this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2025
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Real talk: Would literally cutting a single atom in half unleash the force of an atomic bomb? Would it even be a noticeable reaction to the unassisted human eye?
I've seen some science show stuff at particle accelerators where a dude points to some device giving off sparks and is like "these sparks are actually anti-matter explosions." So I wonder if a single atom of regular matter would even be a spark.
There are carbon atoms splitting (decaying) inside of you right now. This is why carbon dating works. Do you notice them?
Yeah, unless the atom in question is neutronium, you won't notice and if it is neutronium, you have all kinds of issues even without splitting it.
This reminds me of people freaking out over particle accelerators. Will it create a black hole????
Only they don't know that the Earth is regularly bombarded with high energy particles from space. The reason we need particle accelerators is so that we can accelerate the desired types of particles to the desired speed, and aim them at the desired place.
Most people have no idea just how little they actually know about the world around them.
Hell, most of what the average person "knows" is just made up assumptions they had about things they knew little to nothing about and subsequently internalized those assumptions without actually researching if they were correct.
Humans are hella prone to trapping ourselves in fallacious thought without even knowing we do it. It's just how our brains have evolved to work through inductive reasoning.
Silly talk: Idk... I sometimes get this weird, tingling feeling through my whole body. You think it might be carbon decay?
Not unless you feel it all the time (and even if you do, the energy released is not enough to activate nerve endings).
Maybe it's neuropathy? Maybe it's Maybelline?
Nah, pretty sure they were born with it 🤷
I found a similar discussion on Reddit and liked this comment because it was easy to understand:
It's apparently a quote from the book The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes.
So instead of gas powered leaf blowers and all their noise, we ought to go nuclear.
Instead of constant noise there's just a single pop, and the leaves are gone. Just be careful with the dosage.
Only a tiny part of the atom is converted to energy in fission. An antimatter annihilation is 100%
Even then a hydrogen+anti hydrogen releases 1.86 x 10⁻¹⁰ Joules.
You need about 4 joules to heat 1g of water by 1C
and one annihilation is 0.000000000186J
Bananas emit antimatter.
So what happens when you split a banana split?
You make a friend.
Making friends, you say?
Pris could do the splits
it rather depends on the atom and how you go about doing it- and also, what the atom is surrounded by. if it were split in such a way that neutrons were released into other neutrons, generating a cascade reaction... then.. yes. That's kinda how a nuke works.
But in general? probably not.
It worked in the movie Young Einstein and I trust movies, not really I just wanted to make an amusing but related comment about a lesser well than known movie of my youth. Of course since it's a comic seems semi relevant, it was a part of the movie trailer heh unless my memory is worse than I hope but I don't want to delve there.
I think the most concerning thing would be the radiation that it would give off. Aside from that, I'm not really sure it there would be more than a possible spark as you mentioned, though it may also depend on the size of the atom.