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Post by somenukeareflying on Jul 21, 2018 15:31:59 GMT
I have heard that particle beam weapons are almost invincible in space. The accelerated heavy particles are at a speed of several thousand kilometers per second or even hundreds of thousands of kilometers per second and almost no need to worry about ballistic mechanics, ruthlessly launching to the enemy targets, evaporating the surface contacted by the particle beam and piercing them like a Water jet cutter.
You may think that the common problem of particle beams is that they may be sprayed by the enemy's strong magnetic field or strong electric field, but quote the words in Wikipedia:
"Charged particle beams diverge rapidly due to mutual repulsion, so neutral particle beams are more commonly proposed. A neutral-particle-beam weapon ionizes atoms by either stripping an electron off of each atom, or by allowing each atom to capture an extra electron. The charged particles are then accelerated, and neutralized again by adding or removing electrons afterwards."
We can almost imagine that a neutralized particle beam may be a weapon with more power and utility than Nuclear shaped charges. It can not be easily sprayed by the field energy, launching the particle beam toward the enemy in the industrial CNC cutting mode, cutting the bow and stern of the enemy ship in the most simple way, and even intercepting the enemy rail gun bullets, there is no reason for Children of a Dead Earth does not add such iconic space technology to the game.
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Post by The Astronomer on Jul 21, 2018 16:13:40 GMT
where are the real world maths
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Post by Fgdfgfthgr on Jul 22, 2018 0:21:48 GMT
where are the real world maths Lots of particle accelerators, just not in weaponized form.
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Jul 22, 2018 11:25:42 GMT
Figuring out what the beam looks like on exit should be easy, but what about how it behaves afterwards (it will still bloom a bit depending on various factors) and how it dumps its energy into target? Is there any detailed math for that available in the public domain (as in "not part of classified weapon research")? Lots of particle accelerators, just not in weaponized form. Well, there was this Russian researcher that accidentally got shot through the head with a synchrotron beam.
Is, actually - the guy is apparently still alive.
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ghgh
Full Member
Still trying to make kinetics work.
Posts: 136
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Post by ghgh on Jul 22, 2018 11:42:25 GMT
Anatoli Petrovich Bugorski, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoli_Bugorski) if you see a picture of him, look at the left side of his face (the side the accelerator hit) compared to his right. There are no wrinkles on the left side. I wonder if that had something to do with it being paralyzed. Less/no use of ones face would probably reduce the amount of wrinkles you get.
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Jul 22, 2018 11:47:52 GMT
Anatoli Petrovich Bugorski, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoli_Bugorski) if you see a picture of him, look at the left side of his face (the side the accelerator hit) compared to his right. There are no wrinkles on the left side. I wonder if that had something to do with it being paralyzed. Less/no use of ones face would probably reduce the amount of wrinkles you get. I've never thought I would say this, but botox seems like a saner way to accomplish that.
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Post by matterbeam on Jul 22, 2018 13:20:58 GMT
I am currently researching this topic and will post my findings on ToughSF and here when they're ready.
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Post by The Astronomer on Jul 22, 2018 13:47:59 GMT
Seems like math is already here. Hopefully we'll see something great soon I wonder what fun things we might get. The meta being (modern, more efficient) lasers vs particle beams, with everything else out of the window, maybe?
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Post by tepidbread on Jul 23, 2018 1:07:19 GMT
Well... A really small high fire rate rail gun (sand blaster) is basically just a particle beam with lower fire rate bigger particles if you think about it...
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Post by Fgdfgfthgr on Jul 23, 2018 5:11:04 GMT
Well... A really small high fire rate rail gun (sand blaster) is basically just a particle beam with lower fire rate bigger particles if you think about it... You don't use Electrostatic field to speed up a railgun, don't you? And there is no real limitation of the material tensile strength in a Particle accelerator...
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Post by tepidbread on Jul 23, 2018 6:38:54 GMT
Well... A really small high fire rate rail gun (sand blaster) is basically just a particle beam with lower fire rate bigger particles if you think about it... You don't use Electrostatic field to speed up a railgun, don't you? And there is no real limitation of the material tensile strength in a Particle accelerator... Well obviously. My comment was tongue in cheek for the most part, but in both cases really small bits of matter are flung at extremely high speeds. It is just a matter of "how small" and "how fast."
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Jul 23, 2018 18:28:04 GMT
Well... A really small high fire rate rail gun (sand blaster) is basically just a particle beam with lower fire rate bigger particles if you think about it... You don't use Electrostatic field to speed up a railgun, don't you? And there is no real limitation of the material tensile strength in a Particle accelerator... With particle accelerators you can also no longer afford to ignore granular structure of matter. A penetration will also no longer mean module popping (even with macroscopic kinetics it's often a stretch). Plus, I expect that the limits.txt is the way it is because the math as implemented starts to egregiously break down outside of this range and it's not like near relativistic railguns that are currently buildable wouldn't hit a snag or two IRL.
In the end, however, I expect main problems to be two-fold: - CoADE currently doesn't handle radiological combat damage to crew and electronics
- AFAIK CoaDE also doesn't handle depositing the energy inside bulk materials
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Post by doctorsquared on Jul 23, 2018 23:36:04 GMT
The Large Hadron Collider currently holds the title of the world's most powerful particle accelerator and power consumption for the entire facility at peak load is ~200 MW so strapping something of similar scale to a ship is within the realm of possibility and medical-scale accelerators for proton beam therapy are somewhat widespread so the realism is there. In reality, there are a couple of 'classes' of weapons that could result from this: - Proton beams - IE, use an electrostatic field to shoot a constant stream of hydrogen atoms traveling at near-lightspeed at a target.
- Ion beams - CERN and the US Military have done extensive trials with ionized mercury and yttrium beams both for high-energy physics and defense applications.
- Neutral particle beam - IE, shoot charged particles of noble gasses (Argon, Fluorine, etc.) these are widely used for cleaning of semiconductor parts undergoing chemical vapor deposition of metals and dielectric films so they're totally plausible.
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Post by apophys on Jul 24, 2018 1:46:29 GMT
In reality, there are a couple of 'classes' of weapons that could result from this: - Proton beams - IE, use an electrostatic field to shoot a constant stream of hydrogen atoms traveling at near-lightspeed at a target.
- Ion beams - CERN and the US Military have done extensive trials with ionized mercury and yttrium beams both for high-energy physics and defense applications.
- Neutral particle beam - IE, shoot charged particles of noble gasses (Argon, Fluorine, etc.) these are widely used for cleaning of semiconductor parts undergoing chemical vapor deposition of metals and dielectric films so they're totally plausible.
Charged particle beams (protons or other ions) would suffer from extreme electrostatic self-repulsion and make your range utterly useless, unless you fire two at once, with equal and opposite charge, to get an overall neutral plasma. I suspect the added forces will still cause dispersion issues. Note also that you need to keep from giving your ship an overall charge, or else the beam you shoot will start to be attracted back to your ship, eventually strongly enough that it will not actually leave.
Neutral particle beams are the practical choice. Ions are accelerated as usual, and then neutralized in a charge exchange cell. I'd like to be shooting atoms of mercury rather than noble gases, though (for the high atomic mass). Neutral hydrogen beams are the classic example here, due to the lack of neutrons in the nucleus allowing a shorter linac to get up to speed, though dispersion is more of a problem, so range suffers. Btw, fluorine is not a noble gas.
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Post by doctorsquared on Jul 24, 2018 1:51:54 GMT
Right, its a halogen. My bad.
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