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.

Comments

Re:Strange Room Temperature

[BlueTooth]

15,000 / 50 = 300 kelvin

300 kelvin = 26.85 C = 80.33 F
[Temperature Conversion Page]

So, about 50 times room temp.

Re:Strange Room Temperature

[aug24]

Huh?

15,000 over 50 is 300.

300 Kelvin is about 26 Celcius, 80 Fahrenheit.

Does that help?

J.

Plasma jargon

[buckhead_buddy]

To keep all of the vampires and blood drive workers* from getting too anxious, the plasma this article refers to is not a component of blood (medical jargon). This other plasma (physics jargon) is matter that has been charged with so much energy it begins exhibiting characteristics of a liquid rather than a gas.

*After seeing some of the workers running our corporate guilt-a-thon, I suspect this may be redundant.

temperature vs. energy

[lingqi]

i know you are trying to be funny, but realistically, the amount of energy a high-temperature "thing" contains can be a lot less than you think.

for example, some ions trapped by the earth's magnetic field goes up to some 14 MILLION kelvins (notice it's hotter than anywhere on, around, or inside the sun). However, as there are maybe one or two such high-temperature particles per cubic centimeter, you will still freeze to death standing (erm, floating) in the middle of it.

just a pedantic monday morning, i guess. I'll stop now.

It's a BULLETIN

[devphil]

It's supposed to be short. That's the whole point of the online AIP: short summaries of articles.

Why the poster linked to it instead of to a full published article, I don't know. Perhaps a full published writeup hasn't been made yet. Perhaps the poster thought that short sound bites are all that the /. crowd has attention for.

Temperature != Heat

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Remember folks, temperature is not the same thing as heat. 15,000 Kelvin that's a few molecule's thick won't damage your finger. The thermal mass of your finger would snuff it out lickety split.

Now, the high voltage shock might give you pause before touching it again though...

Re:am i reading this wrong

[EvilTwinSkippy]

It's not really blocking "pressure" it's making it worth every molecule's while to go the other way. Think of it like a Rent-A-Cop with a velvet rope. Neither the velvet rope nor the Rent-A-Cop would stop a raging mob of 100 people walking straight into it.

But, the Rent-A-Cop and his/her rope will "kindly" deflect any stray party goers that encounter it. Since you are repelling individual particles at a time, the physics are much different.

w0000000T! I worked on this project........

[aimless]

And it IS Awesome!

I worked on the pre-cursor to the plasma valve at BNL, the Vaunted "Plasma Window" (ooooh, ahhh)

The thing really is incredible, and yes, I accepted the project because I read the description, and went..."Holy C*ap! That is just like the shuttle bay!" And it is, well...if the shuttle bay were ~4-6mm in diameter =)

And about the 15K Kelvin thing, yes plasmas do get that hot, but lets get real here, the thing is tiny...I bet the lights above your head get just as hot in the middle of their plasmas.

Anyway, the project I worked on was very robust and partially scaleable, just would require a boatload of power. It was very "loud" but not "noisy" as we could put very sensitive equipment right next to it and there would be no interference (you physics types should get this) and when you take a collimated beam of light...in one case a green laser, it will shine clear through it with next to no loss, which is a huge improvement over any other method of separating Atmosphere from Vacuum.

Mind you, this would be only the first stage in a series of differential pumping to get down to UHVacuum.

Gratz to Ady, he is one helluv a guy!

-Chris