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Force Field. No, Really

Posted by jamie on from the GeV dept.

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.

4 of 434 comments (clear)

  1. Not a Star Trek Style Force Field by brunes69 · · 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.

  2. Maxwell's Demon Implemented by EvilTwinSkippy · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Did anyone else in the process of reading this think "Gee, this sounds just like Maxwell's Demon."

    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.

    --
    "Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
    --Dr.W.Edwards Deming
    1. Re:Maxwell's Demon Implemented by Smidge204 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I think the best example of this would be the Hilsch Tube.

      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=

  3. Re:Maybe 'force fields' isn't a good name. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I had found this to be an interesting read, but I would need to see it to beleive it. ...David Swenson of 3M Corporation describes an anomaly where workers encountered a strange "invisible wall" in the area under a fast-moving sheet of electrically charged polypropelene film in a factory. ...

    rest of arcticle can be found here
    http://www.amasci.com/weird/unusual/e-wall.h tml