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| 5/24 |
| 2004/10/4-6 [Reference/Military, Science/Physics] UID:33922 Activity:high |
10/4 Photon Torpedos anyone?
http://tinyurl.com/62nk9 (sfgate.com)
\_ A photon is not matter. However, they *have* used antimatter
weapons in trek.
\_ m = E / c^2 :-)
\_ No, a photon has no mass. You just gave the mass-equivalence
of a photon.
\_ Photon Torpedos are based on antimater:
http://www.ccdump.org/photontorps.html
http://www.cakes.mcmail.com/StarTrek/photontorpedo.htm
\_ Nothing will come from this for many decades, if ever. They should
be spending that money on something useful like the homeless or
universal health care.
\_ You can use the homeless as weapons? Cool!
\_ The article mentions positronium, but makes no mention of trying to
use antihydrogen. Is there some reason positronium is preferable?
\_ We have to catch up to the terrorists who are already building
anti-matter weapons out of unobtanium.
\_ Why do you hate America?
\_ Why is this conducted by the Air Force? Shouldn't it be the Dept of
Dept of Energy? Air Force should be working on better planes,
Energy in a Lawrence lab? Air Force should be working on better planes,
better missles, and maybe better space-based weapons, not working on
something that involves so much fundamental physics.
\_ The Air Force typically has always held sway over the "cutting
edge/whiz bang/star trek side" of military tech.
\_ no. I know of quite a bit of far-out physics research
that gets funded by both the Navy and the Army. The army
spends a lot of money on quantum computing, and you can't
get much more star trek than that.
\_ My computer told me otherwise this morning. It was built
by the USMC with Marine-Tech(tm). |
| 5/24 |
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| tinyurl.com/62nk9 -> www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/10/04/MNGM393GPK1.DTL San Francisco Chronicle The US Air Force is quietly spending millions of dollars investigating ways to use a radical power source -- antimatter, the eerie "mirror" of ordinary matter -- in future weapons. The most powerful potential energy source presently thought to be availab le to humanity, antimatter is a term normally heard in science-fiction f ilms and TV shows, whose heroes fly "antimatter-powered spaceships" and do battle with "antimatter guns." it actually exists and has been inte nsively studied by physicists since the 1930s. In a sense, matter and an timatter are the yin and yang of reality: Every type of subatomic partic le has its antimatter counterpart. But when matter and antimatter collid e, they annihilate each other in an immense burst of energy. During the Cold War, the Air Force funded numerous scientific studies of the basic physics of antimatter. With the knowledge gained, some Air For ce insiders are beginning to think seriously about potential military us es -- for example, antimatter bombs small enough to hold in one's hand, and antimatter engines for 24/7 surveillance aircraft. More cataclysmic possible uses include a new generation of super weapons -- either pure antimatter bombs or antimatter-triggered nuclear weapons; Another possibility is an timatter- powered "electromagnetic pulse" weapons that could fry an enem y's electric power grid and communications networks, leaving him literal ly in the dark and unable to operate his society and armed forces. Following an initial inquiry from The Chronicle this summer, the Air Forc e forbade its employees from publicly discussing the antimatter research program. Still, details on the program appear in numerous Air Force doc uments distributed over the Internet prior to the ban. These include an outline of a March 2004 speech by an Air Force official who, in effect, spilled the beans about the Air Force's high hopes for a ntimatter weapons. On March 24, Kenneth Edwards, director of the "revolu tionary munitions" team at the Munitions Directorate at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida was keynote speaker at the NASA Institute for Advanced C oncepts (NIAC) conference in Arlington, Va. In that talk, Edwards discussed the potential uses of a type of antimatte r called positrons. Physicists have known about positrons or "antielectrons" since the early 1930s, when Caltech scientist Carl Anderson discovered a positron flying through a detector in his laboratory. That discovery, and the later dis covery of "antiprotons" by Berkeley scientists in the 1950s, upheld a 19 20s theory of antimatter proposed by physicist Paul Dirac. In 1929, Dirac suggested that the building blocks of atoms -- electrons ( negatively charged particles) and protons (positively charged particles) -- have antimatter counterparts: antielectrons and antiprotons. One fun damental difference between matter and antimatter is that their subatomi c building blocks carry opposite electric charges. Thus, while an ordina ry electron is negatively charged, an antielectron is positively charged (hence the term positrons, which means "positive electrons"); and while an ordinary proton is positively charged, an antiproton is negative. The real excitement, though, is this: If electrons or protons collide wit h their antimatter counterparts, they annihilate each other. In so doing , they unleash more energy than any other known energy source, even ther monuclear bombs. The energy from colliding positrons and antielectrons "is 10 billion time s ... that of high explosive," Edwards explained in his March speech. Mo reover, 1 gram of antimatter, about 1/25th of an ounce, would equal "23 space shuttle fuel tanks of energy." Thus "positron energy conversion," as he called it, would be a "revolutionary energy source" of interest to those who wage war. It almost defies belief, the amount of explosive force available in a spe ck of antimatter -- even a speck that is too small to see. For example: One millionth of a gram of positrons contain as much energy as 378 kilo grams (83 pounds) of TNT, according to Edwards' March speech. A simple c alculation, then, shows that about 50-millionths of a gram could generat e a blast equal to the explosion (roughly 4,000 pounds of TNT, according to the FBI) at the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City i n 1995. Unlike regular nuclear bombs, positron bombs wouldn't eject plumes of rad ioactive debris. When large numbers of positrons and antielectrons colli de, the primary product is an invisible but extremely dangerous burst of gamma radiation. Thus, in principle, a positron bomb could be a step to ward one of the military's dreams from the early Cold War: a so-called " clean" superbomb that could kill large numbers of soldiers without eject ing radioactive contaminants over the countryside. A copy of Edwards' speech onNIAC's Web site emphasizes this advantage of positron weapons in bright red letters: "No Nuclear Residue." Still, Dyson adds, antimatter weapons are "a long, long way off." One reason is that at present, there's no fast way to mas s produce large amounts of antimatter from particle accelerators. With p resent techniques, the price tag for 100-billionths of a gram of antimat ter would be $6 billion, according to an estimate by scientists at NASA' s Marshall Space Flight Center and elsewhere, who hope to launch antimat ter-fueled spaceships. Another problem is the terribly unruly behavior of positrons whenever phy sicists try to corral them into a special container. Inside these contai ners, known as Penning traps, magnetic fields prevent the antiparticles from contacting the material wall of the container -- lest they annihila te on contact. Unfortunately, because like-charged particles repel each other, the positrons push each other apart and quickly squirt out of the trap. If positrons can't be stored for long periods, they're as useless to the military as an armored personnel carrier without a gas tank. So Edwards is funding investigations of ways to make positrons last longer in stora ge. Edwards' point man in that effort is Gerald Smith, former chairman of phy sics and Antimatter Project leader at Pennsylvania State University. Smi th now operates a small firm, Positronics Research LLC, in Santa Fe, NM So far, the Air Force has given Smith and his colleagues $37 million for positron research, Smith told The Chronicle in August. Smith is looking to store positrons in a quasi-stable form called positro nium. A positronium "atom" (as physicists dub it) consists of an electro n and antielectron, orbiting each other. Normally these two particles wo uld quickly collide and self-annihilate within a fraction of a second -- but by manipulating electrical and magnetic fields in their vicinity, S mith hopes to make positronium atoms last much longer. Smith's storage effort is the "world's first attempt to store large quant ities of positronium atoms in a laboratory experiment," Edwards noted in his March speech. "If successful, this approach will open the door to s toring militarily significant quantities of positronium atoms." Officials at Eglin Air Force Base initially agreed enthusiastically to tr y to arrange an interview with Edwards. "We're all very excited about th is technology," spokesman Rex Swenson at Eglin's Munitions Directorate t old The Chronicle in late July. But Swenson backed out in August after h e was overruled by higher officials in the Air Force and Pentagon. Reached by phone in late September, Edwards repeatedly declined to be int erviewed. His superiors gave him "strict instructions not to give any in terviews personally. I'm sorry about that -- this (antimatter) project i s sort of my grandchild. "(But) I agree with them (that) we're just not at the point where we need to be doing any public interviews." Air Force spokesman Douglas Karas at the Pentagon also declined to commen t last week. In the meantime, the Air Force has been investigating the possibility of making use of a powerful positron-generating accelerator under developme nt at Washington State University in Pullman, Wash. One goal: to see if positrons generated by the accelerator can ... |
| www.ccdump.org/photontorps.html The Photon Torpedo is a powerful, long range weapon which has been in use aboard Federation Starships for over one hundred and fifty years - earl y models differed from today's weapon only in the level of sophisticatio n and the power of the warhead. Today the weapon most widely used by Sta rfleet vessels is the Type 6 This weapon comprises an elongated ellipti cal body some 210 cm long and 76 x 45 cm across. The warhead of the photon torpedo comprises a maximum of 15 kilos of ant imatter and 15 kilos of matter. These are divided into many thousands o f small pellets suspended in a magnetic field - smaller yields can be ac hieved by reducing the number of such pellets in the torpedo. Also included in the torpedo are target acquisition, guidance and detonat ion assemblies and a warp sustainer unit. If launched at low impulse flight the torpedo will accelerate t o a 75% higher sublight velocity; launch at high impulse speed will not push the torpedo into warp. If launched during warp flight the torpedo w ill continue at warp until the sustainer is exhausted. Torpedo range can be extended by utilizing the matter / antimatter warhead to power the s ustainer, although this causes a corresponding loss of warhead yield. Fo r a mid-range yield the torpedo can achieve ranges of some 3,500,000 kil ometres at sublight speeds. The photon torpedo can be set to fly a ballistic trajectory, be steered b y the launch vessel, can home in via its own guidance systems, or use a combination of these methods in a single flight. The warhead of a photon torpedo can be removed and replaced by sensor pac kages or other equipment. Some advanced models are fitted with full warp drives for use as long range high speed probes - the Class VIII probe c an cover 112 light years at Warp 9, while the Class IX probe can cover 2 light years at the same speed. On one occasion such a device was used to transport a Federation diplomat to an urgent rendezvous. |
| www.cakes.mcmail.com/StarTrek/photontorpedo.htm Section 2 Technology 23 Weaponary 233 Explosive Yield of a Photon Torpedo. By the 24^th century the explosive yields of weapons are described in ter ms of isotons as compared with today's convention of using kilotons. How ever, given that we know the quantity of antimatter and matter used, we should be able to make some assumptions about the comparative yields of the weapons of the Federation. We know that TN T has an explosive yield of 700 calories per gram, (Encyclopaedia Britan nica) so we can begin by converting into SI units; specifically the joul e To do this we will multiply the given figure by 41868. antimatter is injected into the matter and hel d by fields around each packet of antimatter until the detonation signal it would seem that the matter is not in movement and therefore p tends towards zero. E^2=0c^2+m^2c^4 E=mc^2 Where c is the velocity of light and m is the mass of the particle when a t rest. What we will do is calculate for a detonation of 100% efficiency for simp licity. In 1987 the Soviet and Am erican stockpile of nuclear arsenals measured 15 gigatons. This is only 58 times the yield of a single quantum torpedo. In fact the detonation o f a single torpedo would release more energy than 13 times the explosive s ever used in war from the discovery of gunpowder to the 1990s. This compares with modern weapons as below: Name Date Weight Yield/weight Y/W ratio kton per pound Destructive Area Little Boy 1945 9000 lb 1 kton to 600 lb 00017 3 sq. miles MX missile 1986 800 lb 1 kton to 24 lb 0417 234 sq. Comparative Destructive Size An asteroid of 2000 metres diameter would have an equivalent yield of one million megatons and would be sufficient to cause a global cataclysm. T he crater at Chicxulub was caused by a considerably larger asteroid of a lmost 9000 metres across and had an explosive yield of 10^8 megatons (Wy nn 1998) (further calculations below). Even the impressive yield of Star fleet weapons and global extinction events pale compared to mines used b y the Borg Collective. In the first episode of season 4 of Voyager, Scor pion Part 2, (Braga & Menosky 1997), 7of9 wishes to use a Borg multi-kin etic-neutronic mine with an explosive yield of 5 million isotons. While Starfleet was testing the Marx IX warhead it was determined that a theoretical limit of 25 isotons had been reached for matter/antimatter e xplosions. However the Type 6 torpedoes that came into use in 2371 and w hich were utilised onboard intrepid class ships had a considerably large r explosive yield. The Borg examination of Voyager (Braga & Menosky 1997 ) described the type 6 as having a maximum yield of 200 isotons. Later t hat year a torpedo (Diggs and Kay 1998) was modified with a gravimetric charge for a 54 isoton explosion though this charge was not standard iss ue. Another weapon of mass destruction that is worth considering is the Long Range Tactical Unit from Star Trek Voyagers Warhead. The Unit is a self aware artificially intelligent weapon found on a planet; the destruction caused by the units companion weapon allow us to calculate its explosiv e yield. To calculate the energy we could compare with an incident meteor impact, from these we can deduce the size of crater and using simple kinetic ene rgy equations, calculate the energy required to excavate a crater of sai d size. First let us consider the dimensions of the impactor at Chicxulub. Given the uncertainties let us begin by considering the arbitary figure o f 10,000 metres (usually stated diameter approx. Converting into SI 3,000,000 grams per cubic metre which is 3,000 kg per cubic metre. A two hundred kilometre crater would require above 100,000,000 megatonnes . Now the total annihilation of 1 kilogramme of antimatter with 1 kilo of m atter will release: E = mc^2 (this assumes all useable energy, all matter destruction, 100% efficiency and no inert particulate matter generation. However, care must be g iven to the shape of the crater. Though we do not know about the photogr amteric accuracy of the Voyager sensors and the orthographic corrections , the crater still looked very deep given the width; The interesting side note becomes, if the Tactical Unit is an antimatter device (seemingly indicated by Tuvok) then how are two crewmen able to c arry the unit, it is possible that the units explode and whatever they u se for explosive yield does not detonate or that they some how replicate their own supply of antimatter before detonation. |
| sfgate.com Friday, May 14, 2004 Updated: 12:07 AM PDT ' I'm guessing that the best way to hail a cab or a bartender in Athens will not be by waving an American flag." Sorensen Capital group He's already got more money than god, but that isn't stopping Steve Young (above, right) from embarking on a second career in business. Gov's Balancing Act Schwarzenegger unveils revised budget containing spending cuts and (as promised) no new taxes. Wedding Date's Still On Same-sex marriage opponents lose bid to halt gay nuptials, scheduled to begin Monday in Massachusetts. Researchers say they've found evidence of impact greater than the one that probably caused the dinosaurs' extinction. Wars' $50 Bil Price Tag "It's a big bill," says Wolfowitz, who estimates the cost of conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. No Plea From Anderson Using a wheelchair, the haggard-looking suspect is arraigned in the murder of Xiana Fairchild. Giants Left Stranded G-men leave 12 men on base, including two in the bottom of the 9th, and drop series to Philly. Sex, Drugs, And Then 5 Deaths Playboy Playmate tells how she got involved with 2 suspects, but left in just the nick of time. Pixar Growth Plan Wins Fans 20-year proposal for Emeryville site gets flak from activists, but city says go for it. |