2 Men Accused of Trying To Make X-Ray Weapon 470
gurps_npc writes "Two radical pro-Israel terrorists were caught in upstate NY when they tried to solicit money from various honorable Jewish organizations to build a truck based x-ray weapon. They intended to drive the truck around and then turn on the x-ray machine, focusing on enemies of Israel. But the Jewish organizations they tried to solicit money from refused to participate. Instead they called the FBI, who promptly set up a sting. The men were arrested before the machine was in working order."
Re:weeeeak (Score:5, Informative)
no, you should read about the foot x-ray machines some shoe stores used in the 1940s, they gave some people 20 REM of dose! It doesn't take that much power to make dangerous levels of X-Ray radiation.
Re:Supremely Irresponsible Reporting. Shame on /. (Score:4, Informative)
2) The editors at Slashdot have some sort of Antisemitic agenda
Why would I say that? If you bother to read the second sentence of the article you will notice that the weapon builders were not Jews.
The summary neither says nor implies that they were. It's perfectly compatible with the linked article.
Re:Supremely Irresponsible Reporting. Shame on /. (Score:0, Informative)
You are either lying or you are ignorant and unwilling to perform basic fact checking of your statements or you do not understand what "implication" is. Either way, your statement rings hollow. As proof, below is the /. summary, taken straight from the main page, with the relevant text quoted. Also, below, is additional, relevant text you omitted when you quoted.
Re:A conspiracy... (Score:5, Informative)
" i was surprised that microwaves aren't ionizing rads since they are often referred to as cooking from the insides.."
But they don't cook from the inside out.. Extremely old microwaves used to come with a thermometer that stuck down into the middle of what you were cooking so they could slowly cook from the outside in and would stop when your food was fully cooked. Newer microwaves realised that ppl quickly catch on to how to use them and a billion microwave cookbooks out there and removed the mostly redundant piece of equipment.
Not sure why you are spreading that old myth, and haven't worked it out yourself when you undercook something your self and find its still cold in the middle, but eh.
Re:weeeeak (Score:5, Informative)
This is actually not a new idea. In East Germany, the STASI is alleged to have done that:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/352461.stm [bbc.co.uk]
Pretty scary and brutal stuff.
Re:Has he thought this through? (Score:4, Informative)
More or less everything radiates in a radial pattern (has spherical wavefron) and is subject to the inverse-square law. Even lasers have some divergence. Better focus (by e.g. reflectors) would give you lower angle of divergence and therefore higher initial power density, but that is all.
Definitely not. X-rays have significantly higher frequency and therefore shorter wavelength (380-740 nm for visible light and 0.01 - 10 nm for x-rays).
Re:A conspiracy... (Score:4, Informative)
There is all the Irish ones that you spent decades shielding from justice back in the U.K. because it suited you. They where allowed to openly raise funds, and convicted terrorists where not extradited back to the U.K.
Re:A conspiracy... (Score:4, Informative)
No, what I'm saying is that black people are disproportionately affected by those laws. Rates of drug use are roughly the same between white and black communities. Black people get arrested for drugs 4-5x more often than white people. You can figure the rest out for yourself.
Re:Has he thought this through? (Score:2, Informative)
"More or less everything radiates in a radial pattern (has spherical wavefron) and is subject to the inverse-square law. Even lasers have some divergence. Better focus (by e.g. reflectors) would give you lower angle of divergence and therefore higher initial power density, but that is all."
No, not accurate. Look it up. While sources DO tend to radiate radially, proper focus can bring it under control and beat the inverse-square law. Attenuation and scattering are NOT the same as inverse square.
"Definitely not. X-rays have significantly higher frequency and therefore shorter wavelength (380-740 nm for visible light and 0.01 - 10 nm for x-rays)."
Yes, you caught me on that one. I was looking at frequency, not wavelength. I don't mind admitting when I'm wrong. But I'm not wrong about inverse-square. I say again, look it up. Even just Wikipedia. It only applies to something that is radiating in all directions. That is how the mathematical formula is derived in the first place. Quote Wikipedia [emphasis added]:
"The density of flux lines is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source because the surface area of a sphere increases with the square of the radius. Thus the strength of the field is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source."
When the radiation is not being emitted in a radial pattern, it does not follow that formula. Therefore it does NOT apply to a beam focused by a reflector. And scattering is a completely different matter.