Anyone know more about this?
pla
At one point, it says:
"Instead it would rely on the gamma rays produced when the
high-energy nuclei of some radioactive elements decay.
Four years ago, scientists at the University of Texas
in Dallas showed that it was possible to trigger this
effect artificially. The possibility that this decay
process, which usually takes place very slowly, could
be accelerated and used in a weapon".
Now, to the best of my knowlege, nuclear decay occurs
as a quantum process, which we can neither predict nor
influence (short of whacking a nucleus really hard,
such as with a neutron, which wouldn't really count
as a "new" technique).
So, does anyone know more about this work done at UT?
- pla
Owen Hartnett
Sounds more like an old idea (Jimmy Carter's Neutron Bomb) than a new
idea. Even in the 70's, I read books about how nuclear weapons could
be "enhanced" to produce definite effects. Since every atomic bomb
emits a good quantity of gamma, alpha and beta rays, there probably
must be a way to maximize the production of gamma at the cost of other
factors, like explosive strength. In fact, there were other studies
about creating bombs where the fallout would have an extraordinarily
long half-life, which leads to the "end-of-the-world" scenario.
-Owen
Edwin Ellinwood
"pla" <p...@tmok.com> wrote in message news:bhggdk$10jn$1...@stone.tmok.com...
Having NOT read this article, but being familiar with Wilhelm Reich's
experiments with what he called an orgone accumulator box, radium (and
assumably other gamma ray sources) could be MADE to decay very quickly. The
US government persecuted this man because of his dangerous findings and
actually ordered his books destroyed by their publisher. Although the
government labeled him a quack and claimed to be "protecting" the people
from his medical claims, the real reason was he stumbled upon something that
could possibly be used to make a really big bomb that would make the H-bomb
look like the mere lighting of a match in comparisan.
What happened in his experiments was that he placed radium in a lead
container in his orgone accumulator for varying lengths times. As the itme
increased, the box became dangerously radioactive and he was forced to
remove the container of radium from it, taking it to the lab (the box was
not in the lab but in an out building a safe [he had thought] distance from
the lab. He took the radium from the container and performed measurements on
it. Soon it lost its radioactivity, which was hitherto thought impossible.
After not learning why, he tried to return the radium to its container;
however, the radium and container reacted by giving off increasing amounts
of radiation the closer they were brought together. It was determined it was
not possible to bring them together because the resultant radiation
increased exponentially and was not measurable by his instruments. The
implication was an explosion could be created under controlled conditions
the result of which could not be known. He disposed of the two at a far
distance from each other.
The government later imprisoned him under trumped up charges and made sure
he died in jail in 1957. (The soviet imprisonment of non-conforming
scientists was modeled after a long-standing US practice [Fuckingasshole
Delano Roosevelt had people locked-up for years without trial], as were the
eugenics laws of Hitler modeled after the laws of 37 US states.)
See:
http://www.orgonelab.org/wrhistory.htm
b...@entropy.tmok.com
On Thu, 14 Aug 2003, Edwin Ellinwood wrote:
> experiments with what he called an orgone accumulator box, radium (and
> assumably other gamma ray sources) could be MADE to decay very quickly. The
> US government persecuted this man because of his dangerous findings and
> actually ordered his books destroyed by their publisher. Although the
> government labeled him a quack and claimed to be "protecting" the people
> from his medical claims, the real reason was he stumbled upon something that
> could possibly be used to make a really big bomb that would make the H-bomb
> look like the mere lighting of a match in comparisan.
Yeahbut according to that page, orgone energy looks suspiciously like the
phlogiston theory of fire or the aether theory of EM propagation, which
was eliminated by Maxwell's incredibly elegant equations.
"Orgone energy in the atmosphere was a physical phenomenon similar to the
older ideas of "vital force" and "aether" combined. It behaves lawfully,
fills all space, expands and contracts in pulsatory rhythm, and interacts
differently with different material substances: every kind of matter
appears to attract the orgone, but at different rates of speed. Water
strongly attracts the orgone, or life-energy, giving rise to the
phenomenon of living water (described classically as "activated" or
"structured" water) "
Water has no memory, in spite of what quacks will tell you.
That page is full of half truths supporting nonsense.
Pseudoscience, in spades.
--
Dan
Edwin Ellinwood
news:Pine.BSF.4.10.103081...@entropy.tmok.com...
I understand it reads that way to some, but he performed very accurate
scientific experiments and even confered with Albert Einstein on the
results. Reich was able to document negative effects on plant and animal
life near nuclear power facilities during the fifties in the American West,
despite no detectable radiation was present which bear out his assertion
that such radioactive decay reacts with something as yet unknown, which he
had labeled orgone energy - a kind of pervasive life force, if you will.
Despite his detractors, he was able to cause radium to lose its
radioactivity in a few weeks, but the lead container the radium was in could
never be brought near the seemingly totally decayed radium. His equations
showed the resultant radiation would be unmeasurable - off the scale.
It's not fair to call him a quack; he was on to something, and those
controlling the black ops military industrial complex killed him because he
would not shut-up about it.
b...@entropy.tmok.com
On 14 Aug 2003, pla wrote:
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1018361,00.html
Try here:
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994049
"The possibility that this process could be explosive was discovered when
Carl Collins and colleagues at the University of Texas at Dallas
demonstrated that they could artificially trigger the decay of the hafnium
isomer by bombarding it with low-energy X-rays (New Scientist print
edition, 3 July 1999). The experiment released 60 times as much energy as
was put in, and in theory a much greater energy release could be achieved.
Energy pump
Before hafnium can be used as an explosive, energy has to be "pumped" into
its nuclei. Just as the electrons in atoms can be excited when the atom
absorbs a photon, hafnium nuclei can become excited by absorbing
high-energy photons. The nuclei later return to their lowest energy states
by emitting a gamma-ray photon.
Nuclear isomers were originally seen as a means of storing energy, but the
possibility that the decay could be accelerated fired the interest of the
Department of Defense, which is also investigating several other candidate
materials such as thorium and niobium.
...
The hafnium explosive could be extremely powerful. One gram of fully
charged hafnium isomer could store more energy than 50 kilograms of TNT. "
Yeahbut it's not as efficient as nuclear fission. Nuclear fission would
yeild 21.5 kilotons from one gram.
Pure E=mc^2:
1Kg * (3*10^8)^2 = 9*10^16 joules.
Therefore 1g = 9*10^13 joules
1 watt = 1 joule/sec.
--
Dan
Eric Scantlebury
"Edwin Ellinwood" <e.ellinwoo...@verizon.S.P.A.M.net> wrote in
message news:BDU_a.18324$UB4....@nwrdny01.gnilink.net...
> Despite his detractors, he was able to cause radium to lose its
> radioactivity in a few weeks
I'm pretty sure if it were possible (realistically, as opposed to
theoretically - keeping in mind I'm not a physicist) - our nuclear waste
"problem" and storage in the Yucca mountains would not be necessitated.
Therefore, I'd be willing to bet it is not that possible since the Yucca
thing has caused quite a political stir. Politicians hate political stir.
Just an outside observation. (not related to any "black" ops type of stuff.
Which I will, of course, leave to Pla - and, now, it seams, Edwin) :-)
PsyberZombie
» To build a fission device with lower yields , Nuclear Engineers use
" Neutron Reflectors " ——— which cause a 'Nuclear Excursion'
[ a.k.a. 'Chain Reaction' ] at a much
lower total total weight than the predicted 'Critical Mass'
The best·known and most readily available Reflector is a metal
called BERYLLIUM
For more details, contact your Fave Search Engine ....
.
Edwin Ellinwood
"Eric Scantlebury" <esca...@rida.net> wrote in message
news:d3V_a.9210$u%2.5...@nwrdny02.gnilink.net...
process Reich discovered essentially created two items, the radium and its
container, that could NEVER be brought into proximity with one another. The
process was extremely dangerous and could never be used to de-radioactivate
nuclear waste because it would create potentially thousands of these objects
which could serve as weapons. It would seem some sort of exchange of
particles took place, and once done, could not be undone without
catastrophic results.
Edwin Ellinwood
<b...@entropy.tmok.com> wrote in message
news:Pine.BSF.4.10.103081...@entropy.tmok.com...
>
pla
> I'm pretty sure if it were possible (realistically, as opposed to
> theoretically - keeping in mind I'm not a physicist) - our nuclear waste
> "problem" and storage in the Yucca mountains would not be necessitated.
Not a very sound argument. You could just as well
say "If fuel cell technology worked, we would not
have a problem with smog in cities", since fuel cell
tech has existed since the late 60s in a useful form.
(In a bit of irony, the biggest "flaw" with early
fuel cells involved the use of expensive platinum
catalysts - Yet, every car currently on the road
includes a very similar (in composition and price)
catalyst in the exhaust system to partially do what
a fuel cell makes irrelevant - reduce polution).
- pla
pla
> I think this type of physics should be avoided.
Any particular reason why?
Personally, I agree with you to the extent that using
it as a weapon doesn't do much to dissuade me of my
opinion of humans as aggressive primates with large
frontal lobes, but aside from that... It does have a
lot of potential. Think of a battery made in such a
manner - Storing not a mere two amp-hours, but possibly
thousands of amp-hours in a AA-sized device. Tell me
you wouldn't like to never need to replace batteries
again - Everything could come with its own, which would
never run out during the life of the product. Not too
shabby...
- pla
Z
: Had you carefully read what I wrote, you would have understood that the
: process Reich discovered essentially created two items, the radium and its
: container, that could NEVER be brought into proximity with one another. The
Yeah, that was right after he made gold from lead.
Wilhelm Reich was a kook and his "science" was unreproducable by
other scientists.
http://www.thegline.com/thought/2002/04-14-2002.htm
As I get older, I find I'm far less tolerant of far-fetched
nonsense in many different forms. I no longer believe in one-tenth
of the things I did when I was 21, and I no longer give credence to
things which are visibly ludicrous. I used to give a lot more
credence to Wilhelm Reich, the same way I did to a whole host of
other things, but after I started finding out more about him directly
instead of just reading what his supporters had to say (a common
problem with many issues), my opinion shifted.
...
Reich's work with the orgone -- or what he believed to be the orgone
-- was so fraught with procedural error and misconceptions that it
reads like a comic opera as penned by Isaac Asimov. The effects of
orgone energy were suspiciously similar to ultraviolet radiation --
tanning, sunburns, eye damage, and so on. No one in his laboratory
made the connection, however, and Reich was allowed to commit one
amazing procedural or conceptual mistake after another. Throughout
his career, Reich took a very peculiar stance with regard to educating
himself about what he chose to study. When he performed his first
life-energy experiments with cultures, he chose to remain deliberately
ignorant of microbiology so that his presuppositions would not prejudice
the results! What he failed to realize, of course, is that prejudice
can arise just as easily out of ignorance as it does out of familiarity.
...
Classically unscientific, crackpot thinking underscored his work in
a staggering number of ways, making it nearly impossible to read any
of his published books without being constantly stopped cold in amaze-
ment. One of the most jaw-dropping episodes involves him placing some
radium (unprotected) into an orgone accumulator and then blaming the
subsequent illnesses and problems that resulted from "deadly orgone
radiation!" (No one ever thought to blame the radium itself.)
...
Z
: Now, to the best of my knowlege, nuclear decay occurs
: as a quantum process,
Yes.
: which we can neither predict nor
: influence (short of whacking a nucleus really hard,
We can do both: predict AND influence. All quantum processes are
predictable to some extent (in the case of decaying particles, how
do you think we get half-life #s), and many can be influenced by
the introduction of some form of external energy.
Edwin Ellinwood
"pla" <p...@tmok.com> wrote in message news:bhhiiv$17li$3...@stone.tmok.com...
> Edwin wrote:
> > I think this type of physics should be avoided.
>
> Any particular reason why?
>
Because people have the tendency to misuse things.
pla
> We can do both: predict AND influence. All quantum processes are
> predictable to some extent (in the case of decaying particles, how
> do you think we get half-life #s), and many can be influenced by
> the introduction of some form of external energy.
number of events, however. Yes, we can say that, for example,
thorium(234) has a half life of 24.5 days. That doesn't tell
us anything about when the atom centered in our AFM will
decay - It might occur in milliseconds, it might not occur
for eons. We can say that, over the entire sufficienly
large sample, half the atoms will decay in that time.
As for influencing it... PZ pointed out the "normal" way,
which I would not consider different than the same process
used in a bomb, if somewhat more efficient. BMO's post
gave me the most useful info to go on, so kudos to him.
From my further reading on this, however, I have to wonder
why they start with a radioactive material - It would seem
that they don't actually cause the nucleus to split,
just to rearrange itself. Why use a starting material
that will degrade over time if they don't need to?
- pla
PsyberZombie
> I have to wonder
> why they start with a radioactive material
> Why use a starting material
> that will degrade over time if they don't need to?
>
遙 Because Radio戢ctive Material is just POTENTIAL ENERGY waiting to
be released
Why do we burn WOOD in a fire搆lace ??
Or why do is OIL so Important to our Nation Interests ??
Because WOOD and PETROLEUM are just Stored Potential Energy Sources
[ from the Sun , originally ]
The SOURCE of the Potential Energy in radio戢ctive material is Still
being debated... Big Bang ?? Or Steady State ??
... but THAT is why its Use is being continually researched , pla
.
pla
> »» Because Radio·active Material is just POTENTIAL ENERGY waiting to
> be released
Er, sorry, but no. This time you have it
completely wrong.
Although it emits gamma, the "reaction" involved
appears totally non-fission-related. They "charge"
the halfnium nucleii over a period of time, then
all at once stimulate a drop to ground state - Not
of electrons, but of the nucleus itsef.
Effectively, a photon "battery". Not a bomb in
any normal sense of the word (or even using any
physics familiar to most people, thus my initial
confusion).
Really quite cool. Too bad we'll first use this
tech as a weapon rather than a means of storing
immense energy densities for peaceful purposes.
- pla
b...@entropy.tmok.com
Ed Ellinwood said:
> that such radioactive decay reacts with something as yet unknown, which he
> had labeled orgone energy - a kind of pervasive life force, if you will.
He went from "unknown energy" to calling it a life force. He didn't come
out and say "I don't know what it is, hey, someone please confirm and help
me?" Instead, he invented his own non-testable conclusion and went down
the path of madness.
Pseudoscience.
Looney.
> Despite his detractors, he was able to cause radium to lose its
> radioactivity in a few weeks, but the lead container the radium was in could
> never be brought near the seemingly totally decayed radium. His equations
> showed the resultant radiation would be unmeasurable - off the scale.
Nobody has ever repeated this. There has been a buttload of Tesla worship
in the past 15 years, and some of the followers of that religion (it seems
so at times) are increasingly cracked. However, Tesla did real science,
and when he was wrong, he was wrong. Reich came up with something that
would be published in the Journal of Irreproducible Results. Tesla's
experiments are reproduced every day when you start your car, or turn on a
radio.
If you come up with an experiment, and you measure something, and nobody
confirms by doing the same experiment, either your methods were wrong or
your conclusion was wrong. There's no shame in that. That's how science
*works*. You pick up where you left off, check your stuff, and go on with
life.
However, if you start off with a press conference to release your
findings, continue to weasel when other scientists can't get the same
results, and claim that everyone else is wrong, you've done a Pons and
Fleischmann.
> It's not fair to call him a quack; he was on to something, and those
> controlling the black ops military industrial complex killed him
> because he would not shut-up about it.
Oh whatever. If he was really on to something, the black ops military
industrial complex would have liked to use his idea. Indeed, he would have
had a job. The idea that he was assassinated is a non-sequitur. It
doesn't follow. It's illogical. The idea that he came up with is *not*
the foundation of the niobium experiments. It was *nonsense*. He was
*wrong*. Irreproducible results are *irreproducible* and useless, because
they only happen *once*.
The reason why he got jailed and such was because the FBI was looking into
his communist (or supposed) ties. MANY people in that time got stepped on
by idiotic politicians and self-serving feds. The FDA burned his books
because they were on a campaign to stamp out quackery. Overzealousness
does not automatically mean *conspiracy*. The FDA was probably stupid by
making a martyr of him (Ooo! they burned his books! They must have said
something Threatening to the Establishment!! (no, they were frauds)). He
would have been handled differently today. He would have a radio talk-show
on 1320AM.
--
Dan
>
>
>
>
b...@entropy.tmok.com
On Fri, 15 Aug 2003, Edwin Ellinwood wrote:
> I think this type of physics should be avoided.
Why?
Some of it turns on your lights in the evening.
--
Dan
b...@entropy.tmok.com
On Fri, 15 Aug 2003, Edwin Ellinwood wrote:
> >
>
> Because people have the tendency to misuse things.
As what, weapons? As pla said, there are other uses for this kind of
stuff...useful ones. Indeed, being a "clean" reaction, much cleaner and
lower yeild than fission, it's more controllable. I could see using this
to blast rock. Indeed, most of the work for blasting ledge is because of
the numbers of holes that need to be drilled. Why not reduce the number
of holes by a few factors of 10? It's save a bunch of money for a lot of
people.
When Al Nobel invented dynamite, he invented a new kind of bomb. Do you
suggest that we go back to spliting rock with bare hands?
Here's where your logic is leading, ed:
So we shouldn't have steak knives in the drawer? We shouldn't have
baseball bats? Axes, too, I think would have to go. And in light of the
latest movie in the theatres, most definitely hockey masks have *got* to
go.
--
Dan
czf
b...@entropy.tmok.com
> Oh, rats. There goes my supply of duct tape .....
Here, you can have mine...
:-D
--
Dan
czf
news:Pine.BSF.4.10.103082...@entropy.tmok.com...
Are you *really* sure you want to give me your duct tape? You *know* how
dangerous I am armed with red lipstick and duct tape ;-)
Owen Hartnett
<rac...@deckards.piano> wrote:
Yes, she's a WMD - a Woman of Mass Destruction.
-Owen