Force Field. No, Really 434
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.
The hardest part of climbing the ladder of success is getting through the crowd at the bottom.
Some cool benefits (Score:1, Interesting)
Clean decapitation. You lower a loop onto a person until it levels his neck. Turn on the plasma field, and it chops his head off? I wonder if this can be used to cut trees as well! Cut anything!
Re:am i reading this wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
I think it's mostly blocking stray molecules of air that get in from leaks until the leaks can be patched.
Not a Star Trek Style Force Field (Score:5, Interesting)
This thing is for use in sci-tech research only, for creating air tight vacums. It can't be used to protect / encase eevryday objects. For example, I quote:
At 15,000 degrees Celsius (27,032 degrees Fahrenheit), the plasma valve is about 50 times hotter than room temperature when measured in degrees Kelvin. This intense heat makes the ionized atoms and molecules move around and collide with air molecules so rapidly that the ions block any air molecules that might pass through the plasma valve.
In short, don't expect this force field to be in use at your neighborhood brig / jail anytime soon :) A really cool advancement though.
my stupid idea (Score:2, Interesting)
The military would probably be interested, but I'm more into the idea of see-through 747s- just think of the view!
I suppose you'd still have to have most of the aircraft solid, unless force fields can act as wings etc for aerodynamic purposes (IANAP), but you'd still end up with the equivalent of glass-bottomed boats, except far cooler.
graspee
SCI FI wonderland (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:temperature vs. energy (Score:3, Interesting)
Daniel
Maxwell's Demon Implemented (Score:5, Interesting)
Maxwell's Demon is a physics problem the is the basis of quantum mechanics. Simply, suppose you had a tank of air that was divided in 2 by a tiny split, with a gate. At the gate is a "demon" who lets high energy particle in on side, and low-energy particles in the other.
Theoretically, by expending no energy save that to open and close the gate (plus whatever overhead the Demon requires) you could thwart the laws of physics. Soon one side of the tank would be "cold" and the other "hot" even if they both started off at the same temperature.
Umm, calc please! (Score:2, Interesting)
15,000 / 50 = 300
50 is completely reasonable here...
I'm not as sure about this, but I found a link in Google to something that looks reputable... some plasmas exist at temparatures as low as 1,500 degrees. According to this [san-bernardino.ca.us] [www.co.san-bernardino.ca.us] water turns to plasma at 1,500 degrees - but unspecified Kelvin, Celsius, or Fahrenheit. If it's Fahrenheit (a farely safe assumption that it's either F or K because it's US,) then 1,500 F = 1088.7055555556 Kelvin, so it's still within reason. If it's Celsius, then 1,500 C = 1773.15 Kelvins, still not so bad...
Re:am i reading this wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
If it can be used to block a 1 atmosphere pressure (or even above) it would solve a whole bucket load of problems.
Re:am i reading this wrong (Score:2, Interesting)
leak in system plasma wall
| |
| enclosed |
atmos area at | vacuum
| atmos - x |
| |
Obviously with this set up the amount of air leaking in will increase with time (albeit possibly slowly) until x=atmospheric pressure. I certainly wouldn't want to trust my delicate equipment inside the vacumm to anything that wouldn't hold back the full pressure of the air outside.
Of course I'm only guessing since there're no numbers or anything in the article but it is a great achievement anyway.
Re:Maxwell's Demon Implemented (Score:5, Interesting)
BLow air in the middle, hot air blows out one end and cold air blows out the other. Temperature difference can be as much as a few hundred degrees C depending on the configuration used! (Still doesn't violate any laws of thermodynamics though... but it does 'sort' high and low energy molecules without ant "extra" energy)
=Smidge=
Except for that whole reduced boiling point thing. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Except for that whole reduced boiling point thi (Score:3, Interesting)
Heck, large quantities of youths get smallish (~1 square inch) regions of flesh exposed to near vacuum conditions all the time with nothing worse than a red welt to show for it.
Re:RTFA: NOT, NOT, NOT a "force field" (Score:2, Interesting)
x=1
y=-1
z=0
or
x=0
y=1
z=1
Or did you want a non-trivial answer for that?
[FLAME ON]
Now, in the words of Dennis Miller, "I don't mean to get off on a rant", but speaking as a Math/Comp Sci. geek, I hate it when people attempt to sound intelligent by frobbing their mighty mathematical muscles. Most people wouldn't know (or care) what the integral of e^(-x^2) is, nor for that matter what you define as "fundamental mathematic expressions" are either.
That's basically like asking someone for a grenden frenesdhire of lignitious flibidnituriousness. Without the context or the intellectual framework to understand the question, it's meaningless. Do YOU have a grenden frenesdhire of lignitious flibidnituriousness? I thought not.
As for your example with Andromeda, a pair of rubber bands and a liquid lunch...well, even you state that there is a vanishingly small chance of being solvable. Vanishingly small, but non-zero. Just because we currently do not know how to do it now doesn't mean we never will.
Remember, at one point in time, many leading scientists believed it was impossible for man to fly, even AFTER Kitty Hawk. The Wright brothers were considered crackpots in their time. Next, it was the sound barrier. "Man will never break the sound barrier", they said. It's been broken. The history of scientific progress is littered with so-called experts saying "It can't be done." and the men who proved it could.
[FLAME OFF]
That being said, there ARE classes of problems which are considered unsolvable. Turing's Halting Problem [wikipedia.org] (Note the use of a link providing information for those interested in learning more and/or are not gifted with near-omniscient intellect) is one of them. Alan Turing proved that there is no algorithm which can solve it for any possible inputs. It's a mindbendingly elegant proof...you can see a sketch of it on the other side of the link if you're interested.
Anyway, sorry for the flame. Your post caught me as being a little too intellectually smug and self-flagellating. Had to be done.
Re:Maybe 'force fields' isn't a good name. (Score:3, Interesting)
rest of arcticle can be found here
http://www.amasci.com/weird/unusual/e-wall.