Antimatter Weapons

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ljuin, you forget X-rays and positron emission. But then again the positrons just anihilate to form more gamms radiation so ...

Gravitons don't come from string theory. Gravity is a field and thus needs a particle to transmit the force. Just like electric forces are transmitted by photons. Even if string theory is wrong, gravitons are still needed. They have recently proven that gravity travels at the speed of light and are currectly working on detecting gravity waves. The piece of equipment used to do this is very interesting in itself. Because gravity waves are so minute they use an interferometric system using 2 lasers 4km apart and aligned such that the deviation between the 2 lasers is on the order of 1 angstrom. That is, the size of an atom. It is so sensitive they can id people as they enter the building by looking at the disturbance caused by their foot steps.
 
This is the stuff I live for :D

I'm a believer in the graviton particle. There has to be a graviton, because gravity is a field akin to electric and magnetic fields. I spent junior year in high school slaving over magnetic levitation and trying to find a relationship between the three fields which would lead to the induction of gravitational fields. With electric and magnetic fields, when you vary one you get the other. My "quest" was to find out how to vary them both to get a gravitational field. Field manipulation is cool (when I made my first electromagnet, no paper clip was safe)! From what I discovered and saw from my cute little maglev experiments, I think that gravitons are closely related to monopoles.

That's just me, though. There's loads of expert science to shut me up. So....

Oh yeah! String theory's great! Stephen Hawking is the man! Both he and Einstein got me obsessed with time travel, as well.
 
I believe in gravitons simply because gravity is one of the fundamental forces (albeit, the weakest), and the other forces have their own particles/waves (at the scale which they exist, wavicles :)).

The problem is just getting over the math. But modern physics is just so damn cool...
 
Originally posted by steampunk
ljuin, you forget X-rays and positron emission. But then again the positrons just anihilate to form more gamms radiation so ...
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X-rays are essentially the same thing as gamma rays--they are both electromagnetic energy, differing only in their wavelength. It's like comparing red and blue light.
 
Originally posted by Ijuin
X-rays are essentially the same thing as gamma rays--they are both electromagnetic energy, differing only in their wavelength. It's like comparing red and blue light.
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Their origin differs. gamma rays result from nuclei taking lower energy levels (they have energy states just like electrons) while X-rays result from electrons dropping to lower energy levels in thier atoms, usually as a result of an electron in a lower energy shell being knocked out by a gamma ray. They are also very low energy comparatively.

Because the physics and properties differ its good (and useful) to make the distinction. Otherwise we'd just call EM, gamma, x-rays, microwaves, UV the same thing: light.

How does one "believe" in a graviton? It is a field and thus must have a particle to transmit the force. Unless our model is totally wrong. This is science folks, scientists don't "believe".
 
We don't know anything about physics. We just have a bunch of theories and laws that really can be disproven at any time. While it's unlikely, it's possible. (Quantum mechanics has proved the unlikely can happen...)
 
Uh, no. We know a lot about physics because we can set up experiments and the results will be the same everytime the experiment is performed. Nothing will come along one day and "disprove" the experiment. Nature says the experiment will behave in some way and that's how it will stay.

Theories have changed over time because they are wrong or inaccurate _to begin with_. Even these are quite valid under regular conditions. Quantum mechanics didn't show unlikely things can occur. Humans simply find it hard to grasp how nature behaves at atomic levels. But as my lecturer always said, "if it doesn't bother you, you haven't really understood it."
 
Originally posted by steampunk
How does one "believe" in a graviton? It is a field and thus must have a particle to transmit the force. Unless our model is totally wrong. This is science folks, scientists don't "believe".
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Allow me to rephrase: "I am a proponent to the existence of gravitons."

Don't forget that we've yet to detect gravitons. Unless we have and I'm ignorant and haven't been informed....
 
Theories are just that - ideas that we've concocted as hypotheses that we run experiments to verify.

Some hypotheses are false, like the Aether theory. But theories get changed all the time as more information comes to light. Before the Michelson-Morley experiment, we thought Aether was the "substance" that transmitted EM waves. And for all intents and purposes, it fit with our experiments. Take the bell jar and bell experiment. We have the bell ringing and slowly evacuate the air inside the bell jar. The ringing becomes silent. Thus, a theory is that waves need "stuff" to travel in. Which proved false in the end. You can repeat it over and over again - constantly evacuating the air out of a bell jar with a ringing bell will silence the bell. We see the bell arm moving because we didn't evacuate the all-pervasive aether.

So yes, the theory was inaccurate to begin with. But we know that *NOW*. Back then, we didn't. Same thing today. String Theory is our best attempt to attempting to unite the worlds of quantum mechanics and general relativity together (which, when you think about it, are two totally opposing theories - one for "small stuff", one for "large stuff").

Heck, back in the 1900s, we thought we knew everything about physics - then came quantum mechanics and relativity.

Experiments are used to give credence to theories or hypotheses, or laws. In time, someone will think of a way to break current theories, and usually because of some part of the experiment we never considered (Michelson-Morley - the properties of the aether).

Heck, we don't have a theory that predicts the gravitational attraction between more than two masses (large scale kinematics here). Although, we've had to adjust several theories to account for new discoveries, which revise our old formulas once again.

Theories reflect our current understanding of the world. They are not set in stone, and can at any time be revoked because someone comes up with a rather convincing counterpoint (it takes only one counterexample to disprove a theory). Just because it works now, doesn't mean it will work in the future when we integrate in new knowledge and understanding. And yes, we'll probably find a few theories that make sense now totally wrong - sure the theories will be incorrect then as they are now, but they serve as the basis of cour current understanding. Theories evolve, and are never set in stone. We may find the theories apply to a limited subset of stuff, once we managed to find stuff that the theory can't account for. Or we may find the theory blown away. Seems hard to believe, but it has happened.
 
You seem to suggest that discovering new things will break what we already know. That it not so. What we have been able to verify experimentally will always be correct regardless of what new theories emerge. Say if someone came up with a theory about something where energy was not conserved. We can totally disregard it without ever learning the details because we know it is incorrect. Energy must be conserved.

So my point is new theories may replace old theories but that doesn't mean we don't know anything about physics. We know a great deal about physics. You are suggesting that if some new theory comes along that replaces an existing one, then suddenly we need to reconsider everything. But that's not true.
 
I didn't say we need to reconsider everything, but that theories change. Right now we can think of experiments that fit our theories. But theories can at times be completely wrong, but work because of what we know and experience. Does it make the theory less valid? Yes it does, but what we do is we limit it's validity to the cases where it does work. There's a lot about physics we don't know, but what we do know is often applied to see if it still holds, and to grasp some understanding on what is happening.

Let's take your example of conservation of energy. Well, it's not quite true. And it's due to Heisnberg's Uncertainty Principle. Most people know of it's relation between momentum and position (or more commonly stated, position and velocity). But there's also an adjunct to it that relates energy and time. Which means, for short enough time periods, there can be opportunities where the energy in a system is *not* constant. Does it make conservation of energy invalid? Not really, until you start dealing on the scale of where quantum mechanics rules must be applied. For macroscopic items, conservation of momentum/conservation of energy works, because we assume the errors incurred due to the uncertainty principle is neglegible (like much of a lot of other simplifications).

And yes, we make practical use of this... and we have observed it before, too. Atoms can be at a local minimum energy state, simply by being unable to overcome an energy barrier that would put it in an even lower energy state. But we have experimentally confirmed that happens, and not through the usual sources of energy being applied. To outside observers, it appears that the atom/molecule simply mysteriously transformed. But the real reason was that the atom/molecule "borrowed" energy to overcome the barrier. Like all loans, it must be repaid, and the more that was borrowed, the quicker it must be repaid. If you're patient, you'll see it happen with diamonds - they'll turn themselves into carbon dust eventually (except the barrier is so tall that the loan is only valid for a really short amount of time).

Or more down to earth, flash memories rely on quantum tunnelling for their operation - it's the only way the electrons can move through that insulative barrier even though it would take way more energy to do so normally.

I like to use quantum mechanics because it literally has turned the tables on what we know and understand in physics. It won't change the way you and I go about our days, however, but the theories that once held have a limitation applied to them. (And who would've thought conservation of energy could be violated so callously?)
 
Hi everyone, im new here and have realy only just skimme over the posts, though a few did catch my eye:
Posted by: Lance Casey
hey guys do u any of u think that there is a such thing called Gravition particles??? if u do do u think we could use those to open up 2 points in space and use the particles to create a safe passage????????
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The sheer concept of graviton particles is nothing but theory, mainly because astro physicists wonder what it is that moves dark matter and causes it, so on and so forth, also what remaining particles are left after the collapse of a super massive black hole or red giant star.

Any way, theoreticaly, the use of graviton particles could be used to create things called "subspace time inversions" ( these things occur at the event horizon of blackholes ), now apparently if you could manipulate graviton particles in such a manner as to open up say, for lack of a better word, a "wormhole", you would be able to use it as a means of trasport, however the main problems are:
1. You have no way of knowing where the "wormhole" is going.
2. You would have to be able to compensate for such things as relativity and gravity fields ( as im sure you physics buffs know, intense gravity from an entitiy such as a black hole can cause such things as time distortion)

Take for example the movie, Event Horizon, they use a graviton particle emition generator, to "fold" space time, in which they can travel to what ever destination they see fit and not have to suffer the effects of relativity/time, and they have somehow mannaged to track the destination of theyre vessle before it goes anyware.

I have to go now, schools over, I shall finnish of the rest of this post later on :D.
 
Ok, now in regards to the anti-matter weapons, I cant remember who said it, but someone made a refference to it, any who, 100mg of anti matter is the (inaccurate) equivalent of a 10megaton neuclear warhead.

On a slight change of topic one sort of weapons that I think are cool, are neutron bombs, so interesting. :)
 
No words can comprehend my dislike towards you for reviving a thread that has BEEN DORMANT FOR SIX MONTHS.
 
Why?

But this is such an interesting thread, and if you didnt want it to be reopened then perhaps you should have closed it, oh wait your not a mod? So quit ya bitching! :D

In the nicest possible way.
 
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