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Stimulated Gamma Decay Weapons
ExRex writes "New Scientist is reporting on a USDOD project to produce super explosives. 'An exotic kind of nuclear explosive being developed by the US Department of Defense could blur the critical distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons. The work has also raised fears that weapons based on this technology could trigger the next arms race.'"
That'll be a hard name to pull by the committees. GASERS or Gamma ray Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation (I may have those last two wrong).
So we're building gamma-ray shooting guns... Like lasers, but higher energy, and thus, with more chances of cell mutation & general badness. I'll call 'em nuclear weapons for now, and maybe later, only inhumane.
I assert that my comment is only my opinion, not that of any employer, past, present or future.
could blur the critical distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons
Because you know, it's not how many people died, it's the weapons used!
Gosh.
I'm not the devil.. just his advocate.
I repeat: Oh shit.
Why did this have to be invented with W in office? He's the first post cold-war president to actually be interested in nuclear weapons development.
"Such extraordinary energy density has the potential to revolutionise all aspects of warfare."
This interesting technology could potentially lead to some better new-age energy sources. I'm not sure why we always focus on warfare, when there are other ways to use the explosive power of new military technology.
New warfare technology has ALWAYS triggered a new "arms race", starting with the first human being who ever beat another to death with a rock.
Imagine their terror when the first knives, attlatls, and later bows & arrows started to be used in combat?
This is simply the latest iteration of an age-old phenomenon.
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
'One gram of fully charged hafnium isomer could store more energy than 50 kilograms of TNT.'
That's just scary. Way scary.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
It really scares me that when a new way to release massive amounts of energy is discovered, it's first implementation is to end human lives.
If you blur the line, noone will cry if you use a bomb "just a little larger". you can always say its a very deep bunker or a big stockpile of WMD ect.
Btw:
Anyone still asking where you really have to search if you want to find WMD? Small hint: not in the middle east...
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
An arms race? With who?
What is this country so fucking afraid of?
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
but if people are going to fight, the faster its over the better, in my mind. Maybe I'm mistaken?
I think that if you have super fast battles (read: anti tank missles against a house, or carpet bombing) people end up forgetting that there are real people on the other side. The slower it is (and the more they see), the more people remember that war is dumb. Things are only getting faster, unfourtunately.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
"What is this country so fucking afraid of?"
Losing to the likes of Red China, which is still imperialist, or a re-started Soviet Empire (which is just one bad election in Moscow away).
This sounds great, could be a great source of energy for space exploration without worrying about radioactivity/fallout problems of using nuclear power for propultion.
This technology also sounds like it could be the breakthrough for electrical storage, think laptops and electric vehicles! It could kill the whole 'hydrogen economy' stuff that was a bad idea to begin with.
-- Greg
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
Of course it isn't a good idea. Inventing new ways to kill others (and therefore to be killed, yourself) has always been a human fallacy. Scientists always do such research and make such discoveries strictly in the name of science. Those guys in Texas (who observed this effect) were likely not trying to pioneer new warfare (they were working towards super-batteries), but the militant and the paranoid ones immediately took over.
The thing that needs to happen (in order for the human race to become truly enlightened) is for science to exist apart from military and warfare. If we can use science to better our lives, and solve our disputes like the animals do (butting heads, or with tooth and nail) then I think we'd get along better. Oh, and get rid of all the lawyers, too. But that's obviously an over-idealized world.
It is true, and frightening, that such a discovery (and the very limited distribution of the technology) could put pressure on less-developed countries to get nuclear weapons (and other lethal alternatives) as a threat against our Gamma weapons. We wouldn't want every country without Gamma weapons to turn into an Iraq, now would we?
Well, at least we've now got the robot Air Force.
the inventor of the Gatling gun had similar ideas. He thought that if he could create a weapon that was so devastating to use, nobody would want to go to war anymore. We all know where that led.
"For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and Long Words Bother Me"
Unmanned Air Vehicles: I'm an aerospace engineer and UAV's are the next big thing. I shudder to think of swarms of semi-autonomous 6 inch UAV's buzzing along carrying a couple of grams of this stuff.
nohup rm -rf ~/. >& zen &
How long could one of these weapons stay viable?
They said that the Halfnium component has a 31 year half life. I bet the weapon becomes non-viable long before that.
In one sense that is good. Proliferation of this weapon might not be as much of a long term threat. When the support infrastructure is removed, the weapon might decay rapidly enough to mitigate proliferation issues when compared to Plutonium and Uranium.
Yes the US, NATO countries and the former soviet republics have WMD's, but they have never invaded a neighbor for oil
*cough*
Watch any news lately?
*cough* USA invades Iraq TWICE in 12 years *cough*
No, we'd never do so for oil. No, never!
[/sarcasm]
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Don't worry, they're both already run by criminals...
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
"The Department of Defense notes that there are serious technical issues to be overcome and that useful applications may be decades away."
Damnit, and here I thought we might be able to retire weapons like these in a few "decades."
Apple free since 1990!
Let me introduce you to the 20th century. Terrorists have these things called "cars" which are strong enough to carry lead cannisters.
The more aggressive U.S. posture has little to do with the guy in the White House. It is a result of 9/11. Democrat or Republican, after an event like 9/11, the war will be taken to the enemy, and their support infrastructure, and fought on someone else's territory.
When those gamma rays strike something, they'll heat it up. If you put that much energy into something that fast, it blows up. The explosion looks and acts almost the same whether the energy source is chemical, nuclear, or gravitational. The instantaneous release of 4 gigajoules of energy in any form looks a lot like a 1-ton TNT explosion.
The experiment released 60 times as much energy as was put in, and in theory a much greater energy release could be achieved.
Is this counting the energy put into "loading" the isotope? Whith the kind of energy they are talking about, this could be huge for us. Think "Nuclear Fusion" without the Nuclear part!! cleaner power, and no hippy anti-nuke types protesting.. I'm trying to remember my old science classes here, aren't the "Gama" radiation bits realitively easy to block?.. A room with lead walls, a bit of this chemical, and X-ray generator, and a large vat of water to make steam... How many years have we spent trying to get Nuclear Fusion to produce more power than went in to making the reaction?! and this is 60 times the engery with a few x-rays!! Why does science always have to deal with weapons first? can't we just pretend that our planet as a whole is growing up and thinking about peace?
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
And the developers of chemical weapons, and biological weapons, and the bomber, and the battleship, and nuclear weapons...
I'm beginning to suspect they might all have been wrong.
Best wishes,
Mike.
You forget the key lynchpin to tie the WMD lie to swift action: Iraqi ties to Al Queda and, by extension, that Saddam would give WMD of whatever type to his "buds" in Al Queda. He did a double lie: imminent threat from use and dispersion of massive amounts of WMD including nukes (that mushroom cloud fear-raker statement) and ties to the much-hated Al Queda.
We Americans wanted payback, we wanted the bastards that did 9/11 and Bush flat-out LIED to make people believe that Saddam and the 9/11 perps were in bed together so attacking the former was tantamount to a continued attack on the latter. LIE! Not a mistake. Not a simple difference in how one interprets intel - there was NO valid intel to support either lie. There was no valid intel justifying the claim of an "imminent threat".
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Feh! Home Despot employs mostly part-time henchmen and won't accept government contracts (and don't let anyone tell you otherwise). Plus, their web site is little more than a home page with links to blank pages, and worst of all, they don't have a favicon.ico! How can you take a site seriously without a favicon?
But seriously, folks... I did *not* expect villainsupply.com to be a real link! Too cool... in an evil sort of way, that is. Wonder if Amazon.com knows about their "Evil Amazon.com" link?
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
The ones that don't trip over their rifles and kill themselves (there are some) end up better-off for the experience, sure. They come back with the will and discipline to, I don't know, manage a Taco Bell or something. I guess that's better than having them spend four years committing crimes back in the states. That I really don't care about.
Meanwhile, though, anyone who's smart enough *not* to join the imperial guard gets put into 'weapons design'. That's what pisses me off. We have more advanced weaponry than anyone on the face of the earth, yet not enough manufacturing capacity or energy reserves to last more than a couple of years, and all of our research capacity goes towards designing new weapons. We leave the energy production to the Middle East and the manufacturing to the Far East and resign ourselves to being the world's policemen. News flash: real wars aren't won without steel and oil.
If the US were cut off from the rest of the world economically, we would all just stand around with our 'rail guns' in our hands wondering what to do with them. That's not a good thing. That means that, like it or not, we sit atop an 'empire' that keeps us dependent upon the fruits of the entire world's labor and resources. In the coming decades, we will be forced to maintain that empire at all costs or give up the lifestyle that it provides and to which we have become accustomed.
Maybe a few hundred thousand dollars gets thrown into subsidies for solar panels or research into some new windmill technology that would be absolutely *crushed* by cheap oil prices if it ever made it to market. Meanwhile, billions of dollars goes into design of weapons that we couldn't even use without the oil provided by those we point them at.
I mean, what does the US produce other than power, or at least the perception of it? Of course, that's the reason terrorism is such a threat. That's why bin Laden spends all his time calling the US a 'paper tiger' and goading Arab leaders into fighting with the US instead of cooperating with it. He's betting that we're simultaneously stupid enough to try to fight the entire world and too lazy to give up our position as the recipients of the world's productive capacity.
Seriously, let's say you could give a damn about the environment or who we have to bribe, threaten, or kill to get cheap gas prices and want nothing more than to drive your SUV and buy cheap electronics and fill your house with little plastic trinkets 'till you die. Terrorism should make you wet yourself. History has shown that armies do not defeat terrorists. Even if we bugged the entire planet and tracked people 24/7, the cost would be much more than a simple, sane policy of self-sufficiency.
If we really set out to do so, we could have the entire country automated and isolated in sight of a decade. I'm talking robots mowing yards and growing crops and stamping out cheaply-made crap powered by sustainable, renewable energy and everyone sitting around on sofas surfing for porn eating soy-burgers (it's all going to be soy pretty soon anyways). That's really the goal we should be setting for ourselves; not "to be the world's target for terrorism".
After that's done, maybe we can go about trying to clean up the rest of the world. That would be a noble way to spend our time if we didn't have alterior motives for controlling every politico from here to Bangkok. Besides, everybody knows that the whole 'information economy' thing is a load of shit. Any self-respecting towel-head isn't going to pay for a legitimate copy of The Matrix or Windows Me anyways. We need to give up the whole "look at us, we're productive" myth and stop playing GI-Joe long enough to accept the facts and get to fixing things.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"