WC Science 101

Originally posted by Unforgiven
Hot fusion uses Hydrogen isotopes to form Helium-3. In this process, both matter and anti-matter helium particles are formed. When these subsequently colide, they annihilate into pure energy, giving you two energy boosts, one from the fusion, the other from annihilation.
This is the exact process that powers the sun (in a nutshell).
I doubt hot fusion would be feasible in a starship though. The energy needs to get the thing started would be enormous since it can only work at some 15,000,000 Kelvin, meaning a ship would always need outside help starting it's reactor. [/B]
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Uhmm... NO. Fusion does not produce matter and antimatter. It produces a Helium nucleus. The only energy coming out of fusion is the energy of combining two atoms to get a larger one. No antimatter.
 
Fusion takes molecules and combines them, producing the element helium. If a large amount of antimatter were ever to come into contact w/ a large amount of matter, we would all be dead.
 
Not necessarily, just there would be a very big hole wherever the contact was made. If that was the process of the sun, on the other hand, we would all be dead.
 
Apparently, fusion is feasible in the 26XX's. Mind you, that's, what? Six hundred years from now?

M/Am reactions are what power the starships. Miniaturized M/Am reactors power some of the highly specialized fighters (First generation Excals and Dragon/Lances), but for the most part, fighters use fusion reactors.

No, the sun is not powered by antimatter reactions...there's been a small amount of antimatter created here on Terra, and the only big source is the giant plume of the stuff coming out of the core of the galaxy...and it's a good thing, because it's pretty potent stuff...a gram of antimatter would take out a large city, if my math's right...
 
If a gram of anti-matter will take out a city then what the hell did we need the T-Bomb for?

[Edited by Penguin on 06-05-2001 at 21:55]
 
Because the moment the antimatter struck anything, ANYTHING... dust, space, molecules, nanoangstroms of stuff, it would detonate.

Kinda hard to aim when it explodes in your face. :)
 
I also theorize that the capsite power plants may use a duo-reaction process. Combining the effects of norm fusin of hydrogen atoms with the matter/antimatter collisions between some of the left over hydrogen and the antiprotons that may get caught in the scoop.




FYI: For all of you who argue that all the quasars in the WC can't exist since they are in our galaxy: It's been known since 1992 that the galaxy may be litter with tiny quasars called microquasars. These quasars are much smaller than their galactic cousins, only having diameters similar to that of Luna's orbit. They are also dim, dimmer than Pluto appears to be from Terra. They are the accretion disks for black holes and neutron stars. In other words, Origin was right. :)
 
Originally posted by Bandit LOAF
The Paradigms are Confed's newest class of destroyer.
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Not the Murphy's? Yeah, I know just because we haven't seen it doesn't mean it hasn't existed before, but my impression was that's it was new in SO.
 
No, they are two different classes of ships, the Paradigm and Murphy. Maybe LOAF meant newest wartime destroyer.
 
A quasar is an object the size of a star that shines brigher than its parant galaxy. Quasars emit most of their energies as optical light. Microquasars emit at x-ray and radio spectrums. Both types are considered visual evidence of black holes and , in the case of some microquasars, neutron stars.
 
Originally posted by Wedge009
Not the Murphy's? Yeah, I know just because we haven't seen it doesn't mean it hasn't existed before, but my impression was that's it was new in SO.
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The Paradigms were the newest Confed destroyers when we encountered them. That was in 2669, though, so it doesn't prevent the Murphys from being newer :).
 
Originally posted by Nep Parth
and the only big source is the giant plume of the stuff coming out of the core of the galaxy...and it's a good thing, because it's pretty potent stuff...a gram of antimatter would take out a large city, if my math's right...
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There's antimatter at the centre of the galaxy? I would've thought it would have destroyed itself before it would have the chance to exist!

(Then again some say the Big Bang was caused by the combination of matter and antimatter, with matter being slightly larger in mass, giving us the universe.)
 
Originally posted by Fenris
Not necessarily, just there would be a very big hole wherever the contact was made. If that was the process of the sun, on the other hand, we would all be dead.
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Actually, you are exactly wrong. There is some antimatter in the sun's fusion cycle, and if there weren't we would all be dead.

For great fusion info go to http://fusedweb.pppl.gov/FAQ/fusion-faq.html. I just pulled a bit off the FAQ about fusion in the sun.

*** I. What sort of fusion reactor is the sun?

Fortunately for life on earth, the sun is an aneutronic fusion
reactor, and we are not continually bombarded by fusion neutrons.
Unfortunately, the aneutronic process which the sun uses is
extremely slow and harder to do on earth than any of the reactions
mentioned above. The sun long ago burned up the "easy" deuterium
fuel, and is now mostly ordinary hydrogen. Now hydrogen has a
mass of one (it's a single proton) and helium has a mass of four
(two protons and two neutrons), so it's not hard to imagine sticking
four hydrogens together to make a helium. There are two major
problems here: the first is getting four hydrogens to collide
simultaneously, and the second is converting two of the four protons
into neutrons.

The sun evades the first problem, and solves the second, by using a
catalyzed cycle: rather than fuse 4 protons directly, it fuses a
proton to an atom of carbon-12, creating nitrogen-13; the N-13 emits
a neutrino and a positron (an antielectron, that is an electon with
positive instead of negative charge) and becomes carbon-13.
(Effectively, the Carbon-12 converted the proton to a
neutron + positron + neutrino, kept the neutron, and became C-13).
The C-13 eventually fuses with another proton to become N-14.
N-14 then fuses with a proton to become oxygen-15. Oxygen-15 decays
to N-15 (emitting another positron), and N-15 plus another proton
yields carbon-12 plus a helium-4 nucleus, (aka an alpha particle).
Thus 4 protons are tacked one by one onto heavier elements, two of
the protons are converted to neutrons, and the result is production
of helium and two positrons. (The positrons will undergo
matter-antimatter annihilation with two electrons, and the result
of the whole process is formation of a helium, two neutrinos, and
a bunch of gamma rays. The gamma rays get absorbed in the solar
interior and heat it up, and eventually the energy from all this
fusion gets emitted as sunlight from the surface of the sun.)

The whole process is known as the carbon cycle; it's catalyzed
because you start with carbon and still have carbon at the end.
The presence of the carbon merely makes it possible to convert
protons to helium. The process is slow because it's difficult
to fuse protons with carbon and nitrogen, and the positron-emitting
nuclear decays are also slow processes, because they're moderated
by the weak nuclear force.


[Edited by Wolf Dog on 06-06-2001 at 08:01]
 
Originally posted by Supdon3
Originally posted by Meson
In other words, Origin was right. :)
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Wouldnt that be Chris Roberts (or the screenwriter) was right?:)
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Which screenwriter? DePalma / Borst? Or that muther...jerk...who wrote the movie, Kevin Droney?

[Edited by LeHah on 06-06-2001 at 10:16]
 
Originally posted by Wolf Dog

*** I. What sort of fusion reactor is the sun?

Fortunately for life on earth, the sun is an aneutronic fusion
reactor, and we are not continually bombarded by fusion neutrons.
Unfortunately, the aneutronic process which the sun uses is
extremely slow and harder to do on earth than any of the reactions
mentioned above. The sun long ago burned up the "easy" deuterium
fuel, and is now mostly ordinary hydrogen. Now hydrogen has a
mass of one (it's a single proton) and helium has a mass of four
(two protons and two neutrons), so it's not hard to imagine sticking
four hydrogens together to make a helium. There are two major
problems here: the first is getting four hydrogens to collide
simultaneously, and the second is converting two of the four protons
into neutrons.
(...)
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Yeah... that's how the first elements were created, right after the Big Bang...

Our sun is actually a big "element factory"... it creates heavier elements from the basic Hydrogen and Helium atoms...
I did all this in my Astrobiology course this year.. :)
 
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