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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.
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.
I can just picture the next headline at The Onion:
Iran Sends Weapons Inspectors to US to Search for Weapons of Mass Destruction
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
"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.
The "Davy Crockett" is more accurately described as a portable recoilless rifle launched nuke. It's about the same size as a more modern TOW setup, can go on a tripod. It probably took 4 or 5 guys to carry all the stuff on foot, so it's not really a bazooka (an anti-tank weapon).
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It had a "dial a yield" warhead from 10 to 250(1) Tons of TNT. The higher settings would cause almost certain death to the launch crew as the lethal radiation kill zone was much farther than the maximum range of even the biggest launcher (2 miles or so).
One of the new thingies or an old Davy Crockett might be a good device to wipe out a bunch of tanks out in a desert, but it's still a friggin huge weapon compared to the precision stuff used nowdays. (I doubt any army will be dumb enough to go head-to-head against the US Army in desert tank battle for a looonngg time. Even the Iraqis didn't try it a second time.)
Here's some links with pictures:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nucl
http://www.guntruck.com/DavyCrockett.html
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.
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 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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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.
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.
"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.
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.