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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.
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I love the idea, and the science around it, but the article sucks! No pics, diagrams or any actual detail on the way the thing works. I'm sick of this kind of 'it works because of herbs!' reporting; it's way too simple for any inquiring mind and because of that it's non-informative.
:)
A shame, 'cause I'd be interested in the practical implementation of this valve system. And I want pretty movies and/or pictures, of course
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
Erm. I dunno. For a lot of laypeople, a valve with no 'solid' parts fits the definition of a 'force field'.
(Note: I am embarrassed to use the following example.) Take the brig on Star Trek: TNG era vessels. There is a ring of emitters surrounding the door opening. These emitters are presumably responsible for maintaining an impenetrable field in the doorway. That 'force field' seems to be at least loosely similar (in form and stated goals) to the 'plasma valve' described--it's just larger.
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.
~Idarubicin
Blasters possibly, I really have no opinion on that, but lightsabers are still a bit off. Lightsabres are cohesive, that is, if you move the handle, the blade moves as though it were completly solid. It is unaffected by, or at least overcomes, the inertial forces that would cause it to bend (think of swinging a rubber lightsaber). It is not clear that a force field would allow this to happen. (Although it is possible) The biger problem with lightsabers, is that they are completly powered at the base of the beam, while the "force fields" span a gap between two (or more) points. We have, at this time, no way to terminate the lightsaber blade.
Little Brother, watching the watchers
Except this wall has a very small, negligable mass.
Thus, you could also make a balloon with extra lifting capasity just by vacuuming out the inside of a field. It could also fly closer to space than any other balloon, since it has a vacuume(essentially 0 density).
Or you could have containment for mass-sensitive matter (antimatter, etc.)
How about a see-through wall with zero heat transfer by contact?
How about a wall that cannot melt, because there is nothing there to melt? We may finally have something we can melt diamond/carbon in
Sometimes you have to think outside the ridgid plasma cube
- Sig
Well, even though they didn't provide pictures, I imagine that the area in which the plasma actually resides is not very big. It may not be too difficult to produce a plasma curtain to block off a 1-2 cm^2 entry point into a particle accelerator, but I wager it would be very difficult to produce the same effect uniformly over a 1 m^2 door opening. I don't know much about plasma physics, but I have a suspicion that a big honkin' 1m^2 sheet of plasma isn't going to be magically stable.
I think the Star Trek force fields are still a long, long way off, if they're even possible at all.[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
Nothing to do with exhibiting characteristics of a liquid: the defining feature of a plasma is that it's hot enough to be substantially ionized (i.e. a significant fraction of the electrons are freed from their parent atoms).