Antimatter and stars

[Kendelian he/him]

I went down a rabbit hole. A dangerous one. I got bored so I thought about what would happen if a matter star and an antimatter star interact. I did the calculations for a brown dwarf, a star so small it isn’t even a star, and the total energy output was roughly 500 times the energy output of a supernova.

[alder24]

58 minutes ago, Kendelian said:

I went down a rabbit hole. A dangerous one. I got bored so I thought about what would happen if a matter star and an antimatter star interact. I did the calculations for a brown dwarf, a star so small it isn’t even a star, and the total energy output was roughly 500 times the energy output of a supernova.

Cool. That's expected but sounds fun  

But that's in the case of 100% reaction efficiency? All matter and antimatter annihilates fully? I highly doubt it would be the case in real life. As the outer layers of brown dwarfs interact with each other, they might reach a point when they produce so much energy that they just blow away the rest of the matter and antimatter, preventing the majority of it from annihilating. You would still likely get dozens of times more energy than what supernovae produce and there would be some leftover reaction from the chunks of matter and antimatter reacting after being blown away. 

And I wonder if that amount of energy could collapse into a black hole. It probably isn't compressed enough to do so.

For comparison, a brown dwarf is almost the size of Jupiter, while having 13-80 times more mass. Jupiter is 1000 less massive than our Sun, so two Sun mass stars, one from matter and other from antimatter, reacting together with 100% efficiency would be more energetic than "around" 50000 supernovae (per your calculations 500x100). Just imagine how bright that thing would be on Earth if it happened in the Milky Way.

[Kendelian he/him]

1 hour ago, alder24 said:

Cool. That's expected but sounds fun  

But that's in the case of 100% reaction efficiency? All matter and antimatter annihilates fully? I highly doubt it would be the case in real life. As the outer layers of brown dwarfs interact with each other, they might reach a point when they produce so much energy that they just blow away the rest of the matter and antimatter, preventing the majority of it from annihilating. You would still likely get dozens of times more energy than what supernovae produce and there would be some leftover reaction from the chunks of matter and antimatter reacting after being blown away. 

And I wonder if that amount of energy could collapse into a black hole. It probably isn't compressed enough to do so.

For comparison, a brown dwarf is almost the size of Jupiter, while having 13-80 times more mass. Jupiter is 1000 less massive than our Sun, so two Sun mass stars, one from matter and other from antimatter, reacting together with 100% efficiency would be more energetic than "around" 50000 supernovae (per your calculations 500x100). Just imagine how bright that thing would be on Earth if it happened in the Milky Way.

My calculations were at 100% efficiency, and you are right, a lot of the brown dwarves would be blown away.

[Quantus he/him]

2 minutes ago, Kendelian said:

My calculations were at 100% efficiency, and you are right, a lot of the brown dwarves would be blown away.

Hmm, It could work if it's being plane shifted over from an AntiMatter Universe instead of an Antimatter Star surviving here. 

This does sound like something the Qward Weaponers would try.  Or possibly have already done, the silver age of comics was a weird time.  

[alder24]

12 minutes ago, Kendelian said:

My calculations were at 100% efficiency, and you are right, a lot of the brown dwarves would be blown away.

3 minutes ago, Quantus said:

Hmm, It could work if it's being plane shifted over from an AntiMatter Universe instead of an Antimatter Star surviving here. 

This does sound like something the Qward Weaponers would try.  Or possibly have already done, the silver age of comics was a weird time.  

Or, just hear me out, the antimatter star quantum tunnel itself directly into the center of the matter star. And I know, quantum tunneling doesn't work like that you will say, but I'm just saying, there is a non zero chance that every particle in the antimatter star just tunnels itself into the matter star at the same time. 

[Quantus he/him]

Just now, alder24 said:

Or, just hear me out, the antimatter star quantum tunnel itself directly into the center of the matter star. And I know, quantum tunneling doesn't work like that you will say, but I'm just saying, there is a non zero chance that every particle in the antimatter star just tunnels itself into the matter star at the same time. 

You had me at Non-Zero Chance.