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UFO:AI, my comments and criticisms

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Adrian Magnus:
Anti-matter is not something you want in any sort of tactical weapon. It has a tendency to make very big booms. A mere 100 grams (.1 kilograms), for comparison the M67 frag grenade has a filling of a ~180 grams, of anti-matter being annihilated  would yield...

E=MC^2

E=(.1)(300,000,000 m/s)^2

E=(.1)(90,000,000,000,000,000)

E=9E15 joules

A kiloton is equal to 4.184 terajoules, that is 4.184E12 joules. Therefore the complete annihilation of the 100 grams of anti-matter would cause cause an explosion of...

9E15 / 4.184E12 = 2151 kilotons, or 2.2 megatons. However, nothing is 100% efficient, let us assume just 60% efficiency. That gives us 1.4 megatons.

Congratulations, your grenade sized anti-matter bomb just wiped-out the aliens along with your entire team, as well as all civilians and structures for kilometres around. If you're going to be flinging nukes it would be much better to use very small nuclear weapons, probably shot from recoil-less rifles, as combat damage won't accidentally initiate them and they are far cheaper. Of course, if you are willing to level an area with sub-kiloton warheads then why bother sending in a ground troops at all? That's what bomb trucks filled with conventional explosives are for.


Incidentally, we could employ nuclear tipped air-to-air and ground-to-air missiles to down UFOs. The real world has had those since the late 50s or early 60s. No need for direct hits, close enough is good enough  :twisted: .

(I'm joking of course, PHALANX would probably be scared shitless of nuking the aliens because the aliens might just nuke back.)

blondandy:
energy conversion can be 100% efficient when you are converting to heat. conversion of mass-energy to heat-energy using antimatter is 100% efficient.

You will get some kinetic energy and energy stored in photons along the way. but you can be sure that it will end up as heat.

Agrajag:

--- Quote from: "Sectoid" ---I don't like the idea of using tachyons, as physicists are pretty sure they don't exist. Besides, a tachyon grenade would explode before you pulled the pin!    :D

If you really need an exotic "sci-fi" explosive, you might consider antimatter. Don't know how you'd store antimatter, tho...
--- End quote ---


How would you store tachyons in the first place, they can't be slowed to lower than lightspeed. Make them orbit a black hole inside the grenade? And how use them as an explosive? What's the idea? How is it supposed to work? What damage would it cause (if any)? And from where comes the explosive force to make the grenade explode. It would more likely just break open.
Particle Beam weapons sounds nicer, more realistic, highly advanced and powerful. Maybe the particle accelerating technology could also make for a nice fragmention grenade like device, yet quite risky (hide! Where to? the blast radius is like a 100 of those squares on the chessboard of the universe!)

 :D  Not being cruel  :P

BTAxis:
Just making an observation here, but I notice most people here seem to be trying to come up with technology they can justify from existing physics theories, or discarding technology because they can't. What I'm sort of missing is the "fiction" part of science-fiction. I find myself thinking, why can't we have a weapon that uses a principle we haven't even thought of? I realize the problem of that is that, well, we haven't thought of it, which makes the UFOpaedia entry a bit hard to write, but why must all alien technology be rooted in current human theories? What if there is a field of physics we haven't discovered yet, be it because we're not in the right part of the galaxy, because our current theories do not prompt us to do the right kind of experiment or even because we're just damn unlucky?

We may not be able to explain it ot reason it into our view of the universe right away. Any such technology would be TRULY alien to us, or as
--- Quote from: "Arthur C. Clarke" ---Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
--- End quote ---


So by this token, I guess I'm saying that all this trying to make it "make sense" is taking the magic out of it. Oh well.

blondandy:
I like sci-fi which has good scientific style. does not break known laws and invents new ones when required, but in a plausible-sounding way. Ian M Banks and Alastair Reynolds are very good at this.

Really pure sci-fi is about trying to guess how science and technology might affect the future. For example, if was in a purist frame of mind I would not classify Star Wars as sci-fi, rather fantasy.

I do thoroughly enjoy sci-fi, which simply tries to tell a story in the future and uses science/technology as a tool.

I think my main point is that it is easier to suspend disbelief if the science sounds plausible. new laws of nature may need to be invented for certain fantastic futures. This is all good fun. Its about getting the style of them right.

for plasma: it is possible to contain them using magnetic fields, it is not possible to contain them using any material.

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