pedro san pedro
14th October 2004, 08:50
there has been an article from a US newspaper circulating peace and disarmament email lists that puts a new slant on Weapons of Mass Destruction and paints a frightening picture of the madnes of the military machine.
On March 24, Kenneth Edwards, director of the "revolutionary munitions" team at the Munitions Directorate at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida was keynote speaker at the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) conference in Arlington, Virginia.
In his speech he revealed details about research being funded by the US government into anti-matter (positron) weapons.
The race is the on to contain the energy obtained from colliding positrons and antielectrons that is 10 billion times as powerful as conventional high explosives.
One millionth of a gram of positrons contain as much energy as 37.8 kilograms (83 pounds) of TNT.
The energy released is primarily gamma radiation, that kills by destroying the cells of living organisms as it passes through them.
Gamma radiation does not create long term contamination of the environment, so in principle, a positron bomb could be a step toward one of the military's dreams, a so-called "clean" superbomb that could kill large numbers of people without making a battlefield too radioactive to enter, or destroying infrastructure.
Washington State University has been conducting experiments on positrons, funded by the US Air Force - but as is common with military research the stated objective is not bomb making, but to develop the technology for space travel.
Physicist Kelvin Lynn, head of the school's Center for Materials Research was quoted in the story as saying that we need to improve capability to travel in space. He said "I think we need to get off this planet, because I'm afraid we're going to destroy it."
For the full article follow the following link.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...a/2004/10/04/MN (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/a/2004/10/04/MN)
On March 24, Kenneth Edwards, director of the "revolutionary munitions" team at the Munitions Directorate at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida was keynote speaker at the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) conference in Arlington, Virginia.
In his speech he revealed details about research being funded by the US government into anti-matter (positron) weapons.
The race is the on to contain the energy obtained from colliding positrons and antielectrons that is 10 billion times as powerful as conventional high explosives.
One millionth of a gram of positrons contain as much energy as 37.8 kilograms (83 pounds) of TNT.
The energy released is primarily gamma radiation, that kills by destroying the cells of living organisms as it passes through them.
Gamma radiation does not create long term contamination of the environment, so in principle, a positron bomb could be a step toward one of the military's dreams, a so-called "clean" superbomb that could kill large numbers of people without making a battlefield too radioactive to enter, or destroying infrastructure.
Washington State University has been conducting experiments on positrons, funded by the US Air Force - but as is common with military research the stated objective is not bomb making, but to develop the technology for space travel.
Physicist Kelvin Lynn, head of the school's Center for Materials Research was quoted in the story as saying that we need to improve capability to travel in space. He said "I think we need to get off this planet, because I'm afraid we're going to destroy it."
For the full article follow the following link.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...a/2004/10/04/MN (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/a/2004/10/04/MN)