Force Field. No, Really

tqft points out news of "a working force field, using plasma. Now to scale the sucker up." Here's the Brookhaven press release. I can think of so many uses for this.

An enormous breakthrough for parents

[artemis67]

Finally, a solution to the "Dad, he keeps touching me!" dilemma.

I've already seen a working force field

[Hogwash McFly]

There was a guy down the street from me who was in a force field. Can't remember his name but he had a black and white striped shirt, white face paint and he didn't speak that much.

Now what I need..

[Anonymous Coward]

are some borg implants so I can walk through the force field unaffected.

Uses?

[Surak]

I can think of so many uses for this.

Like keeping PHBs out of the server room? ;)

am i reading this wrong

[Neophytus]

or is all its blocking at the moment air? then again 14k kelvin might keep us out.

Protect your *nix

[Tukz]

Finally a decent way to protect your *nix server
from physical contact!

Yipee!

*snicker*

Blast...

[foxtrot]

I asked the guy how he did it, but he won't tell me.

Hasn't anyone explained to him the wonders of open force?

-JDF

Torps

[izto]

Yes, but can it stop plasma torps? what about phasers?? :-)

Re:An enormous breakthrough for parents

[CptChipJew]

The one problem though, is that this device runs at about 15,000 Kelvin.

Wait, now that I think about it, that would really teach those damn kids to stop messing around.

Strange Room Temperature

[leeroybrown]

>the plasma reaches a temperature of 15,000 degrees
>Kelvin (about 50 times greater than room temperature)

I'd hate to see the "Room Temperature" the guy who wrote that lives in.

Force fields have existed for ages

[fredrikj]

Just read here [straightdope.com]

Well well

[madmarcel]

Phah! Primitives!
Using my portable force-field
I managed to block all the trolls
and hence...I got first post :P

(It also blocks noxious ga^H^Hodours - much appreciated by my other half ;)

But ehh...(I probably misread this...)

Unfortunately it appears this new forcefield technology only works in very hot conditions
- 50x room temperature :o

Now all we need is heat-and-flame-resistant people...

Translation

[eternity0]

Can someone translate this to 'english' please?

Spam?

[955301]

They use the word plasma so many times in the last sentence of the first link, that for some strange reason (closely related to my sense of humor, I'm sure), I'm reminded of Monty Python and Spam:

A much faster, more complex version of a previously introduced "spam window" (see New Scientist, 12 April 2003), the spam valve is the latest example of novel uses of spam for particle-beam applications; other recent ones include spam acceleration of antimatter (Update 634), a spam lens (Update 508), and spam deflection of high-energy beams (Update 540).

Niiieeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Re:Uses?

[Smallphish]

Just what I need in my server room. Another heat source at 15,000 Kelvin. . .

Unnecessary

[MondoMor]

The nerds standing near it and working on it will generate sufficient repulsive force to keep any "physical contact" impossible.

Voila! Free force field for the price of a shitty ThinkGeek T-shirt!

Re:An enormous breakthrough for parents

[indros]

Also probably a good first line of defense as birth control as well. Make sure the swimmers don't reach their destination!

Re:Strange Room Temperature

[Baron_Yam]

Silly Americans... still converting to Fahrenheit. ;)

RTFA: NOT, NOT, NOT a "force field"

[1u3hr]

1) It's a "plasma valve". Not a force (ie magnetic or something ethereal), the magnetic "force" confines the plasma.

2) The plasma valve is INSIDE a copper container.

If you think this is a "force field" then you might also be interested in the "ray gun" in your television tube.

An interesting story nonetheless, spoiled only by the fatuous ignorance of the submitter and editor.

Re:Reason to use this?

[nomadic]

Can you guys think of any reason to use this? I sure cant! probably expensive too. Sorry if its answered in the artical , i just barely skimmed it.

Don't apologize, you did well. If you had actually read the full article in-depth, we would have had to confiscate your slashdot id.

It's already obsolete

[jdfox]

Because I brought my DINOSAUR! [scifiscripts.com] Who EATS force field dogs!

Re:Strange Room Temperature

[mothrathegreat]

I think he probably got the general message after the first 10 people told him he is crap at maths ;)

Re:An enormous breakthrough for parents

[caino59]

actually, isn't that "father, please stop touching me!" ?

*clash of cymbals*

i'm goin to hell...

Re:What this could be used for

[MondoMor]

Think launch bays that really can be opened up to have a shuttle pass though, and leave the air inside the bay intact.

...while incinerating the shuttle and its passengers as they pass through the shield! That's GENIUS!

plasma windows?

[Alien Being]

We'll have it ported to Linux in no time.

Re:Dont try this at home

[Anonymous Coward]

If you tried this in say a jail cell, you would fairly quickly cook the occupant. ... if the occupant touched the field, his finger would cease to exist...

Still, i'll take the plasma field over the 6'5" grinning black man with the jar of vaseline in his left hand and 10" in his right.

Flying cars next?

[Junior J. Junior III]

Install this as ground FX on my car, can I levitate finally?

Re:15,000 kelvins are 50 times room temp?

[Pulzar]

15,000 is a lot more than 50 times room temp. Assuming the room temperature is 26 degrees, thats 26+275 degrees above absolute zero, around 300 kelvins. I think the writer meant 500 times room temperature. I dont think plasma is 1500 kelvins.

And, the award for the worst math skills on Slashdot goes to...

Re:Finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's because you keep showing up on their gaydar. Does the word 'latent' mean anything to you?

Re:Dont try this at home

[Anonymous Coward]

You got vaseline? lucky dog!

What's next?

[BobRooney]

I suppose next we'll be hearing about a new sort of sci-fi device called a "laser". Perhaps this "laser" can be used with the "force field" to sculpt pictures of world leaders onto the face of the moon...

Re:I've already seen a working force field

[Amarok.Org]

do I get a prize for guessing correctly?

No, but you get a prize for being an idiot and driving the joke completely into the ground.

Yeah but...

[mikosullivan]

... does it make that cool "Bzzzzt" sound when you walk into it?

Re:It's not "degrees Kelvin"!!

[stoops]

you sure it's not "degrees Kelvin"?

i don't know about you, but when someone asks me my height and weight i always say "130 weight units pound" and "70 height units inch".

Re:Yeah but...

[Arcturax]

More like a sizzle given it is at 15000K

Re:Protect your *nix

[urrbanlleg-end]

Just use an AMD CPU in your server, that should generate enough heat to drive this thing...

Moonanites rule the Universe

[Anonymous Coward]

We are the Moonanites and we are far superior to your pitiful earth force fields. An air / vacume barrier. Our two demensional technology is so far advanced that no earthling could possibly understand. We laugh at your silly barbarian ways. HA HA

Now smoke up and get your drink on while shoplifting this stereo deep with in your body.

Re:You are smoking crack

[Dr.Enormous]

Or how about we don't convert away from an absolute temperature scale before dividing things all over the place?

If you convert to C first, you've just assigned an arbitrary zero to the scale and cut off about 90% of room temp, but only about 2% of the force field temp, so of course when you then go dividing by 50 it doesn't work out.

Remember kiddies: arbitrary scales are all well and good for addition and subtraction, but don't go messing around with multiplication and division; you'll end up a pregnant murderer who supports terrorists.

Re:You are smoking crack

[TheKodiak]

How about not being a moron? Would you like an analogous operation? Let's say you're doing .1 kph over the speed limit (which happens to be, say, 30kph) and a guy zooms past you at 60kph. Would it be fair to say he's driving 300 times faster than you are?

Celsius includes an arbitrary constant. If you multiply a celsius measurement, you're multiplying the constant and creating a new scale.

Not that it really makes much sense to say "x is y times hotter than z" in the first place, but at least there are things that scale roughly linearly with Kelvins. Nothing scales linearly with degrees Celsius.

In fact, that's an even better example - I don't think you can follow this one, but other readers might be able to hack it. PV=nRT. So if I have a quantity of gas at -1C, and it occupies 1L of space, and I heat it to 1C - WTF! OMG! I HAVE CREATED FUCKING NEGATIVE SPACE! I AM THE MASTER OF SPACE AND TIME!

Re:I've already seen a working force field

[MaestroSartori]

Apparently, he was keeping quiet about it until the patent came through...

Re:I've already seen a working force field

[TopShelf]

Be very careful - this sounds like a French spy who's been trapped successfully. Sometimes they try to escape by climbing a rope, so be sure that field has a lid to it...

Re:Force fields have existed for ages

[CatKnight]

"In the olden days, electricity and magnetism were counted as two separate forces (for a total of five), until it was discovered they were two aspects of the same thing (still charges and moving charges), and could be described mathematically in one theory, namely Maxwell's equations. Particle theorists have since combined the weak force with electromagnetism into a single theory called electroweak, so if you count that way there are three forces. Of course, particle theorists are gung-ho about combining all the forces into one huge Grand Unification Theory, which will give us just one force."

Hmm, integrating all of the fundamental forces of the universe into one neat package? Aren't there supposed to be anti-trust laws to prevent this? Bill Gates must be jealous as hell.

Re:An enormous breakthrough for parents

[Anonymous Coward]

The one problem though, is that this device runs at about 15,000 Kelvin.

Bah, that's only 14,727 degrees Celsius.

Re:I've already seen a working force field

[sharkey]

...he had a black and white striped shirt, white face paint and he didn't speak that much.

Easily breached using the proper Force-Field Deactivation Device. [safeshopper.com]

Re:I've already seen a working force field

[BrynM]

Sometimes they try to escape by climbing a rope

But every time they escape, we just push them back in with a strong spray of air. It seems they can't run ageanst wind very well.

Re:RTFA: NOT, NOT, NOT a "force field"

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, and the plasma valve would take your finger off if you touched it. Oh well. This is real life that we're stuck with, after all.

Well, then what you've got there is a *Klingon* force field. Duh!

Re:The Brookhaven Press Release

[Anonymous Coward]

I think your government has spread quite enough democracy and freedom for this decade. Take a rest guys. Rome wasn't conquered in a day.

Re:Zap Field

[tantrum]

Where can we find some pix?

Let me get this right.. you want a picture of a vacuum surrounded by air. Now that sounds like a nice picture.

Re:Zap Field

[ebh]

I've got a good picture of it here [about].