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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.'"
This research cannot by allowed to go forward. We all know what happens when gamma rays are used in weapons!
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What country is going to be able to stop the might of a vast army of Hulks once they get this gamma-process down pat?
The only challenge is to get them to stop smashing any tank they see.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Gosh...
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.
Dr. Evil not available for comment.
However, this will soon be appearing in an online marketplace near you: http://www.villainsupply.com/superweapons.html
My basic question concerning this is two-fold, is this realy needed, and if it is created will we be able to control the techology. With world events the way they are now it seems like one of the last things that we end is a small high yeild weapon that can fall into the worng hands. At least with nuclear weapons there are some means of detecting their presence, but it seems that these weapons will not have the same signature.
birds and snakes, an aeroplane...
um...
gamma weapons blow us away?
Everybody sing: "It's the end of the world as we know it..."
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
While I don't condone weapons research, I think this is certainly interesting. If the RPGs flaunted around today were capable of Tomakawk-size destruction, i think we'd simple see skirmishes ending faster, in a "disease-burnout" kind of way. I'd hate to see this effect be used as weaponry by anyone, but if people are going to fight, the faster its over the better, in my mind. Maybe I'm mistaken?
"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
I can just picture the next headline at The Onion:
Iran Sends Weapons Inspectors to US to Search for Weapons of Mass Destruction
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.
The decay thing is a stroke of genius. If you set the half-life right, the mighty Hulks will march out, smash puny enemy army, and by the time they are about to turn around and smash puny you, they rot into a pile of goo.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I'm suprised that the potential for batteries wasn't discussed. What if this technique allowed better energy storage than we have now? What if we could store electricity when and where we produce it, and move it to where and when we want to use it? I guess what I'm asking is: when can I run my laptop off of one, and will it cause "flipper-babies?"
A weapon so small that a suicide bomber can use it to wipe out significant parts of city centres. So "we" have to have more and better of them first in case someone else develops them. How much security is going to be needed to make sure none of these interesting munitions escape into the wild? How much civil liberty will we have to give up so we can enjoy increased protection? I'm beginning to think what the world really needs is a development program for a weapon that destroys military installations and leaves people standing.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
The effect of a nuclear-isomer explosion would be to release high-energy gamma rays capable of killing any living thing in the immediate area. It would cause little fallout compared to a fission explosion, but any undetonated isomer would be dispersed as small radioactive particles, making it a somewhat "dirty" bomb. This material could cause long-term health problems for anybody who breathed it in.
I'm wondering how big a problem this "dirty bomb characteristics" issue is. How much of the isomer really doesn't detonate (and why?) Is this a 1% of the substance doesn't detonate (decay suddenly when hit with an X-ray) problem or a 50% doesn't detonate? And if the amount of the material is small enough (e.g. a gram), perhaps this falls below injurious-in-practice threshholds? I.e. how close to conventional low-yield nuclear really is it?
--LP
Riight... Like the U.S. would let anyone else even participate in a race. Any country going in that direction will first be nudged lightly with reminders of economic sanctions, and if that doesn't stop them, nudged lightly with a sledgehammer.
The race is over, the U.S. won, but they seem to go on racing on their own. (No poetry intended)I shall go and tell the indestructible man that someone plans to murder him.
Right. I'm sure the President himself told the DOD to go spend money on more nuclear weapons.
Give it a rest.
The military is (and rightfully should be) interested in weaponry that focuses on several key factors, in roughly prioritized order from most to least important:
1) Damage potential (military reasons)
2) Minimizing risk to friendly forces and the delivery systems (political reasons)
3) Accuracy and Precision (cost and political/humane reasons)
4) Cost
This new weapon is a breakthrough in the #1 department, and may be a better technology in every category except for the "accuracy" category, due to the fallout factor. If they can figure out how to maximize the energy release (analagous to how complete the combustion is in a conventional fuel-air combustion), they may be able to bring this factor down to levels that equate it with (for example) using depleted uranium ammunition and armor.
Xentax
You shouldn't verb words.
--Mike--
Maybe they weren't used in the way they were designed to be, but they were indeed used. The only thing deterring the Soviet Union was the understanding that if they went to war with the U.S., they would be utterly destroyed. I would submit that our nuclear stockpiling is the sole reason why the Soviets didn't take over the world.
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.
This is the best part of the article: "The hafnium explosive could be extremely powerful. One gram of fully charged hafnium isomer could store more energy than 50 kilograms of TNT. Miniature missiles could be made with warheads that are far more powerful than existing conventional weapons, giving massively enhanced firepower to the armed forces using them."
In fifty years, we'll be defending our right to bare hafnium tipped bullets. God Bless America.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
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.
and means of detonation, this isn't much different than neutron bombs. You could produce a small yield neutron bomb and do the same thing and be less dirty with the radioactive material.
As a military member myself, I cannot say that this weapon is "attractive" to me. As a commander, I wouldn't want to use it as a matter of course any more than I would want to use a nuke. I WOULD use a nuke or this weapon, however, in a dire emergency, which appears to be precisely what this weapon is NOT intended for. It is seen as something with general use potential...to some in DOD halls where everything is clean theory but not to me, a line guy.
As far as I am concerned, use of such a weapon would barely be a step up from use of a dirty bomb, which would rightly be seen as illegal and an act of terror. Not me, no thanks.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
If I hear one more hulk joke, I'm going to get very angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.
> Anyone still asking where you really have to search if you want to find WMD? Small hint: not in the middle east...
Current theory is that Saddam's dog ate them.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
It's not that W told them to do it, it's that there's a war-mongering maniac (toned up for slashdot) in office and a new toy's just been discovered. Anyone I personally would have voted for would make sure that either A: this disappears or B: nobody ever uses it -- because arms races lead to arms surplusses and that is the stuff that gets sold to terrorists. But then again, if someone I had voted for were in office, the defense budget would have gotten slashed in favor of better education/health care.
Doubt it. From what it reads like, it seems like you need to put just as much of energy in as what you get out. The only difference is that the amount of rate of energy release is an incredible amount [ie explosion]. It's like when you overfill a balloon and it explodes.
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
Anyone still asking where you really have to search if you want to find WMD? Small hint: not in the middle east...
Israel probably has some.
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.
Who cares how big the blast is? If you drop 100 small bombs or one big bomb, you're still dropping bombs. You should always be concerned when bombs are falling on people (even if you think its the right thing to do), and not care if the explosion is produced with a chemical or nuclear release of energy.
Yes the US, NATO countries and the former soviet republics have WMD's, but they have never invaded a neighbor for oil and port access or turned said wmd's against rebellions in their own country. Trying to equate the barbaric Huissein regime with any civilized society is an affront to humanity and submission to his vileness. As much as I hated the USSR and its socialist brethern, at least they knew better than to use such things, as opposed to fanatical islamists who seek to destroy all of Judeo-Christian society who should be their brethren if they followed their prophet.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
Neither country has the means, technological or financial, to cause us much harm. Nor, in my opinion, do they have the desire to do so.
Neither did Germany in 1920.
Why not combine this gamma producing technogy with the nuclear reactor waste processing technology (which conveniently requires gamma rays) and everyone can be happy? http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns999 94056> waste processing
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 &
Read the story here
Excerpts from the story:
"For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and Long Words Bother Me"
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.
Unfortunately, the weakness in our system of checks and balances is that it assumes that the civilian leadership is capable of performing its oversight role. One of the duties of every president is to filter out the most dangerous proposals from the various warmongers under his command. I don't see too much of that happening lately.
"The effect of a nuclear-isomer explosion would be to release high-energy gamma rays capable of killing any living thing in the immediate area." They call this an explosion, and they use tons of TNT as the benchmark. Is it really an explosion? The primary killing force in this device seems to be gamma radiation. I believe when they say "energy" in this article, they mean gamma radiation, and not explosive force, but I can't confirm it.
If 1g hafnium > 50 kg TNT, wouldn't this make an excellent fuel for a spacecraft's propulsion system? How does the energy density stack up against conventional/current experimental rocket systems? As I understand it one of the difficulties in sending a probe to Pluto is not getting there, but carrying sufficient fuel to be able to slow and enter orbit once it arrives.
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
When the Army introduced the successor of the daisy cutter you often heard that it's "as powerful as a small nuclear weapon", well this conventional bomb - the largest you'll find by far - has an explosive power of perhaps 50tons (it weighs thirty and I'm assuming they use something more effective than TNT). 100 of these bombs have an explosive power of 5kt, half of the Hiroshima bomb and at the lower end of what you'd expect in a nuclear artillery shell.
1 *big* bomb would have something in the range of dozens of megatons upwards and would be 1000times more devastating than 100 of the biggest conventional bomb and I'm not even talking about nuclear fallout. An average conventional bomb is 1'000'000 times weaker than an average nuclear weapon and that's why keeping the distinction between nuclear and non-nuclear clear is so important.
That's also the reason I don't like all that WMD talk because chemical and biological weapons are nowhere near the destructive power of nuclear weapons and treating them as the same thing is quite dangerous and utterly idiotic from a danger-analysis point of view which is why you bombed the hell out of Saddam and try sweet-talking (or what W takes for it) Kim
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
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.
Could this be used for the next rocket fuel? Controlled explosion of high density hafnium-178m2. The research doesn't necessarily have to create the next bomb. Could this be the way we reach Mars?
Now I hope and pray that I will But today I am still, just a bill
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.
" But then again, if someone I had voted for were in office, the defense budget would have gotten slashed in favor of better education/health care."
I shared your PoV before 9-11.
Wars end lots faster than they used to; it used to take 6-12 months *minimum* to raise an army of 50,000 men that consisted primarily of poorly equipped hand-to-hand infantry. But once the hacking and slashing finished a year or so later, everybody was done for good long while.
Now it seems that we (at least the US) can put an armored force of 200,000 anywhere it wants within a couple of months and win the war in 90 days..but the low-grade fighting just doesn't stop. The Israelis took the west bank in '67 (or was it '73? I forget), but have been essentially fighting the Palestinians for control since.
It's the same way everywhere; we don't fight wars for a few years anymore; we fight them in 2-3 months and then switch to low-grade guerilla tactics for the next year.
I'll bite.
Karma burn in process. I have some to spare. Bite me.
Absolutly correct. We should have turned our backs on nuclear technology and hoped nobody would build any. After all, if we can keep it secret it won't ever be discovered.
To bring it down to your level, do you like security through obscurity (Microsoft) or letting everyone know what is going on (Linux).
If you let the cat out of the bag people know that it is possible AND that you are going to be the first one on the block to have it. If you keep it secret or bury it someone else will just come along and develop it in secret.
Karma Burn ends.
This is a simple case of them strategically releasing information at a time when it will better them. E.G. The SR-71 Blackbird and the F-177A Stealth Fighter were created MANY years before the news knew about them. We saw them have a starring role in Desert Storm Part I. The question that went through my head was "If they had that 10 years ago, what do they have NOW?"
Move along as this isn't news. It is a strategic news release.
"Giving money and power to governments is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." - P.J. O'Rourke
My conspiracy theory is that Lawrence Livermore or Area 51 or some such government run hush hush spot may have a weapon based on this on the drawing board, or even in development. When the dudes published the idea in 2000, Lawrence livermore published fake negative results to keep the other countries of the world from working on the idea, and then secretly have been working on it ever since. Now that mini-nukes are back in style since 9/11, they can even say they're working on it in public and don't have to hide their research.
Eat at Joe's.
During routine maintenance, a filter was removed from part of the plant and not replaced. The shift changed, the missing filter was not noticed and evaporators which dried anthrax into spores were switched on.
A cloud of anthrax was blown across the city, dozens of people died. The Soviet government panicked (it should not have been manufacturing anthrax in the first place) and first of all denied that there had been an anthrax outbreak. When that proved untenable - even the tame Soviet press was asking questions, they said there had been an outbreak but it was caught from infected meat (not entirely impossible).
IIRC, the truth only came out when the Soviet Union had imploded and Yeltsin confirmed the cause.
Best wishes,
Mike.
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?
It appears there is still some controversy about those results:
controversy
Controversy is usually a good thing in science. It often means that there is an effect we don't entirely understand. In other words: There is a cool new effect, we don't entirely understand!!!
Judging from the difference in results coming from sources of differing bandwidth, it would appear that is an important factor. Which makes sense since this is essentially a resonance process.
It's not a conspiracy, it's just not advertised. FYI the anthrax that was getting mailed to democrats and liberals (did no one in the mainstream media make this connection?) previously was made in a military facility located in Utah.
We have large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.
Here is a non-classified breakdown by type and storage location in the US
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/cbw/cw.htm
The Bush administration has restarted our NBC weapons program, and if they are allowed to continue on this path, they WILL use them.
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." George HW Bush
Yes, they do."
"Israel Known to have nuclear weapons capability, but has never declared it or tested. It has an estimated arsenal of 100 warheads and a missile range of 940 miles."
They've had 'em for a long time, since the late 70s IIRC.
realityshunt
Democracy is susceptible to being led astray by having scapegoats paraded in front of the electorate.
The slogal "war for oil!" was made up by extremists to appeal to simpletons and for them to put on the signs that they wave.
True. Because "No Blood for Extension of American Neo-Colonial Hegemony!" was both difficult to chant and explain. Handing out annotated copies of 1984 was also prohibitive.
However, once you aim even a whiff of intellectual penetration at it, the "it is a war for oil" claims vanish in a puff of illogic.
Of course. It is just the simplest explanation once you've eliminated the also baseless "Iraq is an immediate threat" claim. Obviously the reasons for the war were much larger than just some silly oil fields. The portions of the adminstration with brains think much bigger and longer term than that. Though it may seem as though Cheney's energy plan was designed under the assumption that we'd have access to all that friendly Iraqi oil, and it could be argued this suggests oil was the motivation for war, I just figure that the decision to go to war with Iraq had already been made, and he was just making plans based on that knowledge. Call it a happy side effect, which I'm sure is what everyone with crude-oil-colored dollar signs in their eyes is calling it. Which just happens to be a bunch of the adminstration's friends, but I'm serious, that's really just a happy coincidence.
The enemies of Democracy are
Well, it shouldn't matter anyway; these weapons aren't true grasers, though the principle is oddly symmetric.
A graser, like any "?aser" device works by stimulating energized electrons to transition to a lower shell immediately (instead of at a random time) by smacking another photon into it, causing the atom emit a photon (always of a certain frequency) in the same direction that the original photon was moving. The gamma decay device works by stimulating the nucleus is a very similar way with X-rays until it raises the chances that the nucleus will randomly decay.
It's kind of like a graser, but with the nucleus instead of the electron shells. That and once an atom has served its purpose once, it's no longer useable for the same trick thanks to having decayed. Though it technically fits each letter in the acronym GRASER, the gamma decay weapon deserves another name entirely.
My inner evil marketroid recommends Gradec.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
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 article says they're planning to make this isomer in gram quantities by shooting gamma rays into a sample of ground-state 178Hf, which is the reverse of the decay process. The problem is that the cross-section is going to be very low, for exactly the same reason: it's hard to get a photon to carry many units of angular momentum into or out of a nucleus. People have discussed making small (microgram) quantities of it for use as a high-spin target in reactor experiments, but nobody could figure out any reasonable way to do it.
You also have to realize that although the half-life of 31 years is long compared to most isomeric states, it's still relatively short compared to, say, 235U, which lives for gazillions of years. The relatively short half-life means that even if you could get a gram of this stuff, it'd be virtually impossible to handle safely. It would be much more radioactive than a subcritical mass of weapons-grade fissionables.
There's a long history of impractical ideas like this, going back to the Reagan-era idea of a gamma-ray laser. Luckily we're still only faced with the same basic bomb threats that've been around since the Kennedy administration, but that's bad enough. The real thing to worry about, IMO, is the nuclear cauldron that's shaping up in Asia: Iran, Afghanistan, India, and North Korea.
OT: Are other people finding Slashdot extremely slow and unresonsive recently? I can hardle even access it anymore.
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242-Americum has a metastable isomer with 141 years halflife, and there are probably more nuclei with a long-lived isomer.
Also, from what i can find out aboutt this weapon, it is not required to achieve population-inversion, which is different from LASERS and MASERS. Radiation is stimulated by photons diffrent in wavelength than the output wavelength.
I this case, a weapon would loose half of its effect in 31 years, but would probably not become totally ineffective due decaying below a certain 'critical point' (50% in true *ASERS).
With those factors combined, I'm not so sure a its impossible to create a durable weapon with this technology.
Actually, not quite. While good figures for Chem/Bio are a bit harder to find, at least where it comes to Nukes the Russians are well ahead of the US, at least according to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. We've built more in total, but dismantled many as they became obselete.
Why?
The U.S. is bound by international treaty not to use Chemical or Biological weapons, ever, under any circumstances.
Yeah, and the U.S. is known for following international law.
We are the music makers. We are the dreamers of the dreams.
Dont forget about the mine gap. -Dr. Strangelove allusion.
The article claims that the AF supplier, SRS Technologies, said that technology to provide the materials needed in "gram quantities" would be about five years away (he say they "would exist within five years").
;).
Certainly, for a project such as this, it is completely unbelievable that one of the key entities in the weapon development would give anyone and everyone a remotely precise estimate as to when larger scale production (and real weapon production) could possibly begin.
The true timeline must be years away from that. In one of the two directions possible... Which poses an interesting question: are real weapons based on this technology available today already, and did they agree to participate in the story simply to "prepare" the general public for real-world testing which will happen in the following year or two? Or do they know that others are working on this technology as well, and therefore need to tell their nation that "they're right on it", when some other country launches their tests within the next year or two?
That's speculation. Time will show.
What will be interesting to see, too, is how the real testing will commence. Currently they are working on three possibly viable materials. Most likely they will have different characteristics, and their exact effects in a real-world scenario will be impossible to simulate.
In 1945, there were two materials available for fission weapons - uranium and plutonium. One bomb was made with each, and the two bombs were dropped on each their civilian target. Hiroshima got Uranium, Nagasaki got Plutonium.
Which three cities will this new weapon be tested on? And to raise the bar, which city will get Hafnium, which one will get Thorium, and which one will get Niobium?
Oh, and don't tell me war has gone soft and that the weapon would not be tested on civilian targets this time... A gamma discharge weapon has many of the properties of a neutron weapon - it is extremely useful mostly against people (and electronics - it will kill you *and* your Aibo, oh the wonders of modern civilization
On a second note... Did anyone notice how there is no longer anything called a "neutron bomb"? It is, today, called a "low yield" bomb. In the media at least. Because it's blast and heat isn't as great as "real" fusion weapons. Neutron weapons are now almost politically correct - at least, the public wouldn't raise an eye if they were told a low-yield bomb was dropped to stop riots in some third-world city.
Now, to go find lead coating for my tinfoil hat.
While we're on that subject (Since I'm gonna get modded down now anyway) did anyone read between the lines with the recent Liberia situation? I could just see Bush talking about how we were considering sending troops (Translation: "I asked for an oil report on the country, and if it looks good I might do my good friends at Hallow-Burton a favor.") Then it got bad and he couldn't wiggle out of sending a couple of marines over. Did anyone else read it that way? That's sure how it looked to me.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Troll?!
What good is education and health care if extremists can come in and unravel it all?
"Derp de derp."
"What good is living if we are doomed to die? What good is saving money if we bill collectors and the taxman is going to take it? What good is marriage if your spouse can leave you?"
In each of those cases, one takes precautionary steps. You inadvertantly helped NG make his point.
Blaming defense spending on the deficit is a funny thing to think about. Money spent on defense doesn't vanish. A lot of it goes to employing soldiers. This puts the money back into our system, and also trains and disciplines a lot of young men who might otherwise be getting into trouble. Much of the money goes to contractors, miners, etc, keeping more peopel in work. Yet more goes to research that hires higly educated people. Your statement that the money should be spent on education is kind of funny, because if this money were taken from defense to education, there would be a lot of educated people with no jobs. Even if you think defense spending is a complete waste, if all the people funded by defense lost their jobs, that money would be going into welfare, which is an investment with NO returns, comparatively.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
"When nuclear weapons were being developed, it was to create something that would make future warfare impossible (same with the machine gun)"
Wrong on both counts. The goal of both weapons was to make warfare easier, quicker, and less bloody. Dr. Gatling's concern was the number of men needed in formation to achieve X rate of fire, and his reasoning was that reducing that number of men while achieving the same rate of fire would reduce the need for men to even be there to begin with. As for nuclear weapons, peruse the internet a little and take a look at what Eisenhower's philosophy was on them (nutshell: use them early and often to reduce the need to send in actual soldiers).
"but we know how that turned out."
It's a little to soon to say how nukes have turned out, but in many ways Dr. Gatling was successful. Automatic and semi-automatic weapons have lowered the number of men needed to take and hold an objective, which works to lessen collateral damage. For all the carnage that happened in places like Stalingrad and Berlin during the Second World War, think about how much worse it would have been if all the troops had to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in formation.
"Meanwhile, this thing seems to be purely for killing:"
However, nuclear weapons (and this new concept) are different from the other two classifications of WMD in that they actually have valid military uses. Chemical and biological weapons are all but useless against a moderately prepared force, and their only real use is against civillian populations. However, there are times when you really need a powerful explosive to take out a military target (such as underground bunkers). Yes, it's meant to kill people, but it's only intended to kill certain people in certain places, not "everybody in the downtown area." The fallout is a side-effect that even the DOD wants to eliminate because it hampers the weapon's usefullness in a tactical situation (it's better to take and hold an objective than to deny its use to everybody).
"Why am I paying for the development of a whole new type of weapon when I can't afford school because of the resession?"
DOD = federal
education = state
"and massive defense spending is what caused this deficit mess we're in now..."
FY 2001
Medicaid: 7%
Medicare: 12%
Defense: 16%
Social Security: 23%
Source
Personally, I think you're barking up the wrong tree.
It seems perhaps you are hung up on the term decay. Nuclear decay can be several things. Alpha decay, beta decay, gamma decay, fission decay. Chemical reactions also decay at a set rate. Many are just much higher order than the first order nuclear reactions. Pick up a chemical kinetics textbook sometime and read it. :)
Project Steve
Beyond the obvious Hulk jokes, did anyone follow the link in the articles? This story describes how this technology is slated to be used in powering UAVs that could stay aloft over a combat zone for months at a time. IMHO, channelling and controlling the energy in a useful way such as this is much cooler than being able to build a straight energy-release bomb.
I just started thinking about this
/. mode I guess I'll post it anyway
<Mode = "Hypothetical situation">
Let's say you have a country with lots and lots of nearly identical desert and you're descretely making let's say 1 medium sized WMD/BCW a week.
Now, I would have them cart the thing out to some not-previously-determined spot in the desert and descretely bury it, and take a GPS reading of the spot.
So people don't find the GPS co-ordinates just written down somewhere, I'd make a deposit in an off-shore numbered account related to the Co-ords and let it earn intrest at a fixxed rate so it would be easy to calculate the original value.
Then again that's only how I'd do it... not that I've tried it... yet... ummm...
</mode>
I've just realized this is completely off topic, but since my brain has shut back down to
--- As to make my comment seem, by comparison, more intelegent... doodie doodie doodie poop poop poop!
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"