Re: [LoGH] LoGH physics
Justin Ho (jhh14@cornell.edu)
Fri, 13 Oct 2000 19:25:57 -0400
>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).
I took the 120 MW rating to mean the maximum amount delivered to a target,
decreasing as beam spreads over distance.
Can't that be used to give the MJ delivered to a unit area per second in
order to get an estimate of how effectively something is punching through
the armor?
"...so if I could find the amount of energy released per ton of TNT
explosion, I could work out the number of Megatons per unit mass of
total matter conversion (so you could say an X pounds antimatter bomb
would yield Y Megatons of energy)..."
Yes but I was just wondering what yields would be roughly appropriate to
produce the explosion sizes seen in the episodes. ie what yield is
necessary to produce an explosion of x meters in diameter? Naturally the
actual damage effects may be greater than is visible due to penetrating
ionizing radiation but I was just interested in getting a ballpark yield
(5kT to 15?) to give right fireball sizes. :)
Justin
