Question Technical question for Star War fans.

How strong is carbonite as a solid? I am using it for a story (non star wars) but cannot find any real ref to its strength. I am currently saying that dynamite, c-4 and such cannot penetrate its casing. Thickness has not been given (or will be given) but its not thin either.

If others know of a substance that would work better that would be appreciated. But I'll let you know that it must be able to contain Negative anti-matter.

***edit**
That's what I get from not checking CERN. Needs to be kept away from any positive matter (of course I knew that) by using magnetic resonance thus trapping it from movement, thus freezing it in place. Still I need a substance that could hold it that cannot be easily penetrated.

right off the wookiepedia

"""Carbon-freezing was the process by which liquid carbonite was flash-frozen into a solid state, encasing materials for transport in a strong metal alloy.""

so i guess like in the movie its as hard as a metal block ....say steel or better?

Read that first as well as several others. Thanks. May just let it stand as its not in any of those universes.

but on a note in star wars the old republic MMO

I have hidden behind the darn thing and blaster fires does not hurt one---lol

Carbon Buckyballs would hold antimatter, one particle of antimatter surrounded by a geodesic sphere of carbon atoms, the antimatter can't touch the carbon atoms due to the repulsive force. It's incredibly stable you could beat on the material with a hammer and not worry. However heat will crack the carbon, and BANG! That energy will then crack more carbon which will crack more...

But the good news is that some carbon will survive as a radioactive isotope, however most carbon isotopes are very short lived and the radiation from the majority of the fallout will likely be in mostly Beta particles. So shortly^* after the BANG, you can go back fill in the divot left and sell the land as a fixer upper.

^*Depending on various local conditions, including gullibility, your mileage may vary.

Thanks, I've nearly forgotten about buckyballs. I could consider it considering the place is a 'what if' world. And the amount of Anti-matter is about roughly 80-90kg's and the overall weight for both is 125kg. Both are held in a single electromagnetic field. I could say the containment unit is this, but the heat again is the issue. The world is just a stage and not the one the characters live in and such so I could use it for sci-fi purposes.

And no, it's not set in the Whateley universe either.

Hmm, what are you using it for? If heat is an issue all kinds of different methods can be used, if it is set in the Star Wars universe you could just safely ignore heat since they have all kinds of ways to deal with it. With Star Destroyers producing 1e25 watts at peak and NOT blowing up like smallish supernovas I guess that they have REALLY good cooling systems.

~Archangel~ wrote: Carbon Buckyballs would hold antimatter, one particle of antimatter surrounded by a geodesic sphere of carbon atoms, the antimatter can't touch the carbon atoms due to the repulsive force. It's incredibly stable you could beat on the material with a hammer and not worry. However heat will crack the carbon, and BANG! That energy will then crack more carbon which will crack more...

Eh, are you sure of that? I would think that the positrons in the antimatter would be strongly attracted to the electrons in the carbon atoms and annihilate each other. Granted, if the disintegration energy of the electron-positron pairs (not to mention the sudden lack of electrons) did not destabilize the buckyball, then the negatively-charged antinucleus might be held in the center of the buckyball due to repulsion from the carbon atoms electrospheres... but that's a rather big if.

I seem to recall reading a science article saying that it did hold anti-matter. No idea about the science behind it though, just that it could.

As I remember, Bucky balls have pure carbon atoms in tight electron pairings completing the outer shells of each atom and therefore making quite strong chemical bonds (like diamonds, but in a "ball" shape, not a chaotic one).

I think the physics behind it is Bucky balls are round, with all the elements in perfectly symmetrical patterns in all three dimensions, this means at the centre of the Bucky ball there should be a place where all different forces are perfectly balanced, and the antimatter will be held in place by the balanced forces.

The "pure carbon, "perfectly symmetrical" and "perfectly balanced" are all of course the reasons why this is all still speculation and theory.

BTW, what level of technology are you wanting for your story? If you are going for "near now" technology, we can't keep kilograms of anti-matter. In a room sized pice of instrumentation, going through enough electricity to power a good sized town, we can keep single sub-atomic particles of anti-mater contained for a very short amount of time. "Kilograms" of the stuff is beyond our ability to manufacture, let alone contain.

Phoenix Spiritus wrote: BTW, what level of technology are you wanting for your story? If you are going for "near now" technology, we can't keep kilograms of anti-matter. In a room sized pice of instrumentation, going through enough electricity to power a good sized town, we can keep single sub-atomic particles of anti-mater contained for a very short amount of time. "Kilograms" of the stuff is beyond our ability to manufacture, let alone contain.

I am looking at needing a containment unit that is portable, not necessarily light, and is able to be filled with approx 150kg of both antimatter and regular matter.

So far I had looked at cabonite in how it was used in Star Wars, but not sure if it's practical enough. As for being technically feasible I'm slightly not to concerned as where it takes place in a world of 'what if's', do not confuse this as being a coverall in saying 'well then just make up something' as I'm trying to put in a somewhat plausibility in the 'what if'.

I was looking at the world in the following way. What if Einstein never came up with E=MC2 or if Lincoln and Kennedy never were assassinated. That cold fusion when 'falsely' discovered back in the 80's theoretically worked.

We in techno terms have finally 'contained' a few particles of antimatter that could be observed for a few hours if I recall. The technical hurtles to actually store something is well beyond what we have and so I'll have to mcguffen it in some respects but... it is important, just not enough to actually 'show' how it works, if that makes sense.

So, yes, I could say the item was the size of an acetylene cylinder which housed a miniature magnetic containment field preventing antimatter particles from intermixing with regular matter. The magnetic resonator was fitted on the top with an indicator used to function as both monitor and detonator. The container was made in what is a now lost technical advancement of buckyball material coated in some substance that like the properties of outer ice prevented them from coming in contact with the inner wall.

And thus just by answering your question I have found my solution. Thank-you.

Bucky balls are actually more like graphite than diamond. Diamond is pure carbon in a 3-D crystal lattice of covalent bonds. Graphite is also pure carbon, but the crystal structure is different. Instead of a three dimensional crystal, graphite forms hexagonal sheets of covalent bonds. Those sheets are then bonded together using van der Waals forces. The covalent bonds in graphite are actually stronger than the bonds in diamond, but the van der Waals forces between sheets are much weaker, which is why graphite sheers easily. A single "sheet" of graphite is called graphene, and a single-walled carbon nanotube is effectively a sheet of graphene rolled into a tube. A buckminsterfullerene has the same flat crystal structure, but wrapped into a ball in a soccer-ball pattern. It's a very stable crystal structure with a hollow in the center, in which other atoms or molecules can be trapped.


Can you tell that I studied materials in college?

(like diamonds, but in a "ball" shape, not a chaotic one).

Brief aside - while I know what you meant, "chaotic" is not at all the word you wanted to use. ("space-filling" is the best substitute that I can think of). A crystal lattice is, by its very definition, not chaotic. It's a consistent repeating pattern that is defined by atomic geometry. I can identify the location of every atom in a perfect diamond crystal, and explain why they are in those positions. Materials with atoms in chaotic positions are glasses - that's what makes a glass different from a metal or a ceramic. And now you know.