nuclear damper technology

[steve98052]

The first time I saw nuclear damper technology mentioned in Traveller was in classic Mercenary, in the context of nuclear damper boxes used to store californium artillery rounds.

To serve that purpose, they would have to affect both strong and weak nuclear force -- strong force to inhibit fission and alpha decay, and weak force to inhibit beta and positron decay.

Note also that a classic book (probably High Guard) mentioned in passing that damper technology could, at TL16, be developed into an early disintegrator weapon.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Being able to directly manipulate the strong nuclear force would allow mitigation and militating of fusion and fission reactions - enhance the strong force and you make fusion more likely while reducing the chance of fission; decrease the strong nuclear force and you make fusion less likely and fission more likely (in the TNE adventure Guilded Lilly a damper is used to inhibit the fusion reactor of a grounded starship).

Weak force manipulation could be linked to meson technology.

An alternative to nuclear forces being used to explain disintegrators would be the manipulation of molecular orbitals - alter the properties of electon energy levels to turn bonding molecular orbitals into anti-bonding orbitals and you could make chemical bonds fall apart.

Ther is something in T5 about variations on field technologies...

 

[steve98052]

. . .
Weak force manipulation could be linked to meson technology.

So mesons break down through weak force? That doesn't seem consistent with their brief half-life. Muons, maybe, but they're actually leptons, which is one reason (besides mere abbreviation) their name was changed from "mu meson" to "muon". Pions are mesons, so their longer name of "pi meson" is still correct.

An alternative to nuclear forces being used to explain disintegrators would be the manipulation of molecular orbitals - alter the properties of electon energy levels to turn bonding molecular orbitals into anti-bonding orbitals and you could make chemical bonds fall apart.
. . .

This makes a lot of sense. If Traveller technology allows messing with strong force, weak force, and gravity, why not electromagnetic force too? After all, it's the force we understand best now.

But classic canon said that it was damper technology, and making atomic nuclei fall apart would certainly make any macroscopic matter fall apart too.

 

[Sigtrygg]

The weak force can change the flavour of quarks, since a meson is a quark-antiquark pair I am postulating that meson technology messes with mesons via the weak force.