General > Discussion

Particle Beam Weapons: More Than Just Flashlights?

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blondandy:

--- Quote from: Darkpriest667 on June 01, 2008, 03:19:26 pm ---Why has no one mentioned the rail gun (guass cannon) technology really surprises me.

--- End quote ---
have you read the bolter article?


--- Quote ---the problem i foresee with the bunches is that once the particles leave the tube their direction is not very controllable. 

--- End quote ---
particles with mass equal to or greater than protons go in a reasonably straight line in air.


--- Quote ---Also again you guys are failing to address the energy issue.

--- End quote ---
it is stored as kinetic energy in the magazine. the particles are kept at the speed they come out of the gun, but going in a circle. a magnetic field can keep charged particles going in a circle for no energy cost.

DanielOR:
blondandy - just to add to your post...the bit of physics we are ignoring here is the strength of the magnetic field needed to make the damn particles go in a circle of a radius of an inch or two...For comparison: real accelerator rings are miles (often >10 mi) in diameter and involve magnets the size of furniture pieces.  And those are electric magnets that draw a fair bit of current.  Which is why most national labs have own energy sources (i.e. nuclear power plants).

Again, those in the field of particle/nuclear physics please, please correct me as needed.

blondandy:
high temperature superconductors might be possible. then you can have whetever magnetic field you like.

for example MRI machines (medical scanners) have some damn strong fields. the permanent magnetic field is generated by superconductors. this has to be cooled using liquid nitrogen. keeping the nitrogen cold takes energy. it is not impossible that superconductors working at room temperature might be discovered.

electric current going in a loop generates the magnetic field. so, when the magnetic is installed, you just cool it and inject the current.

DanielOR:
very good point.  High Tc superconductors would go a long way towards making smaller (portable) particle weapons.

babunito:
Daniel, I concur with all the points you've made. In any case, even if I had some doubts, I would not have questioned you, since you are the one who still is active in the trade, while I moved to other pastures long ago.

Small effective interaction radius of the elementary particles makes them not the best candidates for shooting at fluffy organics. While the idea of blocking the accelerator's beam is far from brightest, the damage is done only thanks to millions of passes (Dan please correct me if I am the order of the magnitude off) of the particle cloud through the blocking genius within what would seem to us a fraction of a second. Heavily ionized and huge molecules with small density (like buckyballs or other fullerenes) are robust enough to sustain high stresses during acceleration and will have much bigger interaction radii for such applications. Due to huge initial momentum they should be lethal over much bigger distances compared to conventional bullets.

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