Rail Guns Closer to Reality

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)."

Shitty weapon in Counterstrike

[CyberBill]

I think the knife has a longer range than this thing.

They should use some of the technology for cold fusion to accelerate small metal plates into things... That would be hella fun!

Re:Shitty weapon in Counterstrike

[KarmaMB84]

I imagine they mean it only moves vertically that amount while in projectile motion :P

Re:Shitty weapon in Counterstrike

[AKAImBatman]

They should use some of the technology for cold fusion to accelerate small metal plates into things... That would be hella fun!

Or turn it around and try to use railgun technology to produce warm fusion. I'm not really sure if it would work (effective confinement is one *bleeping* hard thing to do), but it might offer the possibility of fusing a large amount of matter. Now how can we extract energy from the extreme neutron flux without losing the machine in the process?

Re:Shitty weapon in Counterstrike

[momerath2003]

The Z machine and other magnetic pinch devices already can create fusion (not thermonuclear, though).

Re:Shitty weapon in Counterstrike

[Anonymous Coward]

Point them at a country and demand their oil for power generation? :o

Yeehaw!

[gbulmash]

One of them, a jug of whiskey, and a bunch of squirrels, and you got yourself a party!

Re:Yeehaw!

[Elitist_Phoenix]

Or you could rig up a I.R. tracker, clock/timer and noise detector and if the that f**king dog next door went nuts at 5am in the morning again, it would be the last time he did it! Yippy Kay Ay, motherf**ker!

Re:Yeehaw!

[pegasustonans]

Come with me and be my Z Machine
And we will plasma pleasures scream
That hills and valleys, dale and field,
And all the craggy mountains yield.

Quake

[YOystick]

Sounds like we have our Quake 4 in real life before it is released...

And speaking of Quake...

[TWX]

... if you're running around being chased by someone with one of these, chanting, "I refuse to be railed! I refuse to be railed!" repeatedly at high speed will cause them to lose their nerve and not be able to hit the broad side of a barn.

At least, it worked that way in Quake II at LAN parties.

Though it sometimes caused the person with the gun to drop out of the game, reboot into Linux, and start denial-of-service attacking the guy who was chanting...

faster, how?

[Speare]

faster than the Earth travels through space

Faster, measured against what frame of reference? A marker on the equator versus the center of mass? As seen from the moon? Sol? Alpha Proxima? Vega? The center of Andromeda's galactic core?

Re:faster, how?

[sloth jr]

Please read the first linked article. Answered in second paragraph.

Re:faster, how?

[js7a]

Obligatory Monty Python [htcomp.net] answer:

Just remember that you're standing on a planet
That's evolving
And revolving
At nine thousand miles an hour.
It's orbiting at nineteen miles a second,
so it's reckoned,
'Round the sun that is the source of all our power.
Now the sun, and you and me,
and all the stars that we can see,
Are moving at a million miles a day,
In the outer spiral arm,
at fourteen thousand miles an hour,
Of a galaxy we call the Milky Way.

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred million stars;
It's a hundred thousand light-years side to side;
It bulges in the middle
sixteen thousand light-years thick,
But out by us
it's just three thousand light-years wide.
We're thirty thousand light-years
From Galactic Central Point,
We go 'round every two hundred million years;
And our galaxy itself is one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.

Our universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding,
In all of the directions it can whiz;
As fast as it can go,
that's the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute
And that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember,
when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth;
And pray that there's intelligent life
Somewhere out in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth!

The Sun circles the center of our Galaxy at about 250 km/s, but the Local Group of galaxies moves at about 600 kilometers per second relative to the primordial radiation of the big bang. [nasa.gov]

Re:faster, how?

[Russ Steffen]

Clearly a solar centric frame of refernce, as (1 AU * 2 * pi) / (1 year) is roughly 29,700 m/s. Which is close to, but less than, the speed quoted.

Re:faster, how?

[MillionthMonkey]

Faster, measured against what frame of reference? A marker on the equator versus the center of mass? As seen from the moon? Sol? Alpha Proxima? Vega? The center of Andromeda's galactic core?

Probably the Earth's orbital speed around the Sun.

It's far too small to be in reference to the cosmic microwave background radiation. The temperature of the CMBR varies as a dipole across the sky, with a temperature difference of 7.7 mK, because the Sun is traveling toward the Leo constellation at about 370 km/s relat

Re:faster, how?

[OO7david]

This is unneed pendantry. If you are not only able to list off these places as frames of referrence but also think of them in the first place, odds are you already know the answer.

Most sensible people would take it as being the sun spinning around the sun, and leave it there.

Since there is no pleasing you therein, the earth is more or less 149,668,992 km from the sun, which gives a circumfrence of around 940,398,011 km which over 365 days gives 29.8 km/second.

So, there you go, it's around the sun.

Re:faster, how?

[Ruie]

...sun spinning around the sun..

Ok, which planet are you from ?

Re:faster, how?

[thomasa]

Of course it slows down for leap years.

Re:faster, how?

[MustardMan]

As some have noted, the speed mentioned in this case is that of rotation about the sun. There is, however, a more universal method to measure our speed through the universe. You can do this by looking at the cosmic microwave background. Just because relativity says there's no preferred frame of reference, doesn't mean we can't choose sensible ones based on the things we see around us.

Plates don't liquify people

[cheesebikini]

Plates don't liquify people. People liquify people.

Re:Plates don't liquify people

[rtaylor]

Try the new Soylent Green Energy Drink!

Futurama, of course

[Olaserov]

Try the new Soylent Green Energy Drink!

"How is it?"
"Well, it varies from person to person."

Rail gun + Japan's robot suit =

[Cl1mh4224rd]

LAQ (Live Action Quake)?

Re:Rail gun + Japan's robot suit =

[Erbo]

LAQ (Live Action Quake)?

I bet the respawns are gonna be pretty hard...

Re:Rail gun + Japan's robot suit =

[SirTalon42]

I bet the respawns are gonna be pretty hard...

That would be taken care of through uploading your brain (http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/ 23/1652222&from=rss/ [slashdot.org]).

The n00bs would still spawn camp though... and still get their ass kicked anyways.

Did you not do basic physics at school?

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.

Re:Did you not do basic physics at school?

[brian0918]

It's accelerate to 34 km/s. I forget what the actual acceleration is, but I figured out that the flyer plate goes from 0 to 60 (mph) in something like 0.002 nanoseconds.

Re:Did you not do basic physics at school?

[digitalunity]

Only if the aluminum slug accelerates linearly, which is almost surely not the case. Like any other inductor, the rails will need time to build up their magnetic field. This hysteresis combined with the potentially non-linear response from the capacitor bank they are likely using to power this thing, I'd imagine you could be off by just a hair.

Re:Did you not do basic physics at school?

[Tet]

0 to 60 (mph) in something like 0.002 nanoseconds.

Or in SI units, 2 picoseconds.

Re:Did you not do basic physics at school?

[Anonymous Coward]

34 km/s is a speed, not a velocity. Velocity is a vector and needs a direction component as well as a magnitude. What where you doing at 14?

Re:Did you not do basic physics at school?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is /. were pedantic nerds with nothing better to do hang out, not CNN.

And as one such, I can't help pointing out that "were" should be "where".

Re:Did you not do basic physics at school?

[panic_smooth]

inspection of the 'scientists' link in TFA reveals that the plate is accelerated at 1010g, taking the speed (sic) from zero to the reported 34 km/s.

Practical use for a rail gun

[netrangerrr]

Call it a "rail launcher" and fire satellite payloads into orbit. Of course you'll have to slow down the velocity or the payload will ionize in the atmosphere upon launch. Rail launchers are more practical in a vacuum, as there is no atmosphere to interfere with hypervolocity launches. Perfect for chunking mined ore from the Moon to Earth?

I'll bet this railgun on fires a few millimeters because they have problems with longer magnetic "barrels" exploding from the shockwave produced by an object moving "at t

Look at the possibilities!

[H_Fisher]

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those ... no ...

How about this: In Soviet Russia the Railgun ... ummmmm ...

No, I can't really see any easy beneficial (which is, I guess, to say "non-military") applications for this tech, unless you can tell me how this could aid in space exploration (a means of launching spacecraft, maybe?) ... or how it might help in the advancement of processing or data storage technology...

Wait! I've got it:

Railgun confirms: Tank crew is dying.

Ahh, that's more like it. Now I can sleep. :-)

Re:Look at the possibilities!

[IO ERROR]

No, I can't really see any easy beneficial (which is, I guess, to say "non-military") applications for this tech, unless you can tell me how this could aid in space exploration (a means of launching spacecraft, maybe?)

Powering spacecraft or launching cargo or many other things [oz.net]...

not a rail gun, fer cripes sake

[Dun Malg]

"Yahoo News is reporting that scientists at Sandia National Labs have created a magnetic pulse gun (rail gun)

Let's hear it for reading comprehension! Between yahoo news and he submitter, we're somehow left with the impression that this is a rail gun. It's nothing of the kind. It's an implosion machine. As described in the LiveScience.com article linked: "The Z uses a short burst of intense electricity - only a few 10 billionths of a second long - that forces an ionized gas to implode." So we can stop the handwringing over the morality of this "weapon", as to use it as such would require luring the enemy into a chamber the size of a soup can and asking him to hold still while you blast him.

I wish you'd just stop your name calling ...

[jasonhamilton]

and think of the children for once.

morality debate

[TiggertheMad]

So we can stop the handwringing over the morality of this "weapon", as to use it as such would require luring the enemy into a chamber the size of a soup can and asking him to hold still while you blast him.

HEAR HEAR! I quite agree with the parent. This should be a discussion about the morality of lureing your enemies into soup can sized implosion chambers and asking him to hold still.

(It doesn't sound cricket, if you ask me...)

Re:morality debate

[Insipid Trunculance]

It doesn't sound cricket, if you ask me...

It does sound like Football , especially the kind a Arsenal Vs. Man United game is.

Re:not a rail gun, fer cripes sake

[pegasustonans]

Yes, Campbell's will be all over this.

I'm already real.

[RailGunner]

Oh - you said RailGun. I guess my brain just saw the additional three letters.

Curious as to the value

[jd]

If you've a plate travelling at 34 kilometers per second, how are you going to keep the peas from rolling off?

On a serious note, this seems a useless device for most purposes. It MAY have implications for nuclear fusion, especially if used in any future space-based drives, as you can't exactly place the JET fusion laboratory in space - it's rather big.

It MAY also have implications for subway systems built along similar lines as the Japanese Bullet Train. What I am picturing here is a subway system that

Re:Curious as to the value

[jd]

Turns out that air drag was a much, much bigger problem than originally suspected, and the means of propelling the vehicle may not be as important.

Which is exactly why I've always thought it best to use a near-vaccuum in a subway setting, as then you have next to zero air resistance.

And how on earth could they not consider air resistance THE major problem? It increases with the square of the velocity, so doubling the velocity quadruples the air resistance. In other words, let's take two trains - one g

better link

[Evil Willow]

I believe this link [livescience.com] better describes what the Z Machine has to do with rails guns.

Wrong

[brian0918]

I work at Sandia, on this very topic. These are just flyer plate experiments, using the Z-machine's Marx Generators to isentropically accelerate small aluminum flyer plates up to high velocities, in order to better understand the behavior of metals at high pressures/densities/temperatures. This has been around for a while now. The only difference is they've recently attained these higher velocities by having the Marx Generators switch at slightly different times, rather than all at once.

Nothing to see here, move along. (and pay no attention to the man behind the curtain)

Re:Wrong

[dnaboy]

And to think I thought Marx generators only transferred energy from the bourgeoisie to the proletariat...

Re:Wrong

[pegasustonans]

No, Marx energies appear to transfer energy to the proleteriat, but, in fact, they only spread noise among elite intellectuals. Lenin energies then convert the noise into energy useable by the proleteriat and Stalin energies then destroy all other particles in the vicinity.

Re:Wrong

[Dr. GeneMachine]

Are you saying that In Soviet Russia energy converts YOU?

Anyway, nice one, you should elaborate that into a treatise on marxistic-leninistic high energy physics.

Re:Wrong

[Pogue Mahone]

... and Marx energies, as any fule kno, are transferred by elementary particles called chicions, harpions, grouchions, gummions and zeppions.

Sorry, couldn't resist. So mod me down.

Railguns not for fusion

[Richard Kirk]

Ages ago, I used to work on this sort of thing too. Railguns as weapons were experimented with in the fifties - perhaps earlier for all I know (some Tesla fan will probably tell me he had one). You cannot make a shell go faster than the propellant's natural velocity, and you only get so many joules per gram with chemicals. To get close to this limit you have to stick the bangy stuff (tm) not only at the bottom of the barrel but at various intervals along its length, as in the V4 supergun. Driving a projectile with a magnetic field (energy but no mass, hooray) seems to offer limitless muzzle velocities. However, they have a history of throwing their breech into the ground at mach 2, rather than putting a bullet in the air when anyone over the rank of major is watching (I forget who I have to thank for this matchless description, but they worked on these, not I).

Rail guns are unlkely to be useful for driving implosions. It would be very hard to focus a symmetric implosion with a railgun. However, you could use the same pulsed power to drive an implosion like a plasma gun. Get a thin gold tube, fill it with DT, and whack in a pulse. The pulse goes up the outside of the tube. The gold outside goes directly to plasma, stops conducting, and so the current can move inward. If you can get the shockwave reaction from the expanding plasma to approximately match the speed of the current penetration, then a nice, cylindrically symmetrical implosion should be yours, and the small burst of annoying penetrative radiation and the hair loss that goes with it.

There is another effect - the Z-pinch - that is a bit railgun-ish. This gets a lot of mention in the Sandia webpage. People used to have great hopes for that - it was quite the thing in the seventies, when people could still use phrases like 'everlasting power from seawater' without laughing - but it is hard to get a symmetrical pinch before instabilities run riot.

Don't take my word for it. Maybe, I'm too old, and things have moved forward since I last was in this field. Sandia is a seriously cool place, even if the people who write their webpages are a bit too keen now and then.

I think I know how that sequence ends...

[SuperKendall]

solids into liquids, liquids into gas, and even gas into plasma

Let me guess - it then turns plasmas into solids.

So the war of the future will be an evere more complex version of Liquid, Gas, Plasma, Solid - far more sophisticated than the three state method of old including Rock and Paper.

The perfect non military use

[dnaboy]

This put's the Flux Capacitor to shame. No where did I park that Delorean?

Nooklear Waste

[KrackHouse]

So this thing can fire stuff at many times the escape velocity of earths G pull. As soon as we can create a nuclear power plant that can launch its waste into space and have energy to spare we can switch all plants from fossil fuels to nuclear. Electricity might get a little more pricey but it'll solve that nasty C02 problem.

These are not the rail guns you are looking for

[Moiche]

True, the Z Machine is not a gun -- it's a giant magnetic field generator. I guess referring to a giant magnetic field generator as a "gun" works better from a journalistic prespective.

However -- rail guns are on the cusp of military viability. The University of Texas at Austin's Institute of Advanced Technology got 10 million dollars [utexas.edu] to develop viable rail guns. Just a month ago Janes reported [janes.com] that a prototype of the military rail gun had been tested, and that it was nearing viability.

UT-IAT has devised a common low-cost projectile concept for both naval surface-fire support and army non line-of-sight (NLOS) engagements using an EM gun launcher. It has a flight mass of 15 kg and contains either multiple kinetic-energy flechettes or a smaller number of sub penetrators made of tungsten. In its naval guise it has a muzzle energy of 64 MJ; a muzzle velocity of 2,500 m/s; a maximum range in excess of 500 km and an impact velocity of 1,600 m/s. From a more size-constrained land tactical platform it would be expected to have a muzzle energy of 20 MJ; a muzzle velocity of 1,400 m/s and an impact velocity of 700 m/s out to ranges in excess of 100 km.

That article really made me wish I had a Jane's subscription. Apparently, the limiting factor is the size of the capacitor -- if they can get this down than naval applications within a few years are plausible.

Incidentally, a fun game, if you're ever bored, is to imagine what would happen to the human body if one were to hold and fire a rail gun [imdb.com](even a wimpy one that shot at a mere 1,600m/s and not at "near the speed of light"), and the law of conservation of momentum actually worked. Really! Try at parties!

Fond wishes,

Moiche

Three times the velocity

[Indianwells]

This is the huge tidbit that I haven't really seen discussed: "That's 50 times faster than a rifle bullet, and three times the velocity needed to escape Earth's gravitational field." A rail gun, of sufficient capacity to catapult raw materials into orbit, would be a gigantic breakthrough for the whole planet.

Does not.

[Larthallor]

The article's title is extremely misleading.

This does not bring rail guns any closer to reality, by which I mean it does not bring military rail guns any closer to reality.

The Z-machine [sandia.gov] is a hanger-sized experimental device akin to a particle accelerator. This was an experiment designed to study extremely high pressures, such as those thought to have been important in Jovian planetary formation.

Saying that this experiment brings rail guns closer to reality is like saying that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN brings PPCs closer to reality.

Re:Does not.

[The One and Only]

Saying that this experiment brings rail guns closer to reality is like saying that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN brings PPCs closer to reality.

Thanks to Steve Jobs, PPCs are now closer to unreality. :(

An improvement

[BCW2]

On something that was being developed at White Sands Missle Range in the early 90's. A friend of mine was working on a device that accelerated a small plastic pellet (about 3mm) to hypersonic speed. They shot them at 6 inch square aluminium plates an inch thick. 3mm entrance and a 3.5 inch exit hole, I saw some targets. Very little splatter of molten metal, most seemed to be vaporized, as I was told, some did become plasma. This was part of the "star wars" space weapons. The shots were fired in a vacuum bec

"Small aluminum plates" is highly misleading

[Goldenhawk]

The "small aluminum plates" are not just small... they're TINY. Others have already noted that "rail gun" is a big misstatement; the discs they're talking about here are merely 850 MICRONS thick. Let's get this thing in perspective, shall we? I know that "rail gun" makes many geeks twitch uncontrollably, but come on now, that's just karma whoring.

Oh, and to link to a two-year-old image... with a caption of "have created" that implies it's brand new... PLEASE.

Once again, the question must be asked: where's the moderation system for STORIES?

Re:"Small aluminum plates" is highly misleading

[aXis100]

850 microns is 0.85mm. Regular sheet metal often comes in thicknesses like that - house roofing for example. In Australia a 5 cent piece is probably not far off.

Draft dodger!

[NanoGator]

Well railguns are neat and all, but I'm still not joining the Army until they invent the respawn point.

Re:Draft dodger!

[Tumbleweed]

I'm still not joining the Army until they invent the respawn point.

Well...it's not so much the _point_ that's the hard part, but more the respawning mechanism itself.

How long till we hear...

[Brad1138]

"The Constitution guarantees us the right to keep and bear rail guns!!!" Later followed by "Mommy... Johnny liquefied the cat again!"

The uses for this:

[Hartree]

The Z machine (and it's earlier configuration called PBFA 2) have been on Sandia for a long time.

As said above, it's not a rail gun. It's not really even particularly useful for rail gun research.

What it's for is to put small amounts of matter at tremendous temperatures and pressures.

There are a lot of reasons to want to do this. Some of it is just basic research. i.e. What happens to matter and the laws governing it at these extreme conditions?

Another application is fusion power research. You can compress deuturium and tritium to the point they will fuse in this machine. Though it's not made to generate power, you can learn about the details of the fusion reaction.

That said, the main reason why this machine was built was indeed for military research. But even that is in a grey area. The US hasn't conducted a nuclear test detonation in quite some time. The reason it was able to do this is that computer simulations and other methods got good enough that they were able to be used instead of actually setting off a thermonuclear or nuclear device. Indeed, many of the Department of Energy's most powerful computers were created specifically to do that sort simulation (ASCII White, IIRC, for example).

When running computer simulations, you have to have some way of calibrating the simulation and checking that it's getting the right answer.

In the case of a supercomputer run simulating a car crash, you can validate it by conducting crash tests, and seeing how closely it agrees with them. Wrecking a few of a given car model is acceptable in return for it.

But, when simulating nuclear weapons, you would often run into cases where to validate the code, you'd, at first glance, have to set one off. The conditions in a nuclear blast are so extreme, that it's difficult to put matter into that sort of state. If you're trying to maintain a test moratorium, that kinda undermines the whole idea.

That's a big reason PBFA 2 and the follow on Z machine were made. They let DOE check the computer simulations and do basic research that would otherwise require nuclear testing. One of the biggest areas of interest is what happens when the materials in a bomb age. A lot of those weapons are getting quite old.

They have many other basic research uses, but a big one is making it possible to keep the nuclear test moratorium.

So, it's grey area. On the one hand, it's used for weapon research. On the other, it helps keep the test moratorium. It also has a lot of basic research uses. So, just like a supercomputer, you have to make your own decision about whether it, on the whole is a good or bad thing.

Bad link?

[miquong]

Uh, was I the only one who got the wrong article on the "magnetic pulse gun" link? It should be here [livescience.com].

Acceleration

[eformo]

Just need to do some thinking on the screen here...

Accelrates at 34 km/s?? I thought that was a velocity. If .5 (at^2) = .005 m

And at = 34000 m/s

...then that makes the time about 3e-7 s. That would be something like 11.8 billion g's.

Not bad. Even for such a small projectile, that's an impressive impulse.

-ex

Equal and Opposite

[PingPongBoy]

For every force there is an equal and opposite reaction. Making something go from 0 to 34 in the distance of a gun must produce one major recoil.

Now I foresee a human-carried model! Shoulder rocket launchers let the rocket go on its own - no recoil but don't stand behind the tube. Well, let's replace the burning rocket fuel with a rail gun. The rail shoots out the back in slow motion and the payload goes out the front much much faster. Right? But we're talking magnetic fields at work so....the rail can be curved!! What does that mean?

North and south. Poles that is - double barrel shotgun. As long as both barrels shoot at once one side balances the other as long as the force should cancel at the back end.

Just in case some entrepreneur wants to build one now, remember Equal and Opposite. The rail has to be flexed. In other words, think sawed off shotgun, and even think crossbow. The rail has to be horizontal for the most part until the ends where the ammo is turned by the electromagnetism to shoot forwards. Almost all the force should occur in the horizontal portion while the forward pointing portion doesn't give any more force than a normal gun.

Kind of scary, espcially if the high speed projectile doesn't want to turn the corner at the end, not to mention the long lever arm will make the rails flap. Automatic fire will have to be timed.

The only problem left? electric power for something like this must be pretty big. Kinetic energy = 1/2 mv^2 so even a small m will require a lot of car batteries. I don't see 007 running around with this weapon protecting ski bunnies while his batteries freeze.

Faster Than the Earth...

[trongey]

Heck, I can throw a rock faster than the Earth travels through space - as long as I'm at the equator, the local time is near midnight, and I'm throwing the same direction as the Earth is traveling. And don't go trying to get relativistic on me.

Re:Just because we can do a thing...

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Well, you could maybe launch non-mil payloads into space, or perhaps use the technology in terrestrial transportation... Or make a really bitchin' chicken gun.

Re:Just because we can do a thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA. It's only 6 paragraphs. That's not too taxing, is it? Or do you prefer to post a dumb question and end up looking like an idiot in the hope that maybe you'll get an "insightful" mod and maybe even a first post?

Second paragraph:

Housed at Sandia National Laboratories, the Z machine attracted a lot of attention eight years ago when its energy output more than quadrupled - raising hopes that the reactions in the Z could provide a new source of clean, abundant power. To help further progress towards t

Re:Just because we can do a thing...

[PhrostyMcByte]

if it's cheap and can bring down walls with ease, i think demolition crews would use it quite a bit. plus, liquifying stuff is cool.

Re:Just because we can do a thing...

[nrlightfoot]

This is a non-military use. They are using it to simulate conditions deep within giant planets. Also this isn't really a rail gun. For one it doesn't use rails, and the whole aim of this experiment is unrelated to rail guns.

Re:Just because we can do a thing...

[deglr6328]

This is so stupid. I fully concur with with nrlightfoot. There is NO WAY any scientist working on something like this would ever, EVER say this even has anything remotely to do with railguns. Firstly, if you used it as a weapon, the projectile would vaporize as soon as it encountered atmosphere!! Second, it is not at all capable of accelerating large (Kg scale) projectiles relevant to weaponry applications. This technique is only used for equation of state measurements and shockwave/fluid dynamics interacti

Re:Just because we can do a thing...

[deglr6328]

Oh! oops. They really did [sandia.gov] use the magnetic field of Z to directly accelerate the plate! Apparently the way they circumvented the problem of vaporizing the plate with a huge current pulse is by staggering Z's laser triggered spark gaps to elongate the current pulse from tens to hundreds of ns. Very neat trick.

Re:Just because we can do a thing...

[OmegaBlac]

are there any non-military uses for this?

Sure is. Check the Wikipedia link posted in the summary or right here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_gun [wikipedia.org]

Space travel

[kf6auf]

I refer you to the article:
One purpose of these very rapid flights is to help understand the extreme conditions found within the interiors of giant planets in our solar system. By creating states of matter extremely difficult to achieve on Earth, the flyer plates provide hard data to astrophysicists speculating on the structure and even the formation of planets like Jupiter and Saturn.

What's more, this is 3 times Earth escape velocity and so if one had a huge heat sheild it would be a good way to help

Re:Space travel

[Rei]

So many people here are saying things like this because of the stupid, erroneous "rail gun" description Slashdot gave it.

This is not some projectile launcher. It's a massively expensive device that creates immense magnetic fields in a tiny region for fusion and shock wave experiments, of which one thing that you can do is propel miniscule items over short distances. It doesn't "scale" to rail gun applications, and it's not designed to - it's already a monstrously large device. Besides - when it operates

Tighten your tinfoil hat

[StarCharter]

Just because it's called a "railgun" doesn't mean it has military uses. The power supplies and support equipment necessary to power the Z-machine take up several rooms. It's far easier to kill with existing weapons design that it is to reduce the requirements for imparting vast amounts of energy to low mass objects. The chance to study high energy transformations in other-than-nuclear reactions open several potential basic science appliations. The article clearly cites some potential applications that aren'

Re:Just because we can do a thing...

[Kimos]

Mod parent up. Very good point...

You can never un-invent weapons. There are somethings that should not be created. Look at atomic bombs. They were created, used, and now for the rest of our existence we have to deal with the repercussions. Knowing that a war could easily level most of the civilized world, or that a single weapon in the hands of the wrong people could kill millions. This is discussed in great detail in The Tragedy of the Commons [sciencemag.org] (Hardin, 1968). If you haven't read it, then do.

Re:Just because we can do a thing...

[polysylabic psudonym]

From the linked Wikipedia article: Peaceful uses of railguns There is interest in using railguns as mass drivers for space exploration and mining. They would be useful for launching bulk ores into space, particularly from low-gravity bodies such as moons and asteroids; electrically powered from solar panels, they would not require any consumables such as rocket fuels. Rail guns have been proposed for use in delivering projectiles to space, especially from bodies without atmospheres (such as the Moon). Its main competitors are coil guns and ram accelerators. Also, railguns may be used to initiate fusion reactions, by firing pellets of fusible material at each other. The impact would create immense temperatures and pressures, allowing nuclear fusion to occur. However current railguns are not yet sufficient to achieve the energies required.

Re:Railguns, Exactly What We Need

[CosmeticLobotamy]

If you can't get out of the way of the guy carrying a gun bigger than my house, I think it's probably best if your slow-ass organs die with you.

Re:How about a love gun

[dex22]

I don't think you understand the intent of the international treaties.

They don't want weapons that leave injured bodies and people screaming. That's "cruel"

Which is why you have to shatter the bodies, and kill the people outright. No suffering that way...

Hope this clears that up for you...

Re:How about a love gun

[CosmeticLobotamy]

I am a hippie. Voted against Bush and everything. But it ain't the science that does the killing.

Re:How about a love gun

[Adrilla]

Call me crazy, but I'd rather make a friend than kill an enemy.

Unfortunately, not every enemy feels the same way.

Re:How about a love gun

[Zeebs]

Actually it's basicly the same thing if you are going to use some kind of "love gun" mind control ray deal. It just plays differently in the PR world.

War is just the process of forceably making your enemy love you, current methods however involve the the death of the target individual.

I hate to reply to myself right now but...

[Zeebs]

Also it may be relevant that I could really go for a bag of potato chips right about now.

Re:How about a love gun

[Repton]

This is nothing to do with rail guns. It's just a silly inflamatory headline (or maybe railguns are cool 'cause they're in Quake).

This is all about generating massive shockwaves to examine the properties of matter in extreme conditions (without having to heat it up to enormous temperatures).

Re:How about a love gun

[poopdeville]

This is all about generating massive shockwaves to examine the properties of matter in extreme conditions (without having to heat it up to enormous temperatures).

...using strong magnetic fields to accelerate aluminum plates to incredibly high speeds in a contraption that has a strong resemblance to a rail gun.

Re:How about a love gun

[georgewilliamherbert]

This is all about generating massive shockwaves to examine the properties of matter in extreme conditions (without having to heat it up to enormous temperatures).

...using strong magnetic fields to accelerate aluminum plates to incredibly high speeds in a contraption that has a strong resemblance to a rail gun.

The Z machine isn't a railgun at all.

It doesn't accellerate the flyer plate linearly. A Z-pinch machine, which the Z-machine at Sandia is an example of, implodes a thin hollow cylinder of

Re:How about a love gun

[image77]

Housed at Sandia National Laboratories, the Z machine attracted a lot of attention eight years ago when its energy output more than quadrupled - raising hopes that the reactions in the Z could provide a new source of clean, abundant power. To help further progress towards this end, the machine is getting a $61.7 million upgrade, officials announced recently.

The fact that several mods decided that you post was insightful makes me very uncomfortable with the quality of mods lately. If you read ANY of the TF

Wake me...

[SuperKendall]

... when a Love Gun can fire love at 34 kilometeres/second!

I mean, love is great and all but that's just cool.

I'm sure it has some practical non-war mongering use like ridding the world of used car salesmen.

Re:How about a love gun

[Dun Malg]

I'm not a hippie, far from it. Grizzled veteran of several wars is more like it. But I hate guns. I hate war. I hate all these things that are designed to kill and maim (contrary to international treaties, in fact). How about concentrating on global cooperation instead of global conquest? There are only two ways of eliminating an enemy: Kill him or make him a friend. Call me crazy, but I'd rather make a friend than kill an enemy. Designing these weapons can only lead to more killing. I find that terrib

Re:How about a love gun

[pegasustonans]

Call me crazy, but I'd rather make a friend than kill an enemy.

Well, I'd rather make an enemy than kill a friend.

But what if your friend is also your enemy. Now, there is a true dilemma. Or in that case, maybe you just say, "fuck it," and kill him anyway. Or maybe you just both kill each other and that way it's even.

Re:How about a love gun

[poopdeville]

-1 Missed Simpsons Reference

Re:To what ?

[Goeland86]

good question. Earth travels at 300 km/s relative to the inside edge of the galaxy. That's a bunch of velocities combined. Not to mention that earth's speed varies depending on where it is in it's elliptical orbit.

Not quite that simple

[Ranma21]

You may have also seen aluminium egg rings fired off older rail-gun devices. The actual material doesn't have to be magnetic, it moves forward because of its own magnetic field induced by current flowing through it. Aluminim is a GREAT conductor of electricity and so makes a similarly great magnetic field. This field, when interacting with the rail gun's, makes it move, NOT the fact that the material itself has (unenergized) magnetic properties. Pretty simple really.

Re:Can someone please explain

[Duhavid]

I used to work ( at the corp office ) for a company that did MRI. Story I heard was that a doctor allowed a patient into the chamber with an aluminum pin in the arm. Wasnt steel, so it should be no problem, right? Well, that patient ended up with the flesh around the pin cooked. Aluminum conducts current very well. Move a conductor thru a magnetic field will induce a current ( and a magnetic field ) ( and the resistance will generate heat ).

( Another story, the B-36 I think it was was spec'ed with alu

Re:Just what we need.

[Jerry Coffin]

Another incredibly powerful weapon for world's largest loose cannon to be playing with. Go America!

While it's theoretically possible that a weapon might be derived from this research someday, but for a moment think about what this is really talking about.

It's a machine that can accelerate a tiny disc of metal very quickly, but only for a short distance, and AFAICT, it's all happening down inside of a big machine so about the biggest thing you could kill with it might be a cockroach.

Right now, as f

Re:So uncivilized!

[mister_tim]

About the same time that people develop who can use them to block laser fire without thinking and who have super-human reflexes.

In the meantime, an army with guns would certainly defeat people with swords, even if they were laser-swords, because it is just not humanly possible to deflect so many bullets (or blaster fire).

Which now makes me wonder - which came first: the jedi or the lightsabre? Did the jedi develop and invent lightsabres as a weapon that was matched to their abilities, or did people invent

Re:Faster then the Earth?

[Bill Currie]

what's your problem? Earth's orbital velocity is ~29.8km/s (thus Earth travels though space at 29.8km/s relative to the sun). those plates are travelling at 34km/s. is 34km/s not faster than 29.8km/s?

That said, that's significantly slower than Earth's `orbital' velocity around the center of the galaxy: 300km/s (yes, 0.1% c) assuming the sun is 100000 ly from the center of the galaxy and it takes 100 millioin years to go complete an orbit.