Particle Beam Weapons: More Than Just Flashlights?

[babunito]

Continuation #2:
Additional problem with rotating in the loop particles must be well familiar to anybody who tried to move around a high rpm gyroscope. It would require two perfectly co-axial rotating in opposite direction streams of particles to cancel all of those funny angular momentum effects (akin to rotating in opposite direction helicopter blades). One can conceive two co-axial superconductive toroidal inductors with ionized molecules rotating in opposite directions in each. If the same number of particles is released every time from both inductors, they will compensate each other's angular momentum at all times during happy hunting session. Dan and blondandy should correct me if my assumptions are not warranted by laws of nature (in addition to limitations of current technology).

[DanielOR]

Babunito,

good to hear you, man.  It sounds like a beam of particles in itself is even less deadly that I expected (due to a very small cross section).  had no idea about the Foulerines though.  Yet another application of carbon nanotubes and nanoballs - Foulerine shrapnel.

[Winter]

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.

This is good stuff, I may use it in a wee update of the PBW articles if you don't mind.

Regards,
Winter

[babunito]

I stand corrected by Daniel - "cross section" is the proper scientific term for "interaction radius".

Does wiki define one way or the other the nature of the bullets used in conventional guns one starts with? For what it is worth, it might make sense to avoid references to the metal based bullets. Due to their rotation (added for higher precision while flying through air), the combination of strong static electric field (to induce opposite charges on bullet tips) and short, but extremely intense magnetic pulse can deflect the bullet or even divert it back at the shooter (example of theoretically plausible future shielding technology). With the level of slimy's technology they certainly would have been able to exploit this.  There is a good reason for even modern militaries currently are considering lighter Si (ceramic based slugs) or other stable elements from the lower right corner of periodic table.

I will leave it to Daniel to validate this suggestion.

[Darkpriest667]

you guys said energy stored in a magazine to my last energy based question.

I may not have a masters in physics... but i know it takes a hell of a lot more energy output than is man portable.. possibly even by 2084 standards.


I heard earlier the mention of the mri

and this post by daniel

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).

so you want my soldiers walking around with mini nuclear power plant backpacks? im still waiting for you guys to figure out a new energy solution... I think it may be more pertinent to go with the antimatter theory that the game is producing... only an antimatter reaction would have enough energy to throw these particles the way you guys are talking about..

Again im an amatuer in the physics department but my buddies and I who are not too stupid have tossed around the idea of particle accelerators before.. and it always comes down to having enough energy to do it..

[ghosta]

The Problem here is storing Energy for our particles.
My idea to solve this is this: Let us suppose, we have a gas on a certain Temperature. On low temperatures, the whole Energy is stored in 3 degrees of freedom, that are movement in x-, y-, and z-Direction. If you increase the temperature to around 3000K (i guess it was around that) you "activate" additional degrees of freedom, like rotation around the x-, y- and z-Axis and oscillation. Now think about the method to isolate a molecule and start to activate every degree of freedom except the translation. Then take it, put it into a portable device and if you want to shoot with it you just disturb the rotation and you get more and more Energy into translation. How? No idea, but imagine a rotating ball getting in contact with the ground --> It starts to move.

The question is, how many Energy can u store? First I would not recommend using a Bucky Ball, it wont be durable to more than 1000K then it starts to break. So u should use single and heavy atoms, like Pb or U. Then u can start rotating them until the atomic bond starts to break and neutrons and protons start to fly around. If this is not enough u can use the protons and neutrons that are quite hard to destroy.

Just the way how I would try storing this amount of energy.

[DanielOR]

Darkpriest667,

yes, compact energy sources are a serious issue.  Keep in ming, however, that matter-antimatter interaction is no picnic either:  again into the realm of stuff I learned a while ago...  A particle-antiparticle interaction, i.e. annihilation, would produce a huge release of energy (straight E=mc^2, baby) in forms of high energy X-rays.  Theoretically - great.  Practically - very hard to harvest, and even harder to store - need high vacuum plus a margnetic field trap to hold the anti-particles in place and away from normal matter.

As far as carrying nuke plants into battle...  We can fudge factor around that by saying that we solved cold fusion by 2084 - much better and closer alternative.  -- you fuse two Hydrogen atoms together, get a Helium atom and a bunch of energy out.  You need water and some Palladium electrodes, maybe - at least that's the level the quacks stopped at.

[Darkpriest667]

Daniel you better hope one of those packs isnt damaged during a combat mission....

if the molecular reaction we are talking about is disturbed.. I think things get ugly with nukes or antimatter....

I love the points you guys bring up and the amount of detail in the mathematics that you give... It really helps me learn and I , for one, appreciate learning more than most



also ghosta.... about your idea of heating gas to a high temperature for energy.. its a good idea.. but i think possibly you will find some fatal flaws with it when you try to make it man portable in a very intimate setting *touching it, dropping it, putting it under the stresses of combat*   its definitly something to look at.

[DanielOR]

Darkpriest,

Glad to provide entertainment.   

The cold fusion bit - which in reality turned out to be a fake - is supposed to not be so voletile.  The nuke / anti-matter options are dangerous indeed, which is reflected clearly in the description of the research project in UFOpedia.

[DanielOR]

ghosta,

I am not sure I understand you very well.  Are you talking about a specific physical effect?  Bose-Einstein condensation?

It is true that very cold matter (near absolute zero, -273 C) is less reactive - electrons hop to lowest states, mechanical vibration *almost* siezes.  Latest work does, however, say that some movement exist.  While it is true things like radiation are effetively "turned off" at low temp, it does not appear to me a good way to store energy.  Reasons are two:

1. Thermodynamics: cold things want to get warm, warm things want to get cold, all wants to be uniform (result of second law of thermodynamics).  So, the business of keeping things cold is very, very energy-costly. 
2. Conservation of energy: say you have cold gas...  If you want to heat that same gas, than somehow extract energy from it...you still have to heat the gas, which costs energy.  So, you have to *give* the energy before you can *take* it.  And since nothing is 100% effective, you will loose a bunch in the process.  My gut tells me electromagnetic or chemical storage is better than using temperature of gasses.

[Darkpriest667]

no daniel he is referring to a process i mentioned earlier called electrothermal chemical


basically "some individuals" who shall remain nameless designed a projectile a sequence of some chemical (a gas) that if heated in a compressed area (say a cartrige or a tube as he said) creates a thermal chemical reaction that shoots the projectile... becauseof the amount of energy released by superheating the gas so quickly ....

I forgot the gas they used.

[ghosta]

Bose-Einstein condensation? No! And I guess we should get the descriptions of the weapons understandable for people who havent studied physics!

I am talking about very fast rotating atoms/molecules. Shielded from the environment for not loosing too much Energy.

[Darkpriest667]

totally different.. but i do have a question


you are heating it very rapidly how? and with what

[DanielOR]

Darkpriest,

I believe you just very accurately described the conventional gunpowder weapon:  powder burns really fast (oxidation), the reaction produces heat, which heats the resulting gasses.  The pressure inside the cartridge, behind the bullet, suddenly is way higher than the 1 atmoshere in the barrel, in front of the bullet.  Gas expands the only way in can, thus propelling the bullet down the barrel.  Bang insues.

[Doctor J]

I know we've wandered a bit off of particles, but i couldn't resist responding to this.  It's actually been quite an  interesting thread.  Before i go into ETC, let's review what happens in chemically propelled bullets: The firing pin crushes the primer, the primer ignites the gunpowder, the gunpowder rapidly [can be seen as instantaneously] becomes pressurized gas pushing the bullet down the barrel.  The limitation of this is that as the bullet begins moving down the barrel, the space behind it grows larger.  As this volume increases, the pressure decreases dramatically.  Reduced pressure means less acceleration available to the bullet - it reaches the highest speed it will reach well before it gets to the muzzle [the point at which the pressure is dispersed].

Electro Thermal Chemical is a proposed method of propulsion that aims to give greater muzzle velocity to our bullet.  The bullet is the same, it is the case that is different.  Rather than using chemical energy from exploding powder, the case is filled with some fluid [liquid or gas] that is electrically heated to the point of being plasma.  The fluid could be anything [even water] but if you pick something that is also chemically active you reduce the amperage needed.  Anyway here's the clever bit: rather than generating all this plasma instantaneously, it is an ongoing process that continues until the bullet has left the muzzle.  By maintaining continuous pressure behind the bullet, the bullet continues to accelerate.

FWIW, the U.S. Army is currently doing research on electrically ignited gunpowder type cannons for the near term, for the same reasons.  It is expected that within two decades they will field a 120 mm weapon for a tank that has penetration of twice what the current 120 mm cannon offers, w/o significantly increasing weight.  The problem for us is that their method is also called ETC, leading to potential confusion down the road.