Antimatter bomb
When a massive particle collides with its corresponding antiparticle, they annihilate, producing photons with energy equal to their rest mass energy.
Imagine that you had of hydrogen and of anti-hydrogen. How much energy would you release if you let them collide? Express your answer as an order of magnitude. (That is, give when your answer is of the form joules.)
For comparison, the atomic bomb detonated over Nagasaki released .
The answer is 14.
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1 solution
The net rest mass energy of the hydrogen and anti-hydrogen is equal to the total energy released.
E = 0 . 0 0 2 kg ∗ ( 2 . 9 9 ∗ 1 0 8 s m ) 2 E = 1 . 7 9 ∗ 1 0 1 4 J