Re: PHYSICS: force fields

From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Mon Jun 09 2003 - 13:53:37 MDT

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    On Mon, 9 Jun 2003, Michael M. Butler wrote:

    > Are the accelerators or galleries to be configured in such a way that any
    > breach of vacuum anywhere in the rig creates its own plasma valve (that
    > sounds tricky)? Or what?

    No doubt. My read of it is that they intend to be able to create
    anywhere in the accelerator a plasma capable of capturing any
    air leak. Now I have a minor problem with this (in that if I
    have my physics right) plasmas are positively charged (largely
    ionized gas) while normal matter is somewhat negatively charged
    (electrons on the outside of the atoms). So on thinking about
    this a bit further I question whether one gets a "repulsive"
    force field or may instead get an "annihilation" force field
    (ions stealing electrons from neutral atoms).

    Now that is fine for an accelerator but doesn't have the
    "Star Trek" requirements that I had in mind as being
    particularly cool. Stealing all of the electrons from the
    surface of a human body is probably not healthy. So this
    concept may still need a bit of work.

    Robert



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