From: Damien Broderick (damienb@unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Thu Aug 14 2003 - 20:34:07 MDT
At 05:20 PM 8/14/03 -0700, Robert wrote:
>Gamma-ray weapons could trigger next arms race
>David Hambling, 13 August 2003
>NewScientist.com
>http://www.newscientist.com/news/print.jsp?id=ns99994049
>
>My understanding of such technology is that it would allow
>the relatively painless termination of human lives (vs.
>nuclear weapons where the heat produced is likely to produce
>burn victims).
FWIW: former Navy physicist Dr Evan Harris Walker commented:
======
<This is an old idea and one first put into development by the Soviets. The
technology was labeled by the Soviets "red mercury," mercury being another
element that can be so excited. There were claims in 1990 that the former
Soviets had it up for sale to the highest bidder.
The danger is that its 1 to 10 thousand eV/atom energy release is exactly in
the mid-range between the 1 to 10 eV/atom of chemical explosives and the 10
to 100 million eV/atom of fusion and fission bombs. It does blur the line,
but that line is getting very blurry all by itself.
The good news is that it is much more difficult to make in that all the
energy has to be put in at the factory using very expensive processes
(unlike the others where the ingredients carry the potential energy).
By the way, it is environmentally friendly (i.e., if you don't mind a little
mercury or hafnium vapor)! Nice clean gammas.
Some more incidental information, an ordinary nuke can be made less than 5
inches in diameter, in at under 155 mm complete with a half inch of steel
for a carrying case. From what I have heard rumored, the smallest size was
never determined. A nuclear handgrenade is a likely possibility. That idea
of an nuclear handgrenade use to be a common physics joke, but we now know
there are people out there who are dumb enough to want such a thing -- and
they are not US. >
Damien Broderick
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