Rail Guns Closer to Reality

emtboy9 writes "Yahoo News is reporting that scientists at Sandia National Labs have created a magnetic pulse gun (rail gun) that can accelerate small aluminum plates at 34 kilometers per second, faster than the Earth travels through space. The accelerated plates strike a target after traveling only five millimeters, or less than a quarter-inch. The impact generates a shock wave -- in some cases, reaching 15 million times atmospheric pressure -- that passes through the target material turning matter into various states almost instantly (solids into liquids, liquids into gas, and even gas into plasma)."

Comments

Re:Just because we can do a thing...

[nrlightfoot]

This is a non-military use. They are using it to simulate conditions deep within giant planets. Also this isn't really a rail gun. For one it doesn't use rails, and the whole aim of this experiment is unrelated to rail guns.

Re:faster, how?

[js7a]

Obligatory Monty Python answer:

Just remember that you're standing on a planet
That's evolving
And revolving
At nine thousand miles an hour.
It's orbiting at nineteen miles a second,
so it's reckoned,
'Round the sun that is the source of all our power.
Now the sun, and you and me,
and all the stars that we can see,
Are moving at a million miles a day,
In the outer spiral arm,
at fourteen thousand miles an hour,
Of a galaxy we call the Milky Way.

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred million stars;
It's a hundred thousand light-years side to side;
It bulges in the middle
sixteen thousand light-years thick,
But out by us
it's just three thousand light-years wide.
We're thirty thousand light-years
From Galactic Central Point,
We go 'round every two hundred million years;
And our galaxy itself is one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.

Our universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding,
In all of the directions it can whiz;
As fast as it can go,
that's the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute
And that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember,
when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth;
And pray that there's intelligent life
Somewhere out in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth!

The Sun circles the center of our Galaxy at about 250 km/s, but the Local Group of galaxies moves at about 600 kilometers per second relative to the primordial radiation of the big bang.

Re:faster, how?

[OO7david]

This is unneed pendantry. If you are not only able to list off these places as frames of referrence but also think of them in the first place, odds are you already know the answer.

Most sensible people would take it as being the sun spinning around the sun, and leave it there.

Since there is no pleasing you therein, the earth is more or less 149,668,992 km from the sun, which gives a circumfrence of around 940,398,011 km which over 365 days gives 29.8 km/second.

So, there you go, it's around the sun.

not a rail gun, fer cripes sake

[Dun Malg]

"Yahoo News is reporting that scientists at Sandia National Labs have created a magnetic pulse gun (rail gun)

Let's hear it for reading comprehension! Between yahoo news and he submitter, we're somehow left with the impression that this is a rail gun. It's nothing of the kind. It's an implosion machine. As described in the LiveScience.com article linked: "The Z uses a short burst of intense electricity - only a few 10 billionths of a second long - that forces an ionized gas to implode." So we can stop the handwringing over the morality of this "weapon", as to use it as such would require luring the enemy into a chamber the size of a soup can and asking him to hold still while you blast him.

Wrong

[brian0918]

I work at Sandia, on this very topic. These are just flyer plate experiments, using the Z-machine's Marx Generators to isentropically accelerate small aluminum flyer plates up to high velocities, in order to better understand the behavior of metals at high pressures/densities/temperatures. This has been around for a while now. The only difference is they've recently attained these higher velocities by having the Marx Generators switch at slightly different times, rather than all at once.

Nothing to see here, move along. (and pay no attention to the man behind the curtain)

Does not.

[Larthallor]

The article's title is extremely misleading.

This does not bring rail guns any closer to reality, by which I mean it does not bring military rail guns any closer to reality.

The Z-machine is a hanger-sized experimental device akin to a particle accelerator. This was an experiment designed to study extremely high pressures, such as those thought to have been important in Jovian planetary formation.

Saying that this experiment brings rail guns closer to reality is like saying that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN brings PPCs closer to reality.

Bad link?

[miquong]

Uh, was I the only one who got the wrong article on the "magnetic pulse gun" link? It should be here.

Re:Just because we can do a thing...

[polysylabic psudonym]

From the linked Wikipedia article: Peaceful uses of railguns There is interest in using railguns as mass drivers for space exploration and mining. They would be useful for launching bulk ores into space, particularly from low-gravity bodies such as moons and asteroids; electrically powered from solar panels, they would not require any consumables such as rocket fuels. Rail guns have been proposed for use in delivering projectiles to space, especially from bodies without atmospheres (such as the Moon). Its main competitors are coil guns and ram accelerators. Also, railguns may be used to initiate fusion reactions, by firing pellets of fusible material at each other. The impact would create immense temperatures and pressures, allowing nuclear fusion to occur. However current railguns are not yet sufficient to achieve the energies required.