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Rail Guns Closer to Reality

Posted by samzenpus on from the fastest-gun-in-the-west dept.

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)."

1 of 475 comments (clear)

  1. Did you not do basic physics at school? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "a magnetic pulse gun (rail gun) that can accelerate small aluminum plates at 34 kilometers per second"

    We were taught this at the age of 14 - what were you doing?

    Acceleration is measured in distance per second per second. 34 km/s is a velocity. So did you mean it accelerates it to 34 km/s? Or did you actually mean it accelerates at 34 km/s/s? This is /. were pedantic nerds with nothing better to do hang out, not CNN.