SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the top-bottom-up-down-charmed,-I'm-sure dept.
A practically useless form of quark fusion releases more energy than deuterium-tritium fusion:
A pair of physicists discovered a new kind of fusion that occurs between quarks – and they were so concerned with its power they almost didn't publish the results. [...] "I must admit that when I first realised that such a reaction was possible, I was scared," Marek Karliner of Tel Aviv University told Rafi Letzter at Live Science. "But, luckily, it is a one-trick pony."
[...] If we take deuterium (proton plus a neutron) and add energy to squish it against some tritium (proton plus two neutrons), it will scramble to make helium (two protons and two neutrons). That last neutron runs from the scene of the crime. For your effort, you get 17.6 megaelectron volts and an H-bomb.
Karliner and Letzter calculated the fusing of the charm quarks in the recent LHC discovery would release 12 megaelectron volts. Not bad for two itty-bitty particles. But if we were using another pair of heavy quarks? Bottom quarks, for example? That becomes an astonishing 138 megaelectron volts.
[...] Unlike atoms, bottom quarks can't be shoved into a flask and packed into a shell. They exist for something in the order of a picosecond following atomic wrecks inside particle accelerators, before transforming into the much lighter up quark. That leaves quark bombs and quark fusion drives to science fiction authors, and, thankfully, well out of the hands of rogue nations and terrorist cells.
Just what I needed for my pure fusion weapon design.
Quark-level analogue of nuclear fusion with doubly heavy baryons (DOI: 10.1038/nature24289) (DX)
(Score: 4, Informative) by Immerman on Tuesday November 07 2017, @04:00PM (15 children)
Fusion examples:
Energy / starting mass = energy density
The standard unit of mass for particle physics, where you're looking at single particles is the mega-electron-volt per speed of light squared or MeV/c^2 (derived from E=mc^2,). Often simply expressed simply as MeV - the energy equivalent of the unit mass. In which case the energy density can be expressed as a simple unitless ratio of energy released to mass-energy in.
Nucleons (protons and neutrons) have a mass-energy of about about 939MeV each (neutrons being about 1MeV heavier), though nuclei will have somewhat different mass due to binding energies (changing binding energies are what releases energy in fusion/fission)
Hydrogen d-t fusion = 5 nucleons
17.6 MeV / (5*939MeV) = 0.00375
Charm quark fusion = 2 quarks
12 MeV / (2*1290MeV) = 0.00465
Bottom quark fusion = 2 quarks
138 MeV / (2*4650MeV) = 0.01484
In those terms you can see that charm quark fusion has about 124% the mass-energy density of d-t fusion, and bottom-quark fusion about 396%. 4x the "boom per gram" isn't nothing, but it's not really anything compared to the 2-8 million x increase going from gasoline to nuclear (TNT actually only has about 1/10 the energy density of gas). It's more comparable to the difference between uranium fission (in a breeder reactor) and d-t fusion. So basically not really any reason to "keep it secret" at all - we already know how to build nuclear bombs far larger than there's any real use for, the mass of a nuclear bomb is already almost entirely support equipment to initiate the reaction, and quark fusion would almost certainly require far more massive and complicated support equipment, since you can't store quarks in an unbound state and basically need a high-energy particle accelerator to create them in the first place.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday November 07 2017, @04:30PM (14 children)
If there was ever a way to separate, isolate, preserve, and fuse a large number of bottom quarks, it could replace the fissile material used in a fusion bomb to make a pure fusion weapon. Antimatter is probably easier to work with than bottom quarks.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday November 07 2017, @04:52PM (13 children)
It'll be interesting to see if any sci-fi writers try to come up with a "quark drive", but you're right, it's hard to see how it would make sense compared to antimatter. Antimatter can be confined with magnetic fields, so in theory it shouldn't be that hard to work with once you've figured out how to generate large quantities. And (IANAP) doesn't antimatter/matter annihilation have a much much higher energy density than nuclear (hydrogen) fusion?
Anyway, the "quark drive" would still be interesting; even if it doesn't make *that* much sense, it's surely a lot better than the idiotic idea of a tardigrade DNA mushroom drive. WTF?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday November 07 2017, @05:11PM (6 children)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiproton [wikipedia.org]
938.2720813(58) MeV/c2
I don't think electron-positron collision would produce enough energy, so go up to antiproton.
STD, huh? Sounds like the Zerg gone stupid.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday November 07 2017, @05:25PM (5 children)
STD, huh? Sounds like the Zerg gone stupid.
Yep, STD. I haven't even seen it; just the reviews are enough to make me avoid it. Very disappointing that some people actually involved in prior ST shows have been involved in that turd, and that so many fans have been defending it. The Orville has been pretty fun to watch though; you have to take it with a grain of salt, as it's definitely not as serious as real ST, and has too many penis jokes, but it least it's fun to watch, unlike STD where the characters are all assholes stabbing each other in the back. The optimism shown on Orville is really out-of-step with modern TV and modern sci-fi, which is a good thing, even if it's completely unrealistic (400 years from now will not look like The Orville; it'll look more like "28 Days Later" or "The Walking Dead").
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday November 07 2017, @06:44PM (2 children)
You are seriously projecting the mood 400 years from now, when it oscillates back and forth on a scale of decades?
I can think of arguments that it will stabilize at gloom, but also arguments that it will stabilize at optimism, and I don't believe either of them. I don't even believe that it will continue oscillating, but the evidence I have noticed seems to indicate that when bodies feel young and energetic they are more likely to feel optimistic, so if I believe that biology will keep progressing, then if I believe the oscillations will die out, I tend to believe that people will be optimistic. This doesn't mean their situation will be good (as judged from my perspective) but merely that they'll feel hopeful about it.
What I really expect is that 400 years from now will be well beyond the Singularity, and that any predictions made about it are...too call them uncertain is to understate the case. But there's a fair chance that people will spend nearly all their time in virtual reality. This may, in fact, cause humanity to die out of its own free will.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday November 07 2017, @07:34PM (1 child)
Once you have a massive extinction or civilization-ending event, things don't oscillate on the scale of decades. Look at the fall of the Roman Empire: it took 1000 years for Europe to regain just some of the technology and civilization that came before. And that was just a societal collapse in one part of the world, not a massive asteroid strike or plague or something causing massive deaths. When the Earth was hit by the K-T asteroid, half the species were killed off, including most of the dinosaurs, and it took a very long time for things to bounce back (but in very different form, now with mammals able to be active in the daytime and grow larger than rats).
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday November 08 2017, @12:15AM
You are talking about physical changes, not emotional perspective. Emotional perspective doesn't have those long term swings, people get accustomed to whatever they're experiencing unless it's something "rapidly" changing. It's true that Maslow's hierarchy of needs will dominate *what* they think about, but the emotional tone is really rather separate, and is more adapted to noticing changes in state and/or echoing what their social group considers appropriate. Now if the environment is chronically life threatening then you will tend to get low energy moods, but in such a case you don't get the sort of depression a continual descent would yield unless it's so severe that it can't be continued, in which case you can hardly call it stable.
Similarly, if you are wealthy and used to being wealthy, you don't even NOTICE that you are wealthy, and it doesn't result in your being predictably happy. Some people will be, especially while they are young and healthy, but others will instead be insecure and unhappy. And such people are often willing to share their unhappiness with others. Again what's going on is people get used to their current experiences, and don't value them, either positively or negatively, but instead react to how their body feels and what their social group expects of them. The one averages out and the other oscillates.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Funny) by chromas on Wednesday November 08 2017, @05:31AM (1 child)
That's the cool thing now. <gesture type="cough" class="coverup" id="3">Ghostbusters</gesture>
Sir, there is no such thing. You take that back right now!
Yeah, there's a lot of brooding and super cereal right now. Everything's trying to be dark 'n' edgy. It's no wonder celebs are turning on each other at the moment; Hollywood's going through an emo phase! It's moved on to cutting itself.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday November 08 2017, @02:19PM
No, the celebs are finally speaking out about a few asshole men in positions of power. Good for them; it's been long overdue. It's not like all men in Hollywood are like this; it's just a few producers and directors (Weinstein, Spacey, Ratner, probably Singer, and of course Polanski years ago), and maybe a few actors (Casey Affleck, Hoffman years ago). Out of all the men active in Hollywood, that's still a small minority, the problem is that too many of their associates turned a blind eye but that's changing now. This kind of mistreatment of women isn't unique to Hollywood; it's been a problem across society for a long time with women in the workforce, but it seems that that behavior hung on in Hollywood for longer. I don't think this is related at all to the dark-n-edgy trend in the last 2 decades; that's just a reflection of our society, just like everything Hollywood makes. They only create stuff that's going to be popular, and anything that isn't gets canned. The viewing public wants dark-n-edgy, so that's what Hollywood makes for them.
(Score: 2) by KritonK on Wednesday November 08 2017, @10:03AM (4 children)
I think it's more likely that we're going to see quantum and photon torpedoes being upgraded to"quark torpedoes" than seeing "quark drive" in Star Trek.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday November 08 2017, @02:20PM (3 children)
Not in this latest STD; instead it'll be some kind of stupid "mushroom torpedoes" or something.
(Score: 2) by chromas on Thursday November 09 2017, @01:46AM
Sporepedos.
(Score: 2) by KritonK on Thursday November 09 2017, @08:24AM (1 child)
STD takes place 10 years before STTOS, so they don't even have quantum torpedoes yet. They might get mushroom torpedoes (which, I guess, will send enemy ships to distant parts of the universe, where they'll become somebody else's problem), along with some contrived reason as to why they, along with mushroom drive, were no longer available in classic Trek.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday November 09 2017, @03:23PM
They might get mushroom torpedoes (which, I guess, will send enemy ships to distant parts of the universe, where they'll become somebody else's problem)
We need guns like this today: instead of someone getting holes punched in them and bleeding out, when they're shot with a mushroom gun, they're instantly teleported to Somalia or El Salvador. I'm not sure if that's worse than taking a bullet or not though.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Wednesday November 08 2017, @02:50PM
Yes, much higher. Matter-antimatter annihilation performs total mass-energy conversion, so the ratio of released energy to initial mass-energy is always exactly 1, or about 250x more energy dense than H-T or charm-quark fusion.