Realist energy sources...

[Gedaliah]

Plasma, even the colder plasmas, are thousands of degrees Celsius wile clearly not to the temperature of air's flash point. Even 1,000Celsius is enough to spontaneously combust many common things.

Anti-Matter? I don't even have to examine the facts to know it's not even enough credit. A nuclear reaction does not even harness a fraction of atom potential power. A Anti-Matter reaction, the canselation of atoms, would either produce no kinetic energy, or enough kinetic energy to set off a miles wide nuclear chain reaction with no survivable end in sight. Which would then produce a even bigger thermal explosion.

There would be no containing the reaction because unlike standard explosion that that apply force on a macroscopic level a fusion/fission brakes down mater on a atomic level. It's not a question of if something can withstand the reaction, it's a question of how far will the sub-atomic 'smoking ashes' be scattered, if there is even that left.

I'm guess I'm not on bored with the whole sci-fi thing in such a near future, I'm wondering how the alien's play with the laws of physics.

Edit from my last post:

As far as detection goes? It's again a question of volume vs how sensitive you can become. Wile it's easily drown out in the earth's magnetic field, solar radiation, or standard radio waves, I assure you that even the keyboard you've been typing on, being run by electricity, is putting out a EM pulse. The alien, using both prodigies amounts of power, and having non-'local' power generation should stick out like a star going supernova.

For that matter the EM field put out my a anti-matter reaction should blanket out any other signal, radar, radio, TV:D,your microwave:twisted: ,  etc. A nuke puts out a miles wide pulse. The aliens have a bigger, and sustained output to track. I guess detection would just be a matter of havening enough listening posts in the right places to track the source.

[Wanderer]

Anti-Matter? I don't even have to examine the facts to know it's not even enough credit.

This alone should have stopped me from continuing to read...

A nuclear reaction does not even harness a fraction of atom potential power.

By it's very half-life nature, this is a fact.

A[n] Anti-Matter reaction, the canselation of atoms, would either produce no kinetic energy, or enough kinetic energy to set off a miles wide nuclear chain reaction with no survivable end in sight.

Nullification of matter, or immediate conversion to energy are the two theoretical possibilities of forcing a positve matter and negative matter particle into the same spacetime.  The reason nullification exists as a theoretical is because it is unknown if the particle would react in this dimension or the one the negative matter is retrieved from.  This energy would be as subatomic as heat, electricity, or gravity... all forms of energy, and all containable.  There is no matter moving from the point of cohesion to cause an uncontrolled chain reaction.

The question therefore, does not come from the concept of 'mini-explosion' corroding and firing neutrons into other atoms, causing a subatomic split (fission), but from a matter of how do you contain a miniature sun at the time of explosion.  This becomes a matter of physics, not chemistry, at this point.

Plasma, even the colder plasmas, are thousands of degrees Celsius wile clearly not to the temperature of air's flash point. Even 1,000Celsius is enough to spontaneously combust many common things.

To human understanding of plasma, I can't argue this one.  There's a reason it's usually held in magnetic bottles.

However, it was a really cool weapon in the original, long loved by old fans of the game who turned a blind eye to this.  I'd love to see it act like a flying piece of napalm though.  "Burnin' down da house!"

[pma]

Hi,

although I can"t understand most of the post of Gedaliah, I am just willing to comment on the properties of plasma. Yes Plasma are hot. Yet it is not mandatory to contain any kind of plasma into magnetic film. I can remeber that lang ago I had a partical lecture on plasma. We had a tube in which we where generated a plasma of Argon. The electronic temperature was about 22000K (Hot hu ?) And guess what, the glass containing the plasma was not melting at all. I will not explain you why. It would be too long. Yet I can't see any simple theoretical reasons that would prevent good-evil engineers from developing plasma weapons.

Regards.

[Alex]

I worked as a computer programmer developing software to run a CNC plasma cutter.  These cutters will burn through inches of steel and there are no safety containment fields or anything like that - just a jet of ordinary compressed air forced past a spark-gap.

I even hear plasma is being used to deal with municipal waste.

Can't see why it can't be used to, I dunno, blow shit up.

[Wanderer]

I worked as a computer programmer developing software to run a CNC plasma cutter.  These cutters will burn through inches of steel and there are no safety containment fields or anything like that - just a jet of ordinary compressed air forced past a spark-gap.

I even hear plasma is being used to deal with municipal waste.

Can't see why it can't be used to, I dunno, blow shit up.

News to me. I'll apparently have to do research.  The plasma I have in mind is the hypertemperature goo that's usually suspended in a vacuum.

[Alex]

Plasma is the fourth state of matter, Solid, Liquid, Gas, Plasma.  I can't remember the exact science but I'm pretty sure a plasma's electrons are unlinked from the nucleus and move about freely.  I could be wrong, so I'll probably look on wikipedia.

[Voller]

I think you can get "cold" plasma as well as hot plasma. So that would explain why it is sometimes alright to just put it in a plastic bottle, but you'd need something more fancy at other times.

[Gedaliah]

 The reason nullification exists as a theoretical is because it is unknown if the particle would react in this dimension or the one the negative matter is retrieved from.  This energy would be as subatomic as heat, electricity, or gravity... all forms of energy, and all containable.  There is no matter moving from the point of cohesion to cause an uncontrolled chain reaction.

In theory yes, you can create a inverse waveform to stop it's progress or a lessor waveform of the same type to deflect it , I guess. Entropy would dissipate the energy in do course, but earth would be beyond saving at that point. What makes the reaction dangerous is there is nothing that can absorb said reaction to make it containable that wouldn't be as massive as a small planet(nothing earth could hold without adjusting it's orbit, or have gravity of it's own:P), or wouldn't require a equally dangerous energy source.

Edit: I take that back, if you could fold or bend space/time you could store it some out of the way place, but consider the energy needed to do that if the anti-matter reaction it's self doesn't warp space. It would be simpler, I would think, to harness the energy elsewhere and 'warp' it to a ship. The UFO, iirc, are warping in to near earth orbit, just outside of the human range to detect them.

[Wanderer]

 The reason nullification exists ....snip... There is no matter moving from the point of cohesion to cause an uncontrolled chain reaction.

In theory yes, you can create a inverse waveform to stop it's progress or a lessor waveform of the same type to deflect it , I guess. Entropy would dissipate the energy in do course, but earth would be beyond saving at that point. What makes the reaction dangerous is there is nothing that can absorb said reaction to make it containable that wouldn't be as massive as a small planet(nothing earth could hold without adjusting it's orbit, or have gravity of it's own:P), or wouldn't require a equally dangerous energy source.

Edit: I take that back, if you could fold or bend space/time you could store it some out of the way place, but consider the energy needed to do that if the anti-matter reaction it's self doesn't warp space. It would be simpler, I would think, to harness the energy elsewhere and 'warp' it to a ship. The UFO, iirc, are warping in to near earth orbit, just outside of the human range to detect them.

Well, at least we've stopped discussing uncontrolled chain reactions.  

You're right, though.  It is unlikely we could contain the equivalent of the sun's surface worth of energy condensed into a tight location with current materials and equipment.  In theory, as you've alluded too, the only way with our technology to even attempt controlling an explosion that powerful is to turn it on itself (inverse waveforms).  This dissipates to much of the energy to make the fuel source more economic to human technology then other forms.

However, a simplistic way of dealing with the issue would also be controlled containment forcing two equivalent blasts into each other, and siphoning off what was needed for the FTL and bleeding off the rest of the power... especially if you weren't there anymore when the spacetime was warped by the excess.  Proper venting is more required here then control if used in the middle of nothing, however, as the storyline reads, they also use it as a fuel source as they wander around the planet, nullifying this explaination.

Regarding the idea of storing the resultant energy: Energy would dissipate, or become it's own sun.  The volume of energy out of it's potential (once the pos and neg actually meet and becomes kinetic) is extraordinary and defeats the point of the ratio of size to power.  The ships would not be able to store the same volume of energy, making 'explode it, then fuel up' to be less then economical, size wise.

If you investigate recent findings in high-density atoms, the stable ones are being explored as use in shielding high-energy reactions.  It is chemically possible, if out of reach for our knowledge, to find one dense enough to contain these explosions without much bleed through of the energy itself.  With chemists actually 'making' new, denser elements, I don't think it unreasonable to make something that dense as a shielding.

Would it's erosion rate probably be high? Sure.  You'd probably replace the containment shell with every 'fill up'.  It's not, however, out of a theoretical reach to contain an immensely high-energy explosion for a short period as you shunted the results to storage locations.  The antimatter's existence itself is a whole different ballgame, however.

[Gedaliah]

I'm being a showoff-no-nothing-snob, but I'm going to thank you for the replays Wanderer, and go back to my we're all "doomed" tone.

Edited this out by mistake:Short of a black hole I'm not sure how you would contain anti-mater, and I'm not even sure then. It would be like exposing a alkali metal to air(Flames to Boom, if I remember my high school chemistry.)

I'm going to go back to my first post, observes that a fission reaction shatters ,forceably releasing the energy that once bound the whole atom as one. Assuming energy doesn't arc from matter to anti-matter reducing them both to free floating debris. Which would mean no energy passed between them(sub atomic lighting ), they just destroy the bonds holding the atom together releasing the sum total the atom's energy all a once.  That just means you have a lot of rapidly expanding energy, but let me risk a little logic here...


...A star doesn't totally annihilate a atom, but produces enough atomic energy to be self-sustaining , well at least until it's core fuses to some higher order element and it collapses or goes nova. If the release of part of a atom's energy is enough to sustain a sun, and a sun does all kinds of interesting things to matter; Then, What will a total release do?