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kenthorvath writes "This guy and his friend built their own cyclotron, capable of 1 MeV protons using spare parts and surplus science equipment. Anyone else happen to have a 4600 lb. magnet lying around?"
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Keeping a lid on devices that use simple physical principles is a waste of time. If they're that simple, someone will figure it out on their own in due course.
Take H-bombs, for instance. Yes, it's true that details of their construction are secret... but it's pretty well known that you need a fission explosion to set one off. Fission bombs are impressive devices on their own... if you can build one, you really don't need to go much further for most purposes.
The construction details for fission bombs are well known... they're really very simple devices. That doesn't mean that they're easy to build, fortunately.
Here's a link [cbsnews.com] to the full text of the president's address to the UN. He mentions those tubes. Close enough?
And here's a link [bullatomsci.org] to a story from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, who are anything but crackpots, explaining why those tubes are no kind of evidence at all.
On this note, I'd like to share a thought I recently had: while driving one evening, it occurred to me that it might be an interesting endeavor to build a truly feature-rich home-theatre appliance, PVR, DVD player, component video outs, digital in/out - bells and whistles galore. Then it occurred to me that there is no (legal) way to DIY build a DVD player. With hardware decoding and all, just as a real player does. What's missing? Well, the keys for the CSS encryption, of course. Even without the DMCA, you can't just put your own hardware DVD player together, to my knowledge. Each manufacturer is assigned a key for CSS, if I recall - and you don't get one!
Needless to say, I was irritated, angered and more than a bit disappointed at this revelation.
Many years ago, my high school had acquired the beginnings of a cyclotron as military surplus - the magnet frame and some big spools of magnet wire.
Nobody ever did anything with it, though.
This was part of a large shipment of somewhat random military surplus obtained by the electronics shop instructor under some DoD educational program. Lots of interesting stuff, but very little useful - wierd CRTs from obsolete radars, waveguide, big power tubes, paper tape Morse code training devices, and similar obscure junk.
Cyclotrons can be used for uranium enrichment. Most of the uranium used in the Hiroshima (40*WTC911) and Nagaski (20*WTC911) bombs was purified in cyclotrons.
Actually, they both weren't U135 based.
The Hiroshima weapon, Little-Boy, was a uranium enriched "gun" style weapon. Material from Oakville, TN. Fat-man, the weapon used on Nagasaki, was an implosion based Plutonium; material courtesy of Hanford, WA.
It takes a lot of energy, so you might want to have vast oil reserves that you aren't allowed to export in order to power the cylcotrons.
Aye, that it does. And the results of the processing facilities are the same too. In Oakville and Savannah, there are buildings no one will enter for a long, long, time. In Hanford, the engineers are finding out very interesting things about the waste storage tanks.
No, they do seem "easy" to build - what you saw is what I think is normally called a "cloud particle trail chamber" - I have seen plans for these type chambers in older SciAm issues (Amature Scientist column), as well as in old (ie, pre-1970) "science fair" experiment books aimed at kids. They aren't super difficult to build, I believe they involve using mainly oil droplets (rather than water). It has been a while since I have seen plans for these things - go to the largest, and oldest library (ie, the "central" library) in your nearest city (you want a library with lots of old books, that still keeps them on the shelves), and look in the 620.x-630.x (Dewey Decimal - mainly applied science/technology) area for these books.
explaining why those tubes are no kind of evidence at all.
Actually that story does nothing of the sort. Oh sure, it ridicules some of the evidence, but it neither denies the existence of the tubes nor provides an alternative, innocent use for them.
A much more even-handed story is this one [isis-online.org], which goes into considerable detail about the Iraqi centrifuge program and also details some other possible (but still weapons-related) uses for the tubing.
One of the other little known facts of about Nagasaki was that it was essentially an experiment. It was chosen as a secondary site because they wanted to know what kind of damage would be done to a hilly area. As it turns out the hills protected the people on the other side. Im not saying this is some giant conspiracy or thats its even (any more than Hiroshima) evil im just saying they got a lot of data from Nagasaki. Kinda sad to think civilian casualties are reduced to data but it was a war and hopefully we learned from it.
Things that go boom (Score:4, Interesting)
Take H-bombs, for instance. Yes, it's true that details of their construction are secret... but it's pretty well known that you need a fission explosion to set one off. Fission bombs are impressive devices on their own... if you can build one, you really don't need to go much further for most purposes.
The construction details for fission bombs are well known... they're really very simple devices. That doesn't mean that they're easy to build, fortunately.
Cylon? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:He is right, you know? (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's a link [cbsnews.com] to the full text of the president's address to the UN. He mentions those tubes. Close enough?
And here's a link [bullatomsci.org] to a story from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, who are anything but crackpots, explaining why those tubes are no kind of evidence at all.
Re:Amazing... (Score:3, Interesting)
Needless to say, I was irritated, angered and more than a bit disappointed at this revelation.
My high school had a "cyclotron kit" (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Yesterday's technology, tomorrow! (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, they both weren't U135 based.
The Hiroshima weapon, Little-Boy, was a uranium enriched "gun" style weapon. Material from Oakville, TN. Fat-man, the weapon used on Nagasaki, was an implosion based Plutonium; material courtesy of Hanford, WA.
It takes a lot of energy, so you might want to have vast oil reserves that you aren't allowed to export in order to power the cylcotrons.
Aye, that it does. And the results of the processing facilities are the same too. In Oakville and Savannah, there are buildings no one will enter for a long, long, time. In Hanford, the engineers are finding out very interesting things about the waste storage tanks.
Re:bubble chamber (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:He is right, you know? (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually that story does nothing of the sort. Oh sure, it ridicules some of the evidence, but it neither denies the existence of the tubes nor provides an alternative, innocent use for them.
A much more even-handed story is this one [isis-online.org], which goes into considerable detail about the Iraqi centrifuge program and also details some other possible (but still weapons-related) uses for the tubing.
Re:Yesterday's technology, tomorrow! (Score:5, Interesting)