Large Hadron Collider: First Blood Part II

[peterb]

If we boiled it down to its component atomic nuclei it'd fit in the beam pipe all right. Prob go a lot faster like that

Sounds like a challenge for the "Top Gear" team

[watercooled]

How hard can it be?

[[GSV]Trig]

Depends if you factor getting past me, to the car into the equation...

[Salazaar]

You wouldn't volunteer your car in the name of Science and Top Gear...?

[Tumble]

An ion thruster is basically a particle accelerator. All space propulsion systems I can think of use Newton's third law (excluding the ridiculously exotic things like wormholes) - equal and opposite reactions - to get off the ground and keep moving. In space as you don't have the luxury of air, you can only rely on chucking things out the back of the ship to give you a bit of a boost. So, in momentum terms this tends to be chucking out mass at as high a velocity as you can. The larger the velocity, the larger your momentum term becomes.

Ion thrusters accelerate charged particles (ions) to huge velocities so that although you're chucking out things that weigh a fraction of a gram, they're being chucked out such a high speed that you can generate a pretty reasonable amount of force.

You kinda answered your own question there

I read somewhere on the NASA website that they've got an experimental ion thruster working, and producing a reliable 9Nm of thrust... not a lot granted, but it's a start isn't it?

[malfunction]

So I had no idea what a TeV or indeed GeV was... Wiki to the rescue:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronvolt

For comparison:
>108 TeV: The most-energetic known ultra-high-energy cosmic rays.
14 TeV: The 'Designed' collision energy of protons at the Large Hadron Collider(as yet not reached).
1 TeV: A million million electronvolts, or 1.602×10−7 J, about the kinetic energy of a flying mosquito[6]
210 MeV: The average energy released in fission of one Pu-239 atom.
200 MeV: The total energy released in nuclear fission of one U-235 atom (on average; depends on the precise break up).
17.6 MeV: The total energy released in the fusion of deuterium and tritium to form He-4 (also on average); this is 0.41 PJ per kilogram of product produced.
1 MeV: Or, 1.602×10−13 J, about twice the rest mass-energy of an electron.
13.6 eV: The energy required to ionize atomic hydrogen. Molecular bond energies are on the order of one eV per molecule.
1/40 eV: The thermal energy at room temperature. A single molecule in the air has an average kinetic energy 3/80 eV.

All the stuff about fission being only ~200 MeV while the LHC can summon 14 TeV was sounding impressive until I got to the bit about the mosquito (though I appreciate that even a mosquito has a 'few' orders of magnitude more mass than any particular individual sub-atomic particle)...

So, erm, is it a death ray or not?

[scaryjim]

... producing a reliable 9Nm of thrust...

So, just enough to keep a beefburger in midair, then?

[[GSV]Trig]

You wouldn't volunteer your car in the name of Science and Top Gear...?

No, last count well over a year ago put less than 250 Cavalier Turbo's on the road, shoot me...

[kalniel]

So, just enough to keep a beefburger in midair, then?

Sure, but put that beefburger in space...

[scaryjim]

Sure, but put that beefburger in space...

Beefburgers in space?

Now that's just crazy talk...

[kalniel]

Sounds like a great name for a film

[Fraz]

So I had no idea what a TeV or indeed GeV was... Wiki to the rescue:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronvolt

All the stuff about fission being only ~200 MeV while the LHC can summon 14 TeV was sounding impressive until I got to the bit about the mosquito (though I appreciate that even a mosquito has a 'few' orders of magnitude more mass than any particular individual sub-atomic particle)...

So, erm, is it a death ray or not?

Very much so!

At full energy + luminosity, the beam stores the energy equivalent of about 90 kilos of TNT, and it can deliver this energy to a target much smaller in cross-section than a penny in about 90 microseconds. Most definitely a death ray.

[Whiternoise]

I read somewhere on the NASA website that they've got an experimental ion thruster working, and producing a reliable 9Nm of thrust... not a lot granted, but it's a start isn't it?

Have a look on wiki for Deep Space 1 and Dawn. Both used/are using ion thrusters as a proof of concept. They're also in use on a lot of planned satellites for orbital correction. They have enough fuel to be continuously fired for years creating enough momentum to stop a satellite from going into a decaying orbit.

[Steve]

Very much so!

At full energy + luminosity, the beam stores the energy equivalent of about 90 kilos of TNT, and it can deliver this energy to a target much smaller in cross-section than a penny in about 90 microseconds. Most definitely a death ray.

Whatever you do, don't cross the b...oh wait.

[malfunction]

At full energy + luminosity, the beam stores the energy equivalent of about 90 kilos of TNT, and it can deliver this energy to a target much smaller in cross-section than a penny in about 90 microseconds. Most definitely a death ray.

If the serious scientific experiments don't go that well I hope you're planning on launching your own version of "will it blend?"

[scaryjim]

See, now I'm glad I didn't link to this one earlier