PA's create Oh-My-God particles

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sideranautae

Mongoose
A PA might be a weapon that shoots uncounted million of subatomic particles with the following characteristics:

The particle referenced in the Subject line was an observed subatomic particle with kinetic energy equal to that of 50 Joules, or a 5-ounce (142 g) baseball traveling at about 100 kilometers per hour (60 mph)!!!

If this is the case it would mean that PA's create a good amount of recoil as they hurl that mass at the hull of the target ship. Really like a broadside from the Age of Sail.

Interesting visual if nothing else.

Reference
 
I saw a documentary on particle accelerators once...The superconducting rings of one system fused and the beam blasted through housing and blasted a huge hole in a reinforced concrete wall...and that was just a purely research accelerator, not a weaponized Third Imperium era accelerator.
 
wbnc said:
I saw a documentary on particle accelerators once...The superconducting rings of one system fused and the beam blasted through housing and blasted a huge hole in a reinforced concrete wall...and that was just a purely research accelerator, not a weaponized Third Imperium era accelerator.
Click to expand...

Whoa! That's wild. If you run across any links to that be sure to let us know. Would make for good reading.
 
sideranautae said:
A PA might be a weapon that shoots uncounted million of subatomic particles with the following characteristics:
Click to expand...

I suspect you might have problems with massive over-penetration. It's like with bullets. If the bullet goes through the target and out the other side, any residual kinetic energy is wasted. You want as much energy as possible to go into the target, and stay there. Hence hollow points.

An effective particle beam weapon would need to balance the mass of the particles, versus the number of them and their energies, to achieve an optimum balance of penetration and energy transfer into the target.

The only particle accelerator accident I'm familiar with was the one that happened to Anatoli Bugorski.

Nasty.

Simon Hibbs
 
simonh said:
I suspect you might have problems with massive over-penetration. It's like with bullets. If the bullet goes through the target and out the other side, any residual kinetic energy is wasted.
Click to expand...

The solution to that is easy peasy. The target ship is in motion. When you fire at the aim point (as the beam is travelling at 0.9999c) you don't continue to follow so as to create a "slash". Also, ship hull material and armor is REALLY, REALLY tough.
 
sideranautae said:
simonh said:
I suspect you might have problems with massive over-penetration. It's like with bullets. If the bullet goes through the target and out the other side, any residual kinetic energy is wasted.
Click to expand...

The solution to that is easy peasy. The target ship is in motion. When you fire at the aim point (as the beam is travelling at 0.9999c) you don't continue to follow so as to create a "slash". Also, ship hull material and armor is REALLY, REALLY tough.
Click to expand...

So the energy is released into the armour not the ship's systems. Isn't that what armour is supposed to do?

Not sure what a 'slash' does except disperse and diffuse the energy of the beam. It won't make any more of the energy be 'captured' by the target. Each individual particle will still just transit from one side of the target to the other. They'll just be more spread out.

Simon Hibbs
 
simonh said:
Not sure what a 'slash' does except disperse and diffuse the energy of the beam. It won't make any more of the energy be 'captured' by the target.
Click to expand...

If the PA is achieving "blow through" quickly, then you want to walk the beam to a part of the ship that is still there. Like a circular saw: if you stop moving the saw, you stop cutting the wood.
 
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