Positronic Assassination

Of course by now you've heard from your fancy up to date news sources and your all knowing "breaking news", but I have things to report on anyway.

The Lebanese PM is not good news on so many levels. One, someone in the world was killed. Two, he was a Prime Minister. Third, it was in the damn Middle East, of course. Also, they aren't very creative, too. I mean, we Americans invented assassinations. Ever heard of a guy named Abraham Lincoln? God, John Wilkes Booth must be rolling in his grave. <----Satire! Please, do not assassinate me. As I am writing this post, I am doing my last minute journalism thing by looking up pretty links for you to click on. This one was very interesting, and I enjoyed it (and feared what some of it meant) a great deal. It's all about antimatter, what it is and what its place in the future.

You might have heard about antimatter in science fiction movies or your science class and you're likely to know very little about it. That's the way the Air Force would like it, too. What antimatter is, is the opposite of matter (obviously). But this is important to know, because it's like simple math. A negative plus a positive equals what? Let's say they are both 4. So -4 + 4= 0.

Zero is nothing. Bombs create nothing. They (at least attempt) to make nothing, and destroy everything. The Air Force would like this for obvious reasons, to make those bombs and have a leg up on everyone in the global rivalry to annihalate the human race.

I. Am. Pissed. About half of this post was just lost due to Blogger's greatness. I don't get it. But I will retype it all, just for you. Okay?

For antimatter to exist, there must be opposites of the two main components of an atom. The atom is made of protons and electrons. Protons being positively charged, and electrons being negatively charged. The antiproton is where the proton would be, but has a negative charge. The antielectron, or positron, is where I got excited. Immediately my mind raced back to Isaac Asimov's robot stories and how he described them as having positronic brains. Well, I'm not sure how that kind of brain was all wired about, or how it's similar to this, but maybe it's powered by this kind of science?

The guy (Asimov, my favorite author) usually knows his stuff. He was a chemist. I'm not, but this intrigues me, as you can probably tell. I hope you understood what I was trying to say and that it was written in a clear and easy manner. It may be brief but that's because I am retyping this explanation of it.

Oh, and don't let me leave out the good parts of antimatter research. It might be able to help humanity obtain the ultimate fuel. This is the kind of thing that gets science fiction fans (like myself) excited. In many science fiction stories, apparently, (I haven't read these, or at least can't recall) many authors write of how the hero's starship is powered by antimatter. Maybe you thought they said this because, well, it sounds really cool. But it could be possible. The only trouble is we are producing very small amounts of it each year (billionths of a gram). Other hopeful news is that there is very little required to make one hell of an explosion. But still, we need more to get something done.

This is still many years off, but we should invest in it more for betterment of all people (the fuel, not the bombs). At least, by publishing it on a worthless (and yet priceless) blog, I can get information out and it can be circulated better.