From: henry@spsystems.net   
      
   In article <1107796841.918773.178160@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>,   
   Geoffrey  wrote:   
   >> Antimatter is not touchy at all, provided you keep it confined   
   >> properly.   
   >   
   >Since the amount of antimatter that has *ever* been confined is a   
   >number of atoms small enough to be countable, I don't see how Henry has   
   >any engineering data to suggest that antimatter is not touchy if   
   >confined properly.   
      
   The statement is necessarily a bit speculative :-), but I think there is   
   reasonable cause for making it, nevertheless.  Antimatter gives trouble   
   only when it encounters normal matter.  This is a greatly magnified   
   version of the potential trouble from mixing fuel and oxidizer in   
   bipropellant liquid rockets.  The answer is the same: you keep them apart!   
      
   The engineering for doing this with antimatter is by no means "off the   
   shelf", but it doesn't look infeasible.  The more fundamental point,   
   though, is that it *is* a matter of engineering.  We have a handle on the   
   problem:  just keep the two apart and nothing drastic *can* happen.   
      
   With a single-component chemical explosive like liquid ozone -- the   
   original topic, remember -- *there is no such handle*.  That makes it a   
   fundamentally different problem, and a much more difficult one.  There's   
   no engineering way of making such a material more docile, no systematic   
   way you can modify the situation to one in which unpleasantness is   
   reliably avoided.   
      
   Bipropellants, even exceedingly active ones like ClF5, can be kept apart;   
   sometimes it takes a lot of work and the safety margins remain limited,   
   but it's generally practical.  Explosive materials can rarely be tamed,   
   and when it does happen, it's generally done by finding a way to modify   
   the material to a better-behaved one, not by stabilizing the original.   
      
   Much depends on details, but in a fundamental sense, handling antimatter   
   safely *is* easier than handling liquid ozone safely.   
   --   
   "Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend."    |   Henry Spencer   
                                   -- George Herbert       | henry@spsystems.net   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)