power output?

[YT2095]

a friend of mine and I were having a debate the other day and neither of us agree with the other, so maybe someone here can settle it...

 

what has more power output gram per gram.

 

Nuclear Fission

Fusion

or Anti matter annihilation?

 

he reckons Fission, and I say Anti-matter annihilation.

[insane_alien]

it all depends on what your fissioning and fusing really. if its hydrogen you are fusing it will give more energy than the fission and the antimatter will give more energy than both put together.

 

but as for power, with all three the rate of reactio, and hence rate of power output, can be controlled to some degree or another.

 

but annihilation could give more than the others.

[YT2095]

well My arg was based upon pure Logic (again), simply put that matter-antimatter annihilation converts the Whole lot into energy, with the other 2 options they still leave Matter as a product and therefore are Not as efficient.

so gram per gram anti-matter wins.

[thedarkshade]

so gram per gram anti-matter wins.

Yeah! The process of annihilation results with the release of ALL the energy stored within matter, and that energy is enormous ([math]E=m_0c^2[/math])

[swansont]

Of course, you can complicate matters by arguing about how much energy is recoverable, but you're right — antimatter annihilation can have 100% conversion efficiency. Fission's at the bottom of the list, but it's the one we can actually do on an industrial scale, so it wins that particular contest.

[John Cuthber]

If it's really power output you are interested in rather than energy I think it's even clearer that antimatter wins. Fission takes a while (if all the fission reactions were "prompt" they wouldn't be able to control reactors)

Fusion takes a while too- the Sun's been at it for ages.

I think antimatter anihilation is practically instant but I can't say I have checked.

[thedarkshade]

i.e.

 

electron + positron = 932MeV released

[John Cuthber]

The energy, I can calculate (and are you sure about the value of 932MeV? It seems rather high).

The rate of transfer of energy, ie power as in the original question, I don't know.

[thedarkshade]

Well I took this data from a script I recently read, and the author's got a PhD on physics and works for US national security so I should believe it.

It seems high but that's not strange.

Check out post #4

 

Cheers,

Shade

[swansont]

i.e.

 

electron + positron = 932MeV released

 

511 keV

 

932 MeV is about energy equivalent of 1 atomic mass unit, i.e. just less than the mass of a proton or neutron. So that's the energy per amu for any matter/antimatter reaction. (c^2 = 931.5 MeV/amu)

 

Well I took this data from a script I recently read, and the author's got a PhD on physics and works for US national security so I should believe it.

 

A script?

[Mr Skeptic]

Per gram of material, the energy contained is, from greatest to least, matter/anti-matter, fusion, fission. Matter/antimatter would win out by a few orders of magnitude, since all the matter/anti-matter is converted to energy, followed by fusion, which has both lots of energy per reaction and uses light nuclei, and fission last because it uses large nuclei with relatively little energy. If you want to take into account equipment to contain and extract useful energy from the reaction as part of the weight, I think that fission could win out at very small scales (due to containment for the antimatter), but otherwise the antimatter would be far superior. Fusion, of course will outdo fission if you don't have to worry about the mass of the reactor (eg by using a star as your reactor).

 

As for maximum power per gram (energy per unit time per gram), I'd imagine antimatter would make a better explosion if there were no trouble with mixing.

 

However, as I understand it, there is not much or any antimatter to be harvested, so the antimatter would have to be created from other energy sources.