Slashdot Mirror
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."
> 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.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Find out here!
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...
This is a special excite
This
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.
I have been pwned because my
"... 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 !!
than Nonium at all.
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
... and the damn prequels still sucked. I guess all the science in the world can't save you from George Lucas. -Jem
what could be done with a Wholenium...
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
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
Next question: how the heck do you control the spin of individual baryons in a nucleus?
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.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
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.
So should I throw all my money into researching inflatable sex dolls? They fulfil all three conditions.
Decode these
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. >:)
Winged Power Photography
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.
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.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
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.
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.
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
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".
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?