 1% for fission bombs). About 50% is lost to neutrinos, but this is made up for by the fact that 100% of the energy is released both from the antimatter and the matter it explodes with, thus the usable explosive energy is about 100% of the E=mc^2 of the antimatter mass (1 * 2 * .5 = 1).
As for the particular type of antimatter, it actually doesn't matter, as it is the mass, rather than what it is made of, which is important. You would actually probably not use uranium, so as to avoid your antimatter undergoing radioactive decay and/or fission (and thus reducing the amount of antimatter and strength of the reaction). Most likely it would be in the form of simple, stable anti-molecules like hydrogen or helium or even subatomic particles, depending on which was easier to contain in the given situation.
Based on wiki's figure of 4.18 * 10^15 joules per megaton of tnt, that's about 2400 megatons of tnt if my math is right; the Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated, was 50 megatons. According to wikipedia, it would give you a 3rd degree burn from the heat from 100 km away. This antimatter weapon would be 48 times more powerful.
edit: corrected; my initial calculation was off by 2 magnitudes due to counting fail; 48 times more powerful than the Tsar Bomba is updated figure.
Based on the 100km 3rd degrees burn data about the Tsar Bomba's heat and assuming a dissipation something between squared and cubes, the 3rd degree burn radius would be somewhere between 700 and 360 km. The air blast would probably shatter every window worldwide, although the earthquake wouldn't do much, since the area it would actually have a decent effect on would be completely incinerated anyway. The mushroom cloud would probably eject a decent amount of dust and particulate matter into orbit, giving any spacecraft passing through the plume a nice sanding job.
A shock wave was observed in the air at Dikson settlement 700 kilometres (430 mi) away; windowpanes were partially broken to distances of 900 kilometres (560 mi). Atmospheric focusing caused blast damage at even greater distances, breaking windows in Norway and Finland. The seismic shock created by the detonation was measurable even on its third passage around the Earth.[7] Its seismic body wave magnitude was about 5 to 5.25.[6] The energy yield was around 7.1 on the Richter scale but, since the bomb was detonated in air rather than underground, most of the energy was not converted to seismic waves. The TNT equivalent of the 50 MT test could be represented by a cube of TNT 312 metres on a side, approximately the height of the Eiffel Tower.
Poll
Author
Topic: Effects of an antimatter bomb? VOTE! (Read 14303 times)