The U.S. Air Force is spending millions of dollars investigating ways to develop weapons using the most powerful potential energy source presently thought to be available to humanity, antimatter.

Antimatter has been studied by physicists since the 1930s. Every type of subatomic particle has its antimatter counterpart. But when matter and antimatter collide, they annihilate each other in an immense burst of energy.

One gram of positrons, the antimatter partner of the electron, would equal “23 space shuttle fuel tanks of energy…and one microgram of produces as much energy as 83 pounds of TNT.“

Problem is: how do you handle and store the stuff?

Following an inquiry from The San Francisco Chronicle this summer, the Air Force forbade its employees from publicly discussing the antimatter research program. But details survive in Air Force documents distributed over the Internet before the ban.

Details in SFGate, via Technology Review Blog.