[LoGH] LoGH physics
Walter Amos (amos@sedl.org)
Fri, 13 Oct 2000 17:15:23 -0500 (CDT)
On Fri, 13 Oct 2000, Josh Yuan wrote:
> For the physics people. How do you accelerate
> neutrons? And what is the energy level involve to
> accelerate enough mass to form a 120MW beam?
You don't. At least not in any way that I know. When doing my brief
stint at Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility, when neutron beams were
used, they were created by bombardment of another target (like a
rapidly spinning carbon disk) by a charged particle beam and the energy
of the beam was whatever energy the neutrons had as a result of the
kinematics of the bombardment.
In principle, I think neutron beams as weapons for space battleships
isn't very practical or realistic, unless you posit that they are using
some magic technology not known to current science.
And it's confusing to talk about at "so many megawatt" beam when
talking about particle beams. Your question about "what energy is
needed to accelerate enough mass to form a 120MW beam?" poses a sort of
meaningless question. When talking about particle beams, the 2
parameters used to describe it are the energy of the particles in the
beam (corresponding to their speed) and the intensity (the number of
particles per cross sectional unit area of the beam per unit time).
Describing a beam as delivering "so many megawatts" makes more sense
for a beam of energy (i.e., a laser).
Hey, where's Ming? He should be able to offer additional insight in
all this as well... A little hard for me since I haven't used much of
quantum mechanics in several years and it gets a little foggy...
==============================================================================
"Zu jeder Zeit, an jeder (sic) Ort, bleibt das Tun | Walter Amos
der Menschen das gleiche..." - Galactic Heroes II | amos(at)sedl.org
