The Controversy of a Potential Hafnium Bomb

deglr6328 writes "Physics Today has a report detailing the surprisingly heated controversy surrounding the usually sober science of nuclear isomers (the Washington Post has run a less scientifically rigorous version). Since the 70's it has been known that the specific "m2" isomer of Hafnium-178 has an extraordinarily long half life of 31 years (nuclear isomers usually have half-lives on orders of pico or nanoseconds) and on decaying, emits high energy gamma rays at ~2.5 Mev. The prospect of energy storage and rapid release in Hf-178 for the puropse of creating large energy stores, bombs and even exotic gamma ray lasers did not escape the interest of Reagan era Star Wars researchers and was seriously studied for a time during SDI's heyday, but was eventually abandoned after being considered unfeasible. Then, in 1999, Carl Collins at the Univ. of Texas Center for Quantum Electronics reported inducing energy release from Hf-178 by bombarding a sample with X-rays (from a dental machine no less). Immediately, comments about the article were submitted, pointing out inconsistencies with basic nuclear theory and the controversy has only grown since then, with claims and counter-claims of flawed experimental design, incompetence and irrational theories in feuds reminiscent of the cold fusion debacle of the late 80's. It's seeming more unlikely as the arguments drag on, but if a Hafnium bomb could be built, it is thought that a golf ball sized chunk could produce the energy equivalent of 10 tons of conventional explosives."

Comments

Power, Science and Death

[mfh]

> a golf ball sized chunk could produce the energy equivalent of 10 tons of conventional explosives

What if journalists and scientists agree to only discuss the *positive* uses of scientific invention? That way, some uneducated terrorists from The Great Wherever won't get new ideas using Google keyword searches like "explosives", "bombs", "nukes". You know the phrase, When in Rome; I think it could apply to science! If we just conceal the potentials for violence, we may avoid these practices somewhat. But much of the scientific community has a love affair with death, it seems. Why? The death-dealing potential of any scientific invention is proportionately equivalent to the fundraising influence of said project; yet science should be a noble pursuit, IMHO, not a monetary one. Sadly, the two (money and science) are inseparable with the high cost of equipment, facilities and so forth, compounded by the need for science by the powerful, as a method of retaining power and building power. One day, it's going to be a lot simpler.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[DrEldarion]

If the terrorists have the resources and contacts available to get materials make a nuclear weapon, chances are that they aren't going to be getting ideas from the newspaper.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Caractacus Potts]

Haven't you heard? Information wants to be free.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Simonetta]

What if journalists and scientists agree to only discuss the *positive* uses of scientific invention? That way, some uneducated terrorists from The Great Wherever won't get new ideas using Google keyword searches like "explosives", "bombs", "nukes".

This makes sense until you have that "eureka" epiphany moment when you realise that the quiet geeky white men in their labs who squander billions of public funds to come up new and exotic ways to kill people in the name of patriotism are the 'uneducated terrorists'. None of this shit would exist if they didn't make such a focused effort to invent it.

They may be educated to the max in science and technology, but they have always been, are now, and will continue to be illiterate retards in ethics, morality, and basic human decency.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[xyloplax]

After 9/11 I thought to myself "Hmm, now we know they don't have nukes"

Re:Power, Science and Death

[rokzy]

>They may be educated to the max in science and technology, but they have always been, are now, and will continue to be illiterate retards in ethics, morality, and basic human decency.

let me guess, you have a degree in humanities?

don't take it out on scientists just because you wasted the best years of your life.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[borgdows]

they don't even NEED nukes! ;)

Re:Power, Science and Death

[rspress]

If the terrorist are ever going to use a nuke they are going to have to buy it.

While building an atomic bomb is not that hard, there are parts that would take quite a bit of work to perfect. Such as making sure the shockwave reached the core from the explosive charges at the same time. If you are off by a nanosecond from any of the charges....no joy.

Making an H bomb is even harder. Unless they purchase one the only nuke they will likely ever use is a dirty bomb.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Don't overestimate the difficulty of building a working nuclear device. Remember: a small group of what were basically graduate students were able to build a city-buster bomb in the middle of a desert with access to only 1940's-era technology, and not really that much of it.

Go check out the satellite pictures of Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan pre-November, 2001, and notice how similar they look, from a distance, to Los Alamos circa late 1944.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Anonymous Coward]

What if journalists and scientists agree to only discuss the *positive* uses of scientific invention?

Holy fuck. It's obvious. We'll get both of them to sit down and have a gentleman's agreement over tea!

Jesus! We've been going at this all wrong! Maybe we can get the Israelis and Palestinians to sit down and agree to only say nice things about each other, too! Surely if Sharon and Arafat can sit down in the same room and not blow each other's heads off, they all can agree to get along! We'll surely turn things around there yet!

Would you like a cookie, too?

As for you...

This makes sense until you have that "eureka" epiphany moment when you realise that the quiet geeky white men in their labs who squander billions of public funds to come up new and exotic ways to kill people in the name of patriotism are the 'uneducated terrorists'. None of this shit would exist if they didn't make such a focused effort to invent it.

I call bullshit. The science and engineering of weapons development isn't something that's reserved for discovery by your gov't bankrolled, morally corrupt, mad scientists. If "they" don't do it, someone else will.

Wouldn't the world be a different place if the Soviet Union had dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan, rather than the US....

What, too old school for you? Well, you might have heard about the, you know, planes that were crashed into the WTC. Some pretty fucking basic weapons development there!

That you hold the feet of the discoverers of principles to the same fire as the fucktards that decided to play cruise missile with passenger planes is what's retarded. Christ. The myopia astounds me.

TFOAE

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Anonymous Coward]

a small group of what were basically graduate students

Um, yeah, graduate students named Teller, Fermi, and Feynman.

were able to build a city-buster bomb in the middle of a desert with access to only 1940's-era technology, and not really that much of it.

The Manhattan Project pushed the technical state of the art harder than it had ever been pushed before. You, sir, are on sherm.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[tigersha]

The difficulty of building a nuclear bomb lies in making it small. It is true what you say about grad studdents building one in a desert in the 1940's, BUT

a) most of the effort (by faaar most of it) went into enriching Uranium and making Plutonium. The effort expended to do that involved the largest industrial project in the world at the time. I once heard that a large part of the silver in the Fort Knox was melted to make electromagnetic coils for the enrichment process.

Of course, that effort has been expended and the world is now full of Plutonium and they could buy some. Interetingly, btw, one country nobody moans about who certainly has more than enough Plutonium on hand to build lots of nuclear devices is Japan. They certainly have the expertise too.

b) The two bombs were pretty large. Ok, you could park one on a container ship and float it into New York Harbour or detonate it in San Franciso Bay or in the Thames estuary but nobody is going to carry one of those 1940's devices around just like that.

Anyways, the difficulty does not lie in building the device, the difficulty lies in making an actualy deployable weapon.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[jaoswald]

The difference is that these "graduate students" (about 20 of whom won Nobel prizes), were trained in the latest developments in atomic and nuclear physics at the time, and had the technical training to use and adapt that knowledge.

Al Qaeda, by contrast, puts its highest emphasis on knoweldge of the Koran, and secondarily on guerrilla training and weapons with minimal technical sophistication. Yes, they have desire, but they have the wrong mindset and training to have any success in such an engineering endeavor.

The only likely way for Al Qaeda to get nuclear weapons is to persuade their allies in the Pakistani intelligence organization or Iran to arrange for a bomb to be "misplaced" on its way to North Korea or some such.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[kcelery]

They don't even need machine guns.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[misleb]

What?? Uneducated terrorists don't build nuclear bombs, Period. If they get them, they buy them. And I doubt they get their ideas from Google.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[dcsmith]

That way, some uneducated terrorists from The Great Wherever won't get new ideas using Google keyword searches like "explosives", "bombs", "nukes".

Security through obscurity?

Re:Power, Science and Death

[STrinity]

Go check out the satellite pictures of Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan pre-November, 2001, and notice how similar they look, from a distance, to Los Alamos circa late 1944.

Okay, but where are the camps similar to Oak Ridge and Chicago?

Remember, the Manhattan Project consisted of a lot more than assembling a bomb -- they needed to create the fissionable material from scratch. The odds of al Qaeda being able to build and maintain a reactor is pretty slim; and if they obtain the fissionable material from a third party, they could probably get a complete bomb from the same source.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[toiletmonster]

heh. hear hear.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Smidge204]

Remember: a small group of what were basically graduate students were able to build a city-buster bomb in the middle of a desert with access to only 1940's-era technology, and not really that much of it.

Funny, 'cause I've heard it took about 90 PhD level physicists, many of which were Nobel Prize recipiants.

Maybe you're confusing the real Manhattan Project with the movie "The Manhattan Project"?

Go check out the satellite pictures of Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan pre-November, 2001, and notice how similar they look, from a distance, to Los Alamos circa late 1944.

Go check out the satellite pictures of Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan pre-November, 2001, and notice how similar they look to a generic group of buildings!

=Smidge=

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Binary Judas]

Who says they need nukes?
Biological weapons are much easier to manufacture and alot cheaper. They don't call it a bang for a buck for nothing..

I personally don't understand why these people are still developing these things. Didn't we see enough of the A-bombs. We're gonna end up blowing up the earth..

Re:Power, Science and Death

[mog007]

The Japanese are a non-nuclear country, just like almost every other country on the planet. The only confirmed nuclear powers are the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, China, Pakistan, and India. Israel is believed to have build nuclear weapons with South Africa back in the 80's, but they never declared it offically, so nuclear treaties like the non-proliferation treaty doesn't apply to Israel. After the damage done to Japan during the second world war, it's no small wonder that they're not interested in making a nuclear bomb.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would we worry about nuclear weapons from Japan? I'm more worried about them sending an army of Aibos at us!

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot North Korea.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Thomas Shaddack]

Don't be so hard on him. He, in his depths of philosophy, forgets that it's the military/cryptography research that laid the foundations of computing applications, that it's the attempt to make better military radars that led to first transistors, that the scientists he despises so much are the ones he should thank for the technology he is now using as a medium for criticizing them.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[jalefkowit]

Yeah, I had the exact same thought that day. I always expected the Big Hit to come if they got their hands on a loose nuke. One of the few comforts of the days after 9/11 was that it seemed like that they had tipped their hand too early -- that now we would go after them with Extreme Prejudice and grind al Qaeda into dust before they ever got that chance.

Of course, that was all before we decided to drop everything and go after Saddam Hussein... now we've given them a nice breather to start working on finding that loose nuke again. (sigh)

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Anonymous Coward]

They may be educated to the max in science and technology, but they have always been, are now, and will continue to be illiterate retards in ethics, morality, and basic human decency.

This is funny, considering there has been an ever-growing emphasis on taking ethics, psychology, sociology, and how technology/science affects ethics and society in these science-oriented curriculums.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[spike hay]

By "graduate scientists" you mean Feynmann, Fermi, Oppenheimer, and the rest. The atomic bomb project took tens of thousands of people and was one of the largest projects we've ever undertaken. Billions and billions of dollars were spent on it. It wasn't just a couple of scientists in the desert. That's an idiotic assumption.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Mudcathi]

If the terrorists have the resources and contacts available to get materials make a nuclear weapon, chances are that they aren't going to be getting ideas from the newspaper.

You apparently missed the report a couple of years ago, wherein an Al Qaeda base in Afganistan was found with copies of a spoof entitled "How to Build an Atom Bomb" -- said spoof included the source: Annals of Improbable Research (aka Journal of Irreproducible Results).

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Anonymous Coward]

There are no weapons of mass destruction in North Korea! They are all in Iraq!

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Anonymous Coward]

And any day now, Iran.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Anonymous Coward]

Aah, security through obscurity.

While you're at it, why not put up signs at ports and airports around the US saying "Welcome to France"? That way, the terrorists won't know who to aim at.

Idiot.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Anonymous Coward]

Enrico Fermi was a graduate student? If you care to check, most of the brains involved were well established physicists of many years standing.

Clue: you may need smart people to actually build the devices, but you don't go around irradiating your best talent.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Anonymous Coward]

"Interetingly, btw, one country nobody moans about who certainly has more than enough Plutonium on hand to build lots of nuclear devices is Japan."

But, having been the only country ever to have been attacked with nuclear weapons of mass destruction, they are opposed (almost culturally) to the military use of such devices. I suspect, too, that since nuclear wapons are primarily offensive, rather than defensive (mutually assured destruction relies on being able to strike targets anywhere in the world, not defending your own soil), they may be unconstitutional.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[BlueJay465]

...That way, some uneducated terrorists from The Great Wherever won't get new ideas using Google keyword searches like "explosives", "bombs", "nukes"...

What? You mean like Al Qaeda getting caught trying to reproduce something from the Journal of Irreproducible Results?

Re:Power, Science and Death

[TechnoFreek]

only discussing the positive uses wouldn't work. The first time they used it, they would see how "well" it could be used as a dirty-bomb/threat/device of mass destruction. I don't care how much you say a stick of dynamite can be used for only wonderful things such as blowing open mine shafts and such, eventually someone's gonna tie it to a person.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Anonymous Coward]

You bastard! How am I supposed to sustain my paranoid xenophobia if you keep applying logic and reason?!?

*removes tin foil hat*

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Marble68]

b) The two bombs were pretty large. Ok, you could park one on a container ship and float it into New York Harbour or detonate it in San Franciso Bay or in the Thames estuary but nobody is going to carry one of those 1940's devices around just like that.

Yeah.
And nobody is going to hijack a couple of planes and fly them into buildings. They'd have to be crazy or suicidal or something...
Who says they have to build one anyway, they could buy one. And if that's the case, what's the size? I suppose it's whats you buy.

How far away are we from building offshore platforms that ships must dock near for customs?
What good does it do us if we find the bomb off the coast of Miami or Galveston?

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Anonymous Bullard]

After 091101 I've kept wondering when and if americans might eventually begin asking themselves "why are they so angry at us".

So far there's only been jingoistic kneejerk reaction a la "let's kill every last one of 'em".

What comes to those nukes "they" don't have, we're barely half a century into the nuclear Weapons of Mass Destruction era. The US has an arsenal of some 7,000 nuclear warheads - all far more powerful than those deployed against the two japanese cities - capable of hitting any and all targets around the world in just minutes. In addition to the US, Russia, China and even UK are all either occupying their neighbours or invading some distant foreign country "pre-emptively". All these security council seat holding nuclear states are acting against basic humanitarian principles, simply because they currently can. On a mutual "wink & nod" basis. All that matters is business, acquisition of foreign resources and plain old generating of patriotic fever. In none of these four aggressive states (although the UK isn't yet a lost cause) are the people actively organizing themselves to stop these practises which are the root cause of "terrorism" (aka "fight for freedom").

50-60 years is a very short time in the timescale of human civilization. In another generation or two the people fighting foreign invasions and occupations may well be capable of building true WMDs and delivering them to capital cities, along with ultimatums to pull out or else... Will the political leaders of that time be capable of realizing and correcting the root causes of such desperate measures, or will they still be stuck to the current "nuclear superpowers can do anything they wish" doctrine of today?

In my opinion, all actions, including those against foreign people, should pass the simple test of "would I mind someone else doing that to me?".

Re:Power, Science and Death

[mpe]

If the terrorist are ever going to use a nuke they are going to have to buy it.

Or get given it by a sponsoring government. State sponsored terrorism is a tradition at least 2,000 years old.

While building an atomic bomb is not that hard, there are parts that would take quite a bit of work to perfect. Such as making sure the shockwave reached the core from the explosive charges at the same time. If you are off by a nanosecond from any of the charges....no joy.

Precision timers have improved a lot in the last 60 years. You only need this kind of mechanism with Pu-239, if you have a U-238 bomb the engineering is a lot simpler.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[macdaddy357]

So what if them moozlim ay-rabs get nucular weapons. Alls we gots to do is duck and cover! Don't you 'member 'dem movies in school?

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Wes Janson]

"I suspect, too, that since nuclear wapons are primarily offensive, rather than defensive (mutually assured destruction relies on being able to strike targets anywhere in the world, not defending your own soil)"

You don't know much about nukes, do you? Nuclear landmines, nuclear artillery shells, and nuclear short-range surface-to-surface rockets were all developed during the Cold War to be used defensively in the possibility of a Russian attack. An airburst weapon does amazing things to enemy tanks, troops, aircraft, and ships. In the '50s we even did training exercises out west, simulating a Russian landing on the Western coast, making a counter-offensive with tactical nuclear weapons and infantry.

And anyways, have you ever WATCHED any anime? *I* wouldn't trust them with nukes ;)

Re:Power, Science and Death

[E_elven]

While I appreciate the attempt at sarcasm, his attitude is right, while yours is wrong. No problem will get solved if everyone conceeds its unsolvable without trying -and if everyone attempts to solve it, eventually a solution will be found.

Does the youthful idealism die because it's a cruel world or is it a cruel world because youthful idealism dies?

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Anonymous Coward]

I've read many of the hard-core Islamists are engineers and scientists. Certainly at least several of the 9/11 bombers were engineers. I'm pretty sure that if they could put together the resources they could find the people to actually build the devices.

The country to watch is Pakistan. If the military lets control go to the Islamists then both the materials and the know-how could start to slip to terrorist groups. And of course the Saudis would be happy to foot the bill.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[ahodgson]

Yeah, those poor dumb terrorists could never build a powerful device. Give me a break. Half these guys are engineers educated in Cairo and other modern centers. Just because they act crazy doesn't mean you should underestimate them.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[rspress]

Those people in Los Alamos also had the infrastructure of the United States, Billions of dollars in 1940 era dollars, and a large percentage of the generated electric power in the U.S. to build it.

I think is they were going to build one they would have done it by now. Buying or stealing a device would be cheaper and easier.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[rspress]

Actually we have fewer, small devices now then and the number is dropping all the time.

Biological weapons are much easier and much cheaper to make than a nuke and have at least the same killing power.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[rspress]

The timer is the easy part. Getting the shockwave to arrive at the same time at the core is the hard part. Even the Russians had to steal our information to make one and that took them 5 years.

Again buying, stealing or have one given to them is more likely than them building one themselves. Once they do use it then nearly every country would unite to wipe them from the face of the earth. If they used it, it would be one of the last weapons they use.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[pluvia]

"terrorism" (aka "fight for freedom")

Are you equating terrorism with fighting for freedom?

would I mind someone else doing that to me?

Ah, yes, the Golden Rule. I like it, too... it's usually a good guide. Some people believe all morality can come from this rule ("Do unto others as you would have done unto you"). The problems come when other people don't follow this rule or don't care about the same things you do.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Anonymous Coward]

"Remember: a small group of what were basically graduate students were able to build a city-buster bomb in the middle of a desert with access to only 1940's-era technology, and not really that much of it."

Well, a small group (in the stadium-filling sense) of the brightest physicists of the 20th century, plus the army, plus a few 10^9 dollars.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[pluvia]

Really? I always thought the 9/11 attack was a very simple plan with relatively few risks, entirely unlike a nuclear attack. Bringing in anything even related to a nuke would probably be complex and high risk from a variety of perspectives (working with them, getting them into the country, etc.). Nukes may have even been more expected and probably easier to detect than what did occur. Imagine the kind of holy hell that would arise if the US were nuked.

OTOH, the fact that Israel hasn't been hit by a nuke also suggests that the terrorists might not have any (or multiple) nukes.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[angel'o'sphere]

There is not only Al Qaeda .
Probably they are the most well known right now ... but everybody in the third world having access to television and some basic education hates the first world and particular the USA. After Al Qaeda, after Afganistan and Iraq ... whats then? Indonesia? China? North Korea? Or some African countries? Or south america again? E.g. Venecuela?

We are on a very important point in history. The so called globalization, the cheaper and cheaper mass transport, the internet as fast and easy way of communications the upcomming 'new' deseases like Ebola and its variations, or the Chicken Deseases in South Asia lately ... if someone is full with hatret and he just times his opertunity and has never shown up as a "terrorist" but decides one day suddenly to run mad ... he has really great chances to cause a lot of havok.

For some ideas read John Brunner: Shockwave Rider or Sheap Looking up or Stand on Sansibar.

I would not fear that some terrorists get some bombs . I fear far more that that the western civilization continues its third world exploitation. The cold war is over? No! The cold war is at its full climax, and we are IMHO very short before the big hot war. And its not USSR against USA ... its USSR + USA + UK and probably even Europe against the third world. Or turn it around: its third world against us. And they will use everything they can get ...

angel'o'sphere

Re:Power, Science and Death

[misleb]

Excuse me? I am not the one who specified "uneducated." The poster before me did. I was replying to that.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Beardydog]

Picture two scientists in a lab, one of them juggling three golfballs. The other one says, "You know, if you drop those the explosion will be equivalent to thirty tons of TNT. So the first one stops juggling the damn golfballs. Even if you yourself aren't planning on turning something intoa weapon, it's GOOD to discuss its capabilities, and it's GOOD to let the PUBLIC know about them, so there can be discussion about whether it should be developed at all, and if so, in what direction, how closely guarded, and near whose residential district.
People whose jobs revolve around kiling other people will figure out what explodes and what doesn't, even if you pretend it's a strictly power-generating technology, or could only be used for rocket engines, or gopher hunting. I'd rather the public have potentially dangerous information, because the alternative is even more threatening.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Twirlip of the Mists]

I suspect, too, that since nuclear wapons are primarily offensive, rather than defensive

Swing and a miss.

Modern military doctrine calls for the use of nuclear weapons in a defensive capacity. The offensive uses of nuclear weapons are quite limited.

Let's say it's 1985, and the Soviet tanks start pouring through the Fulda Gap in East Germany. What does NATO do? Why, stops them, of course. Through the application of no fewer than 108 nuclear-armed Pershing II intermediate-range missiles.

The offensive uses of nuclear weapons are primarily preemptive in nature; that is to say, they're "defensive before the fact." For example, if the Soviets were smart, they would have launched their SS-20's against NATO's Pershing II positions as part of their advance through East Germany. Technically that would have been an offensive use, but in practice it would have been a force-protection, i.e. defensive, move.

The book on the uses of nuclear weapons in war is written entirely in the subjunctive mood, but that doesn't mean that it hasn't been written.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Where've you been, man? It's already happened. His name is Abdul Qadeer Khan. Google it.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Anonymous Coward]

as the saying goes,

i dont fear the man with 10 nuclear weapons, i fear the man who only wants one.

(close enough to the orignal)

someone that wants to attack with a nuke, only needs one (more is better for them im sure) but one sends the message, does the damage, and would send the world in a downward spiral.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[mikerich]

Let's say it's 1985, and the Soviet tanks start pouring through the Fulda Gap in East Germany. What does NATO do? Why, stops them, of course. Through the application of no fewer than 108 nuclear-armed Pershing II intermediate-range missiles.

The Soviet Union made it quite clear that were NATO to use nuclear weapons on the battlefield it would retaliate with a strategic nuclear launch against the West. 'Limited' nuclear war was a fantasy held by the super-hawks, fortunately they never got a chance to play out that game.

Best wishes,
Mike.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[tiger99]

Yes, but these guys had virtually no computers to support their work. Nowadays anyone can build a Beowulf cluster, but I suspect that if you are not in too much of a hurry, a standard PC is capable of simulating lots of things that the Manhattan Project team could only guess at, or measure by a series of tedious experiments. Also, much more is known about explosives nowadays, "simple" shaped charge theory should be sufficient to get a spherical implosion, the rest apart from the neutron source to ensure efficent explosion, is fairly straightforward using published information.

One evil genius and a small team of good technicians could do it, given the plutonium. A basic weapon would not need to be all that much bigger than the plutonium core, depending on how fast the detonation velocity of the conventional explosive is. The yield-enhancement features which make the thing much bigger would not be too important to a terrorist. In fact, a low explosive yield, tons rather than kilotons, of TNT equivalent, might be of more use to a terrorist, AFAIK the fall-out from unreacted plutonium etc would be very much worse, and the area might be uninhabitable for a very long time. Apparently there was minimal fallout in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki, people were mostly injured or killed by radiation absorbed by their bodies in the few microseconds of the blast, although the horrific deaths are probably continuing to this day. I strongly suspect that a low-yield weapon in a modern city would kill a lot more people, maybe a few hundred by blast and direct radiation, but a million might inhale plutonium dust before they could be evacuated, all of them would die, mostly of lung cancer.

However,if you want to get it past radiation detectors, you have to do a lot more, although AFAIK most of the output from the plutonium, and probably the polonium in the initiator, is alpha and easily stopped.

But, my guess is that an inexperienced team who could get sufficient plutonium might try a cylindrical configuration, it might be even easier to get the simulations correct, and it might fit more easily in a briefcase, but it would use more material.

As computers are widespread, and everything you need to know to build a weapon is published (why that was ever allowed, I don't understand!), the only means of control is to restrict the circulation of plutonium. It makes me sick to think that enough for maybe 50 or 100 weapons has simply been allowed to go missing over the years. Much of it might simply be lost, not in the hands of the wrong people, but where is it, and who is it polluting?

I would be even more worried if large amounts of U235 went missing, an idiot could make a uranium bomb using published information, nothing remotely high-tech is required, but that one would be heavy. Even worse, a suicidal maniac with 2 pieces of U235 could create a "fizzle" with no extra hardware, it would kill a lot of people if used in a crowded place such as a city. Note that the Hiroshima bomb was untested, they knew it must work, even in 1945, with no simulation. The test at Alamogordo was for the plutonium bomb used on Nagasaki.

BTW you are right about the silver in Fort Knox, but it got recycled afterwards, and was used because of a wartime shortage of copper. I don't think a terrorist would go that route, they would not need a uranium enrichment plant for a plutonium weapon, AFAIK plutonium is "relatively" easily separated from used reactor fuel rods by a chemical process. But, stealing used fuel rods would be suicidal, and it would need very elaborate robotic handling to be able to do the processing. I think that any makeshift processing facility would leak so much radiation that it would soon be discovered.

I think that society as a whole needs to think about installing many more radiation detectors (they can be cheap and unobtrusive) so that unauthorised movements of radioactive materials will be spotted. They will also help prevent accidents such as the one in the US some years ago when a cobalt source was melted d

Re:Power, Science and Death

[jaoswald]

Depends on what you mean by "led to" in your transistor example, but AT&T was mostly interested in low-noise repeaters for long distance telephone service, not in radar.

Which is not to play down the enormous contributions to technology made by the Rad Lab and other research groups in radar.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[JasonStiletto]

More importantly, the question should be, which future is more livable, a future in which those who attack are assured survival or one where those who attack are assured destruction. There's a very good reason why the civilized world doesn't give in to terrorists demands. If someone comes up to you and says, "I'll shoot you if you don't give me $100 bucks", if you give him the hundred bucks, next time he needs money, he knows where to go. That is broadly applicable. Any nuclear capible nation, since basically the begining of the nuclear age has had to go by one rule. If you nuke us, we'll use everything we have against you. The reason there wasn't a nuclear war in the last 50 years was because both sides new that one small nuclear weapon used anywhere would get a 100% reponse. The equation hasn't changed, it's just got more dangerous, because there are people in power who really don't care if their nation gets turned into glass, so long as they live. Giving in to demands only makes them have new demands. Pull out of one country and pretty soon they're asking to leave whichever one is your own. War is never the answer, but war is a diplomatic tool- it's quite often, no matter how much you might want to deny it, part of the answer, or part of the path that leads to the answer. Denying that it pointless so long as the other side is willing to use it against you.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't the Pershings they were concerned about, it was the nuclear tipped ground launched cruise missiles of the US Air Force they were worried about. We had 96 missiles in just the unit i was in, and there were five other sister units through out europe with just as many, and with a 2,500 mile range we were all capable of striking deep within the soviet union. the problem with the pershing's, apart from their limited number, was their need for a fixed launch site which was something we didn't need; we could launch from ANYWHERE, even a country road.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

In palestina terrorism isn't a fight for freedom at all - it's fight for your life.

These people giving their life to kill off a few Israeli's are exerting the only military influence that's stopping the Israeli's from just killing them off (which is a popular idea in Israel, you can tell by Sharon getting elected).

Others are trying to protect their culture, their religion. We are decimating their culture fast. We ask, and even force them to change in the name of things like women's rights, human rights (equality of religion), and the worst of it all corporatism. If these people don't succeed in stopping us their culture, their way of life will be a memory in 50 years or so.

Or did you think they try to kill you because you looked at them wrong (from about 5000 miles away).

And you're right, it's a stupid thing to act moral when dealing with immoral people. That does NOT mean you can just go over and kill them.

Just think it. Who is the criminal ? The guy who sacrifices his own life in an act of desperation against a superior force. Or the pilot who pushes a button that fires a rocket to the middle of a street, 50 miles away, in HOPES of hitting a certain person ? Guess which one is the American soldier ...

Re:Power, Science and Death

[shadowbearer]

"His" attitude may be morally right, but it's simply not realistic. If you seriously think it's that easy, I have some ocean front property in Wyoming to sell you :)

SB

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, 'cause I've heard it took about 90 PhD level physicists [childrenof...roject.org], many of which were Nobel Prize recipiants.

I work at a research university. Believe me, the graduate students are the ones who do all of the work and who are actually able to build stuff. The PHDs are the chiefs of tribes of graduate stuends -- and are essentially managers.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

You know, I'm rabidly against cameras in public places, watching me.

But I truly like the idea of these. I can't imagine any argument against them, and for once, it might be a good use of my tax dollars. Why the hell aren't they putting these at every street corner?

Re:Power, Science and Death

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

The concept of a nuclear bomb :

one takes 7 kg U238 in one's left hand (98% pure or better, which is not easy but the methods for purifying it are quite well known and stated in every advanced chemistry and physics book (look under separating isotopes)).

I've actually come across a book that had a method for doing that with a microwave (with lots of losses, but I'm sure the process could be perfected). BTW microwave technology was developed by one of the Los Alamos guys, and only much later than that.

Ditto for the right hand.

One smashes both hands together, and *boom* 10 kilotons. (10 kilotons is not all that much these days, but it's enough to destroy any American city in 1 blow)

so yes, a couple of grad students with 50 kg reasonably pure uranium could do it quite easily.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[js7a]

One of the few comforts of the days after 9/11 was that it seemed like that they had tipped their hand too early -- that now we would go after them with Extreme Prejudice and grind al Qaeda into dust before they ever got that chance.

Of course, that was all before we decided to drop everything and go after Saddam Hussein... now we've given them a nice breather to start working on finding that loose nuke again. (sigh)

Kerry wouldn't have lied, but I don't blame him for getting fooled by Cheney.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[E_elven]

That's exactly the point. It's not 'realistic' because of the people with the wrong attitude.

I wasn't describing a solution, I was describing the problem. The solution is 'lighten up'.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[topynate]

nuclear treaties like the non-proliferation treaty doesn't apply to Israel

Right, but that's because they're not a signatory to it. They undoubtably do have nukes, but they're legal.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Anonymous Coward]

how big would the wave be if set off under water

Re:Power, Science and Death

[shadowbearer]

Tell that to the North Koreans, the Palestinians, the old-world Soviets, the Taliban, Muslim extremists, and I could go on and on....

Those people, and others, are exactly why the world is what it is, and why the rest of us feel that we need to be armed and dangerous. Hell, I'm armed and dangerous because I don't want to let some *American* fuckwit think he can walk into my home with impunity and take what's mine or rape my women, or threaten me with impunity.

I understand what you are saying, but it's a seriously naive viewpoint. I just hope it doesn't bite you someday.

The solution is not "lighten up" the solution is to be armed, dangerous and vigilant. Thou shalt not fuck with me, because I am covered in spikes and will hurt you if you try to bite me.

As long as the world is the way it is, there will be people who think the way I do. Thinking that your fellow humans, or the world, will change simply because peace and fellowship is a good idea (it is!) is a dangerously naive viewpoint. It's nice to think that way - while I'm not religious, I pray, in my own way, for that kind of peace everyday - but I'm not fool enough to think that it'll happen in a few generations, or even in hundreds of generations. Even if it did, it might transform humankind into something that stagnates uncontrollably...

SB

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Anonymous Coward]

So, what is involved in vacuum-distilling malathion spray to make it more concentrated (the only difference between the stuff available at retail, vs the stuff where you need a commercial applicator's license to buy is the concentration), or how simple is the chemistry required to make it more similar to such organophosphates as parathion (much more powerful than malathion) or some of the nastier organophosphates that are used as nerve agents (i.e., the ones rumored to kill someone if one drop lands on their open skin after about 10 minutes)?

Maybe some of this information DOES need to be kept locked up in military labs or Ortho/Monsanto's labs.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[FuegoFuerte]

Of course, that was all before we decided to drop everything and go after Saddam Hussein... now we've given them a nice breather to start working on finding that loose nuke again. (sigh)

bzzzzzzzt. WRONG! We didn't drop everything to go after Saddam... we're still in Afghanistan, it's just not the latest thing so it never gets covered by the media.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Anonymous Coward]

While I appreciate the attempt at sarcasm, his attitude is right, while yours is wrong.

No. Making wishes about how the world should just Do The Right Things is not how to solve problems.

No problem will get solved if everyone conceeds its unsolvable without trying -and if everyone attempts to solve it, eventually a solution will be found.

I never said the problem was unsolvable. I said that was stupid to expect cooperation from everyone, everywhere, on the solution. Or to say the blame lies at the feet of some hypothetical, Kirk-Douglas-in-"Falling Down"-esque, government weapons development drone. If you're gonna talk about solving the problem, maybe starting with a decent problem statement up front would be good, no? Instead of just railing on about "Why can't we all just get along."

Does the youthful idealism die because it's a cruel world or is it a cruel world because youthful idealism dies?

The cruel world doesn't care one iota what you, or I, hold to be ideal. Oddly enough, it doesn't care if we find our ideals to be in conflict, either. Or if we build bombs to drop on each other because of said differences.

And so we come full circle.

Youthful idealism is held, usually, by youths who, contrary to what some might think, don't have all the answers.

TFOAE

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Smidge204]

In theory, yeah it's no big deal. But it's not simply smashing lumps of purified uranium together - it's about critical mass. That means increasing it's density enough, fast enough, uniformly enough, and doing so with adequate material, to create a runaway nuclear reaction. Too little or too much and all you end up doing is destroying the core.

In practice, this is much harder than simple smashing two lumps of heavy metal together. Even with the theories and equations publically printed and fairly well understood by a large portion of the scientifc community, it *still* took over 20 years (1972 to 1998) for Pakistan to develop nuclear weapons. (And even then a good portion of the ones they claimed to have tested were pretty pansy... in the 4-6 kT range)

Clearly it's not something you can do in your own home. So no, I don't think it's something a couple of grad students could do at all, let alone easily.

I would be MUCH LESS worried about terrorists building nukes, and MUCH MORE worried about them simply BUYING a few from somebody. It would be cheaper, faster, and less conspicuous to do so.
=Smidge=

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Anonymous Coward]

That's exactly the point. It's not 'realistic' because of the people with the wrong attitude.

If that's the case, you need to make a much stronger case than, "You're bumming me out". If it was as easy as that, the KKK could be wiped out in a 6 minute speech.


I wasn't describing a solution, I was describing the problem. The solution is 'lighten up'.

Dude, you made me laugh. :)

TFOAE

Re:Power, Science and Death

[E_elven]

I'm perfectly well aware of how the world works and more importantly why it works in the way it does.

The solution really is as easy as 'lightening up'. Getting to that solution is an entirely different matter, but that's simply what it boils down to.

> As long as the world is the way it is, there will be people who think the way I do.

And conversely, as long as there are people who think the way you do, the world will remain the way it is.

There are problems, yes, but negativity is not the answer. Obviously, no one knows what the answer is, but by eliminating things we know not to be the answer, things will get better.

I hope you understand this is an extreme strawman. This is Slashdot, for crying out loud :) For more in-depth discussion feel free to e-mail.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[shadowbearer]

And conversely, as long as there are people who think the way you do, the world will remain the way it is.


There's a world of difference between evil people and defending oneself against the same.

It's not negativity, it's realism.

You're young, aren't you?

(no offense, mind you :)

I wouldn't necessarily call it a strawman; but I do think that you are sheltered enough that you haven't really experienced the human goblin condition yet, that you haven't met any truly nasty people.

May you never. A hopeless wish, but one can still wish...

SB

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Anonymous Coward]

'Limited' nuclear war was a fantasy held by the super-hawks, fortunately they never got a chance to play out that game.

Not so. The tit-for-tat strategy calls for proportional escalation. It provides mutually assured destruction with reduced losses in the face of accidental or stupid attacks.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[aminorex]

What's this "us" and "them" crap? Remember, al-qaeda uses slashdot too, yanqui.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[aminorex]

> most of the effort (by faaar most of it) went into
> enriching Uranium and making Plutonium

Whereas, today, this is a trivial exercise.
Given natural U metal, I can crank out Pu-239
in my basement for a few $K upfront costs, some
electricity and a fair lot of deuterium gas, (which
you can get from welding shops by the tank).

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Anonymous Coward]

Nowadays anyone can build a Beowulf cluster, but I suspect that if you are not in too much of a hurry, a standard PC is capable of simulating lots of things that the Manhattan Project team could only guess at, or measure by a series of tedious experiments.

Richard Feynman (IIRC) tested a room full of women with calculators against their IBM electromechanical computers. The women were just as fast, but they got tired.

The yield-enhancement features which make the thing much bigger would not be too important to a terrorist.

The plutonium isotope used for military bombs needs those features to work reliably. It has such a low rate of spontaneous neutron emission that the "pit" can actually implode and rebound without a chain reaction. A neutron source is a really good idea.

As computers are widespread, and everything you need to know to build a weapon is published (why that was ever allowed, I don't understand!), ...

Knowing that a fission chain reaction is possible is all you need. That information is nigh-impossible to suppress.

Even worse, a suicidal maniac with 2 pieces of U235 could create a "fizzle" with no extra hardware, it would kill a lot of people if used in a crowded place such as a city.

A water-moderated reactor would be even more "fun". Sink it into a lake and watch the gov't anthill swarm.

... AFAIK the fall-out from unreacted plutonium etc would be very much worse, and the area might be uninhabitable for a very long time.

The plutonium fallout isn't that bad. Not healthy, but then neither is radon or obesity. The nastiest bad fallout is from the neutron-activated heavy elements, things like the iron and nickel in the delivery truck. This can be enhanced by adding a cobalt or similar cladding to the bomb.

... AFAIK plutonium is "relatively" easily separated from used reactor fuel rods by a chemical process.

If you want a low-yield dirty bomb, the used fuel itself works just fine!

I for one would not mind if they were fitted invisibly in public places, they don't affect the privacy of normal people, and they might catch terrorists.

They already are, at least in some places in the US. People who've been administered radioisotopes for medical purposes are being stopped and asked questions by the police. Personally I'd rather be subjected to that, than suffer the economic loss of a stock exchange or port getting disrupted by a dirty bomb.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[aminorex]

You don't need a fission reactor to turn natural
U-238 into Pu-239 anymore, just a fast neutron source,
such as an IEC reactor, a big fat wall socket for
electricity, and a supply of tritium.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[afarhan]

I would add to this that, whenever you create a technology, remember that it can be used on you.

Now, if you were to look at who created and used the nukes, agent orange, etc. you will realise, that in this game, you really can't sue the other side for intellectual property rights over weapons of mass destruction.

once you have created a weapon, it is for everybody to use. whether you like it or not.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Anonymous Coward]

bzzzzzzzt. WRONG!

That's so fucking annoying. Stop it.
About the only thing worse is adding "Thanks for playing."

Re:Power, Science and Death

[An Ominous Cow Aired]

Are you retarded?! This sounds like how Microsoft treats security issues. "Don't tell anybody, and they won't find out" BULLSHIT. Pranksters and the curious won't find out. But criminals, psychopaths, and terrorists will. If they then did something, people would be saying, "Wow! What was that?! Oh no! We don't know what to do!" and "No known phenomena could cause that, it must've been a freak accident" Do you really WANT terrorists getting away with things? If nobody knew what Uranium, heavy water, and Barium were used for, they wouldn't have a clue where to begin looking if a bomb was set off. Anyway, do you really think that you'll get journalists to not produce something sensational? Right. Ain't gonna happen. They comfort themselves with "The American Public has a Right to Know" and go for it.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[pluvia]

These people giving their life to kill off a few Israeli's are exerting the only military influence that's stopping the Israeli's from just killing them off (which is a popular idea in Israel, you can tell by Sharon getting elected).

Are you kidding? You equate Sharon's election with Israel wanting the genocide of all Palestinians? You think that Palestinian bombers are preventing Israel from annihilating them?? Without the Palestinian terrorists, Israel would have no cause to retaliate and no need for walls. If Israel wanted to they could obliterate the Palestinians. That is obviously not their goal. Israel targets terrorists and their leaders.

I invite you to further investigate the history of British Mandated Palestine, as well as the Palestinian's current laws, culture, media, and education.

And you're right, it's a stupid thing to act moral when dealing with immoral people.

I certainly did NOT say that. It should be our goal to always act morally.

That does NOT mean you can just go over and kill them.

If that is basically the only way to prevent them from killing other innocents, then yes, it is reasonable and moral to stop them, by force if necessary.

Just think it. Who is the criminal ? The guy who sacrifices his own life in an act of desperation against a superior force. Or the pilot who pushes a button that fires a rocket to the middle of a street, 50 miles away, in HOPES of hitting a certain person ? Guess which one is the American soldier ...

Your example presents insufficient context to judge criminality. Either case may be moral or immoral depending upon the circumstances. e.g. Why are they attacking? Are they targeting innocents? Will the death of the target eventually save lives?, etc.

Are you trolling or are these truly your beliefs?

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Libraryman]

Others are trying to protect their culture, their religion. We are decimating their culture fast. We ask, and even force them to change in the name of things like women's rights, human rights (equality of religion), and the worst of it all corporatism. If these people don't succeed in stopping us their culture, their way of life will be a memory in 50 years or so.

You have stated pretty clearly the motivation of the RATIONAL terrorist. Unfortunately you cannot attribute the motivations of rational people to suicide bombers. No one can preserve their way of life by blowing themselves up. A suicide bomber is not "sacrific[ing] his own life in an act of desperation against a superior force" he is simply willing/happy to die in order to murder a bus-load of children, a cafe full of civilians, or two sky-scrapers full of office workers.

This is a very simple conflict. Their culture [murder children == go to heaven] against everyone else's [murder children == go to hell]. You, and I, and every person who is not a suicide bomber can only hope that in "50 years or so" their culture is the same sort of bad memory that Nazi Germany is today.

Do not fall into the trap of believing that just because something is "a culture" that it is valuable.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Anonymous Coward]

not to bust your bubble but you don't need to make it mobile.

Al Queda cells rent houses. All you need is a two story house and some other bits. Just transport the fissile material and do the work in the garage.

Heck in theory a tweaked microwave oven might be enough to trigger a lump of plutonium....

Re:Power, Science and Death

[FuegoFuerte]

That's so fucking annoying. Stop it. About the only thing worse is adding "Thanks for playing."

bzzzzzzzt. WRONG!
I'd have to say there's much worse things, like ACs trying to tell me off. Now go crawl back into the slime from whence thou camest. Oh, and I almost forgot: Thanks for playing!

Re:Power, Science and Death

[HP LoveJet]

The Soviet Union made it quite clear that were NATO to use nuclear weapons on the battlefield it would retaliate with a strategic nuclear launch against the West.

And it's that attitude that, in a perverse sense*, helped hold the enormous game of chicken in a steady state until the collapse of the USSR. Adopting the doctrine that any tactical deployment of nukes would be functionally equivalent to a strategic first strike, in essence, stabilized the European theater against border brinksmanship.

*(though no more perverse than any other aspect of post-Kissinger nuclear diplomacy)

Re:Power, Science and Death

[lkeagle]

Right... Because then we'd just bomb ourselves and the terrorists would win ;-)

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Anonymous Coward]

only when talking about nuclear weapons can the explosive force of 4,000 to 6,000 tons of TNT be referred to as being pansy.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[oldCoder]

You said:

So far there's only been jingoistic kneejerk reaction a la "let's kill every last one of 'em"

I guess you haven't been to the US since the 9/11 attacks. It's actually quite different from the way you say it. If the Americans had decided to kill every last one of somebody, then they would indeed all be dead by now. We didn't and they aren't.

Your point about nuclear proliferation in the next 5 or 6 decades is on point, however. Humanity may indeed kill itself off.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[fucksl4shd0t]

I wouldn't necessarily call it a strawman; but I do think that you are sheltered enough that you haven't really experienced the human goblin condition yet, that you haven't met any truly nasty people.

Okay, regardless of what the other guy was saying, I am definitely not sheltered and have both personally experienced and witnessed aspects of the human goblin condition, and have known truly nasty people.

Yet I agree with the other guy. Figure that out. ;)

Re:Power, Science and Death

[fucksl4shd0t]

As computers are widespread, and everything you need to know to build a weapon is published (why that was ever allowed, I don't understand!)

I'll answer the parenthetical expression first, of course. Censorship is never a workable long-term solution, and is frequently unworkable as a short-term solution. If censorship really worked, the average age for loss of virginity would never have dropped below average age of marriage, and it has been in the low 'teens for centuries, I understand (but could be wrong, that might be a relatively recent thing).

In this specific instance, censorship would not seriously prevent the wrong people from building the bombs. It would hinder them, yes, but not prevent them. ON the other hand, it would prevent everyone else from being able to find them, identify them, or even notice something that might be suspicious. By passing around the information to build a bomb, we can also pass around the information to prevent the bomb's construction and/or deployment.

We'll never know if I'm right, but it's my firm opinion that had we successfully censored this stuff, "they" would already have nukes, and would have already used them. And if it had happened in the Cold War, we would either be having this discussion underground, or we wouldn't be having it at all.

And we did try censorship already, and that resulting in several other nations suddenly becoming nuclear powers.

I admit, censorship can be a seductive idea. Just don't tell anyone! They'll never figure it out, and if "we" don't say anything, it'll never happen! But it never works. Time and time again, it has been used and it has failed. When will we learn? Censorship doesn't work, and frequently manages to defeat the purpose entirely.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[jalefkowit]

I think you took "drop everything" a little too literally.

I know we're still in Afghanistan. But, our effort there has been hamstrung by the need to divert troops and materiel to Iraq. The result has been that we've settled for outcomes in Afghanistan -- rough stability in Kabul, and rule by the whim of local warlords everywhere else -- that are a far cry from what we originally wanted when we went in. (And for the most part, nobody cares, because attention is, as you mention, focused on Iraq.)

The fact that Afghanistan is the mess that it still is should have been one of the things arguing against opening a war of choice against Iraq. Trying to stabilize a country as historically fragmented as Afghanistan is a Big Job. When you're right in the middle of it, it's probably not the best time to go snipe hunting.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Eunuchswear]

That's flamebait? I'd go for Insightful myself.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[another_henry]

You'd use a Farnsworth fusor as a neutron source? I don't think they produce enough neutrons for significant activation. It is possible to build a fission reactor from natural U metal but I don't think it's easy at all!

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Anonymous Coward]

bzzzzzzzt.

Thanks for playing.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[shadowbearer]

I have. You're nuts. No offense. :)

SB

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Anonymous Coward]

The word "positive" describes an effect of a scientific invention or discovery. So one has to debate that first.

First: it is hard to be sure what that effect might be (consider dynamite), and different people may have genuinely different ideas about the positiveness of the item in question; or their view could be just too plain narrow, missing out on the positive effect.

Second: it may be possible in some cases to agree that some issue is negative, but it is difficult for a significant large number of poeple to come to an agreement a priori about which topics are such before such discussions actually taken place in a fairly public setting.

Thirdly, in principle, a smaller group making such decisions leads to high probability of scenarios where the discretion may be abused (hypothetical: perhaps news of the Chernobyl incident should be kept secret because terrorists could blow up other reactors now that they know its potential for desctruction).

Fourthly, in principle it is an open ended question whether some inventions being negative in the narrow (read: easier to decide) dimension of non-violence-capable-index should be suppressed. Consider the purely hypothetical situation of "scientifically proving" to a bunch of people that their corporations are out-sourcing jobs for everyone's longer term benefit, with the knowledge that it could cause street riots. (This might be infalmmatory if you forget that this is inded hypothetical).

Re:Power, Science and Death

[ShadowBlasko]

Oak Ridge is pretty easy to spot.

Its on fire at the moment.

No, I am not kidding.

K 25 Fire

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Anonymous Bullard]

The point of that statement was that the american public went straight into the "massive vengeange" mode, instead of taking even a moment to ask why those terrorists hated America so much. Iraq? Believe or not, according to British press reports many, if not most, US fighters there still hate the Iraqis as if they were terrorists and were in fact responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Hell, astonishing percentage of the US population continues to believe those claims by the administration, despite all the credible evidence, even before the invasion, proving otherwise. The US media, with very few exceptions, cheerily supported the "we'll hunt 'em down" and "you're either with us or against us" doctrine "until we've got every last one of 'em". Because of all the misinformation and state/media indoctrination I've seen disturbingly many calls by vengeful Americans to actually "just nuke 'em all"!

Okay, as the US media has finally started exploring, albeit very carefully, the issues with America's "war on terror", the level of blind vengefulness has began dropping as well. Your point is taken and I admit that the above statement is now thankfully becoming increasingly outdated. Maybe some day the US will even face the harsh reality that in the non-terror-related (diversionary) war against Iraq not only did some 700 (or whatever the eventual tally will be) American troops die, but also tens of thousands Iraqis, with far greater number injured and disabled. When Americans are asked how many died in the Vietnam war, many give a confident answer "60,000". The 2-3 million Vietnamese who died remain part of the anonymous collateral damage which isn't worth considering. The value of foreign casualties, incl. foreign civilians, in US wars remains unnecessarily cheap.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[erc]

You, and I, and every person who is not a suicide bomber can only hope that in "50 years or so" their culture is the same sort of bad memory that Nazi Germany is today.

Not likely - Mohammad's religion of death has been around for well over 10 times that.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[jpop32]

Tell that to the North Koreans, the Palestinians, the old-world Soviets, the Taliban, Muslim extremists, and I could go on and on....

You know, it takes two to start a fight... Or do you fall for that 'they hate freedom' idiocy?

Thou shalt not fuck with me, because I am covered in spikes and will hurt you if you try to bite me.

An eye for an eye in the end makes the whole world blind...

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, it takes two to start a fight...

You know, it takes two to perpetrate a rape...

Draw your own conclusions on how universal the 'it takes two' argument really is.

TFOAE

Re:Power, Science and Death

[mbessey]

"It is possible to build a fission reactor from natural U metal but I don't think it's easy at all"

Google "CANDU". If you have a sufficient supply of Heavy Water, you can just stack bricks of uranium in it to make a reactor. Of course you'd die pretty quickly if you built it that simply, but it's hardly rocket science.

-Mark

Re:Power, Science and Death

[another_henry]

it's hardly rocket science.

Just nuclear physics :) Seriously though, that CANDU reactor looks like a pretty good design.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[KILNA]

You may make a point on courage there, but I personally value smarts before courage. Your example does not address the relative smarts of the pilot and the suicide bomber, but I do have prejudices regarding people in both positions that I suspect aren't completely off base. The attributes required of the bomber is bipedal locomotion and the "guts" to blow himself to smithereens. The US military may have more than a few twits in its ranks, but I'm willing to guess they don't put too many in pilot seats.

America (and most every other nation) has lost the culture it had 200 years ago. Do you think that social progress on issues of human rights neccessitates "decimation" of a culture, or merely bringing it into the 21st century? Is corporatism so wrong that we should deny everyone the clothing, shelter, medicines and food that are also generated by it? Or would you rather every culture stay exactly where it is now, or even go backward?

Re:Power, Science and Death

[aminorex]

Yes.

n + U-238 --> U*-239
U*-239 --> U-239 + g
U-239 --> Np-239 + e (T = 23.5 minutes)
Np-239 --> Pu-239 + e (T = 2.355 days)

You can get trillions of neutrons per second
with the junk in my basement. What you could
do with higher voltages, accelerated ions, and
higher pressures, I don't know. If you're
willing to wait 35 thousand years or so, I can
deliver a critical mass of Pu-239. You might
prefer to buy me more equipment, to take delivery
sooner;)

Re:Power, Science and Death

[another_henry]

Please show me a fusor that can get trillions of neutrons per second. That's 5 orders of magnitude better than the best amateur effort, and 4 better than the professionals.

Re:Power, Science and Death

[jpop32]

You know, it takes two to perpetrate a rape...

The US has fought defensive wars, is that what you're trying to say? Well, since none of them were waged on US soil, what would you conclude, who was the rapist?

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Threni]

> What if journalists and scientists agree to only discuss the *positive* uses of
> scientific invention?

Groupthink!

> uneducated terrorists from The Great Wherever

Nasty foreign types, you mean? Not educated like the average American is?

> science should be

How can I determine what `science should be` for myself?

> One day, it's going to be a lot simpler.

When you run the world, you mean?

Re:Power, Science and Death

[mfh]

> When you run the world, you mean?
I don't think I'm qualified for that task, but I could be an admin, need be. ;-)

Re:Power, Science and Death

[Anonymous Coward]

The Canadian force is in charge of Afghanistan's security now. They seem to be doing a good job... but it's scary that a relatively small commitment like we have there is so taxing on our military.

What is Hafnium?

[Anonymous Coward]

Find out here!

Re:What is Hafnium?

[Attaturk]

Parents are trolls.

Get your Hafnium fix here.

Re:What is Hafnium?

[Surazal]

Gee, I've never seen a web page get TICKED OFF at me for blocking pop-ups.

Well, ticked-offedness is a two-way street. :^)

Re:What is Hafnium?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have blocked pop-ups, and it goes fine for me. I am using Mozilla firefox.I like the Wikipedia article better because they don't have pop-ups or ads at all!

Re:What is Hafnium?

[Anonymous Coward]

Woah, look at some of the javascript that site is using. Pretty impressive...a total waste of time, but impressive.

It even tries to detect hacked Opera versions and reports back to opera.com.

Re:What is Hafnium?

[ikkonoishi]

Regexp

s/#(\w)\s{\sdisplay\s\:\snone\s}/#\1 { style : inline }/

Or if you have proxomitron

Replace
#\1{display*:*none*}

With
#\1{display : inline }

Re:What is Hafnium?

[Anonymous Coward]

Note: Where the article says "isomer" it means "isotope". These are different things.

Isomers - molecules with the same molecular formulae, but different connectivity.

Isotopes - atoms with the same number of protons, but different numbers of neutrons.

Re:What is Hafnium?

[aardvarkjoe]

What do you know; another idiot webmaster who restricts who can access their page based on the software you use to do it. (In my case, it refused to let me in because I'm using Opera.) Some people need to wake up and join us in the twenty-first century.

Re:What is Hafnium?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Gee, I've never seen a web page get TICKED OFF at me for blocking pop-ups.

I don't know what you're talking about - I run Mozilla with popups disabled, and it worked fine (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).

Re:What is Hafnium?

[jaoswald]

No, actually, when the article says "nuclear isomer" it means "nuclear isomer" as in same nuclear constitutents, different quantum mechanical state.

Long-lived nuclear isomers are basically "stuck" in an excited state that takes a long while to find its way to the ground state of the nucleus. They have the same number of protons and neutrons (i.e. are the same "isotope") as the ground state nucleus, but slightly more energy (on a nuclear scale).

The (probably bogus) claim is that you might be able to control (accelerate) the release of the extra energy by external means.

Re:What is Hafnium?

[zCyl]

The (probably bogus) claim is that you might be able to control (accelerate) the release of the extra energy by external means.

What's so unbelievable about stimulated emission from an excited state? Can we say "lasers"?

Re:What is Hafnium?

[Anonymous Coward]

LA SERS

Re:What is Hafnium?

[WalksOnDirt]

It's not stopping popup blocking, but banner blocking. I'm running Firefox with the anti-ad provisions installed, and I got blocked.

Had to fire up IE to view it.

Re:What is Hafnium?

[jaoswald]

Because in lasers, one is stimulating the emission with the same frequency (=energy) of the transition. The hafnium claim is that one is able with X-ray (lower) energies excite a transition in the hafnium nucleus into a state of nearly the same excited energy that has a much quicker decay path to the ground state.

Except that nuclear physicists claim that the current theories of nuclear structure predict a reaction rate/efficiency *much* lower than the advocates claim to have observed, and the experimentalists have not been able to reproduce the advocates' results.

A little dangerous...

[Alexis Brooke]

It's seeming more unlikely as the arguments drag on, but if a Hafnium bomb could be built, it is thought that a golf ball sized chunk could produce the energy equivalent of 10 tons of conventional explosives.

I'm assuming they'll not be using this material to make golf balls...

Re:A little dangerous...

[DrEldarion]

Although that would be a convenient way to "take care of" an annoying boss...

"Happy birthday, sir! These are wonderful, you must try them out as soon as possible!"

Re:A little dangerous...

[Anonymous Coward]

Would sure be a lot funnier than those exploding-powder golfballs.
Id be laughing, from a safe distance ;)

Re:A little dangerous...

[AndroidCat]

Watch for them building sandtraps around important buildings--and outlawing 7-irons.

Re:A little dangerous...

[in7ane]

Finally! The suitcase nuke will no longer be just a, paranoid, dream.

Re:A little dangerous...

[koi_fish]

Suddenly that level in GTA: Vice City gets a lot easier...

Re:A little dangerous...

[TGK]

It's generaly accepted that the Soviet Union built a small number of so called "Suit Case" nukes in the latter years of the cold war.

Of course, the term is a misnomer, because the intelligence community mis-translated "Backpack Nuke" into "Suitcase Nuke."

KGB documents indicate that the Soviet Union kept one such device in the basement of the Soviet Embassy in DC to use as a decapitation weapon in the event of nuclear hostilities.

Suitcase nuke, in any case, refers simply to a small nuclear weapon theoretically made man portable, or at least small enough to easily secure within a car's trunk. The United States produced a fair number of these weapons, though they were never fashioned (to the best of my knowledge) into a form intended for covert deployment. The most famous such miniaturized nuclear weapon was the Davy Crocket, a low yield nuclear weapon designed for battlefield deployment in Germany in the event of a Soviet tank invasion of Europe.

Of course, for a halfnium suitcase nuke to be built you'd need a compact X-ray source that could discharge a fair quantity of X-ray's before being blown apart by the halfnium discharge, in otherwords you'd need a fission bomb... which kind of invalidates the entire point.

Re:A little dangerous...

[tigersha]

Do you have some rerefence to those KGB documents??!!

And as far as small nuclear weapons is concerned, ho large is a nuclear artillery shell in any case? There is this one famous picture of an American General standing next to a field gun looking at a mushroom cloud in the distance. An artillery shell shoudl fit in the trunk of a car. And these were made in the late 50's if I recall correctly.

Even the Israelis have nuclear artillery shells.

Re:A little dangerous...

[drinkypoo]

The problem is that you have to provide him with an X-Ray emitting driver at the same time. I don't know about you but I've been having a hard time finding clubs with integrated magnetrons.

Re:A little dangerous...

[TGK]

Regretably no. The only on-line reference I can find to the weapon is in the personal memoriors of a Mr. Hugh Sidey [White House reporter in the Kennedy Administration] which should turn up for you in a google search.

Regretably Mr. Sidey's insight is 2nd hand, he relates a discussion he had with Kennedy on the topic.

I've seen other references in print, but nothing I can turn up on line.

If you find anything else on the topic please let me know.

Re:A little dangerous...

[Mudcathi]

I'm assuming they'll not be using this material to make golf balls...

Talk about putting the "power" into your power stroke!

Re:A little dangerous...

[KingReuben]

An artillery shell shoudl fit in the trunk of a car. And these were made in the late 50's if I recall correctly.

Not too worried about that. A shell big enough to house such a warhead would have to be quite large (and thus quite heavy, on the order of 3,000 lbs I would think). You would have trouble getting such an object into the bonnet of any car.

Re:A little dangerous...

[B.D.Mills]

I'm assuming they'll not be using this material to make golf balls...

It adds a whole new meaning to the term "bunker buster" now, doesn't it?

Re:A little dangerous...

[shadowbearer]

KGB documents indicate that the Soviet Union kept one such device in the basement of the Soviet Embassy in DC to use as a decapitation weapon in the event of nuclear hostilities.

Somehow I seriously doubt that. Such a weapon, with as little shielding as it would have to have had, would have been easily detectable - and the Soviet Embassy was the target of a lot of scrutiny by the best technology we have ever had (which is much, much better than anything the Soviets ever had).

That said, I HOPE it isn't true - because it would have been monumentally stupid of the USSR to pull such a risky gambit. If it had been discovered (like, say, being detected by a Geiger counter during transport, diplomatic "pouch" or not), it would probably have touched off a war; one with no winners.

Forty years of Cold War bullshit with no nuclear exchange shows in a small way that the Soviets weren't quite stupid enough to do anything that would touch such an exchange off. I simply can't believe it. OTOH, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if such information was buried under "Need to Know" back then...

SB

Re:A little dangerous...

[Saberwind]

I'm assuming they'll not be using this material to make golf balls...
Not golf balls. Happy Fun Balls (tm).

Re:A little dangerous...

[Anonymous Coward]

what about the boot?

Re:A little dangerous...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, there was a 205 mm (8") towed howitzer that could lob such nuclear rounds. Rumor has it (as in, I recall reading it in multiple military tech books) that the technology was reduced further to be fired from 155mm guns, and they were in Europe up to the late '80's-early 90's, where the Soviet Union and US agreed to get rid of them as part of the SALT treaties or one of the other treaties they signed then (that also got rid of the Pershing II and the Soviet equivalent, tactical nuke missiles that had MIRV warheads...).

Sure, a 155mm arty shell could fit in the trunk of a car, but it would probably take someone used to lugging around 120 lb backpacks to call them "man-portable".

And if the Israelies have them, do the South Africans still have them as well?

Re:A little dangerous...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the picture referred to was an 8" (205 mm) howitzer (M-?), the "atomic cannon". At the time, it was a towed piece, but some were also developed later into a "self-propelled" platform. They were taken out of service in the 80's, IIRC.

However, the shell was reduced to work in the 155mm howitzers, which was probably stocked in Europe until one of the treaties that the US-USSR signed outlawed them (and the Pershing/Pershing II missiles and USSR-equivalent, etc) or the USSR collapsed.

Re:A little dangerous...

[Oriumpor]

I remember seeing a davy crocket test fire on the history channel, or maybe it was discovery... It was the damnedest thing I'd ever seen, the blast radius was larger than the range. The operator dug themselves a hole and jumped in it after firing.

Re:A little dangerous...

[subtropolis]

I believe he might have been thinking of the Mitrokhin Archive, collected by Vasili Mitrokhin, who worked in the foreign intelligence archive of the KGB. He eventually defected to the UK (he wasn't an agent and hadn't contacted the west at any time previously) with his trunk of files.

One of the revelations concerned buried stashes of weapons, explosives, radios, etc. supposedly for equipping sleeper cells. Targets included dams, power lines (hit it in a remote, difficult to work in place), pipelines, etc. I keep finding references to some stashes found (through the archive materials) in Austria and, i think, Belgium. Apparently one of the Austrian ones was booby-trapped. If anyone has more specific info about those, i'd be grateful. It doesn't surprise me though - there were several caches unearthed in the 80s or 90s. They were buried by the Americans for use if the Soviets moved west in a hurry.

Here's an interesting doc about the suitcase nukes. That's the text from a Congressional hearing on the subject. Evidently, there may be a few in North America. And General Lebed, who told 60 Minutes and the US Govt that there were some several dozen of them missing, was, unfortunately, killed in a helicopter crash.

Also, there's a shot of one of those atomic shells being howitzered across a valley in Errol Morris' latest, The Fog of War. Very creepy - you see the howitzer fire and, a moment later, *flash* and a mushroom cloud. Quick way to deal with a couple of armored divisions bottlenecking in some german valley, i guess. For the impatient, i think it's in the quicktime trailer.

Re:A little dangerous...

[subtropolis]

See my reply to your parent.

Re:A little dangerous...

[Anonymous Coward]

South Africa never had nuclear artillery shells.
SA'n weapon was more of a kick it out of the back of the airplane with a drogue parachute kind of thing.

Remember that the country does not really face any mortal danger from its borders (although the cuban intervention in Angola did get us scared a bit in the 1980's, but that was in an atmosphere of extreme paranoia in any case). So there was no need for tactical nuclear wepons it was more of a sacre the neigbours to hell sort of deterrent.

South Africa does, have a really good artillery piece (the G5) but its a 155mm and certainly beyond the capability of the country to manufacture nuclear warheads with that sort of minituarisation. That is extremely difficult to do.

As far as the Israelis are concerned their nuclear wepons program (which, incidentally, was sponsored in the beginning at least by the French) have much more time to develop than the SA program. They did not develop the warhead together but SA gave them boatload of Uranium in return for some help on their wepons program.

Y'see, that's why I didn't go to U Texas...

[Anonymous Coward]

Developing and testing nuclear bombs on campus. Yeah. Really safe. Parents, take note.

Bah

[shadowkoder]

Why do people think of weaponry as the first use for a new method of power? Help to increase energy supply int he US, maybe convert a nuclear power plant ot use this source (whether or not that is possible is beyond me)? Nope. We want to built a bomb with it!

Re:Bah

[odano]

Well you have to remember that it is a lot easier to create an uncontrolled release of energy (bomb), than a controlled release (power plant, battery, etc).

So while a bomb is the natural first step (or proof of concept if you will), the power plants and other uses will definetly come afterwards.

Re:Bah

[Keruo]

three basic rules in science when creating new things

1. can you blow it up?

2. can you have sex with it?

3. can you profit from it?

if atleast one condition is filled, it might be worth researching/funding

Re:Bah

[Ruie]

Do not get carried away by the fact that weapons are used to inflict violence. If anything this fact is a commentary on the current human nature which can turn even fun things (like football) into violence.

The fact is that even without armies or wars weapons would still be made.

The reason is that a weapon makes a good intermediate scientific goal - deliver and release large amount of energy to a small remote location.

People who experienced the delight of making something go "Boom" (however small) on command will understand what I am talking about. (Explosives not required - compressed air will do just fine..)

Re:Bah

[betelgeuse-4]

So should I throw all my money into researching inflatable sex dolls? They fulfil all three conditions.

Re:Bah

[MrMr]

Perhaps from the original paper on the Hf experiments?

I count one air-force, one lockheed-martin and one small defense contractor in the author list.
But you're right, perhaps the US military is diversifying into the electricty market.

Re:Bah

[SSJVegeto2001]

This Isomer of Hafnium has to be created; it does not exist in nature. This could never be a source of energy. Also, the amount of x-ray energy needed to trigger the reaction (if it is possible) is still over 5 times the energy you get out of the Hafnium reaction. The chain reaction necessary for use as an explosive is also unlikely; we're talking fast photons here instead of slow neutrons, photons that would be too fast to sustain a reaction. Overall it seems like Hafnium is a dud.

Re:Bah

[AchilleTalon]

Building a bomb, is just plain marketing. A kind of proof-of-concept nobody can't object against.

After that, you can easily get the money to liberate the energy in a controlled manner and turn it into a peaceful invention.

Also, at this stage, it maybe much more easier to just focus on the way to liberate the energy without the hassle to figure out how to control it.

But, don't forget, at end, they get married and add many children (no necessarily in that order).

Re:Bah

[ktulu1115]

No that's my potato gun!

Re:Bah

[Anonymous Coward]

That too was the thirst thing that struck to my mind while reading the article.
I can not add much too that. I wish I could clearly explain to people, who don't see this, how wrong such a thing actually is. But I know their way of thinking, so i won't even try.

They could try reading some words from the Dalai Lama though, to get our point of view. :)

Re:Bah

[Dr. Spork]

Some of these things were mentioned, like a plane with arbitrarily long range. But it's just a joke at this point to talk about applications, because that one golf-ball-sized chunk would need tons of shielding before anybody could walk near it. It's insanely radioactive. If you read the articles, you'll see that though the actual amount of stuff necessary for the explosion is relatively small, the shielding and the necessary excitation device can simply not be made small.

This means that our best hope of making use of this stuff is if we could get it to explode in an uncontrolled chain reaction. Great! Luckily, the science behind it is less plausible than cold fusion, so I don't expect this "ultimate dirty bomb" is going to be dropping on the heads of our dark-skinned "enemies" soon.

The $30Billion facility for producing this stuff could make it for a price as low as $1M/ounce, if the thing gets built. The real victims of this sham are the people who hand over these billions to our government. But don't worry, you'll never hear about it, because all the research (about how this is total bunk) is about to get classified. The defense contractors will get richer... though I'd be more mad about it if they were making insanely radioactive nuclear energy release devices that might actually work.

Re:Bah

[Anonymous Coward]

No Shit.

Re:Bah

[john.r.strohm]

Why do people think of weaponry as the first use for a new method of power?

Step One is triggerable release of disordered energy (heat and noise) from a new source by whatever means.

Steps Two through N are learning to control it in various ways: maximizing the yield, tuning the yield, controlling the timing of the effect, using it in cascade with other things. Compare for example the incandescent light bulb, which gives most of its output in infrared, with fluorescent lights, light-emitting diodes. Compare the original ruby lasers with the various gas lasers and the modern laser diodes. Consider fission, fusion, and the more recent work in laser-triggered fusion with inertial confinement from all the lasers hitting from all sides.

The first step is ALWAYS making it go boom. Then you learn how to control the boom.

The original Little Boy and Fat Man devices were large, heavy, and very inefficient, compared to weapons with similar explosive yields today.

If you want an extreme example: black powder was originally developed as an explosive. That very same black powder is still in use today, powering small model rocket engines. All it takes is proper design and packing to control the combustion.

Re:Bah

[pipingguy]

So should I throw all my money into researching inflatable sex dolls? They fulfil all three conditions.

Nah, wait for the Real Dolls to become more affordable and equipped with semi-reflective skin textures. Don't throw her out yet, as she provides unique squeeky sex. Try giving her a nitrous oxide inflation before your next romantic episode, you won't regret it!

Re:Bah

[pipingguy]

Ummm, is there a way to redact posts?

Re:Bah

[JollyFinn]

So Male sex dolls that, blows during an intercouse fills on all 3 account.

Re:Bah

[Oligonicella]

Apparently you, like many people today, do not have a grasp of history and see current activities only in their current function.

Perhaps you weren't aware that "football" is a sport designed upon a Celtic game which was used to "get the head back" of a decaptitated companion.

*That* means that we actually *civillized* the 'game'.

Human nature hasn't changed in millenia.

I was watching Voyager the other day

[ObviousGuy]

While I think that Voyager is quite below par for the entire Star Trek series, the skin tight spandex outfits that Kate Mulgrew wears draws me back.

But anyway, the crew had just found out about a so-called "Omega particle". The particle contained as much energy in one molecule of it as a neutron star had in its entirety.

Eventually they found a race of aliens who had been able to replicate the particle as well as contain it somewhat. Somewhat, because by the time Voyager got there the particle had escaped and blown up the laboratory.

Since this particle could be used for ultimate evil by anyone who had the predilection to use it in such a way, Starfleet HQ had deemed it illegal and set up regulations that required the immediate destruction of the particle if encountered.

The problem is that the energy from even a single molecule of the stuff could provide enough energy to sustain the life of a planet for hundreds of thousands of years.

So I look at this debate over the efficacy of the Hafnium bomb and wonder to myself why it is that humans have this innate need to develop weapons that possess this much power. Why do we see the drawbacks to new technology faster than the benefits? If the Hafnium technology could provide us with such a cheap power source that lasted generations, it makes sense to pursue a course of action that allowed us to take advantage of it.

Shame on the warmongers who would use it to kill other humans.

Re:I was watching Voyager the other day

[Anonymous Coward]

what a lot of people don't realize is that Hafnium is very similar to zirconium and is usually found in nature in zirconium ore.

what the article fails to mention is that Hafnium can actually be extracted from cheap cubic zirconium jewelry. this makes it extremely dangerous. Consider this - a hugely powerful explosive can be harvested by terrorists just by watching the Home Shopping Network and stocking up on cheap $29.95 necklaces.

Yes, I majored in chemistry...

I don't know, I think it would be better if this knowledge weren't public.

Re:I was watching Voyager the other day

[potifar]

Hafnium may be a component of zirconium ore, but the isomer Hf-178m does not exist naturally (even though standard Hf-178 constitutes about 28% of the Hf on earth).

Re:I was watching Voyager the other day

[Cryect]

Sure, except for the little issue that the hafnium that is with zirconium isn't the nuclear isomer they are discussing. Extraction of hafnium from zirconium is already a pain enough but then you have to use neutron irradiation to create the necessary isomer. If you can do the necessary neutron irradiation, why can't you just enrich your fuel for nuclear weapons?

Re:I was watching Voyager the other day

[selderrr]

comment summary : skin tight spandex outfits ... Kate Mulgrew

The first one of this result is the one you need

Re:I was watching Voyager the other day

[oconnorcjo]

So I look at this debate over the efficacy of the Hafnium bomb and wonder to myself why it is that humans have this innate need to develop weapons that possess this much power. Why do we see the drawbacks to new technology faster than the benefits?

Simple.
Military is willing to spend a fortune on speculative R&D where most companies and agencies would not. This means that the military gets the toys sooner than the rest. Military spent a fortune to harness atomic energy and later others found uses for the discoveries and inventions the military came up with.

You got to pay to play and the military is willing to pay.

Re:I was watching Voyager the other day

[Twirlip of the Mists]

So I look at this debate over the efficacy of the Hafnium bomb and wonder to myself why it is that humans have this innate need to develop weapons that possess this much power.

You aren't really serious, are you?

Come on, guys. Let's progress beyond freshman seminar and start thinking about things, okay?

Those human beings who are presently living are the result of hundreds of thousands of years of culling. Before modern civilization, say 100 years ago or so, life was very hard. It was incredibly easy to fall off of a cliff, or get eaten by a jaguar, or get constipated and die.

The hard facts of life were exacerbated by the presence of other creatures competing for the same resources our ancestors needed to survive: food and water, mostly, but also the gonads of our fellow human beings. If there's a monkey in that tree, he's going to be able to get to the fruit before you can. If there's a jaguar lurking behind that rock, he's going to be able to get to the monkey. And if there's a human being who's better equipped to kill jaguars, he's going to be able to score more chicks. So great-great-etc.-granddad either responded by figuring out how to kill jaguars, or by figuring out how to kill humans who knew how to kill jaguars. Either one worked.

Think about it: you are the product of 15,000 successive generations of winners. Red in tooth and claw.

So, equipped with these facts, you are somehow surprised that people have a natural penchant for creating tools that give them a competitive advantage? Tools like spears and ovens and sunblock and Viagra and wheels and central heating and cruise missiles and the germ theory of medicine and mascara and shoes and the incandescent light bulb and hafnium bombs.

Use those great big brains, people. They're not just decoration for the top of your spinal cord, you know. Think.

Understand that human beings are competitive, and that competition includes devising tools to wipe out as many of your fellow human beings as possible. This is, to coin a phrase, "human nature."

Re:I was watching Voyager the other day

[Limecron]

You watch Voyager to see Kate Mulgrew ??

Are you mad?

I can see if it were Jeri Ryan, but seesh! :)

Re:I was watching Voyager the other day

[Anonymous Coward]

While I think that Voyager is quite below par for the entire Star Trek series, the skin tight spandex outfits that Kate Mulgrew wears draws me back.

MY EYES! IT BURNS! AGGH!

Re:I was watching Voyager the other day

[misleb]

Why do we see the drawbacks to new technology faster than the benefits?

Because we learn from our mistakes. Because the first use of fusion was for bombs. Because it is about time people started considering the drawbacks BEFORE a new technology is developed.

Re:I was watching Voyager the other day

[Zak3056]

Starfleet HQ had deemed it illegal and set up regulations that required the immediate destruction of the particle if encountered.

Err, wouldn't destroying it RELEASE all of that energy in a rather bomblike way?

Re:I was watching Voyager the other day

[Anonymous Coward]

Kate Mulgrew is teh hottie.

One could easily imagine her being "in charge", if you know what I mean.

Re:I was watching Voyager the other day

[Anonymous Coward]

Hooooooo gawd was that insightful! Your analytical mind surely inspires awe.

Re:I was watching Voyager the other day

[argStyopa]

Shame on the warmongers who would use it to kill other humans.

Unfortunately, this doesn't usually STOP them, thus even the good guys have to build them too.

Since information is invariably imperfect, we (as the 'good guys') have to try to anticipate what the 'bad guys' will do; since it's folly to assume the other guys are not as smart as us, we have to advance in weapons tech as fast as possible.

Of course, this runs against the grain of the 'hey man, you're harshing my buzz'+'love everyone' ethic of the naive liberal, most therefore consider that we (the 'good guys') are the warmongers here. Stupid, really.

Re:I was watching Voyager the other day

[Anonymous Coward]

Understand that human beings are competitive, and that competition includes devising tools to wipe out as many of your fellow human beings as possible. This is, to coin a phrase, "human nature."

And civilization is deciding not to wipe out as many of your fellow human beings as possible, today.

Re:I was watching Voyager the other day

[Twirlip of the Mists]

And civilization is deciding not to wipe out as many of your fellow human beings as possible, today.

Why? I, for one, would be a lot better off if about seven-tenths of the world's population were killed right this minute.

And I bet you would be, too.

The moral imperative is very strong, and that's a good thing. I'm morally opposed to killing people, and I hope you are too. (If nothing else, be pragmatic: be morally opposed to other people killing you, and then generalize.)

But let us not confuse the moral imperative with some natural process, or something inherent in ourselves or our society.

The natural state of being is for me to be trying as hard as possible to kill you all the time, and vice-versa. We choose not to do this because we've convinced ourselves that it's the right thing to do, not because of some exterior compulsion.

Re:I was watching Voyager the other day

[clambake]

Why? I, for one, would be a lot better off if about seven-tenths of the world's population were killed right this minute.

Not if that included all the women.

Re:I was watching Voyager the other day

[clambake]

The natural state of being is for me to be trying as hard as possible to kill you all the time, and vice-versa. We choose not to do this because we've convinced ourselves that it's the right thing to do, not because of some exterior compulsion.

Humans are social animals. You would not survive very long in the "natural" world without your fellow clans members. Chimps don't hunt each other to extinction for the very same reason. It has nothing to do with morality and everything to do with survival. You can survive in this world because of the other 6 billion people who make it livable for you. Killing them off may sound reasonable until you do it and only then discover that the festering, disease-inviting garbage that you left on the sidewalk doesn't empty itself in the landfill.

Re:I was watching Voyager the other day

[Anonymous Coward]

Viagra, the tool of evolution. Lord knows you can't beat someone with a floppy cock.

Re:I was watching Voyager the other day

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Chimps don't hunt each other to extinction for the very same reason.

Chimps, and the other primates, have evolved a very complex system of dominance that usually--usually!--obviates the need for murder. A chimp when challenged by a more dominant member of the species will cringe and retreat.

Human beings, ironically, generally seem to lack this trait. People, when challenged, tend to return the challenge rather than accepting a subservient social role.

Killing them off may sound reasonable until you do it and only then discover that the festering, disease-inviting garbage that you left on the sidewalk doesn't empty itself in the landfill.

So, wait. Let me get this straight. Human beings need to get along because we need somebody to pick up our garbage for us?

Re:I was watching Voyager the other day

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Viagra enables a man to reproduce far past the point where he would normally stop responding to sexual stimulus. Only moderately wealthy people can afford Viagra. Basically we're selecting for wealth. Not secondarily, not incidentally, but primarily. If you can buy the pill, you can reproduce.

Interesting, no?

Re:I was watching Voyager the other day

[Wes Janson]

Absolutely perfectly put, the parent and your reply below. Bravo, bravo. You should write for a living. Thank you for your efforts to educate /., perhaps they have had some positive effect.

Re:I was watching Voyager the other day

[Guppy06]

"So I look at this debate over the efficacy of the Hafnium bomb and wonder to myself why it is that humans have this innate need to develop weapons that possess this much power."

To scare people enough to keep them from wanting to attack you. You're focusing too much on the "weapon" part of "terror weapon" and not enough on the "terror." More than a few people have worked on weapons like this with the intent of making them so frightening to everybody that nobody would want to see them actually "used."

If you want to talk Star Trek, think back about that TOS episode "A Taste of Armageddon," where an interplanetary war goes on for centuries because the two sides kept things "civilized" by relying on computer simulations to decide who was supposed to die.

Nuclear weapons have been working just as designed since the 1940's: they sit there and scare the bajeezus out of everybody.

Re:I was watching Voyager the other day

[Entropy2016]

Your "15,000 successive generations of winners" only won because they used their fear.

Fear of cliffs kept us alive.
Fear of jaguars kept us alive.
Fear of A-bombs & hydrogen-bombs kept us alive.
Fear of hafnium-bombs will keep us alive.

Not fearing box-cutters in airports led to thousands of deaths.
Not fearing Korea's nuclear-power intentions gave them a nuke.

You said: "Use those great big brains, people".
Concerned people are using their brains.
Anyone assuming technology==better==progress isn't.

Progress is much more than technology.
Progress is the caveman fearing fire (keeping a lit cave is moot if he's incinerated).
Progress is not letting caveman-tech weaponry on airplanes.
Progress is the strategic-arms-limitation-treaty.
Progress is being responsible, even if it's means being low-tech.

We're discussing something that can kill millions of people, so don't belittle anyone's fears with childish statements like "Let's progress beyond freshman seminar and start thinking about things".

Re:I was watching Voyager the other day

[shadowbearer]

Um, no. Viagra enables a impotent man to have sex - not necessarily to reproduce. Viagra has no effect on sperm production.

SB

Re:I was watching Voyager the other day

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Remember your high-school biology? Men almost always continue producing sperm throughout their lives, barring some kind of organic trouble. Women stop producing ova, but men continue producing sperm.

But men, at a certain, ill-defined age, do stop responding to sexual signals as consistently or completely as they used to. Hence, Viagra.

Re:I was watching Voyager the other day

[shadowbearer]

Sperm production does fall off with age, however. How fast depends on the individual. In any case, even tho we mostly *do* continue producing sperm, the viability of those sperm falls off even more rapidly than production does. In any case, I'd have to say that reproduction is likely not a big factor wrt to the use of Viagra - think about it - most people that old are not looking to have kids, they are looking to enjoy life, and aren't likely to reproduce. Seriously, how many people who can afford Viagra at older ages are going to be taking it so they can have four or five more kids? I'd say that in most cases they are taking it so they can enjoy having sex *after* the kids are out of the house. (Being more/less middle aged myself... :)

That also said, is it a bad thing if smart, successful people would want to reproduce as long as they can? (Well, as long as they aren't Bill Gates, but WTH :)

Great posts, BTW.

SB

Re:I was watching Voyager the other day

[Anonymous Coward]

Shame on the warmongers who would use it to kill other humans.

mmmm...kill other humans - btw, i'm in iraq right now

Re:I was watching Voyager the other day

[clambake]

Chimps, and the other primates, have evolved a very complex system of dominance that usually--usually!--obviates the need for murder. A chimp when challenged by a more dominant member of the species will cringe and retreat.

Human beings, ironically, generally seem to lack this trait. People, when challenged, tend to return the challenge rather than accepting a subservient social role.

You either don't understand how chimp dominace works or else you have never spent any time in a public high school.

So, wait. Let me get this straight. Human beings need to get along because we need somebody to pick up our garbage for us?

And be our doctors, engineers, train conductors, tailors, etc. Unless you are some godlike being capable of understanding and mastering all of the specilized professions that humanity has devised to survive in the world, you can't do it alone.

Re:I was watching Voyager the other day

[Anonymous Coward]

An interesting theory, very Hobbsian. Also very wrong. And on _every_ single point too.

Lucky you're not a "freshman", or I'd have to suggest Jared Diamonds "Guns, Germs, & Steel" as homework reading.

muppet.

Re:I was watching Voyager the other day

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Read it. Boring. Diamond pays too much attention to biology and ecology and not enough to culture.

Why do some cultures succeed spectacularly while others fail? Diamond asserts, in essence, that it's basically luck. If you had a head-start in hunting and gathering, well, the game is pretty much won right there.

Which is a fucking crock of shit. It's Western liberal apologetics of the worst kind. "I'm sorry that my culture dominates a huge chunk of the world. It's not our fault, really. It was just luck. If the breaks had gone the other way, it would have been the Zulus building the four-masted men-of-war and conquering the known world instead of us."

Yeah, whatever. I don't say this with pride, but with simple objectivity: some cultures are demonstrably better than others. Not races, not ethnicities; it's not biology at work, it's culture. We can have a productive discussion about why this is so, but first we have to set aside our white liberal guilt and drop the foolish pretensions that it's all just random chance.

Re:I was watching Voyager the other day

[List of FAILURES]

Trust me. Mr. Twirlip is not a godlike being as much as his arrogance implies that he may think he is. He's just a pompous prick who has probably read too much Ayn Rand. He doesn't care about other people and he will readily admit that. His world view is such that life is all about survival of the fittest. He has an agenda. HIs agenda is to sow discontent and division amongst those who he believes are beneath him. Read some of his journal entries and you will get the picture. What he IS, however, is a complete and utter FAILURE. Which is why he will be on my List of FAILURES forever. The time will come when he will try to write me off as his personal troll. But he has no idea how much more serious my game is than simply trolling.

Hafnium bullets.

[gooberguy]

Hafnium bullets would give a whole new meaning to armor piercing round. It would also make the motto of "one shot, one kill" obsolete.

Re:Hafnium bullets.

[comet_11]

Hell, imagine what you could do with an army of golfers!

Re:Hafnium bullets.

[BCoates]

Yes, but if we go down that path, we'll create a golf ball so big could destroy a planet...

Re:Hafnium bullets.

[gooberguy]

We could call it The Death Ball.

Re:Hafnium bullets.

[Thomas Shaddack]

Hell, imagine what you could do with an army of golfers!

A Beowulf cluster of those!

Hurry!!

[Tom7]

"... but if a Hafnium bomb could be built, it is thought that a golf ball sized chunk could produce the energy equivalent of 10 tons of conventional explosives."

Well, damn, we had better get our best minds on that one !!

Re:Hurry!!

[pjt33]

Wanting to blow up our best minds is surely taking anti-intellectualism a bit far.

Re:Hurry!!

[deglr6328]

I apologise for only mentioning the negative bomb making aspects of the story in my submission but I didn't want to drag it on too long for fear it would be rejected. The articles I linked to note the possibility of it being used in a kind of highly localized, intense cancer treatment among other things. However, I also think this will never pan out at all, in light of the recent negative results of the national labs and Collins fumbling around trying to explain them away. He now actually has a 'Galileo complex' saying things like "You start talking about expert panels, that's exactly what they did to Bruno, this is the same thing." referring to the monk who was burned to death for claming a sun centered solar system (well...sun centered universe to them).

Re:Hurry!!

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

The articles I linked to note the possibility of it being used in a kind of highly localized, intense cancer treatment among other things.

Using nuclear explosive golfballs to treat cancer? Suddenly the thought of living near a cancer treatment hospital scares me.

Re:Hurry!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, it's only 10 tons.

Spellchecking

[slavemowgli]

s/puropse/purpose/. You guys need a spellchecker for story submissions. :)

How much energy?

[bigattichouse]

Found this online: (about the ~2.5Mev):

http://www.clavius.org/envsun.html
but it takes the equivalent energy of about 620,000,000,000,000 million electron volts (MeV) per second to light up a 100-watt light bulb

So the question becomes, how much of this stuff (and how big a "battery") would it take to handle all my energy needs, and does the resulting crap that comes out the other end (when it breaks down) pose an unecessary risk to my health or the health of the environment (ie, is there a way to really "seal" the battery)

Re:How much energy?

[k98sven]

but it takes the equivalent energy of about 620,000,000,000,000 million electron volts (MeV) per second to light up a 100-watt light bulb

Firstly: Yes, but this 2.5 MeV is per ray. How many rays do you think the thing emits?

Say we have a golf ball of the stuff. A quick calculation gives you have about 4.8e20 atoms of hafinum in a 2cm radius ball.

With a 31-year half life, that means about 2.4e11 rays per second for the first 31 years.

Only about a tenth of a watt. Oh dear, not many lightbulbs there.

Which brings me to the main point:
You are assuming most of the fission energy is released as gamma radiation. This is not true.

Most of the energy turns into motion (or: the heat) of the fission fragments.

Re:How much energy?

[Deadstick]

but it takes the equivalent energy of about 620,000,000,000,000 million electron volts (MeV) per second to light up a 100-watt light bulb

Well, if you multiply 2.5 Mev by the number of hafnium atoms in your golf ball and divide that by 620,000,000,000,000, you're gonna need a light bulb that's guaranteed to last for very roughly a millennium.

rj

Re:How much energy?

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Erm... no. Most of the energy of a nuclear reaction (either fission or fusion) is released as photons. These photons interact with things around the core, like the bomb casing and the first couple inches of air, to create kinetic and thermal energy.

I don't know exactly where your math went wrong, but it went wrong.

Re:How much energy?

[poszi]

178g of hafnium 178 is 6.02E+23 atoms (Avogadro constant). 6.02E+23 x 2.5 MeV = 1.5E+30 MeV = 2.41 × 10E+11 J = lighting 100W bulb for 76 years.

Natural hafnium contains 27% Hf-178.

This Hf-178-m2 is radioactive and requires roughly the same protection as radioactive cesium-137 but it has an excited nucleus and there are no decay products apart from normal stable Hf-178. Getting it excited is not a cheap process, though.

Re:How much energy?

[canavan]

The energy density of Hf-178m is mentioned in the wikipedia article on nuklear isomers (as opposed to molecular isomers). At 900GJ/kg you could draw 1kW from 1kg of Hf-178m for 900000s, which is 250 hours or 10 days, 10h, or a notebook with 100W (or the aforementioned light bulb) for more than 104 days.

Re:How much energy?

[canavan]

Oops. I was off by a factor of 1000...

The energy density of Hf-178m is mentioned in the wikipedia article on nuklear isomers (as opposed to molecular isomers). At 900GJ/kg you could draw 1kW from 1kg of Hf-178m for 900000000s, which is 250000 hours or 10416 days - 28 years. Your 100W Lightbulb would last 280 years.

Re:How much energy?

[Gewis]

Nuclear fusion of deuterium produces about the same, 2.5 MeV. But considering that in about 2 grams of deuterium, there are 6.02*10^23 particles, if those two grams underwent fusion, you'd have (2.5 MeV/reaction)*(3.01*10^23 reactions)...

By comparison, Halfnium particles are much heavier, about 178.49 g/mol, so you'd have to have a much heavier battery to get the same sort of reaction rate going with it, but for the most part, it's easily manageable.

Now, of course, there are differences with that reaction rate based on nuclear surface tension, questions of whether or not the Hf can really be induced to undergo fission, questions about how to get deuterium to fuse, but from a numerical standpoint, you don't have to have that much material to provide you power.

As for the resultant crap, well, it can't be too much worse than we already get from nuclear reactors, can it? :)

Re:How much energy?

[k98sven]

If you knew what you were writing about you'd know that I'm not wrong.

Yes of course the energy is released as photons, and as kinetic energy. You can't really differentiate between the, anyway because heat radiation and kinetic motion rapidly form an equillibrium in solid matter.

Gamma photons are not heat.
The heat radiation is in the infrared. VERY different part of the spectrum there. (X-ray patients don't warm up when they're being examined. They might get cancer though, through the ionization effects though.)

Why do you think nuclear reactors work through heating water instead of X-ray absorption?
Hint: It's not just because it's easier.

Most of the energy is released as heat. Or 'heat photons' if you like. Lots of them. The gamma rays, by comparison, have much higher energy per photon, but they do NOT carry away most of the reaction energy.

Re:How much energy?

[k98sven]

You could also take a course.

Quote, emphasis mine:

Actually, in the fission of 235U, about 83% of the energy appears as the kinetic energy of the fragments, about 2.5% as kinetic energy of the neutrons and about 3.5% in the form of instantly emitted gamma rays. 11% is given off in the subsequent decays of the daughter nuclei.

Re:How much energy?

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Most of the energy is released as heat. Or 'heat photons' if you like.

You're kidding, right?

Let's review. Heat is the term we apply to the average kinetic energy in the molecules in a given collection of matter. That collection might be in any phase; "heat" still applies to the kinetic energy of molecules or, in especially high-energy states, individual atoms, or even more elementary particles.

Photons are particles (Hi, my name is Isaac Newton) that convey the electromagnetic force.

Heat and photons are not related.

However, a barrage of photons of different wavelengths (Hi, my name is Christian Huygens) can change the temperature (i.e., the total heat, expressed in relative terms) of a given collection of matter.

The vast majority of the energy released by an uncontrolled nuclear reaction is released in the form of photons. Photons go "whoosh!" and interact with nearby matter, causing that matter to get really hot.

("Gamma rays" is merely the term we apply to photons with wavelengths in a certain range.)

Re:How much energy?

[Glock27]

Gamma photons are not heat. The heat radiation is in the infrared. VERY different part of the spectrum there. (X-ray patients don't warm up when they're being examined. They might get cancer though, through the ionization effects though.)

When atomic weapons explode, most of the energy is released in the soft X-ray region. This is simply a consequence of the black body curve and the (extremely high) temperature of a nuke blast.

In the atmosphere (note emphasis) these soft X-rays are quickly absorbed (average free path is something like 9 in. if I remember correctly) and then re-emitted as thermal radiation. That is why there's a "fireball" from a nuclear bomb.

If the bomb were to explode in space, there would be much less thermal effect.

Why do you think nuclear reactors work through heating water instead of X-ray absorption? Hint: It's not just because it's easier.

No, it's because the reactor materials become hot. Note that in a fission reactor the temperature never reaches several million degrees, where the X-rays would be produced, as they are in a nuclear explosion.

I hope this cleared things up for you. If not, read more at TutorGig. Read the part about 2/3 of the way down under "Effects of a Nuclear Explosion".

Re:How much energy?

[k98sven]

No I'm not kidding. I spent five years getting my masters' degree in physical chemistry. And so, I'd like to belive I know something about matter-radiation interactions, given that that's mostly what physical chemistry is about.

Heat is the term we apply to the average kinetic energy in the molecules in a given collection of matter.


Correct.

That collection might be in any phase; "heat" still applies to the kinetic energy of molecules or, in especially high-energy states, individual atoms, or even more elementary particles.

Wrong. The concept of 'heat' and temperature loses significance on level of the individual particle. As you pointed out, temperature is a statistical thing, you can't apply statistics to individual objects.

Or, in the words of my atomic physics professor: "Temperature is something which you measure with a thermometer"

Heat and photons are not related.
Yes they are, this has been known for 120 years or so. Please bother to learn about some physics 101 laws like Wiens radiation law, Stefan-Boltzmanns law and the Planck radiation law before spouting off stupid things like that.

However, a barrage of photons of different wavelengths can change the temperature (i.e., the total heat, expressed in relative terms) of a given collection of matter.

Yes. That's called absorption. Photons get absorbed. They don't continue to exist after that. Unless of course they're re-emitted. All matter is continuously emitting and absorbing heat radiation. (Hi, my name is Max Planck)

It get's worse than that, though:
Quantum electrodynamics (Hi, my name is Richard Feynman), tells us that you cannot differentiate between kinetic heat and radiative heat are different things. In the classical picture, heat is transferred in collisions, but in the QED picture, as exchanges of virtual photons.

Re:How much energy?

[k98sven]

Comments noted, and I agree with everything you wrote.

But: the context here was the energy of a single gamma line-emission from a fission reaction, not the total amount of gamma-ray radiation from a nuclear blast, which is also a bit out of context, since energy production was the subject.

Re:How much energy?

[Twirlip of the Mists]

And so, I'd like to belive I know something about matter-radiation interactions, given that that's mostly what physical chemistry is about.

I'd like so too. Only trouble is, it doesn't seem to be the case.

Re:How much energy?

[k98sven]

Yeah, well once you get out of junior high-school I suppose you can tell me all about how bad my understanding of physics is.

Until then, perhaps you could give me some examples, with references, on what, exactly, was wrong with the grandparent post?

Re:How much energy?

[Anonymous Coward]

just wondering dude.. why did it take 5 years to get your masters? Or did you combine bachelors and masters together?
Most people I know take 2-2.5 years to complete their masters. Phd's- yes, about 3,4 or 5 years.
(im not twirlip of the mists or glock27 etc).

Re:How much energy?

[k98sven]

Because I'm studying in Sweden, where you are not required to get an undergraduate degree before going on to a masters' (or rather, the equivalent thereof).

I did it all in one swoop, so of course, I count it all together as five years.

This is due to change though, The EU:s Bologna declaration means they're going to harmonize the standards of higher education in Europe. The current suggestion is to institute a more american-style system.

Re:How much energy?

[pfdietz]

No, most energy in fission is released in the kinetic energy of the fission fragments. There is some prompt gamma emission from the fragments, and some delayed gamma emission from the decay of unstable fragments, but this is a relatively small fraction of the total energy yield.

In DT fusion, 80% of the energy comes out in the neutron, and 20% in the helium nucleus. Gamma emission from the fusion reaction is negligible.

Re:How much energy?

[shadowbearer]

All frequencies of electromagnetic radiation can induce "heat" (ie, can accelerate the velocities of the molecules which they impact). They don't need to be infrared photons. The various frequencies of EMR will vary in their effects depending on whether what molecules they hit absorb or reflect the photon in question.

Infrared radiation is particularly effective that way with regards to human bodies because it is at frequencies that are easily absorbed by water molecules, of which we mostly consist.

High energy photons such as xrays and gamma *do* cause heating effects, but those vary depending on the frequency; and wrt to gamma, the molecular dissasociation that occurs dwarfs the heating effects. That doesn't mean that they don't heat up their targets.

SB

Our "Dilythium" Star Trek Crystal

[artlu]

The first thing that pops into my head is long term power - similar to the premise of Star Trek's "Dilythium Crystals." The amount of power in such a tiny size could be used for many useful applications especially in regards to space travel/exploration. If only everyone didn't think about using this immense power to kill each other, we might progress as a society. Oh well.

artlu

Re:Our "Dilythium" Star Trek Crystal

[Cryect]

Well, apparently this nuclear isomer has less energy than the usual fissable materials. Then you take into account this nuclear isomer isn't found naturally. So now you have to purify Hafnium, then blast it with neutrons to get your desired nuclear isomer. All for something that really doesn't have much use besides its safer to handle than fissable fuel. Really to use it for anything beyond a weapon doesn't sound to feasible from reading the article.

The paranoid might say..

[bigattichouse]

cause they still haven't told you about the huge mothership that's coming... we gotta have something beeter than nukes (they *never* work in movies) ;)

When are they going to be marketed?

[Camel Pilot]

I could really improve my golf score with one of those baby's! Every shot is a hole in one - a really big hole....

Better Hafnium...

[rodney dill]

than Nonium at all.

Re:Better Hafnium...

[pipingguy]

than Nonium at all.

I was thinking the same thing: is hafnium only 50% as effective as fulnium? Where do they get the unobtanium to make this stuff?

Re:Better Hafnium...

[shadowbearer]

Nonium

I think I made some of that in the microwave the other day. At least, nobody around here would approach it closely.

SB

for the sake of humanity

[Heartz]

For the sake of Humanity and all of mankind, if a HF bomb really can create such chaos and destruction, we shouldn't build it.

The ethical parameters in this issue is clear. The risks are too high, and the destruction devastating.

Re:for the sake of humanity

[Mordok]

For the sake of humanity we also must have weapons. Think about an huge asteroid, with this we could dispose the danger more efficiently than with nuke.

Re:for the sake of humanity

[rdsmith4]

a HF bomb

Thats "a Hf bomb." HF is hydroflouric acid, which I do not think is very explosive. </pedantry>

Re:for the sake of humanity

[Have Blue]

Now that the knowledge is out there, someone will build it eventually. Hopefully it will be built by a country or organization not likely to use it for evil right off the bat.

Re:for the sake of humanity

[SmokeSerpent]

Think about an huge asteroid, with this we could dispose the danger more efficiently than with nuke.

The great think about nuclear weapons is that they are the swiss army knife of disaster preparedness. We can use them to avert destruction by asteroids, aliens, earthquakes, disease outbreaks, bad weather, instability of the earths magnetic field, hordes of mutant animals, just about anything!

Re:for the sake of humanity

[mpe]

For the sake of Humanity and all of mankind, if a HF bomb really can create such chaos and destruction, we shouldn't build it.

Since it would be redundent alongside all the other methods humanity has developed for creation chaos and destruction :)

Re:for the sake of humanity

[aardvarkjoe]

Hopefully it will be built by a country or organization not likely to use it for evil right off the bat.

Unfortunately, I don't think that the Vatican is researching it at the moment.

One word...

[Anonymous Coward]

COOL!

No, two.

WAY COOL!

I can already imagine blowing up a couple terrorist with this weapon from our lord and savior jesus christ.

All that Star Wars research back in the 80s...

[ValourX]

... and the damn prequels still sucked. I guess all the science in the world can't save you from George Lucas. -Jem

Re:All that Star Wars research back in the 80s...

[Guppy06]

" ... and the damn prequels still sucked."

Just because there was research doesn't mean they actually did anything it. Fett could have used on of these Golfballs of Doom to kill the senator off in the first five or ten minutes of Ep. II, but no, he had to set up the Goldberg assassination plot involving poisonous worms sent by a rookie dumb enough to have the droid return home.

Better yet, they could have put these into each of the combat droids in Ep. I, along with a failsafe switch that says "If you lose contact with the mothership, detonnate." It wouldn't perhaps be as fun as my other solution ("If you lose contact, shoot anything that moves"), but it works a heck of a lot better than leaving all that expensive hardware just standing around and doing nothing.

Hmm....

[DiscordOfFive]

This sounds like an argument, with the potential to become a huge debacle, over something that is poorly understood by modern standards. Yeah, IF a bomb of the stuff could be built, it'd be a really effective bomb. But that's like saying if we could make another sun, we'd have lots of light. Maybe it's possible, but I'd bet my chips on not. At least under present tech.

I shudder to think...

[SSJVegeto2001]

what could be done with a Wholenium...

Re:I shudder to think...

[hak1du]

I think Holmium is much less useful.

Re:I shudder to think...

[Phleg]

Who would mod this guy up? There was a great opportunity for a joke here, and he completely missed the existence of Holmium!

Oops

[MickyJ]

When I first saw the title I though it said 'Human Bomb'. But if the bomb is potentially golf ball sized, that's exactly how it would be used in future. Swallow a bomb, blow up a large part of a city...

Re:Oops

[ziggamon]

Or you just hide it in a soda can and take the first flight out of the country?

I think a better line of investigation

[Anonymous Coward]

The state of kate mulgrew's pudenda in an excited state.

I suspect the depth and warmth of this might be worth exploring, but only under tightly controlled condition.

Deep penetring particles might raise the containment field to a highly energetic state, ultimately ending in spurting of electrons that would cover not only the area in question, but might raise higher if only to shower the faces of those involved.

Is it a fair question? We might never know.

Dimensions

[Daath]

[...] if a Hafnium bomb could be built, it is thought that a golf ball sized chunk could produce the energy equivalent of 10 tons of conventional explosives

Doesn't that mean that a ten megaton hafniabomb would be the size of one million golf balls? That's pretty big...
I'm sure I must be wrong :P

Re:Dimensions

[calidoscope]

Doesn't that mean that a ten megaton hafniabomb would be the size of one million golf balls? That's pretty big...

That would be my assumption as well. Remember a volume of 1 million golf balls would be a sphere 100 times larger than a golf ball - which is maybe a factor of 2 to 4 larger than a 10 MT nuke.

Anyway, reason for size
Splitting U-235 releases 207 MeV
Gamma from Hafnium is 2.45 MeV

Re:Dimensions

[Ruie]

One million golf balls do not take that much space. In fact they should fit comfortably into 3m cube (assuming the diameter of a golf ball is 3cm or not much bigger than that).

9 cubic meters will fit easily in a truck.

Re:Dimensions

[Dirtside]

3m-sided cube is 9.8425 feet on a side, or 118.11 inches, or 1,647,631 cubic inches. A golf ball is 1.73 inches in diameter, or 3.142436 cubic inches. A million golf balls would be thus 3,142,436 cubic inches, or 1.907 times larger than a 3m cube. QED, one million golf ball volumes would not fit into a 3m cube. It would take a cube 3.7m on a side, which is considerably larger.

Fusion bombs are nowhere near that large. Incidentally, a cube 3 meters on a side is 27 cubic meters, not 9 cubic meters.

Re:Dimensions

[deglr6328]

That sounds right, the energy available from the reaction is NOT more powerfull than nuclear bombs. It is intermediate between conventional and nuclear explosives.

Re:Dimensions

[calidoscope]

Fusion bombs are nowhere near that large

The B-36 got two to three years of extra operational life for the simple reason that the first generation of fusion weapons were too big to fit in a B-52. Later generation fusion weapons were smaller - figure the warhead on Titan II was on the order of two meters diameter and maybe two meters high.

A 10 MT Hf bomb would be putting out about 100 KW of heat - which would make it pretty easy to spot. All-in-all, even if a Hf bomb was possible, it would much simpler building a conventional nuke.

What had DARPA excited was the possibility of a fuel with much higher energy content than chemical fuels without the neutron shielding problems of a conventional reactor. 2.45 MeV photons are basically stopped by Compton scattering, so while you would want a lead shield around the reactor, the primary gamma ray absorber could be any goor refratory material.

Re:Dimensions

[frankie]

that a ten megaton hafniabomb would be the size of one million golf balls? That's pretty big...

Yep. The point of hafnium is NOT that it's more powerful than uranium or plutonium. The point is that you CANNOT make a U or P bomb smaller than a grapefruit (approximately), that's the critical mass limit. A golf ball sized bomb that can take out a small building -- that's a great weapon for assassination. Or terrorism.

Re:Dimensions

[SiMac]

A million golf balls would be 10 gigatons. A thousand would be 10 megatons. The original poster fucked this up.

Re:Dimensions

[Dirtside]

The article said:

if a Hafnium bomb could be built, it is thought that a golf ball sized chunk could produce the energy equivalent of 10 tons of conventional explosives

1 golf ball = 10 tons of (e.g.) TNT
1,000 golf balls = 10,000 tons of TNT = 10 kilotons of TNT
1,000,000 golf balls = 10,000,000 tons of TNT = 10 megatons of TNT

Thus one million golf balls' worth of Hafnium would (theoretically) produce an explosion with the force of 10 megatons of TNT. The original poster was correct.

Red mercury?

[ozbird]

These (rather dubious) claims sound awfully like those attributed to red mercury, a mysterious (and probably mythical) powerful explosive substance. Note point 5 in the linked document, which suggests that "red mercury" may be a codeword for some kind of new nuclear material.

</tinfoil hat>

Re:Red mercury?

[mangastudent]

Well, Sam Cohen (sp?), inventor of the real "neutron bomb" (Enhanced Radiation (ER) warhead) and author of a cogent book about it (with the great punch line that we never deployed real ones in Europe (I think the Sprint ER warhead was probably the only one ever deployed)) at one time thought there might be something to "red mercury" but he of course didn't get very explicit about it in public sources.... Curiously, Hf is about 95% the atomic weight of mercury....

It does sound unlikely on theoretical grounds, so it's up to the experimentalists to prove Hf-178 m2 decay can be induced by X-rays.

But what could this be used for? Those worried about bombs are not thinking this through, I suspect. Conventional Pu implosion based nukes would I think be much cheaper, and we can already fit one inside a 155mm artillery shell. Probably much cheaper --- I should read up on it --- but with a stable isomer of Hf-178 have a 27.1% incidence in nature, you aren't going to make it by pure extraction....

Gamma/X-ray lasers sound cool, and they are ... for space combat. Problem is, gammm/X-rays don't propagate through the atmosphere very well. In fact, the fireball of a nuke is its liberated gamma rays interacting with the atmosphere and being turned into heat. One would have to check out distances and all sorts of other factors to see if it might make e.g. a good tank killer (and we already have LOTS of ways of killing tanks). But as a directed energy weapon (X-ray laser) it might have short range uses inside an atmosphere compared to existing alternatives.

For bombs or X-ray lasers in space this might be very useful due to the low mass and ability to turn the source on and off for the latter, but that's a long ways away, and realistically only threatens fast targets, i.e. incoming boosters or warheads that are going to kill people if you don't stop them. Kinetic kill is a very mature technology to compete with, but the speed of a directed energy weapon (e.g. X-ray laser) could make it very worthwhile, especially if it's multi-shot (you could see if you've killed the target and then try again).

Otherwise, at first thought is just seems to be useful for special cases of power generation; the ability to turn it on and off could do some really special things to weight budgets. (E.g. you only have to shield vulnerable parts of what you're powering; it's not "hot" all the time like a reactor or pure decay heat source.) However I wonder about its daughter isotope decay patterns ... those can be nasty.

Re:Red mercury?

[aminorex]

Someone please mod the parent up. We have a
priority inversion going on here.

Re:Red mercury?

[rjh]

the fireball of a nuke is its liberated gamma rays interacting with the atmosphere and being turned into heat

The majority of a fission reaction's fireball comes from the Brehmsstrahlung Effect. Uranium fisses into two incredibly ionized fragments each with a +46 charge on average. Those fragments have a huge amount of kinetic energy and, due to their enormous charge, tend to stop within inches of the detonation--meaning all that energy gets liberated as heat inside a sphere about the same size as a beach ball.

That's the fireball for you.

The entire idea that "gamma is easily absorbed by air" is nonsense. If gamma is easily absorbed by air, then why did I have to wear a lead apron whenever I was around a gamma source? Because gamma travels through air quite readily, and ionizes holy hell out of your body tissues as it travels through you.

For an excellent reference on the physics of nuclear weapons, check the Federation of American Scientists' website, particularly the essay The Holocaust Bomb: A Question of Time .

Re:Red mercury?

[mangastudent]

the fireball of a nuke is its liberated gamma rays interacting with the atmosphere and being turned into heat

The majority of a fission reaction's fireball comes from the Brehmsstrahlung Effect. Uranium fisses into two incredibly ionized fragments each with a +46 charge on average. Those fragments have a huge amount of kinetic energy and, due to their enormous charge, tend to stop within inches of the detonation--meaning all that energy gets liberated as heat inside a sphere about the same size as a beach ball.

That's the fireball for you.

That's obviously almost certainly correct when you think about the basic physics. I can't remember my source for gamma ray heating of air causing the fireball (although it might contribute some)....

The entire idea that "gamma is easily absorbed by air" is nonsense.

Indeed --- otherwise Enhance Radiation warheads (aka "The Neutron Bomb") like the Sprint's (but not whatever it was we deployed in Europe) wouldn't make sense. Therefore it's a good thing I said in the context of gamma/X-ray lasers that "gamma/X-rays don't propagate through the atmosphere very well."

This has been one of the major arguments for the use of nuclear pumped X-ray lasers in space for ballistic missile defense; they can't kill cities.

If gamma is easily absorbed by air, then why did I have to wear a lead apron whenever I was around a gamma source? Because gamma travels through air quite readily, and ionizes holy hell out of your body tissues as it travels through you.

Pretty obviously it's a question of distance, made more complicated for a laser by the inverse square law not applying, although collimation is obviously important; scattering is probably the major factor (the cause of "skyshine").

For an excellent reference on the physics of nuclear weapons, check the Federation of American Scientists' website, particularly the essay The Holocaust Bomb: A Question of Time

This I can't entirely recommend (like I suppose everything else, but the FAS is particularly suspect; they and this essay are certainly open about their agenda). For an essay who's thesis is that excessive secrecy is a bad thing, it's curious but very politically correct to omit any mention of Teller's campaign against that. It also ignores the evidence against Oppenheimer WRT the clearance issue, which has been partly confirmed after the fall of the Soviet Union: at a museum exhibit honoring their atomic spies (the third of which is still unknown...), Oppenheimer has a place, but not as a spy per se (the guide(s) were not clear about his role while they were about the confirmed spys).

I'm simply uncomfortable with anything that puts a pure white hat on Oppenheimer and a black hat on Teller, or someone who tries to write about nuclear war fighting without taking it seriously, i.e. thinking and/or reading about how nukes would be used if worst comes to worst (obviously his understandable dislike for the concept is the likely cause). Morland's bias and gross ignorance about this field, etc. makes the whole essay a questionable thing, and it's been amply demonstrated that you need to carefully check technical papers in the areas where they result in support for a thoroughly biased author's thesis.

(I suspect Morland is trying to be honest as he can, but too strong a bias can e.g. cause one to not sufficiently check convenient results.)

Unfortunately, we have to start "thinking about the unthinkable" again; "Wretchard's" indispensable essays in his Belmont Club blog make the case better than I can, but the bottom line is that a likel

Re:Red mercury?

[rjh]

This I can't entirely recommend (like I suppose everything else, but the FAS is particularly suspect; they and this essay are certainly open about their agenda).

I wholeheartedly agree that they've got a very distinct agenda. On the other hand, they're also fairly good about separating the facts from their interpretation of the facts. As it happens, I disagree with their ultimate conclusions--pretty solidly, in fact--but I find their factual content to be top-notch.

Morland's essay, in the strictly factual bits, is quite excellent--his explanation about how modern "fusion" weapons are really primarily fission devices is spot-on and lucid. His knack for coming to dicey conclusions based on those facts is equally excellent.

BOMBS!!

[Anonymous Coward]

[Shaking in Rage] Why...always...bombs...first?!

Everything we develop in the nuclear field has started out as a _bomb_, and then, only 10 or 20 or however-many years later, it finally finds its way into power plants, or medicine, or other _good_ uses.

Re:BOMBS!!

[MellowTigger]

It's a simple developmental process: blow it up before trying to contain it. Same with the internal combustion engine. You have to know how stuff combusts ("blows up") before you can properly harness it. Disappointing, I agree, but true. Same with nuclear fission. I really don't want an electricity generation plant built from the stuff unless the engineers know just what it takes to make it produce energy in an uncontrolled "mushroom cloud" kind of way. It's the simplest beginner step in gaining knowledge about the energy release process. More refined methods come later.

Re:BOMBS!!

[markov_chain]

Without big bombs to deter your enemies, you wouldn't be alive long enough to develop said good uses.

I recall an article about scientists at Los Alamos wishing to develop bombs as big and powerful as possible, precisely because the destructive power would make them much *less* likely to be used by the governments. Indeed, compare the cold war and the previous wars where entire nations were dying in the trenches. I sure prefer the former.

Re:BOMBS!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to the human race... You must be new here.

Re:BOMBS!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh come on... even rocks were used as weapons before people learned to use them as constructive tools.

That's just the way things are. It's mcuh easier to destroy than to create.

isotope vs isomer

[frankie]

For those of us non-nuclear scientists (like me) who thought isomer meant a molecule with different bond orientations (e.g. trans vs cis), here's an explanation: A nuclear isomer is a metastable state of an atom caused by the excitation of a proton or neutron in its nucleus so that it requires a change in spin before it can release its extra energy.

Next question: how the heck do you control the spin of individual baryons in a nucleus?

Re:isotope vs isomer

[Anonymous Coward]

For those of us non-nuclear scientists (like me) who thought isomer meant a molecule with different bond orientations

Hell, I thought an isomer was a pair of fashionable winter gloves.

Re:isotope vs isomer

[Stuwee]

how the heck do you control the spin of individual baryons in a nucleus?

Well according to the article, you fire X-rays at them and hope for the best. There's probably a more scientific reason (due to the high wavelength of X-ray radiation, blah blah blah), but that one worked for me.

Re:isotope vs isomer

[Christopher Thomas]

Next question: how the heck do you control the spin of individual baryons in a nucleus?

You fire something at the nucleus and isolate the ones where one of the outer-shell nucleons was bumped up to the energy state you want.

If you fire X or gamma rays at the nucleus, you should only be able to excite very short-lived isomers (if it is boosted by absorbing a photon, it can decay by emitting a photon). Firing things like electrons or protons at the nucleus can excite states that don't have a single-photon decay path. These can be metastable.

We do the same thing in HeNe lasers. Helium atoms are excited to a metastable state by electric discharge, and after a while interact with neon atoms, putting them in a state suitable for lasing (target state of neon has almost exactly the same energy as the metastable helium state, so the exchange happens easily).

I hope this helps :).

Re:isotope vs isomer

[subnuclear]

You just have to make a lot of halfnium from some nuclei and some of the halfnium will have this higher energy spin-state spontaneously. You can seperate different spin-states using strong magnets since the amount a particle bends in a magnetic field depends on its spin. The X-rays aren't used to controlled the spin but to the kick the nucleus in to a higher-energy and less stable spin-state. The nucleus then decays into the ground state releasing a much more energetic photon than the X-ray you put in.

However, the cross-section (the probability of occurance) for this X-ray excitation is incredibly small in every isomer studied. It usually requies much more energy to be put in than can be produced. Carl Collins's data shows a much larger cross-section (10,000x larger!), but follow-up experiments by Argonne National Labs and others haven't seen a damn thing. Collins data is not very convincing to anyone, but Collins

Re:isotope vs isomer

[aaron_ds]

You don't control the spins, that would be opressive. A simple please would work nicely.

Re: isotope vs isomer

[Black Parrot]

> Next question: how the heck do you control the spin of individual baryons in a nucleus?

For the spin control we must turn to politicians rather than scientists.

Re:isotope vs isomer

[Spy Hunter]

Don't use leech sites like encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com. Use Wikipedia itself, where the content comes from, where it will be the most up-to-date, and where you can edit it yourself.

oh hell yea

[P0lyh34)]

We may blow ourselves straight to hell yet. Personally i'm all for destruction of the human race. Sure we take out several other species on our way out this way, but atleast we do take ourselves out, besides, were over due for the perodic mass extinctions the planet experiances.

Hafnium as airplane nuclear fuel?

[MtViewGuy]

This idea is NOT a joke--a recent issue of Popular Mechanics talked about such an idea, one that could make it possible for a high-flying UAV such as the Global Hawk to fly 10-20 times the endurance it has now.

Not to be contrarian, but . . .

[Maradine]

isnt's that a little weak?

Hiroshima had an estimated yied of 12-16kt, something that can be done these days with 24kg of plutonium (if google serves, anyway).

And a golf ball of hafnium can do one ton?

Seems a little less scary, in a nuclear sense.

M

Re:Not to be contrarian, but . . .

[Maradine]

And a golf ball of hafnium can do one ton?

read: ten.

Ignore me.

Re:Not to be contrarian, but . . .

[Euler]

The article didn't seem to cover this issue. But I've been following this for a while.

The reason such a weapon is desirable (or feared) isn't the size of the explosion, but the fact that Hf-isomer weapons can be made to cover the middle ground between conventional and nuclear weapons. An army equipped with such weapons is tactically superior to an army with only conventional explosives. Imagine grenades that can level an entire city block. SAM missiles could knock out an entire squadron of planes at a time. Large ships could easily be sunk by a very small cruise missile or torpedo.

Even if the conventional army has a nuclear deterrent, it will not deter the use of isomer weapons.

Re:Not to be contrarian, but . . .

[STrinity]

Imagine a SEAL team consisting of Tiger Woods and Arnold Palmer armed only with a 1-iron.

Once the world trembled at the sound of our rockets. Well once again will they tremble, this time at the sound of our driver!

Re:Not to be contrarian, but . . .

[Maradine]

Now I get it. Thanks.

Re:Not to be contrarian, but . . .

[Lawrence_Bird]

weapons like this would be used to take out hardened bunkers and deep underground weapon stores. They would be much
more favorable than the micro-nukes that are on drawing
boards.

Not Interested...

[icekillis]

They should be looking at other ways to make use of the Hafnium, like... How can it be used to halfen the boot load of xp? If we place one of those devices in a microsoft building... will we make the employees more productive?

Not so scary

[Anonymous Coward]

Just have standing orders to shoot on sight anyone with a backpack dental x-ray machine strapped to their back. This should take care of the nuclear homicide bombers.

Great...

[Jack Zombie]

I can imagine the Bush Administration will now claim that Saddam Hussein had a hidden stash of golf balls... and send Tiger Woods to defuse them.

"Golf for your lifes"?

Re:Great...

[Anonymous Coward]

100% Underrated

Hefnerium

[sql*kitten]

Hefnerium molecules come in pairs and they're larger than golf balls. More like the size of grapefruits.

Re:Hefnerium

[dirtydamo]

Hefnerium molecules come in pairs and they're larger than golf balls. More like the size of grapefruits.


Only on Slashdot could this comment be modded informative.

Re:Hefnerium

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, there are lots of bottom-of-the-barrel recycled-news sites out there...

Re:Hefnerium

[Viceice]

Since when was the Periodic table 1000 trillion elements big?

Re:Hefnerium

[Anonymous Coward]

I only wish that when I was meta-modreating that the options were "fair, indifferent, unfair, and this moderator wsa on crack"

Nuclear isomers were investigated thoroughly...

[Anonymous Coward]

...in the 90's by the tanning industry. Turned out to be a total failure. The researches disappeared with all the grant money, leaving only a cloud of neutrons.

You obviously aren't a Trekkie...

[cnelzie]

...even the most peon of a Trekkie knows that Dilithium crystals are used to regulate the output of a Matter/Anti-Matter Reaction...

They have nothing to do with generating power by themselves...

Sheesh...

Re:You obviously aren't a Trekkie...

[Kiriwas]

Indeed.. the dilithium crystals have the strange property of NOT going boom when encoutering anti matter, even though they themselves are normal matter. THAT too would be an amazing discovery. One I doubt we'll see any time soon.

Re:You obviously aren't a Trekkie...

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems to me that one does not need dilithium crystals to regulate a matter antimatter reaction. One only needs a magnetic field to control how many particles escape.

The question is, where does one get antimatter to power such a reaction?

If anitmatter has the same amount of energy as matter, and energy cannot be created or destoryed, then perhaps there is a way to turn matter into antimatter without expending much energy to do so? Perhaps a way to start a chain reaction that converts a certain type of matter into antimatter?

Re:You obviously aren't a Trekkie...

[Thomas Shaddack]

If anitmatter has the same amount of energy as matter, and energy cannot be created or destoryed, then perhaps there is a way to turn matter into antimatter without expending much energy to do so?

It's unlikely this is possible (the conservation of charge, energy, and several other variables), but you can convert energy to matter/antimatter. There is some effect when a photon of high enough energy interacts with the field around an atom nucleus, and its energy is converted to an electron-positron pair.

Re:You obviously aren't a Trekkie...

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

You are talking about a breeder reaction, something that is possible for fissionable materials (specifically uranium), but I've never heard of such a reaction postulated for AM.

More practical, would be to cool a few copper atoms to absolute zero, and alter some of the resulting tweaks so that they act as virtual strings. You could use such a setup to locally alter supersymetry, and cause normal matter to "mirro" to AM. I was going to do that tomorrow night, except there is a new episode of Sopranos on. New and advanced energy production methods will just have to wait until after I find out whether Tony B betrays Christopher...

***NOTE TO IDIOT MODERATORS***
The first paragraph is serious, and correct to the extent of my knowledge. The second is a lame midnight attempt at a joke, with nearly plagiarized methods from a better than average scifi novel I read a few years back. Which one? I leave that as an exercise to the reader.

hafnium ? poltential for misdirection

[Stanleverlock]

DEar Friends,
Has anyone considered the money and research hours spent by all those scientists just to check out this expermental breakthrough.
Then think of all the non-American research people that are going to investigate and spend research dollars if what was said is true about the energy potential of this radioactive isotope?
As our german soldier from "LAugh-In" would say
"Veerry Interesting".

Plot for next Bond movie

[KrisCowboy]

It's seeming more unlikely as the arguments drag on, but if a Hafnium bomb could be built, it is thought that a golf ball sized chunk could produce the energy equivalent of 10 tons of conventional explosives
Forgive me for this, but can't resist saying this. This forms the perfect story for next Bond movie. Evil rich industrialist trying to destroy London. James Bond, along with his sexy sidekick Woonda, saves the day.

Re:Plot for next Bond movie

[gclef]

Woonda? c'mon. It's got to be something weirder and more junior-high-sex-joke-ish than that if she's going to be a Bond girl. How about M. Mary Bounce?

Re:Plot for next Bond movie

[KrisCowboy]

On a second thought, it could be the plot for the next Indy movie. Indiana Jones and the return of Nazis. Hitler isn't dead. He's alive and kicking. He's forming "The Fourth Reich" and now, he has this damn bomb. Who's gonna stop him?
Oh..Nazis...I hate 'em
Indy Jones and his dad, Henry Jones. To add some spice, Nazi's can be shown eating apes, snakes and all kinds of crap. BTW, M. Mary Bounce's a good name, hope Albert Brocolli sees your post :-)

The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch

[Detritus]

Cool, you could make a nuclear hand grenade. There would be a slight problem with employing it. It would also kill the person who threw the grenade.

Re:The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch

[SamSim]

Trust me, if a nuclear hand grenade was a) possible and b) practical, it would already exist.

Re:The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch

[Borg453b]

I remember being very nervous about throwing my first (and hopefully last) handgrenade. Regardless of hollywood fantasies, it leaves you 3 seconds til detonation, once its armed and released.

I remember thinking "If you mess this up, it'll be your last mistake"

I'm glad I'm no longer in the army, but it was kind of neat to try, and fireworks will never be the same again.

Re:The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch

[Welsh Dwarf]

Hand grenade, don't know, but a nuclear bazooka does (or, at least I hope, did) existe: the Davy Crockett.

Some info on what this hideous piece of equipement was capable of is here.

Additional info can be found here

Re:The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch

[mangastudent]

Regardless of hollywood fantasies, it leaves you 3 seconds til detonation, once its armed and released.

I don't think it's so much fantasy as not being up to date. I've heard that WWII (and I assume Korean) era fragmentation grenades had a nominal 7 second fuze, and that was obviously too long.

What I remember is that it's now a nominal 4.5 seconds, but given the variability in such a mass produced device you're indeed supposed to treat it as being something like 3 seconds or less, and just throw it and don't mess with arming it and waiting.

And to get into real grenade trivia, I heard from someone in the 101st a few years ago that a very green just arrived to the division soldier managed to kill himself with a fragmentation grenade in Panama: they were clearing rooms, and he didn't notice that he had opened a door to a closet, thereby not giving him the necessary distance :-(. That helped induce the USArmy at the time to emphasize concussion grenades, especially for urban warfare, and e.g. the urban warfare manual emphasizes the extra training needed to use fragmentation grenades with some safety....

Re:The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch

[Anonymous Coward]

and fireworks will never be the same again.

You looked at the explosion? And it reminded you of fireworks? You're one of the guys that had a big "I" on the side your helmet, weren't you?

Re:The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch

[cms108]

First shalt though take out the Holy pin...
Then shalt thow count to three, no more no less
Three shall be the number thow shalt count and the number of the counting shall be three
Four shalt though not count, neither count thow 2 excepting that thow then proceed to three
Five is right out.
Once the number 3, being the third number be reached
Then lobist thow thy holy hand grenade of Antillock
Towards thy foe,
Who being naughty in my sight
Shall snuff it

Amen, Amen

--
disclaimer. copied and pasted. probably wrong.

Re:The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch

[P0lyh34)]

doesn't matter, as it sits, standard grenades can't be thrown far enough away that they won't kill you. You have to be well garded from its blast, in a fox hole, behind a BIG tree, anything that can absorb tiny peices of glowing hot metal traveling at 4 times the speed of sound.

Re:The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch

[pjt33]

Well, certainly transcribed by someone who can't spell "thou".

Re:The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch

[caluml]

Have you ever had a nightmare where you have a handgrenade, and you pull out the pin, and go to throw it, but it sticks to your hand? That's a scary dream.

PS. Any psychologists out there care to tell me what it means?

Re:The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch

[stox]

Already been done in the 1950's by Ted Taylor, one of the original members of the Manhattan Project. As you already guessed, not a practical weapon.

Re:The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch

[moltar77]

Ah, yes, the grenade throw...

Being of the slashdot type, I was always a little concerned on when I would have to throw a grenade, as throwing is not one of my strong points. During practice I would just barely get it past the line. Obviously it turned out okay when I threw the real thing, but I remember one of my friends telling me how he noticed that one of the explosions was louder than the others. :-|

Good thing I'm a 74B (computer guy) and not infantry.

Re:The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch

[pipingguy]

5, 4, 2 seconds until the MP puns arrive.

Re:The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch

[Anonymous Coward]

"...Have you ever had a nightmare where you have a handgrenade, and you pull out the pin, and go to throw it, but it sticks to your hand? That's a scary dream.

PS. Any psychologists out there care to tell me what it means? ..."

Off the top of my head, and without searching the literature, I'd say it's variant of the standard "failure" dream.

You know, where you're adressing a large meeting and look down and see that you're naked, that kind of thing.

It stems from feelings of anxiety and inadequacy, especially in stressful or new situations. Basically, you were anxious about your new role as a soldier, and this was manifested in a dream where you are returned to a situation of obvious danger (ie. having live ordanance ticking in your very hand) and your subconscious envisioned he very worst outcome...

It's coping mechanism which de-sensetises you to the dangers to which you are being exposed, and is a fairly common and healthy response. Nothing to worry about, and as you settled in to your army career, I'd expect the frequency of this kind of episode to decrease.

Thanks for coming, I'll see you next week.

The Doctor is [IN]

Re:The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch

[Borg453b]

Nope - not infantry. Field maintainance administration; Comm & Retrieval/Repair coordination in war-scenarios. Sat in a mobile office, with a small group of people and directed our maintainance company during exercises. We had an NT server and 2 clients per mobile office. It was warm and comfy compared to the field exercises of the first 3 months. Yup, had basic training like everyone else; which is when I got to throw a grenade, and "play" with guns.

Re:The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch

[Anonymous Coward]

It means you have been jerking off and now have sticky hands by which you are trying to throw you balls, but they are not getting anywhere.

Re:The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch

[Anonymous Coward]

Won't work, but a nuclear morter shell might.

Re:The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

We had an NT server and 2 clients per mobile office.

You know, you could have just formated the server and installed Linux or BSD or something. I mean, Windows can be a pain in the lower regions, but blowing up the server with a grenade is a little harsh.

Re:The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch

[chgros]

I remember thinking "If you mess this up, it'll be your last mistake"
I don't know how it was for you, but when I was in the army, I also throwed a hand grenade (offensive, i.e. not much more than a loud "bang", defensive is nasty), I was in some sort of small concrete shelter, of which I could jump out in case I made a "mistake". Outside of war, the army is paranoid with safety (N.B. this was not the US army, YMMV of course)

Re:The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch

[UncleJosh]

"I remember being very nervous about throwing my first (and hopefully last) handgrenade. Regardless of hollywood fantasies, it leaves you 3 seconds til detonation, once its armed and released."

You think you were nervous? What about the sergeant watching you and (successively) all the other green recruits in your training cycle throw their first grenade?

'I remember thinking "If you mess this up, it'll be your last mistake"'

And the sergeant is looking at you, the grenade and thinking about where he has to kick the damn thing if you drop it instead of throw it over the blast barrier. Or at least that's how I remember it. But that was a long time ago and the training circumstances may be different now.

Re:The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch

[iggymanz]

you mean, there's no one in this world who's such a deranged whacko he would blow himself up to hurt or kill other people?

Experiments not reproducible

[starbuzz]

American Physical Society columnist Bob Park reports in his What's New column that the Hf-experiments were found by several groups to be not reproducible. That puts the claim squarely in the category of Bogus Science.

• April 2004
• August 2003

Re:Experiments not reproducible

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because it's contested doesn't mean it's "bogus". Here are some links:

Their main page

Publications

Note especially that they're continuing to publish in journals. That automatically puts them in a different category than most junk science like hydrinos, zero-point energy, gravity shields or cold fusion cited by Park.

Re:Experiments not reproducible

[pfdietz]

No, but bogus is certainly the way to bet, especially when the putative result contradicts well-tested theory, as this one apparently does.

Re:Experiments not reproducible

[pfdietz]

Robert Park is hated precisely because he tells the truth. Ideologues don't like this, of course.

Atomic Weight

[kcdoodle]

This research is flawed.

Hafnium is like phoshorus. It spontaneously combusts on contact with air. Adding gamma or xrays isn't going to activate the nucleus of the Hafnium atom somehow.

Elements that offer nuclear energy are either at the low end or high end of the periodic table. Low-end atomic weight element hydrogen and helium (1 and 4) can be made to fuse (fusion) to create middlish weight elements and energy (look at the sun). High-end atomic weight elements like uranium and plutonium (235 and 238) can be made ti split (fission) and create middlish weight atoms.

So there is NO WAY you will get a energy-yielding atomic reaction with hafnium and gamma/xrays.

Hafnium is used in many reactor control rods and are constantly exposed to a barrage of neutrons, gamma rays, fission fragment particles, etc. If this reasearch were true, nearly every nuclear reactor on the planet would be blowing up right now.

Hafnium might be used in weapons, but it is no more dangerous than phosphorus.

I live the greatest adventure anyone could want. - Tosk the Hunted

Re:Atomic Weight

[Cryect]

Actually the Hafnium they are discussing is a nuclear isomer. Basically its gotten energy stored from neutrons that have hit it while being used in control rods in a nuclear reactor. The problem with the nuclear isomer is that it doesn't like to give up that energy thats been stored at any rate thats useful. The idea Collins is trying to say is that we can blast it with XRay's and look the amount of neutrons being released is increased slightly over the background radiation.

Re:Atomic Weight

[Progman2000]

IANANuclearPhysicist

The PopMech story mentioned that. The explanation was that this is an ususual isotope of hafnium that *does* emmit gamma rays in response to irradiation by x-rays. The emmisions were (reported to be) 6 times the input energy.

I'd be happy to provide exact quotes and such, but I think that issue is already gone, and their website is not being helpful.

Re:Atomic Weight

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're saying phosphorus could be used to make golf-ball bombs too! SWEEET!

Re:Atomic Weight

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you don't quite understand what is happening here. While chemically it is quite like phosphorus, inside it has quite different properties. Hence we are talking about an 'nuclear' isomer not some chemical reaction. You are quite correct that that most nuclear reactions happen on the 'ends' of the reaction chain eg Pu, Ur, H, etc, but because this version of Hf (essentially has extra neutrons), is manufactured during nuclear reactions in reactors, it has a halflife of 31 years. The supposed research is an attempt to artificially shorten that natural halflife to something that will release that energy in a shorter time.
Even if we suppose that the experimenters results are valid, (which are doubtful at best), There is still no evidence that there is any net energy gain as in a uranium or hydrogen reaction. In fact it takes a few orders of magnitude of energy input to get the small amount of energy out as reported. (This is NOT like the attempts to get a sustained fusion reaction to work)
There is no bomb here except as in a proverbial bomb where no useful results come about the research, except an interesting side note to nuclear physics.
Move along, nothing to see here.

Re:Atomic Weight

[SEE]

Who modded this up? Obviously no one who understood the physics of the story. So let's explain.

The process described is neither fission nor fusion. Instead, it's analogous to how a light bulb works.

(What? Yes, a light bulb. Bear with me.)

In a lightbulb, you add energy to a fillament. The electrons (mostly) in the fillament are placed into excited states by the energy, then very quickly release the energy in the form of photons (visible light) and fall from the excited state into a ground state.

A similar thing can be done to particles other than electrons -- such as neutrons. In most cases, the neutrons fall from the excited state very quickly and release photons (gamma rays and the like).

In hafnium, however, the excited state of the neutrons is metastable -- which is just a fancy way of saying they stay excited for a long time between when they're excited and when they release photons.

If a way could be developed to induce the grounding, then hafnium could be used to store large amounts of energy in the metastable state, and then induced to release it all at once, resulting in much larger discharges than ordinary chemical reactions can store/release.

It doesn't yield energy; at best you get from the grounding the energy you put in to get the neutrons excited. It isn't fission, and it isn't fusion; not what we typically call a "nuclear" reaction. However, it is a beyond-chemical-bond-capacity energy release based on the nucleus.

Oh, and by the way, there are middlish-weight elements that are unstable, and thus can provide nuclear energy through ordinary radioactive decay. The classic example is Technetium, number 43 on the Periodic Table, atomic mass 98.

Re:Atomic Weight

[tootlemonde]

So there is NO WAY you will get a energy-yielding atomic reaction with hafnium and gamma/xrays.

You appear to be saying that the experiment is flawed because its results do not match the results predicted by current nuclear theory.

The experiment may in fact be flawed for many reasons but the fact that it has unexpected results is not one of them.

Re:Atomic Weight

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because it hasn't been verified doesn't mean it isn't possible. Its called stimulated emission. Nothing new here. If it is true, 10 tons worth of energy would be radiated, most likely in the form of gamma rays. Most of these rays would be radiated upwards into the sky, or down into the earth away from people and the rest would be absorbed by a few feet of dense materials (buildings). What am I trying to say? Very few casualties in proportion to the effort required.This is just another example of how pussified (is that a word??) our culture has become. Now we even terrorize ourselves with our own drivle. Get a grip people, 10 tons of explosives is like a WWII bomb going off. It isn't gonna destroy an entire city. I think this is an attempt to boost sales of pacifiers, diapers and draconian political hogwash.

Re:Atomic Weight

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do people who obviously know something still call it weight? Its obviously mass.

Re:Atomic Weight

[jared42]

Are there examples of metastable electron states? How are they formed, and how are they induced to ground?

Paradox alert!

[rdsmith4]

This idea is NOT a joke--a recent issue of Popular Mechanics talked about such an idea...

Logical fallacy: conclusion does not follow.

Lysenkoism

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

The article makes it clear that the best-equipped labs aren't seeing the claimed triggered decay and theory doesn't support it either.

The government has been disinviting expert nuclear physicists from funding meetings.

It's not healthy when government runs with an unconfirmed result and overrides the give-and-take of experimental science. The old Soviet Union did this when the government endorsed maverick biologist Lysenko because his ideas were compatible with Marxism.

Notice that even if the result can be confirmed it's still many huge jumps from practical application. First you have to mass-produce the excited isomer of hafnium. Then you have to separate it from normal hafnium, a far harder problem than uranium enrichment. Then you need a far higher yield than Collins has claimed, because even at the rate his experiments claim, you'd spend far more energy triggering decays than you'd get back out.

Stranger things have happened, of course, but right now it makes more sense to be intrigued than to be excited.

Re:Lysenkoism

[pfdietz]

This is a bit like Lysenkoism, but not because the government is suppressing this (supposed) discovery, but because political pull has been used to give additional funding to something that had been disconfirmed.

Right now, it makes more sense to be very skeptical than to be intrigued or excited. There is almost certainly nothing here.

Re:Lysenkoism

[aminorex]

Well, hell, they have to find some WMD *somewhere*.

We have to accept the responsibility

[mpn14tech]

As we progress forward we will be working with ever larger amounts of energy. We either learn how to harness this energy productively and move on or we burn ourselves to crisp, get out of the way and let some other species evolve to try.

obStrangelove

[Theatetus]

"That's a commie lie, Mr. President, our studies show livable conditions return within 2 to 3 years."

"Obviously you've never heard of Cobalt Thorium G."

Oh Please..........

[Geek of Tech]

Skip the small stuff. Just go grab some Naquida...

Hafnium 2 ?

[tennistoad]

Man I can't believe they keep delaying this crap? first talked about 5 years ago then told on sep 31st,,then some stuppid hacker/bad guy, steals it and now 31 years for hafnium to come out...this just plain sucks!!!!!

Dimishing Returns

[Trolling4Dollars]

Completely dismissing all the pro and con science regarding this issue. I have to say that if we can have a ten kiloton bob the size of a golf ball, then we can guarantee global decimation with a car full of golf balls. Why do the monkeys insist on playing with fire? Because they haven't gotten burned yet. In this case, once they DO get burned it won't matter because there won't be any monkeys left. I don't care if this is just some kind of theoretical experiment at this stage. If and when it does become a reality, you know that one of the fearful warmongers will demand that the ultimate weapon is made so that they are the biggest kid on the block. Humans have so much potential for great things and for self destruction.

(Let the games begin)

golf ball sized chunk of hafnium ...

[paradaxiom]

And it usually ships the next business day:

http://www.bwild.com/exgoba.html

Weapons will change the world

[Raw Ostrich]

Imagine weapons like beam riffles and HF granade launchers. Then imagine how the world will be changed becouse of them.

With a scoped beam riffle you can kill anyone within line of scope sight, no matter the distance. You can also get away with it, since you are shooting from 10 miles away. There will be no flashes or bangs, you will just aim and pull the trigger. The target 10 miles away will die. If you do not want to be around the you can use remote control.

With a hf granade launcer you can shoot golf-ball-sized granades that are worth 10 tons of dynamite. Just get on a roof a skycraper with 1000 granades and start leveling the city. With such explosions happaning around no-one will even notice you.

These thigs are unlikely to happen everyday. But just think what lenghts the society has to go to prevent such things from happening. The level of surveillance and control will be suffocating.

What about Halloween?

[Julien Brub]

I'm already covered infear each year that I might get an apple containing razor blades, now I'll need to worry about my apples might contain a nuclear bomb. Damn!

Radioactive Cobalt

[Anonymous Coward]

Your "high and low end" point is a little unfounded, considering Radioactive cobalt releases quite a bit of energy, and its not too far on either end (quite a bit larger that H, or He, and alot smaller that lets say Uranium). The point being that all elements have unstable radioactive Isotopes, and that when these isotopes decay they release Alpha particals, beta particals, gamma rays, ect. I honestly dont think that your dumb enough to believe that regular phosphorus is anywhere near as dangerous as a radioactive Isotope of Halfnium. But... at the same time i think thats what you said.

no wonder then...

[Mengoxon]

...that most people dislike scientists.

World Peace

[List of FAILURES]

I've sussed it folks. I've figured out how we can achieve world peace and it's very simple. Historically most wars have been about "us vs. them", or "hey that's mine!" or "Oh yeah? We'll now I'm bigger than you!" But it appears that the "I'm bigger than you" brand of war is the one that has brought about the development of bigger, faster and more accurate machines of destruction. (ie. weapons) Why do we do all of this? Here is the answer kids, and it's as plain as the nose on your face: penis envy.

To achieve world peace, I think all male world leaders should be required to publicly pull out their penises and measure them. That information should be publicly posted so that we would, once and for all, know who is really bigger than who. I think you would find that the countries with the leaders that make the most noise are the ones who are least well endowed. After all, this is just a pissing contest in the end.

To achieve complete world peace among all people, clothes should be designed in such a way that men's penis size should be plainly visible. (No this isn't gay, it's a way to bring men into the 21st century) Add to that, putting a man's penis size on his driver's license. After all, since many women are freely judged by their breast size, why shouldn't men be freely judged by their penis size? After a few generations of this, the stigma attached to penis size should become relatively meaningless and men could get on with the business of actually running the world in a responsible way.

Damn! What a great idea.

Re:World Peace

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

After all, since many women are freely judged by their breast size, why shouldn't men be freely judged by their penis size? After a few generations of this, the stigma attached to penis size should become relatively meaningless

Like the 'stigma' about breast size became meaningless?

Re:World Peace

[List of FAILURES]

It IS relatively meaningless for anyone with a brain. Now... we just need to work on getting people connected to brains.

If it worked, more like phaser than bomb...

[digital photo]

Since most of the scientist trying to replicated the results notes that it either can't be replicated like the original experiment or that they are seeing extremely low efficiencies, it probably isn't a problem in terms of increasing world violence/death/etc...

However, assuming that the original research hinted at what that partiular Hafnium isotope/polymer could do, it would be like an energy sponge: soaking up energy so that it could be squeezed out at a later time.

Since the energy released is gamma only, you could potentially arrange a bank of these and stimulate the material in much the same way as a nitrogen laser and get a gamma beam where the energy being outputted by each stage is cascaded into the next stage to create a denser coherent beam.

Would be interesting to see if this Hafnium stuff pans out. If it does, it would make for an interesting beam cannon as opposed to a bomb. You can't be very selective with a bomb, but you can with a beam.

I'm personally thinking it would be cool to have this technology in a microwave oven. :) Food cooked in under a minute every time. >:)

Re:If it worked, more like phaser than bomb...

[HyperCash]

"You can't be very selective with a bomb, but you can with a beam."

Dude, I find I can be WAY more selective with a rocket launcher than I am with the lightning gun.

Re:If it worked, more like phaser than bomb...

[msim]

> Since the energy released is gamma only, you could potentially arrange a bank of these
> and stimulate the material in much the same way as a nitrogen laser and get a gamma beam
> where the energy being outputted by each stage is cascaded into the next stage to create a
> denser coherent beam.

Sounds like bart simpson with a dozen megaphones.

Re:If it worked, more like phaser than bomb...

[Anonymous Coward]

uh, no you couldn't. The gamma is released in a random direction, so you could not make a beam. Also 2 MeV photons are about the most difficult to absorb.

Re:If it worked, more like phaser than bomb...

[Anonymous Coward]

Food cooked in under a minute every time...

But you have to wait so long before it's safe to eat, it just gets cold again!

Ten TONS, not ten KILOTONS.

[tukkayoot]

When I read the summary, I thought "10 tons of TNT... kind of weak". Because really it is, compared to nukes. I browsed the article, so for those who didn't bother to RTFA, the contraversy here is not that the stuff is so powerful, but that it is a lot more powerful than conventional explosives but not as powerful as nuclear weapons... so they don't fall under the domain of most non-proliferation treaties.

On a side note, this kind of makes the terrorist thing a moot point. I mean, I have to think it'd be very tricky to make a weapon out of these things, since there is so much debate on whether or not it's even possible to unlock the energy (hence the "Cold Fusion" reference). If it's a more difficult to weaponize this stuff than uranium and plutonium, as well as having less destructive power, I doubt we'll see any terrorists using this kind of thing as a weapon for a long, long time.

I'm not particularly worried. Seems we've already let a much more horrible genie out of the bottle.

your argument is flawed

[hak1du]

So there is NO WAY you will get a energy-yielding atomic reaction with hafnium and gamma/xrays.

While I have no opinion on whether the effect is real or not, your argument against it is bogus. They aren't claiing an "atomic reaction", they are claiming a state change of the nucleus. It's clear that that exists. The only question is whether it can be induced artificially. If it can, you have a great energy source and the potential to make a bomb. If not, you still have energy release, but it's too slow to be useful.

Density & fabrication

[Anonymous Coward]

It's even denser than lead. So if you want to make something harmless-looking out of it, and smuggle it in somewhere for a kaboom, you're going to have to make a hollow item, or assemble it in with something else, so that it does not draw attention at the security check. Maybe a camera body, something like that?

Just what the world needs..

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet another device to kill each other.. this is a very sad day indeed!

Re:Just what the world needs..

[Anonymous Coward]

No it isn't.

Re: on competition

[King_TJ]

Absolutely right, but at what point do we decide that a weapon would be so powerful, there's no advantage to building or using it, because it would mean our own destruction too?

I think many people feel nuclear weapons are already at this point, but the problem is, there are plenty of military-sponsored studies showing the contrary. They firmly believe that used tactically, a nuclear bomb or three wouldn't necessarily mean life ends for the nation using it against an enemy nation. (Of course, much depends on the ability for the enemy to retaliate in kind.)

Taking things to the next level though? I can't see the logic behind it, unless you really are dealing with interplanetary battles. (EG. We feel a need to completely wipe out another planet, before they do the same to ours.)

Very worrying precedent

[Phleg]

...if a Hafnium bomb could be built, it is thought that a golf ball sized chunk could produce the energy equivalent of 10 tons of conventional explosives.

Christ. With that much power, imagine how devastating a Holmium bomb would be.

Re:Very worrying precedent

[kencurry]

...Holmium, tee hee, a freaking knee slapper.

c'mon, mod him up, WAY UP!

Our astonishingly young civilization

[ArsSineArtificio]

Those human beings who are presently living are the result of hundreds of thousands of years of culling. Before modern civilization, say 100 years ago or so, life was very hard.

It's extremely difficult to take seriously someone who believes that "modern civilization" began about 100 years ago. They must have had a lot of trouble arranging the Constitutional Convention or the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, what with all those jaguars wandering in and eating people.

At least in our post-1904 civilization we've solved the crippling "falling off the cliff" problem.

Re:Our astonishingly young civilization

[Twirlip of the Mists]

It's extremely difficult to take seriously someone who believes that "modern civilization" began about 100 years ago. They must have had a lot of trouble arranging the Constitutional Convention or the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, what with all those jaguars wandering in and eating people.

Jaguars weren't a problem in the 1780's or the 1530's, but staph was. So were tuberculosis, tularemia, scurvy, plague, scarlet fever, pneumonia, typhus, cholera, and diphtheria.

Hell, we don't even have to go back 100 years. Today, the rate of infant mortality is about 8 per 1,000 live births. In the 1940's, just 60 years ago, it was nearly six times that.

Let's put it this way: throughout human history from about 300,000 years ago to just very recently, the leading causes of death have been trauma and infectious disease.

Only in the past century has the trend shifted. Today, the leading causes of death in the developed world are all chronic diseases: heart disease, diabetes, cancer. (Statistically, you're still quite likely to die from some kind of trauma, but if you look at all trauma, today you're far more likely to survive an injury that would have killed you even just 20 years ago. God bless the emergency room.)

Do you know what would happen to you if you broke your arm in 1900? Which, incidentally, you'd be far more likely to do, because you would have had far less calcium in your diet, and your bones would have been far weaker. If you broke your arm and you were very lucky, you would merely be crippled for life. Your barber--unless you were one of the relatively few people who lived in or very near a big city, your barber would be your sole source of medical assistance--would reduce the fracture badly, and the absence of anything like a cast would guarantee that it would not set properly. The result would be a permanent disability.

If you were slightly less lucky, your fracture would be a compound one. Your wound would get infected. Your barber would tie a piece of not-altogether-clean cloth around your upper arm, then use a short piece of wood to twist the cloth until it constricted your brachial artery. Then he would cut through the muscles, nerves, vessels, and ligaments in your arm until he reached the bone, and then saw through the bone. Meanwhile, you're unable to scream because you've got a piece of rawhide stuck in your mouth, and you're unable to reach out because three strong men are holding you down. The blood that was trapped in your arm spills out onto the sawdust-covered floor; later, that blood-soaked sawdust will be swept up, lofting whatever dire pathogens you might have been host to into the air.

Of course, if you were only slightly less lucky than that, you'd simply lapse into sepsis and die.

Don't be so arrogant. Only about four generations separate us from a standard of living that many of us would find to be just barely above proto-humans scrabbling around in the dust.

Re:Our astonishingly young civilization

[slamb]

Do you know what would happen to you if you broke your arm in 1900? [...] Your barber--unless you were one of the relatively few people who lived in or very near a big city, your barber would be your sole source of medical assistance--would reduce the fracture badly, and the absence of anything like a cast would guarantee that it would not set properly [...] Only about four generations separate us from a standard of living that many of us would find to be just barely above proto-humans scrabbling around in the dust.

What you've said seems accurate...except the dates. My impression was that barbers did these things until the 16th century or so. Do you have any source for the idea that barbers were still performing surgery until the 1900s? Wikipedia, for what it's worth, says here that they did so in medieval times and earlier. (I.e., until the 15th century or so.)

Re:Our astonishingly young civilization

[Twirlip of the Mists]

My impression was that barbers did these things until the 16th century or so.

Barbers did these things whenever doctors (and dentists!) were not available. That goes up to the early part of the 20th century, and even as late as the 19-teens in some rural parts of America and Europe.

World War I was bad in many ways, but it certainly did wonders to advance the state of the art in trauma medicine.

Incidentally, why barbers? Because they had the straight-razors, of course.

Re:Our astonishingly young civilization

[Jardine]

Incidentally, why barbers? Because they had the straight-razors, of course.

And steady hands.

Re:Our astonishingly young civilization

[Guppy06]

"So were tuberculosis, tularemia, scurvy, plague, scarlet fever, pneumonia, typhus, cholera, and diphtheria."

100 years ago germ theory was more or less accepted and people knew how to avoid such diseases. Notice the way Nineteenth Century engineers drained the swamps of Panama first before building the canal.

" Today, the rate of infant mortality is about 8 per 1,000 live births. In the 1940's, just 60 years ago, it was nearly six times that."

In the 1940's there was this little event called "The Second World War." It's kind of difficult to provide proper medical suvervision to childbirth when things are blowing up around you.

"Do you know what would happen to you if you broke your arm in 1900?"

You'd have it set and wait for it to mend, same as today. Having thumbed through a copy of Gray's Anatomy (first published in 1858) would help to know what was supposed to go where, but setting something as simple as an arm (as opposed to, say, a hip) could probably be done by feel.

Not that you'd have to rely on feel. Roentgen published his work on x-rays in 1896 and their medical applications were immediately apparent. You might have ended up being heavily over-exposed to hard radiation, but you'd at least know your arm was the way it was supposed to be again.

" because you would have had far less calcium in your diet,"

That would depend on your local culture and your diet, wouldn't it?

"If you broke your arm and you were very lucky, you would merely be crippled for life."

I think you're confusing "bone fracture" with "gunshot wound."

"Your barber--unless you were one of the relatively few people who lived in or very near a big city,"

"Relatively few?" One of the things I will admit they didn't have 100 years ago were suburbs. Unless you lived out on a farm in BFE, you lived in a city, along with just about everybody else in what we now called the industrialized world. There was rampant overcrowding and slums and the like (which was why some of the diseases like "scarlet fever, pneumonia, typhus, cholera, and diphtheria" you mentioned spread so quickly back then) to the point where it was becoming a very visible social concern. There were all sorts of exposes and such written at the time about it in books and newspapers, including accompaying photographs (made with cameras).

"and the absence of anything like a cast"

"Plaster of Paris" was first developed in the Eighteenth Century and was used to protect mending fractures at least as far back as before the American Civil War (which, by the way, happened before 1900). Hell, if the Romans could figure out cement...

"Your wound would get infected. "

Joseph Lister started the ball rolling on antiseptics in the 1860's.

"and then saw through the bone."

It still sounds like you're confusing "fracture" with "gunshot wound." Did you play with your Civil War Field Surgeon Log too much as a child?

"Meanwhile, you're unable to scream because you've got a piece of rawhide stuck in your mouth, "

Chloroform was first used as an anesthetic in the 1840's, a little after nitrous oxide.

"that blood-soaked sawdust will be swept up,"

What, were people getting amputations left and right that there was that much blood on the floor? With that many grievous injuries you'd think they were all getting hit by Minie balls or something, like that certain time period from around 1860 to 1865... what was it called again?

(And this goes back to my previous allusion to the 1940's: It's kinda tough to be a good doctor when things are blowing up all around you. And even then, they were called "doctors.")

Re:Our astonishingly young civilization

[Guppy06]

"That goes up to the early part of the 20th century, and even as late as the 19-teens in some rural parts of America and Europe."

If Tombstone, Arizona could have a dentist in 1881 (population: less than my old high schol), why would it be harder to find one after another 19 years of railroad tracks and telegraph lines had been set up?

"Incidentally, why barbers? Because they had the straight-razors, of course."

Yeah, people in 1900 had to wait a long, long four years for Gilette to patent his safety razor.

And if doctors and dentists were so hard to find, why were these barbers everywhere? Shaving with a straight razor was tricky enough that you needed to rely on professionals to do it, but you could also do what many (most?) men did back then: Grow a beard.

And why were there so many bearded rural men when it was apparently so easy to find a barber?

Re:Our astonishingly young civilization

[angel'o'sphere]

Don't be so arrogant. Only about four generations separate us from a standard of living that many of us would find to be just barely above proto-humans scrabbling around in the dust.


Well, as the main thread was about Hafnium Bombs and Al Qaida ... for 70% of the world population the scenarios you describe having been likely around 1900 ... they are still their dayly live TODAY.

And thats why they fight you.

angel'o'sphere

Re:Our astonishingly young civilization

[Twirlip of the Mists]

100 years ago germ theory was more or less accepted and people knew how to avoid such diseases.

If you lived in Paris, or London, or Berlin, or New York, or San Francisco. But if you lived in a Hannibal or a Midland or a Bozeman, as the vast majority of Americans and Europeans did, you were out luck.

It's kind of difficult to provide proper medical suvervision to childbirth when things are blowing up around you.

No, it had more to do with childhood fevers than with the war. Besides, the infant mortality rate throughout the 1950's was about the same.

Having thumbed through a copy of Gray's Anatomy (first published in 1858) would help to know what was supposed to go where, but setting something as simple as an arm (as opposed to, say, a hip) could probably be done by feel.

You've evidently never broken a bone. And you've obviously never had to reduce one. You can't feel anything through the swelling.

Roentgen published his work on x-rays in 1896 and their medical applications were immediately apparent.

Which might have meant something if (1) sources of x-rays and (2) film were readily available. They weren't.

That would depend on your local culture and your diet, wouldn't it?

Not as much as you might think.

Unless you lived out on a farm in BFE, you lived in a city, along with just about everybody else in what we now called the industrialized world.

You have that backwards. A few hundred thousand people lived in what could be generously called cities. About two hundred million people lived in Europe and America. Where did that put them?

"Plaster of Paris" was first developed in the Eighteenth Century and was used to protect mending fractures at least as far back as before the American Civil War (which, by the way, happened before 1900).

Availability, my little friend. You're forgetting that plaster doesn't just fall from the sky. It has to be manufactured. Once manufactured, it has to be trucked to where you are. If you broke your arm, you'd have been far more likely to wear a rigid splint of wood and leather than a plaster cast. Unless you lived in Paris, of course.

You might be interested to know, by the way, that the plaster cast remained essentially unchanged between about 1852 and 1970, when fiberglass tape replaced plaster-saturated bandages. The only thing that changed during that 120-year period was availability, and it changed drastically.

Joseph Lister started the ball rolling on antiseptics in the 1860's.

That doesn't mean betadine magically appeared on shelves, you know.

It still sounds like you're confusing "fracture" with "gunshot wound."

I'm pretty sure I'm clear on the difference.

What, were people getting amputations left and right that there was that much blood on the floor?

Have you ever witnessed an amputation? There's a truly startling amount of blood in an arm, and a shocking amount in a leg. These days the standard of care is to tightly wrap the limb to be amputated to force as much blood as possible out of the tissues before applying the tourniquet, but it's still an astonishing sight.

Let me see if I can't sum this up: as little as 100 years ago, life was fucking tough compared to how we live today. It was much harder to stay alive, and much harder to stay healthy. Only in the last 100 years or so has it become the norm for a person to live his whole life without suffering a crippling trauma or dying from an infectious disease.

Don't get too comfy.

Re:Our astonishingly young civilization

[slamb]

I asked: Do you have any source for the idea that barbers were still performing surgery until the 1900s?

Twirlip of the Mists responded: Barbers did these things whenever doctors (and dentists!) were not available. That goes up to the early part of the 20th century, and even as late as the 19-teens in some rural parts of America and Europe.

Source? You've just repeated what you've said before, and I'm no more likely to believe it this time.

Re:Our astonishingly young civilization

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, we don't even have to go back 100 years. Today, the rate of infant mortality is about 8 per 1,000 live births. In the 1940's, just 60 years ago, it was nearly six times that.

The rate of infant mortality? You are using a grossly simplified world view.

According to the above link, there are 40 countries doing better than 8 per 1000, the US being ranked number #35 with 6.75/1000, just ahead of our brutal regime neighbor to the south, Cuba (at #37 with 7.15/1000). (Japan is #1 with 3.30/1000 and Sweden #2 with 3.42/1000. Afghanistan is #205 with 142.48/1000, Mozambique #208 with 199.00/1000)

So in this world, which is the mortality rate?

Re:Our astonishingly young civilization

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Availability, my little friend. You're forgetting that plaster doesn't just fall from the sky. It has to be manufactured. Once manufactured, it has to be trucked to where you are. If you broke your arm, you'd have been far more likely to wear a rigid splint of wood and leather than a plaster cast. Unless you lived in Paris, of course.

You've completely fogotten about splints - they're simple to make (leather and wood) and they're reusable. Sure, you may not set a bone properly, but you will have something that immobilizes your arm pretty well.

Re:Our astonishingly young civilization

[ArsSineArtificio]

And thats why they fight you.

Al Qaeda is fighting us - including you, as a participant in Western Civilization - because we refuse to convert to Islam.

"I tell Muslims to believe in the victory of God and in Jihad against the infidels of the world. The killing of Jews and Americans is one of the greatest duties." -- Osama Bin Laden

Re:Our astonishingly young civilization

[shadowbearer]

Then you should go read some history. Most of the textbooks which cover this are not online, but you could start here.

Yeah, it's a lot to read...but there's a surprising amount of information in those links.

SB

Re:Our astonishingly young civilization

[Twirlip of the Mists]

So in this world, which is the mortality rate?

100%

Just give it time.

Re:Our astonishingly young civilization

[shadowbearer]

No, he didn't, he mentioned it in the text you cited.

A splint *does not* immobilize a break well enough for it to heal properly. I know this from personal experience, having both fashioned one and having been the victim of one (and that didn't heal properly either, the doctors had to rebreak my arm so it could be properly done, so that I wouldn't suffer from arthritis as badly as I do now)

A splint is a good *temporary* measure, but not at all conducive to proper healing of a break.

SB

Re:Our astonishingly young civilization

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Me: If you broke your arm, you'd have been far more likely to wear a rigid splint of wood and leather than a plaster cast.

You: You've completely fogotten about splints

Thou shalt read all of what thou repliest to. Barring that, thou shalt at least read all of what thou copy-and-pasteth. :-)

Re:Our astonishingly young civilization

[aminorex]

No, they're fighting us because we are taking over
the Umma. As long as we leave them alone, we get
left alone. Set one booted foot on Islamic territory,
and you're toast.

Re:Our astonishingly young civilization

[subtropolis]

The barber-surgeon's guild was disbanded in the mid-18th century but barbers retained the right to perform surgeries in remote locations well into the 19th in Europe and the Americas. I don't know about the rest of the world. Google "+barber +surgeon"

Re:Our astonishingly young civilization

[MarcQuadra]

I have to disagree. The quote you use does not prove your point. Osama wants America to stop forking over loot and coddling the Israelis because from his POV they're keeping Muslims off of Muslim lands. America is also the number-one supporter of the house of Saud, who had Osama himself kicked out of HIS OWN COUNTRY.

You can bet your ass that if I got kicked out of America because I was a potential threat to the ruling party I'd be directing 'terror' attacks against the people who had me booted.

And for the record, I'm FAIR GAME for Osama as far as I'm concerned, and so were the people in the twin towers. I pay my taxes willingly, and a portion of those monies keep Israel illegally armed (read: Nuclear Proliferation), and another portion goes to our millitary to operate on Muslim land we have no business being in. Also, I fork over three hundred dollars a month to Shell Oil, and I'm sure a bunch of that goes to the house of Saud. I'm as guilty as can be.

See, our democaracy and capitalism is great, it really is, I love it and choose it over the alternatives. The problem is that because we choose our leaders by election and 'vote policy' with every dollar we spend, we each bear responsibility for the actions of our country as a whole. You and I MADE Osama who he is today by our own free will, and now, as a local rapper says, "The melting pot seems to be calling the kettle black".

Re:Our astonishingly young civilization

[Anonymous Coward]

So how do you explain his other jehads that he supports like the one he has against Hindus and India? Neither of those parties have much of anything to do with Israel yet Osama still sent people to shoot up India's parlament house.

Just because Israel and America on currently in the top spot of his shit list doesn't mean that he wouldn't enjoy seeing buddists and hindus being killed for being infadels as well.

Re:Our astonishingly young civilization

[Lost Race]

"Islamic territory"? Is not Islam the will and the way of Allah? Is not Allah omnipresent? Is not, therefore, all territory Islamic?

Today, drive the infidels from Mecca; tomorrow from Earth!

Re:Our astonishingly young civilization

[RedLaggedTeut]

Which brings the discussion back to underdeveloped countries like many of the muslim countries. Unfortunately in many countries the fact that you don't need to have as many kids to survive into the next generation and to bet against the odds (which are improved by medicine and ambulances) hasn't made an effect on birth rates.

In fact I don't even know for sure why birth rates are low in industrial countries, IMHO the stress put on people by the state of a capital driven society, esp. on women to earn money, may be a reason. Or maybe all the people willing to take risks got themselves killed during the World Wars.

You only need the top 5% of the population of the western countries to own the worlds capital, what is the purpose of the rest ?

So while we have Civilization, will we profit from it ?

Re:Our astonishingly young civilization

[Twirlip of the Mists]

In fact I don't even know for sure why birth rates are low in industrial countries

It's a cultural thing. In the middle of the 20th century, a cultural movement arose contending that reproduction was tantamount to enslavement, and that in order for women to be free they had to choose not to have children.

On its face, the argument was that women had to have the choice in order to be free, but in practice to amounted to having to make the choice in order to be free.

That's where Humanae Vitae came from, which basically worked like telling your kids not to look in the upstairs closet. The moment the Church came out against birth control, it became absolutely mandatory in the eyes of a lot of women in the West.

It's not economic pressure; it's social pressure. We have had and entire generation of women now (we're currently raising our second) who grew up believing that the highest virtue of a woman is to avoid reproducing, either through birth control or through abortion. These two freedoms are a woman's legacy, passed down to her from her mother, and there's immense social pressure to accept that legacy.

And if we need anything...

[Izago909]

It's another type nuclear bomb. It's capable of storing/releasing large ammounts of energy, so there must be a more reasonable use for it besides a bomb. We've got more nukes then we know how to deal with anyway.

Woops

[Trolling4Dollars]

You are correct. I thought it said 10,000 tons.

Even if Hafnium emits X-rays, still no Bomb!

[Salis]

Like the end of the report (linked in the slashdot article) mentions, even if Hafnium does indeed emit 2.5MeV X-rays when hit by a 20 keV X-ray then it still could not be used to make a bomb.

A bomb requires that a chain reaction occur so that the energy released from the initial X-ray emission propogates and hits other Hafnium atoms, making them emit more X-rays. There are two reasons why the bomb will never 'explode':

1) The possibily bogus research report stated that only a 20 KeV (or a 10 KeV, whatever) would trigger Hafnium emissions. So there would be no propogation from one Hafnium emission to the next.

2) The 2.5 MeV photons would interact with other particles (electrons, itself, etc) and sap away that energy before it came into contact with another Hafnium atom.

So, don't worry about a bomb, it's all vaporware.

Re:Even if Hafnium emits X-rays, still no Bomb!

[Mspangler]

It would make a better battery than a bomb. I don't know haw they would charge the Hf ball, but use a dental x-ray to release the gamma rays, which heat water, and the steam car is ready for a comeback. Or is there some way to get electricity directly from gamma rays?

Re:Even if Hafnium emits X-rays, still no Bomb!

[Salis]

The Airforce was looking at Hafnium for that purpose: Let Hafnium power the battery that makes your UAV fly..for a long, long time.

But, the problem with that is that you need the X-ray machine to make the Hafnium emit X-rays. If your efficiency isn't really, really high, you can easily expend more energy (in making the Hafnium emit X-rays) than you get back from the Hafnium.

Not all of the dental X-rays are able to make Hafnium emit more X-rays. There's a loss of energy there. And not all of the energy from the Hafnium X-rays would be converted to work. There's another loss of energy there. At that point, it turns into an engineering problem..to make it both technologically and economically possible. But, in the mean time, it probably isn't even technologically feasible..it just plain doesn't work at all.

Re:Even if Hafnium emits X-rays, still no Bomb!

[kencurry]

You have totally missed the concept:

1) this is NOT purported to be a traditional fission bomb

2) the significance is that you could store energy in the Hf "golf ball", hit it with a pulse of x-ray, then release the stored energy as much HIGHER energy gamma rays (think anti-personnel, not "big boom")

3) the political ramifications are that you could work on this weapon while not violating nuclear proliferation treaties

sheesh, you weren't even close with your analysis.

Re:Even if Hafnium emits X-rays, still no Bomb!

[Salis]

The energy required to make the Hafnium emit those X-rays might very well be GREATER THAN the energy released from the Hafnium.

Why? Most of the X-rays fired at the Hafnium might just pass through with no interaction.

And how exactly do you intend to get the Hafnium to emit those X-rays in the battlefield? Strap an X-ray machine next to the Hafnium "golf ball" and throw it towards the enemy? Wouldn't the combined X-ray machine + Hafnium 'ball' be larger than traditional chemical explosives?

IF *I STRESS IF* the Hafnium phenomenom is real (it still has not been experimentally proven) then its uses are still limited.

And before you judge other people's intelligence, I suggest measuring your own.

Re:Even if Hafnium emits X-rays, still no Bomb!

[aminorex]

Bomb...vaporware.

Vapor*ize*ware you mean?

Re:Even if Hafnium emits X-rays, still no Bomb!

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, turning gammas to energy take a lot of very heavy mater (like a meter of water to do it efficiently) and that doesn't include the health effects on you.

Not impressed...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hafnium: golf ball size = 10 tons of explosive
Plutonium: grapefruit sized core = 10 Megatons of explosive

I'm not that impressed or worried about Hafnium. Especially, when it is not naturally occurring and is EXTREMELY difficult to make. It will be some time before anyone has a golf ball sized amount of this stuff, let alone enough to make a decent bomb.

To figure out how to make and separate the quantities of the isomer that military applications might require, DARPA created the HIPP panel at the end of 2002. The micrograms of Hf isomer needed for physics experiments can be extracted from tantalum beam stops at existing high-flux proton accelerators. But making macroscopic quantities would require enormously expensive new facilities.

Turn the hysteria alarms off!

moderators! fix parent

[Anonymous Coward]

funny maybe
informative, no

Re: on competition

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's some logic for you. Survival of the species.

Let's say an asteroid the size of a small moon went undetected by our scientists and we had a month or two to do something about it. Nukes aren't powerful enough to move or destroy something that size. We'd need something much more powerful to blast it off course.

Google images site getting slashdotted already.

[Anonymous Coward]

I had no idea that a Google site could succomb to a slashdotting, but it appears to be true. It took 2 full minutes to load the page and I'm on a 3Mbps broadband link. For crying out loud.... this isn't even Jeri Ryan in skimpy outfits, it's only Kate Mulgrew... you people are sick.

If it's so expensive to produce...

[Anonymous Coward]

how are terrorists going to afford it?

Doom's day machine?

[QEDog]

Obligatory Dr. Strangelove quotes:

Dr. Strangelove: Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost if you keep it a secret! Why didn't you tell the world?
Ambassador de Sadesky: It was to be announced at the Party Congress on Monday. As you know, the Premier loves surprises.

Dr. Strangelove: Based on the findings of the report, my conclusion was that this idea was not a practical deterrent for reasons which at this moment must be all too obvious.

Dr. Strangelove: It is not only possible, it is essential.

Re:Doom's day machine?

[TGK]

As for the secrecy of the KGB and the USSR in reguards to this, the weapon in the Soviet Embassy was never intended as a deterant. It was a first strike weapon.

If it was well known you'd assume someone might try to do something about it..

Re:Doom's day machine?

[in7ane]

That poses the question of why there was such a huge scandal about missiles in Cuba while the government didn't care much about a nuke sitting a few miles from them?

/Not saying it's not true, just wondering

Re:Doom's day machine?

[TGK]

That's a good question, and one for which I don't have a (terribly) good answer.

I can say this.

The fear of Soviet Missiles in Cuba was not that they could strike at US cities. Soviet strikes on our cities were fairly unlikely as those would typicaly be targets of a second strike.

The Cuban Missiles, however, could wipe out many US bomber bases before bombers could get aloft. This, in turn, devalues the US deterant, which made a preemptive strike by the Soviets more likely.

A bomb in DC, if it did not have much of a chance of stoping a retalitory US strike, does not pose the same threat. In short, while a lot of people die, the Soviets still have a really good reason not to set it off.

The problem with this argument is that the Soviets clearly thought that such a weapon would prevent a US retalitory strike because it has little point otherwise. Reality is not what matters here, but perception. If the Russians thought it would prevent a retalitory strike than the US had to treat it as a destabilizing influence.

I wish I could give you a better answer.

Re:Doom's day machine?

[Wes Janson]

If I had to guess, I'd say the reason might well have been because we had one in our embassy in Moscow as well, it seems likely ;) But no Cuba sitting up in the Arctic Ocean, and thus no equivilant.

Re:Doom's day machine?

[khallow]

Doesn't mean that they really had a nuke in DC. A more likely scenario is that the DC nuke document was a honeypot designed to rapidly expose spies.

Ie, "accidentally" send this document to Boris the CIA spy. Boris reads said document and instantly realizes that this could bring him a bit of money from the Americans. He hands a copy over and the document rapidly finds its way to the US President. Various high level KGB plants in the administration hear about the information and report it back to the KGB. So now the KGB knows that Boris was the one to handle the document and they dispense justice via firing squad. Another spy caught. The great thing is that this trick can reused over and over.

There's probably dozens if not hundreds of similar documents that claim all sorts of outrageous things. It doesn't mean they're true.

Re: on competition

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Absolutely right, but at what point do we decide that a weapon would be so powerful, there's no advantage to building or using it, because it would mean our own destruction too?

Never. There's always advantage in having a bigger weapon than your rival's. There are certainly circumstances where it's smarter to thump your chest and roar than to actually attack, but that doesn't enter into it.

You should always build the bigger weapon. Because if you don't, somebody else will.

baby talk

[Doc Ruby]

What if we all just agree to be happy and nice? If we just pretend everything is good, it will be. Unfortunately, grownups seem to be bad. And with nuclear weapons, they're going to be bad enough that all of us get killed. One day, it's going to be a lot simpler, when we're all dead, and no one is bad.

Oh, and terrorists are stupid foreigners.

You might not need a nuke

[Anonymous Coward]

From wikipedia, see the link on nuclear isomers: The only stable nuclear isomer is Ta-180m, which occurs naturally in tantalum at about 1 part in 8300. Its half-life is at least 1015 years, and it may in fact be entirely stable. The origin of this isomer is mysterious, though it is believed to have something to do with supernovas. When it relaxes to its base state, it releases energetic photons with wavelength of 16 nanometers -- x-ray wavelengths. There are reports that Ta-180m can be forced to release its energy by much weaker x-rays, but these are currently in scientific dispute.

Obligatory Plan 9 From Outer Space quote:

[Anonymous Coward]

Colonel Tom Edwards: Why is it so important that you want to contact the governments of our earth?

Eros: Because of death. Because all you of Earth are idiots.

Jeff Trent: Now you just hold on, Buster.

Eros: No, you hold on. First was your firecracker, a harmless explosive. Then your hand grenade: you began to kill your own people, a few at a time. Then the bomb. Then a larger bomb: many people are killed at one time. Then your scientists stumbled upon the atom bomb, split the atom. Then the hydrogen bomb, where you actually explode the air itself. Now you can arrange the total destruction of the entire universe served by our sun: The only explosion left is the Solaranite.

Colonel Tom Edwards: Why, a particle of sunlight can't even be seen or measured.

Eros: Can you see or measure an atom? Yet you can explode one. A ray of sunlight is made up of many atoms.

Jeff Trent: So what if we do develop this Solaranite bomb? We'd be even a stronger nation than now.

Eros: "Stronger." You see? You see? Your stupid minds. Stupid. Stupid.

Re:Obligatory Plan 9 From Outer Space quote:

[Jeremy Erwin]

There are so many errors in that snippet of dialogue. Where to begin?

Nude bomb

[isny]

Why won't scientists get working on the nude bomb instead? I think that would have a lot more "peacetime" applications.

Scotty, beam me the hell outta here!

[Tablizer]

but if a Hafnium bomb could be built, it is thought that a golf ball sized chunk could produce the energy equivalent of 10 tons of conventional explosives.

Man, we have to find a way to get off this planet. Nutball terrorists are gonna oblitterate the entire planet via easier-and-easier to obtain garage-able technology. If we don't spread around the human race in space, then we are doomed as a species. If not nukes, then viri, mad-cow in the water supply, etc.

After seeing photos of butch women humiliating Arab genitals on leashed victims, A 4-way taboo in the Arab world, Osamas will be coming out of the woodwork.

Re:Scotty, beam me the hell outta here!

[geekoid]

sure, in 20 years hafnium will be available at the courner store.

Re:Scotty, beam me the hell outta here!

[Tablizer]

sure, in 20 years hafnium will be available at the courner store.

You have to agree that it is hard to hide information forever. Once it gets around it does not go back into the bottle very easily. The computers that used to simulate atomic weapons were wimpier than many CPU's in toys these days. The ability to simulate a weapon design gets cheaper and cheaper.

terrorism begins at home

[Doc Ruby]

What is this crap about terrorists with a hafnium bomb? Unless you're referring to the nuclear terror used by states like the USA, Russia, China, France, Pakistan, North Korea and India to intimidate the competition and their own people, you don't understand terrorism. Low budget groups like Islamic Jihad, the IRA, or even Al Qaeda go for actual telegenic explosions, not expensive technology. They don't need to spend millions/billions on x-ray laser pumping facilities for exotic nuclear chemistry, and the secret real estate in which to hide them. They mix a truckload of fertilizer and fuel oil, then ram it into a state capitol building: cheap and easy, and really scary on TV.

The terror threat from hafnium comes from Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary Strangelove who has reinvigorated America's nuclear threat machine. And from the defense contractors whose money addiction demands continually greater doses at the expense of global safety, marketing weapons by warmongering. How much of this death technology, funded by our fellow Americans, finds its way into the wrong hands - hands that would press the button? These days, most of it. Get your head out of the sand and work on firing Rumsfeld and his apocalyptic gang of thieving blackmailers, instead of wasting time on some imaginary "Dr. Evil".

A few little flaws in this ingenious plan, though:

[Phekko]

1) it doesn't explode by hitting it with a driver

2) the boss (if not stupid enough to be whacked by more conventional means) might get a tad suspicious comparing masses: average golf ball 45g at most, same volume of space (approx. 40 cc) filled with Hf: approg 530g.
Not to mention (what does that mean anyway? Shouldn't you say TO mention?)

3) You probably couldn't afford it on your salary unless you ARE the boss

What it looks like

[Pixel_K]

For those wondering what Hafnium looks like :
http://www.theodoregray.com/PeriodicTable/Eleme nts /072/index.html

Available in the shops right now ..

[SmackCrackandPot]

"... but if a Hafnium bomb could be built, it is thought that a golf ball sized chunk could produce the energy equivalent of 10 tons of conventional explosives."

Exploding trick golf balls - just in time for Christmas. Give your boss the blast of his life and get that promotion you've always wanted.

Whole pic

[The Creator]

Suppose you had a material that when hit my a 2.5MeV photon emits several 10 or 20keV ones. Now combine the two.

Re:Whole pic

[Salis]

Those 20 keV photons would collide with electrons and undergo photovoltaic effects, making them propogate poorly as well.

To compare, atomic bombs use neutrons for the propogation of the chain reaction.

Re: on competition

[WhiteWolf666]

Also...

Bigger weapons mean bigger Fireworks!

Fireworks=more chicks.

More Survival!

Seriously, though. The weapon does not always have to be bigger.

Sounds to me like a hafnium bomb might actually be smaller. Study of new technology (hafnium technology?) can result in miniturization of weaponry, or in advances in totally unreleated fields.

What if there is a cure for cancer in hafnium? What if there is a new power source?
(Unlikely)What if it lets us develop antigravity?

There is no such thing as Pandora's box.

There are dangerous demons out there, but the solution is not to ignore them. Rather, the solution is to win.

Well, as long as you are in pedantry mode....

[Ellis D. Tripp]

HF would be hydrogen fluoride. Hydrofluoric acid would be an aqueous solution of HF....:)

Re:A few little flaws in this ingenious plan, thou

[linzeal]

Karma allows you a peaceful death if prolonged, for instead of wishing you were a good person and surrounded with friends and family you simply are that person. When the future is uncertain there will always be fear

Brought to you by the Tao Of Physics and an early morning cup of tea in my new dwelling.

No. The goal of science is to increase knowledge.

[rtv]

a weapon makes a good intermediate scientific goal - deliver and release large amount of energy to a small remote location.

No - that's an engineering goal. Science isn't about doing stuff, it's a about understanding stuff.

Consider: if the Manhattan Project engineers could have built a city-flattening device without all the difficult, time-consuming and high-risk nuclear-physics stuff, would they have bothered doing all that new science? Nope.

Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

You know we have some of the same feers over breeder reactors. The main problem with nuke's are their exotic and visually impressive nature. Yes the heroshima nuke was VISUALLY impressive but fact is that beyond that at this time their are FAR more effective ways to kill LARGE amounts of people. Poison in the air, induction of a earthquake colapsing an economy, or even a small army of people with swords will do it.

People r dieing

[Hydroquix]

if they were not trying to make bombs like this we wouldent have people dieing n this is my main cause...if it wasent for little people in labs trying to make bombs lk this we wouldent have people dieing!

This isn't University of Texas

[Anonymous Coward]

If you shorten the school name to University of Texas you are referring to the one in Austin, UT-Austin, as it's by far the largest and most well known of the Texas Universities. This story is about the University of Texas-Dallas which must be referred to with its full name. In the same way that UC-Irvine and UC-Berkeley, UCLA etc are different schools, you must be more specific.

Plan 9

[qwertyatwork]

Its only a matter of time until they discover the Solarmanite bomb!

why

[Hydroquix]

why make these sorta things? to kill the enemy? well guess what...we arnt all we do with stuff lk that is blow up inocent people

Gee, who needs this?

[DrDebug]

Perhaps your local neighborhood terrorist?

The REAL issue is using Xrays to drive H-bomb

[mbkennel]

The REAL issue of concern isn't being discussed.

making alot of X-rays very quickly doesn't have to release enough energy to be a bomb on its own.

The question is whether it can be contained, appropriately modulated in its timecourse and shifted to the right frequency so that it can drive the implosion of a fusion capsule. That is how an H-bomb works. The heat from the fission trigger is in fact undesirable for the fusion detonation. The trick there is to contain the x-rays from the fission weapon precisely and direct them to the fusion part in just the right way.

Doing it with metastable hafnium is probably quite unlikely, but you never know.

You would be able to get a fusion weapon without the need of a plutonium trigger. That present requirement sets a minimum yield to be pretty damn big, i.e. no micro-H-bombs.

Supposedly the 'red mercury' could make a thermonuclear explosion.

Consider that it is not the 'red mercury' itself which provides the explosive force, but is the trigger, sans plutonium, which does.

Or perhaps it is a way of making H-bombs without requiring the very detailed engineering of the radiation channels of the present H-bombs, by having the metastable substance modulate and enhance the xrays.

Me too

[JollyFinn]

I don't know but use your karma Whorenium.

Heads up

[Caedar]

"... but if a Hafnium bomb could be built, it is thought that a golf ball sized chunk could produce the energy equivalent of 10 tons of conventional explosives."

I guess when someone yells "Fore!", you'll have to be even more careful now.

Isomers?....how about isoTOPES.

[IgnacioB]

I didn't get a degree in nuclear physics, but I think isomers relate more to plastics and such. Isn't it isoTOPES? Otherwise interesting.

Re:Isomers?....how about isoTOPES.

[ChaoticLimbs]

No degree in chemistry here either, but I thought an ISOMER is a variance in the shape of a molecule of identical consistency, while an ISOTOPE is a variance in the number of neutrons , and thus atomic weight. I could be wrong too. I think you're right there.

Some info

[fullofangst]

A little birdie tells me that Hafnium by itself is not fissionable, and is incapable of carrying on a chain reaction.

However... the US are researching ways of using it with existing tech. hydrogen bombs to either expand the EMP effect, or the fallout of the bomb. It leans towards the first, as having a small bomb able to decimate electronics (and therefore communications) while doing little physical damage would be most desirable.

Sweet

[MercenarySG]

I guess its ok that, yet again, there may be a way of more efficiently killing people, but can this Hafnium energy that is so extremely powerful also be used as a new source of energy? replace nuclear power plants with something even more effiecient?

Re:Sweet

[KD5YPT]

Unfortunately, which Hafnium may become a good source of energy, it will become a weapon first because it's much easier to cause a runaway nuclear reaction (nuclear bomb, both fission and fusion) then it is to sustain a controlled reaction.

inflammable

[Doc Ruby]

The parent is "Flamebait" only if you're in the mushroom cloud business, seeking targets. Bring 'em on.

That's not a very efficient nuclear weapon

[langles]

While it would be amazing if they could make a workable nuclear device that size, 10 tons of explosive yield for a golf-ball sized mass of material is not a very efficient nuclear weapon.

Doing a few calculations:

A golf ball must have a diameter of not less than 1.680 inches (42.67mm)

or a volume of 40.679 cm^3.

Feeding that into Calculation of Density with Halfnium, gives a mass of 0.54143749 kg for a golf-ball sized chunk of Halfnium (neglecting the particular isotope in question).

Assuming metric tons for simplicity, a yield of:

10 tons / 0.54143749 kg

Is equivalent to:

18.5 tons / kg

Compare that with existing nuclear weapons. Once you scale the weapon above a certain size, and using optimal designs, you can obtain much higher yield efficiencies, or Yield-to-Weight Ratio's.

"The W-54 Davy Crockett warhead ... was the lightest ever deployed by the US, with a minimum mass of about 23 kg (it also came in heavier packages) and had yields ranging from 10 tons up to 1 Kt in various versions."

Yield-to-Weight Ratios of US Mk-53 Nuclear Weapon
2.25 kt/kg

Or

2,250,000 tons / kg

Which is a MUCH higher efficiency weapon - at least in the energy sense.

Re:That's not a very efficient nuclear weapon

[langles]

Oops!

2.25 kt / kg is, of course, 2,250 tons / kg and not 2,250,000 tons / kg.

The conclusion, however, still stands.

Re:That's not a very efficient nuclear weapon

[iggymanz]

efficiency of a weapon in terms of mass /energy yield? what nonsense. How about a metric of cost to obtain and deploy one versus number of people killed/maimed or value of real estate destroyed? That's the only meaningful efficiency measurement of any weapon.

Re:Power, Science and Complete Freakin' Ignorance

[Mulletproof]

Clue Time-- "They" hate everybody. "They" hate Britain, and have proclaimed their determination to turn it into an Islamic state, not to mention the 90s embassy siege they suffered a while back. "They" hate Spain, their hate spanning years before the latest bombing. "They" hate Isreal, stating their goal to wipe this tiny little country from the face of the Earth after severval comprimises on Isreals part. "They" hate Russia, as evidenced by the theater hostage taking of recent memory.

Get some persective, Top Gun. The list of people "they" hate is a very, very, very long one and America was by no means the first on it. Maybe you should ask yourself why "they" are reactionary savages to everybody else. I know, it can't be because "they" are just as fucked up as you claim everybody else is, right? Sure, all the countries you listed indiscriminatly target the civilian populace in order to "get their point across", right? RIGHT????

I'm sorry, but fuck you and the horse you rode in on, you cluless bastard. If it takes a gun to the head or a golf ball sized chunk hafnium to keep these freaks in line, so be it.

Re:A few little flaws in this ingenious plan, thou

[Profane MuthaFucka]

So tell the boss to hit it with his mass driver. Hole in one.

My Comment Still Stands

[Trolling4Dollars]

I still argue that humans are just monkeys playing with fire. They will set the jungle ablaze eventually. Mmmmm... charred monkey. ;P

Jupiter IRBM's

[Latent Heat]

There were Jupiter IRBMs in Turkey and England serving the same purpose. As a kid my parents gave me "1001 Questions Answered About Space" that was filled with 1960's innocence. Like it was only recently revealed that Project Discoverer was a spy satellite (gee, as if one couldn't see through the "cover" story about putting mice and wheat plants in orbit as they were trying to do air-grab recoveries of film capsules from the thing). The book talks about the Jupiter IRBMs being "obsolete" as of 1963 and that is why they are being dismanteled. Yeah, right.

The plain truth is that America had the Jupiters, and Russia thought they would get their own Jupiters and put them in Cuba. Americans being Americans put Jupiters in Turkey because America could, while Russians being Russians, thought they should have their own missiles in Cuba, only not only did the Russians not tell anyone about this, they denied the missiles being there until shown the recon photos, and even then they weren't too cool about that either. If they had said, "damned straight we have missiles in Cuba; you Americanskis have missiles in Turkey, if you have a problem with that we are ready to negotiate an arms control agreement" things may have worked out differently, but a lot had to do with the Russian penchant for secrecy and the American penchant not to redo Pearl Harbor.

How it had to play out was for Russia to back down in a very public way because they were secret about their missiles and for America to back down in a secret way because, lets face it, America had been public about its missiles, but there was a reciprocal deal on the Cuban missiles and the Turkish Jupiters, and that is the truth regardless of whatever anyone had told you about it.

Re:Power, Science and Complete Freakin' Ignorance

[Worldwatcher2u]

Im with you... When are these liberals going to get a clue.

Re:Power, Science and Complete Freakin' Ignorance

[Worldwatcher2u]

Im with you Mulletproof.. when are these liberals going to get a clue.

Tea Time at 10 paces

[Anonymous Coward]

We've been going at this all wrong! Maybe we can get the Israelis and Palestinians to sit down and agree to only say nice things about each other, too!

Add a 2nd rule to tea-time: first one to say a not-nice thing gets shot by the moderator. My guess is that one of them won't live past the 2nd scone.

Re:Tea Time at 10 paces

[Anonymous Coward]

I bow to your insight, sir.

TFOAE

Re:Power, Science and Complete Freakin' Ignorance

[Anonymous Coward]

"America was by no means the first on it" were number one now!

Re:Power, Science and Complete Freakin' Ignorance

[tabulae rasae]

It must be convenient to use such broad generalizations to form such strong opinions. Certainly "they," you know, the "evil-doers" are the collective opposing entity of good. "They" must hate "us" because our tanks and bombs bring freedom to their regions.

Keep in mind the plurality of perspective, and that families in Iraq and Afghanistan doubtfully shrug off the death of a family member by saying, "Oh well, too bad your father was collateral damage to the freedom bringers." Instead they might view a war on terrorism as being hypocritical, in that war is indeed terrible, so a war on terrorism is like using rape to combat sexual harassment.

A life is a life is a life from my point of view, and the unjustified theft of life is immoral, period.

Re:Power, Science and Complete Freakin' Ignorance

[Anonymous Bullard]

So much anger, and not just on "their" part ("they" apparently referring here to muslims in general and not just Al-Qaeda or even Iraqis). Yet so little trying to really understand why "they" are upset. Obviously one can not try turning the tables and imagine what it would be like to be one of "them" without understanding why they're so angry and "fucked up".

Don't keep shooting the messengers with this totalitarian "either you're with us or you're against us" war cry. Read a few books about the history (up to current times) of islamic countries, preferably those without obvious political bias, and a pattern emerges. Over the last few hundred years and in particular in the 1900s most islamic countries were occupied and humiliated by the western superpowers of the period. Since oil became the strategic commodity, Middle-East (where all the holiest sites of islam are located) has been under extreme manipulation by the US and UK in particular.

Try imagining god-fearing Americans experiencing such occupation, control and manipulation of the United States, its culture and resources, by some islamic superpower and you might find a few Americans starting to hate their new overlords. Some might even take up arms as a last resort.

Countries cherishing peaceful coexistance and without imperial urges tend not to be hated by anyone. Democracy does not mean one country imposing its values upon other nations with very different culture and history.

Btw, nowhere have I advocated hate or violence, on the contrary. I simply understand the reasons for such anger and frustration which very sadly manifests itself in violent struggle. I also find it interesting and strangely appropriate that you would rename "Death" in the title into "Complete Freakin' Ignorance".

Competitivity has not been our evolutional trend

[Anonymous Coward]

You're obviously an American with that mentality.

Humans are not as competitive as chimpanzees (the closest things to our anciestors there are). Our serotonin levels have become higher through evolution, as males have become more effiminate. If anything characterises our evolution over the past few hundred thousand years, it is our increasingly co-operative nature.

Survival against things in the wild didn't work on a basis of a brutish competitive individual with a big club. It worked on the basis of a social unit. Co-operation to figure out what diseases were and how to treat them, and how to pass that knowledge down and so forth. A co-operative group which works together to kill your jaguar is going to last alot long than a group where the individuals compete against each other and get themselves killed through bravado every second time they pass by a wild cat.

Re:Power, Science and Complete Freakin' Ignorance

[elveu]

I'm sorry, but fuck you and the horse you rode in on, you cluless bastard. If it takes a gun to the head or a golf ball sized chunk hafnium to keep these freaks in line, so be it.

No sadly "they" just hold the same attidute you. This isn't ment as a troll but the problem clearly is that people see weapons as the answer.
just remember if you fight fire with fire you are going to burn a hell of a lot of innocent people in the process

Re:Power, Science and Complete Freakin' Ignorance

[Mulletproof]

"life is a life is a life from my point of view, and the unjustified theft of life is immoral, period."

Good. Now just keep saying that as you walk through Saddam's mass graves. Let's paint with that brush for a little bit.

Re:Power, Science and Complete Freakin' Ignorance

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no point trying to history to today's americans. Unless it's on Fox, they don't believe it.

Re:Power, Science and Complete Freakin' Ignorance

[Mulletproof]

""they" apparently referring here to muslims in general""

Well, you can try to put those words in my mouth but you'll end up looking like an ass doing so. And where the heck did this "Don't keep shooting the messengers with this totalitarian "either you're with us or you're against us" war cry" crap come from? Every incident cited was a terrorist act, notably incited by an "Al-Qaeda like" group. At no time did I even imply lumping the rest of the Arabic world with these savages as you so blindly assume. If it really makes you feel better to assign a racial profile, you can lump members of the IRA to the same catagory; good wholesome white european stock. Don't miss the sarcasm now.

And guess what? Once they start targeting the civilan populace with their military actions, why they hate no longer matters because obviously the only meaningful thing you can do for them is die. If that's the case, I have no problems.

You can attempt to load all the middle easts problems on the evil western super powers as well, but it doesn't fly. Hey, i'll be happy to admit the US has made it's share of forgeign policy mistakes in the region, but they, nor the others hardly share all the blame. As you mentioned, oil is perhapse the worlds number one most valuable commodity, But for such a massive revenue generating resource, the Middle East (with very few exceptions) is surprisingly poor. It's people are supressed. In poverty. You make it sound like everybody is just robbing them blind when they are actually making billion. You make it sound like they are helpless when they wield considerable sway on the world economy. Speaking of which, you're right, LET'S brush up on history and current events and remember the 70s oil crisis. Or how gas is pushing $2 a gallon today because of OPEC's manuvering. And that's just off the very top of my head.

Honestly, if the Middle East is a terrorist cest pool, I have to say it's rulers share an equal, if not greater share in creating that situation. Being oppressed by the Evil Western Empire is an excuse that ceased being viable after the 1960s, especially with the wealth and opportunity they have had access to all this time.

"Why" just doesn't rest soley in the hands of foreigners here.

Make some grenades out of this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Reminded me of a line I had in my quotes file. I believe it might have been from a slashdot sig.

"Only during testing did they discover the range of a thermonuclear grenade was farther than anyone could throw it."

Didnt John Titor say somthing about this

[coradon]

John Titor http://www.johntitor.com/ http://johntitor.strategicbrains.com/ Read for yourselves

Re:Power, Science and Complete Freakin' Ignorance

[tabulae rasae]

I absolutely agree with you. Saddam was a terrible dictator, and I'm glad he's out of power. I'm assuming that "paint with that brush" means that we should determine the morality of a situation objectively and that the actions of a person should be are judged independently of nationality.

If my memory serves me correctly the largest massacre undertaken by Saddam was against the Kurds, after we used them for our own political gain, and then abandoned them which allowed Saddam to take revenge on them (100,000 dead). Please research this incident and let me know if what I'm saying is inaccurate before you respond. If what I'm writing is remotely accurate, then "they" perhaps see things differently than you do, and you owe those who died there at least a cursory review of how those mass graves came about.

Robert Hayden (University of Pittsburg):
"It feels so good to believe that it's black and white and you're combating evil. This is why the Goldhagen view is such pap-- this notion that only the Germans could have done the Holocaust, that the Serbs are evil, is bullshit," he says. "If you put normal people anywhere in abnormal situations like ones where their leaders pander in the worst way to their fears and prejudices -- they behave in ghastly ways that are quite predictable."

Why Worry About Hafnium When There's DU?

[Mekkis]

Hey, kiddies. We're worried about the evilbadnasty terrorists getting their hands on rogue nukes from the former USSR that might be floating around out there, or worse, constructing their own 'dirty bomb' with internet-fueled recipies, sneak it into the land of the Great Satan and start nuke-nuke-nukin' on heaven's door in the name of Allah. Bush & Co. are shrieking 'For God's sake, don't let those crazy Muslim fundamentalists get hold of nuclear materials!'
Problem is we've already given them all the material anyone could ever want or need to make a 'dirty bomb', delivered right to their sandy li'l front doors courtesy of the United States Armed Services. That's right, kiddies, we're talking about DEPLETED URANIUM, that nuclear fairy dust that's now littering Iraq and Afghanistan by the megaton! Thanks to the fabled generosity of the good ol' USA, it's possible to drive around and pick up this stuff with nothing more than a shovel and a dedication to a deity stronger than your fear of radiation poisoning.
A dedicated Boy Scout could easily make either a low-yield nuclear bomb using enough 'spent' uranium to make a subcritical mass (remember, Mouseketeers, that 'spent' fuel rods are still highly radioactive and it just takes a lot more to reach subcritical mass than ordinary uranium) OR even more easily, mix the DU with conventional explosives to make a bomb with a radioactive plume capable of poisoning an entire city for decades!
Fun Fact for th' Day: The most recent draft of the Geneva Convention considers depleted uranium to be a 'weapon of mass destruction', as its effects linger for decades to centuries after a war has ended, causing such amazing things as severe birth defects, mental retardation, cancer and other ailments endemic to a high degree of radioactive contamination. Any nation employing DU in its weapons will be considered to be in serious breach of the Geneva accord. (Ho ho ho! Not that the US actually gives a damn about those silly Swiss! There's profits to be had, and it's a convenient way to dispose of all that nuclear waste that would otherwise require safe disposal!)
Check HERE and HERE for more info.

Re:Power, Science and Complete Freakin' Ignorance

[Mulletproof]

Please don't misunderstand me-- I don't have a shoot first, ask later mentality. I am, however, a huge fan of letting the people who would think to screw around with us know that there is a potentially a huge hammer hanging over their heads.

davey crocket photo

[subtropolis]

here

I think the one i mentioned in my other post was fired from a howitzer, though, and was not the davey crocket. Looks like an RPG with serious attitude. I'm guessing that's one jeep that wasn't used for quick jaunts to the px.

artillery shell videos

[subtropolis]

here.

And here are the links to the videos (mov) themselves (to get around the stupid javascript crap): shot, boom, stuff blowing away, more stuff blowing away, trees

Here's an interesting article about the shot.

9-11 and nukes

[MarcQuadra]

I don't think they would have used nukes for 9-11 anyway, even if they had them. 9-11 was a SYMBOLIC attack on western capitalism and our milltary-industrial complex, not a clear-cut kill-as-many-americans-as-possible mission.

I can even argue that using a nuke on 9-11 on D.C. would have been counter-productive for Al-Qaeda, because it wouldn't have let America react so smoothly and fall into Bin Laden's trap so easily.

Seriously, using an airplane or two against the pentagon? That was clearly just a way to say 'fuck off' while leaving the whole American system intact enough to go totally apeshit and overreact by starting a war or two.

Jerk or not, Bin Laden is a VERY smart guy, and so far what we've done to 'fight terrorism' has done much to benefit his cause. Knocking-off Saddam has turned a once sedated Arab land into an unruly danger to Saudi interests.

If Al Qaeda REALLY wanted to just fuck as many Americans as possible they would have had people infiltrate water plants as empployees and sprinkle slow-acting cumulative poisons (radioactive stuff?) into the drinking supply, or send operatives with high-resistant tuberculosis into American subways and airports.

Re:Power, Science and Complete Freakin' Ignorance

[mfh]

> Don't keep shooting the messengers with this totalitarian "either you're with us or you're against us" war cry. Read a few books about the history (up to current times) of islamic countries, preferably those without obvious political bias, and a pattern emerges.

When I read this part of your comment, I had to think of George Bush Sr. and Jr.; it was like an eye-opener. I think the Bushes are totalitarian, and that's never been a good thing, historically.

There was a video game designed that allows you to get a sense of terrorism. You're overlooking an Arabic city/village and you play the role of the US gov't. You have to kill the terrorists by sending cruise missiles. But what happens when you send one is the pure genius of the video game designer. Each time a bomb explodes and kills anyone, more and more terrorists spring up. Anyone who mourns the death of their relatives, friends, families, neighbours, will become a terrorist.

When I saw that, it became obvious that there is no way to defeat terrorism, but time itself; time and healthy foreign policy.

Re:Power, Science and Complete Freakin' Ignorance

[fucksl4shd0t]

And guess what? Once they start targeting the civilan populace with their military actions, why they hate no longer matters because obviously the only meaningful thing you can do for them is die. If that's the case, I have no problems.

When our bombs drop, who are their targets? How much of the civilian populace have we targetted ourselves? Once upon a time, weapons were of a short, intimate nature, and it could actually be considered dishonorable for a soldier to kill someone he didn't intend to kill. The advent of gunpowder changed that, pretty much. Granted, there was a small amount of collateral damage from previous distance weapons, and the siege of a city has never been pretty. That's not the point. The point is that now we bomb cities with the intent of killing civilians that produce the enemy's war machine.

I'm not attempting to defend terrorism, and it is nuts, but I can see where their actions derive from both crazy-headed thinking but also long-standing doctrines of war.

Hey, i'll be happy to admit the US has made it's share of forgeign policy mistakes in the region, but they, nor the others hardly share all the blame. As you mentioned, oil is perhapse the worlds number one most valuable commodity, But for such a massive revenue generating resource, the Middle East (with very few exceptions) is surprisingly poor.

Yeah, the area is surprisingly poor. For two reasons. First, the oil companies make deals with the totalitarian rulers, so the money that *is* going into the country isn't going to the people in the area. Second, the totalitarian rulers are frequently propped up in one form or another by the "evil Western imperialists" (ref: Saddam Hussein, we also support the Saudi King and a few others).

Besides, with all the battles we fought with the Soviet Union that were fought through puppets in the Middle East, how rich would you expect an area to be that has been fighting someone else's war for decades? The Cold War had a lot more collateral damage than anybody's owned up for. Viet Nam was at least honest in the sense that we used our own troops, and Korea as well, but those weren't the only wars fought on our behalf against the Soviet Union. Does the name "Iran Contra" mean anything to you? Yeah, we officially only supported one side of that war because our man Hussein was fighting it (iirc, he may not have been in power yet), and a few nuts of our own sold weapons to the Iranians. But the Iranians fought with Soviet Union backing, as well.

It's people are supressed. In poverty. You make it sound like everybody is just robbing them blind when they are actually making billion.

Yeah, many middle eastern people are oppressed, meanwhile the only countries we've targetted so far just happen to be countries which have leaders that we put in charge? What are you missing, here? Yes, the people are generally oppressed. More importantly, we generally support the leaders who are oppressive, and *not* the leaders who would find freedom. OPEC and their home countries and American oil companies as well are so scared of a free market in the middle east it isn't even funny. If a free market arrived in middle east oil exports, you won't be looking at $2/gallon and complaining about how high it is. You'll be looking at hybrids, and you'll be looking at $6+.

You make it sound like they are helpless when they wield considerable sway on the world economy. Speaking of which, you're right, LET'S brush up on history and current events and remember the 70s oil crisis.

As I recall, the Middle East was actually doing a fairly decent job of recovering from Nazi influence when we had our oil crisis and got more seriously involved with them.

And what "considerable sway" are you referring to? The countries don't have that, not with the oil fields in the North Sea, South America, etc. It's the oil companies that have it.

Honestly, if the Middle East is a terrorist cest pool, I have to s

Re:Power, Science and Complete Freakin' Ignorance

[fucksl4shd0t]

Please don't misunderstand me-- I don't have a shoot first, ask later mentality. I am, however, a huge fan of letting the people who would think to screw around with us know that there is a potentially a huge hammer hanging over their heads.

Do you really think people enjoy "screwing around with us"? Maybe if we didn't continually back them into a corner they would quit acting like cornered rats. How big a hammer we wield is exactly part of the problem, here.

I'm not saying we can just leave, either. We've caused enough trouble that morally we need to right our own wrongs. We can't just reverse previous policy and back out, anymore. Not only would that be giving in to terrorism, it would also be morally bankrupt. You can't stick a kid in the middle of a burning fire, say you screwed up, and walk away without taking the kid out of the fire and running him to the ER.

But our current foreign policy isn't any different than it's been, and we're not righting our wrongs over there, we're just doing more wrong.

Trying to Really Understand

[oldCoder]

You said:

Over the last few hundred years and in particular in the 1900s most islamic countries were occupied and humiliated by the western superpowers of the period. Since oil became the strategic commodity, Middle-East (where all the holiest sites of islam are located) has been under extreme manipulation by the US and UK in particular.

Try imagining god-fearing Americans experiencing such occupation, control and manipulation of the United States, its culture and resources, by some islamic superpower and you might find a few Americans starting to hate their new overlords. Some might even take up arms as a last resort.

Your themes are: Domination and Occupation exacerbated by Oil causes Terrorism.

Not exactly. You are ignoring the impact of wealth, of Islam, and the fall of the Caliphate.

The west has also poured billions of dollars (and pounds and lira...) into the Islamic societies of the mideast and this has caused great distortion. Saddam would only have been a tin-pot dictator had he not been able to buy weapons from the major powers. Saudi Arabia would not have been able to spread its message of Islamic Radicalism and hatred of the West had it remained a poor nation of pearl divers and camel drivers.

The populations of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the smaller Gulf states have become used to unearned wealth and often astonishing levels of sloth and luxury. This is not what is usually understood as "Imperialism". That the wealth is not more widely shared is the result of indigenous political processes, not Western intervention.

The Mideast, like the entire rest of the world, was a battleground in the Cold War between the Warsaw Pact and NATO, or, if you prefer, between the Soviet Union and the US. Yet global terrorism arose only in the Islamic Mideast. Colonialism was equally widespread and lasted longer elsewhere. Your formulation fails to take this into account.

In order for the West to become wealthy it had to change its medieval world view to a modern scientific world view. The Islamic Radicals are unwilling to do this and it is their swift empowerment by oil money that has made a crisis out of the situation.

Egypt was a colony for over a hundred years and terrorism is a great problem. Yet Saudi Arabia was never invaded and has spawned a lot of terrorism worldwide. Each country is different. What is common is the ideology of Islamic world domination, and the impact (even in poor Egypt) of Islamic oil money to get the whole jihad moving.

Even in the Palestinian areas they have had many opportunities for a Palestinian State and real peace, yet prefer endless war and bloodshed because the Israelis are a different religion. When Jordon and Egypt conquered the Palestinian areas there was no peep of protest because these were Islamic countries. Don't underestimate the importance of the Islamic ideology of domination.

If you doubt the power of Islamic religious intolerance take a look at the history of the Bahai faith, and the treatment of the Sufi at the hands of the mainstream Muslims. For that matter look at the way the Sunni treat the Shiite. See also this site for more information.

An important response of the Mideastern Islamic world to modernity was Nasserite Arab Nationalism. That idea competed with and complemented Islamic radicalism, which is now more powerful than Nationalism, because Nationalism was seen as a failure. Arab Nationalism favored traditional wars between nations as a means of domination. Islamic radicalism likes war but has also developed a taste for Kamikazi tactics.

The stage was set for all this instability by the fall of the Turkish-dominated Caliphate at the end of the First World War. Huge areas of the Mideast were without government, spawning wars of succession as the political vacuum was filled during the rise of Hitler and through the development of the Cold War. The 500 years of Calipha

Re:Trying to Really Understand

[Anonymous Bullard]

I tried to concentrate on the main task at hand without delving deeper into the various factors and nuances, also taking into account the post I was replying to. Islam and the Arab nationalism are subjects worthy of a whole library by themselves, but the key issues why muslims in general and arabs in particular became especially upset with the US have to do with the level and manner of US interference and the fact that arabs, unlike many other colonized peoples (without oil and almost all already independent), are exceptionally proud of their now-faded past glory days of the islamic civilization. But that didn't create Al-Qaeda; that militant arm of the muslim rebellion was created by the US betrayal of the "Afghan freedom fighters" after the Soviet withdrawal. Ironically the Islamic Republic in the neighbouring Iran was also caused by first UK and soon afterwards the US overthrowing a legitimate government and taking control of the oil. The Iranian revolution was really just an extreme reaction to an extreme situation in a fiercely proud and independent nation.

You're right on the money saying that the islamic radicals are slowing progress there, just like religious fanatics everywhere tend to put their holy scripts before science (Bush Jr. being no exception). However demonizing and attacking islam and specific countries only strengthens the hand of the mullahs, just like otherwise reasonable and generally far better educated Americans threw their support behind their Leader when this "war on terror" campaign was launched, with those asking tough questions getting labelled as unpatriotic. It is exactly this political and economic domination by the US that feeds the anger, with the unquestioning backing of Israel's policies causing the already tender feelings to boil over into violence. Only the US, an unusually religious nation in the western world, allows its adopted judeo-christian religious vision and ideology to guide its foreign policy to such an extent, just witness innumerable UN resolutions universally condemning Israel's actions, only to be vetoed by a single opponent, the USA.

Finally, the religious intolerance you mention is genuinely one of the issues islamic countries must tackle before finding their true place in the global family of nations, but it too can be overcome by addressing the root causes of the islamic world's unhappiness towards the US. In the more developed islamic countries religious intolerance might even be a lesser issue than in some strictly religious western states. Or in the constitutionally atheist China, or in Russia with its Orthodox revival and distaste for missionaries.

The written ideals of the US (constitution) are very respectable but as its power has grown towards absolute, so has the execution (by the political and corporate elite) of its ideals been allowed to become increasingly corrupt. It ought to be decided by the US electorate whether their nation should continue supporting and installing dictators in foreign countries (for "subsidized" cheap gas and other resources) while criminalizing the freedom movements of people under occupation, or whether to again put moral high ground above material exploitation and profit, as would befit the US constitution and UN declarations.

Re:Power, Science and Complete Freakin' Ignorance

[luna69]

> LET'S brush up on history and current events and
> remember the 70s oil crisis. Or how gas is
> pushing $2 a gallon today because of OPEC's
> manuvering.

LET'S remember that it's THEIR OIL, NOT OURS. If they want to "maneuver", that's their right. It's all about the free market, right?

Selling oil, at a profit, isn't a terrorist act...unless we are willing to call our own industries 'terrorist'. Oh, wait...

Re:Power, Science and Complete Freakin' Ignorance

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoa... wait a second now.

The person you're responding to said "they" in a very non-descript way. I read "they" as meaning al-Qaeda or terrorists in general. You seem to have a lot of issues stored up just waiting to be hurled at the next innocent passerby.

But, now that you bring it up... :)

If a commodity such as oil *is* as important as we all seem to think it is (and I wish we didn't, or at least would drill in Alaska to have a bargaining chip that didn't involve invading other countries), then clearly control of that resource is a serious issue whether you and I like it or not. I bet you think that if we just left it alone it would be distributed fairly and equitably and no one would ever fight over it. Not Russia, not China, not Germany, not France, not Turkey, not Iran... gosh no, those are all such enlightened morally superior countries and they would do a much better job I'm sure. And their systems of government and transparency of justice are so much better.

No I'd agree that if an imperialist Islamic army invaded and started dictating our political structure, I probably wouldn't like it. But if they invaded to overthrow an Arab nationalist government to replace it with a functioning democracy, I would like it just fine. :D

I suppose you're going to say we should mind our own business and never interfere in dictatorships, no matter how brutal they are. Or that if we encounter some difficulty along the way or actual resistance or even screw up some things ourselves we should just go home and pretend the world doesn't exist. You're the kind of person who could never be a fireman or finish a difficult software project or climb the monkey bars... you might trip and skin your knees and then it would be all over but the tears.

Instead of getting angry at why "we" don't understand "them" (a term *you* applied mind you), how about understanding for a minute why "we" (those who understand anger on *all* sides but also take an interest in the outcome) see you for who you are when *you* understand their anger to the nth degree but can't see even one rationale for ours.

Typical.

About your women...

[Giggle Stick]

Greetings:

Exactly how many women are you in possession of over there. Could you bear to part with a few. Please send a list of descriptions, (along with weight to calculate shipping), and I'll make you an offer.

Also, I don't mean to sound threatening, but I have a rather large amount of impunity here, so I would get too close.

Accelerated Isotopic Decay....

[stonewolf]

I know, this it about isomers, not isotopes. But, think about it. Isn't this the first evidence that we can speed up the decay rate of *any* radioactive nucleus?

What if this leads to learning how to speed up the decay of other radioactive nuclei? Say good by to nuclear waste and hello to useful power.

Stonewolf
www.stonewolf.net