Is it possible to weaponize a particle accelerator?
>>7636907
Yes, fill it with explosives
yeah, look up ray guns, death rays etc. there's some experimental work done, but it's mostly theoretical.
I'm sure it's being worked on in secrecy.
>>7636907
yeah, just open it up.
>What is a particle beam
>>7636934
But how effective would that be?
There was that russian guy that was hit by a proton beam but it just burned some of his brain. Particle accelerators are too "clean" to cause serious damage.
>>7636907
There is a big problem that I see with using beams as a weapon. If a beam is shot in air it is going to quickly go to shit because particles are just going to interact with the air, and if the particles are specifically not going to interact with the air then they're also likely to not interact with anything e.g. if you had some sort of bremsstrahlung gun it would need to be tuned for maximum absorption in the target and minimum in the air.
>>7637123
>Use particles of higher mass, bruv. Charged mercury should do nicely.
then youd get even higher LET and less range
>>7637123
>if you have enough mass
moron. thats the whole point, they only accelerate a few million ions and doing just that is already prohibitively expensive in terms of energy requirements.
even if you used mercury, its not going to have this major effect on anything that you notice immediately, like blowing something up. sure if you zap somebody they are going to get major ionization damage and if you zap their brain they are going to fucking die or have major fucking problems, and you could fry some electronics, but you could do any of that with a bullet much easier and much cheaper.
Black hole factory
>>7636907
yes. unscrew it and beat someone on the head with it.
>>7637134
I think he was referring to possible future applications of the device, rather than current application possibilities.
>>7636907
Bullets are of particles makes gun of particle acceleration.
Duh. Look up particle beam weaponry.
>>7636949
bro a single proton beam from a very small particle accelerator melted his fucking face and almost killed him
its prretty strong
>>7638917
Despite the broken English, this is a pretty good post.
>>7636907
Yeah, it's called a nuke
>>7638928
Considering a particle accelerator is gigantic and requires a fuckload of energy it wasn't strong at all.
>>7636910
Not even a secret. Is /sci/ really that ill-informed?
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1984/jul-aug/roberds.html
>>7636907
Absolutely, you could grab one of the bricks of radiation shielding and bash someone with it.
>>7636910
>>there's some experimental work done
there was some experimental work being done, then we found they were pretty impractical
So first off let's consider charged particle beam weapons, aka ion cannons. Ions are nice because they are charged, which makes them easy to accelerate. Ions are bad because they are charged, which adds a whole host of problems. For one, coulomb repulsion will cause the ions to disperse over reasonable distances and second they are deflected by magnetic fields. The second part wouldn't be so bad, except Earth's magnetic field is variable with location and time.
A while back charged particle beam weapons were investigated as a close in weapons system for aircraft carriers. It did not work out.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/cpb.htm
Another type is the neutral particle beam weapon, which uses ions like before, except that after pointing them at a bad guy using a magnetic field, it neutralizes them. Neutral particles don't repel each other and don't deflect in magnetic fields like ions do. This is allot harder to build. Part of the problem is that it's hard to sense a beam of neutral particles, so you don't know what you are shooting at. Oh and the beam is attenuated by the atmosphere, clouds, smoke, aerosols and more, so it's only really practical to shoot at stuff in space.
But neutral particle beam accelerators are heavy and require lots of power, so they're hard to put into space. Oh and neutral particles disperse in space too because they have temperature, which limits their range.
So they perform worse than lasers at a higher cost.
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent.php#id--Particle_Beams
http://fas.org/spp/starwars/program/npb.htm
