Antimatter in popular culture

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Antimatter is a popular theme in areas of popular culture related to science fiction:

Contents 1 Television and film 2 Books 3 Comics 4 Games 5 Songs

[edit] Television and film

• A famous fictional example of antimatter in action is in the science fiction franchise Star Trek, where it is a common energy source for starships; large reactors generate power by mixing supercooled deuterium and antideuterium, with the annihilation reaction regulated by dilithium crystals. It is also used as a weapon, as in photon torpedoes.
• Antimatter is briefly referenced in the 1966 movie Batman: The Movie (several evil henchmen are turned into antimatter when they are revived using "heavy water" from the batcave), but the concept remains completely unexplained in this example.
• In the episode of Doctor Who, Planet of Evil, an antimatter universe is discovered that is theorised to be a source of fuel. The scientist Dr. Sorenson is transformed into an 'antiman' due to exposure to antimatter. Also, the episode The Three Doctors introduces the Gallifreyan scientist Omega, who was thought by Gallifreyan historians to have died in a supernova in the process of creating the Eye of Harmony, but was in fact trapped in an antimatter universe on the other side of the resulting black hole.
• Late in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Riff Raff confirms to Dr. Frank-N-Furter that the pitchfork-like weapon he has pointed at him is "a laser, capable of emitting a beam of pure antimatter." This misuse of the term led to the audience-response lines "Then it's not a laser." and "Does that mean it doesn't matter?"
• In the short movie spoof "Snowballs from Hell" on A Prairie Home Companion, the snowballs attacking America are compressed to such a density that they become antimatter.
• In Atomic Betty, Betty's aunt is Auntie Matter, a criminal who can transform her body into anti-matter.
• In the British comedy Red Dwarf, "Antimatter chopsticks" are introduced as an exotic dining utensil.

[edit] Books

• The Lensman series features 'negaspheres', which might be anti-matter
• Antimatter engines also appear in various books of the Dragonriders of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey.
• In Alastair Reynolds's novel "Chasm City", antimatter is used to power colonization spacecraft.
• In Niven's Ringworld series, antimatter appears as a weapon useful against even the super-dense matter scrith. Niven makes the observation that if a ship's crew is given an antimatter bullet they will take advantage of any excuse to get rid of it.
• Dan Brown explores the use of antimatter as a weapon in his novel Angels and Demons, where the supposed "Bavarian Illuminati" threaten to destroy the Vatican with potentially unstable antimatter stolen from CERN.
• In The Night's Dawn Trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton, antimatter is characterized as the most dangerous substance imaginable and outlawed across the Galaxy.
• In the sci-fi trilogy "The Dread Empire's Fall" by Walter Jon Williams, antimatter is used extensively, both as an energy source and as a dangerous weapon.
• In Greg Bear's "The Forge of God" Earth's destruction is achieved by the annihilation of immense rods of neutronium and antineutronium dropped into the Earth's core.

[edit] Comics

• In comic books produced by DC Comics, the notion of an antiuniverse, or in DC's parlance, Anti-Matter Universe, was first utilized in the Green Lantern series in the 1960s. The Anti-Matter Universe contains a world known as Qward, home to the Green Lantern Corps' sworn enemies, the Weaponers of Qward.
• In the City of Heroes comic book, the superhero Positron is capable of generating anti-matter, and utilizing it as a weapon.
• In 1985, a powerful, twisted denizen of the Anti-Matter Universe known as the Anti-Monitor succeeded in destroying most of the DC Multiverse during the events of the twelve-issue limited series Crisis on Infinite Earths.
• Antimatter is often used as a running gag in the webcomic Casey and Andy.
• In the early '90s McDonald's "McWorld" Guzzle "What if Kids Ruled the Space Program," aliens ask a child whether he would like some antimatter with his meal.
• Sadako Meka, antagonist of the manga series Cyber Girls Akihabara uses antimater combined with matter as a way to attack and create dimensional holes.

[edit] Games

• The Protoss race of StarCraft uses antimatter for both propulsion and weaponry.
• In the Sega game Shadow the Hedgehog, one of the final bosses, Diablon, used an attack named Antimatter Cannon. It is a powerful all-round spherical attack.
• In the Nintendo game Metroid Prime Hunters, antimatter is a key component in the Alimbic Cannon. The Cannon fires burst of antimatter at specific speeds, frequencies, and coordinations to open a rift in space-time, allowing travel into another dimension.
• In the popular video game Ratchet: Deadlocked, there is a sniper rifle called the Antimatter Rifle, and it fires a straight beam of antimatter.
• In the computer game Nexus: The Jupiter Incident, antimatter engines can be fitted for your fleet ships along with other forms of propulsion such as chemical and fusion.
• In the MMOG EVE Online, Antimatter charges are one of the types of ammunition available for Railguns and Blasters, which emit the charge as either a solid slug or a bolt of superheated plasma respectively.
• In one of the official expansion packs for Quake II, an antimatter bomb is one of the items you need to collect. It is used to destroy an artificially created black hole, but may also be used as a weapon. It will kill everything (including bosses) in the room where it's detonated.
• In the SNES game Super Mario RPG:Legend of the Seven Stars a somewhat hidden boss harder than the rest named Culex claims to be antimatter, amongst other things.
• In the computer game Deus Ex, Area 51 has two antimatter reactors, which the player may choose to activate and then detonate to destroy Area 51 and the Aquinas Hub, plunging the world in a new dark age.
• In the Playstation 2 game by Square-Enix, Star Ocean 3, they used antimatter torpedoes in the past, as described in the in-game dictionary.
• In the Japanese video game series Super Robot Wars, the Granzon is powered by an antimatter annihilation engine. This reactor's efficiency in energy production leads to the Granzon's incredible power.
• In the game Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot, there are Chocolate-covered Bittersweet Antimatter Raisins, a powerful weapon which kills a large amount of Bunnies.

[edit] Songs

• In 1994 Craig Mack makes a brief reference in his hit single, "Flavor In Ya Ear", saying "turn your body into antimatter."
• The indie rock band Pain(t) by Numbers wrote a song titled "Antimatterplane" in which antimatter is creatively used as a fuel source in an aircraft.