Spinal Neutron Laser seriously broken

[MarcusIII]

Free neutrons have a half life of about 15 minutes. When they decay they don't give off anything that could be used in this weapon. So, I don't get it.

 

[WHULorigan]

Free neutrons have a half life of about 15 minutes. When they decay they don't give off anything that could be used in this weapon. So, I don't get it.

Correct. A proton, electron (beta negative) and an antineutrino via the Weak interaction. A down quark transmutes to an up quark via the interaction, emitting a W^- boson which decays into the e^- and ν̅ _e .

I don't see anything special there, except perhaps Sigtrygg's possible suggestion above.

 

[MarcusIII]

Correct. A proton, electron (beta negative) and an antineutrino via the Weak interaction. A down quark transmutes to an up quark via the interaction, emitting a W^- boson which decays into the e^- and ν̅ _e .

I don't see anything special there, except perhaps Sigtrygg's possible suggestion above.

I just thought of something that might work. Neutrons have mass but no "charge". So think of them as balls of dense matter. So they could be propelled by a gravitic "rail gun". Very focused to as to minimize spread. If you get my poor analogy.

 

[phavoc]

But there is nothing to "clear out" for a space-based weapon. And the text is implying it is a laser, not a neutron weapon. The neutrons are doing the "stabilizing".

And in atmosphere, it is generally a laser that is used to clear/create a low resistance path for a charged particle beam.

My point was directed towards a ground-based weapon, to have a laser (or some other method) fired slightly before the other beam to eliminate air molecules that could interfere with the operation of a weapon that does poorly when firing through an atmosphere.

I'm aware that space-based weapons do not have that same limitation.

 

[WHULorigan]

The only way I can make "neutron laser" make sense...

energy is used to excite the quarks that make up the neutron, as they transition between energy levels they generate extremely high energy/v.high frequency gamma rays

In which case the Laser in question would be a Gamma Ray Laser - which would make sense of the TL - which is as good an explanation as any. But then just call it a GRL and be done with it; the "stabilization" nonsense should be changed to "induced" by neutron excitation or some similar verbiage.

. . .
there could be an electromagnetic radiation analogue generated by the colour charge, in the same way a moving electric charge can generate an electromagnetic wave then the "colour charge" of the quarks could generate a vibration in an as yet unidentified quantum field*, or if you want to stick with "known physics" it could excite the gluon field or the fields associated with the weak force bosons. As these fields lose energy they generate the gamma rays of the "neutron" laser...

*note that it is likely that gluons are actually this analogue, it all depends on which QFT book you read...​

Both interesting ideas. Neutron-Laser might actually be workable as a name for these models, depending.

But in the either instance I would still change the technical-detail verbiage to something similar/analogous to the quark-excitation GRL model (e.g. "Nuclear-field stimulated emission 'Glaser'"; "Stong/Weak-field decay induced emission", et al) and dispense with the whole "stabilization" thing.

There is still the potential "confinement" issue with the colour charge and the coloured natured of its gluonic force carriers, of course - but some recent studies have suggested that the inter-particle force does not in fact blow up to infinity asymptotically with increasing distance, but rather along a relatively steep but positive finite slope.

 

[WHULorigan]

. . .
there could be an electromagnetic radiation analogue generated by the colour charge, in the same way a moving electric charge can generate an electromagnetic wave then the "colour charge" of the quarks could generate a vibration in an as yet unidentified quantum field*, or if you want to stick with "known physics" it could excite the gluon field or the fields associated with the weak force bosons.

*note that it is likely that gluons are actually this analogue, it all depends on which QFT book you read...​

SIDE NOTE / OFF TOPIC:

Some virtual particle interaction along the lines you describe above may in fact be a possible partial explanation for Traveller pseudogravity (perhaps as part of a hyper-grand unified field theory involving some other currently unknown J-space related unified fields - a Hypergravity Theory).

• Short range - rapidly falls off with distance from powered plates
• Can push or pull
• Appears to attract/repel all matter
• May or may not affect energy (i.e. photon, et al)
• May or may not have anything to do with geodesics and/or spacetime-dilation/contraction

 

[WHULorigan]

I just thought of something that might work. Neutrons have mass but no "charge". So think of them as balls of dense matter. So they could be propelled by a gravitic "rail gun". Very focused to as to minimize spread. If you get my poor analogy.

Sure. But I would just call that a Neutron Beam. No Laser involved. No stimulated emission of EM-Radiation.

 

[WHULorigan]

My point was directed towards a ground-based weapon, to have a laser (or some other method) fired slightly before the other beam to eliminate air molecules that could interfere with the operation of a weapon that does poorly when firing through an atmosphere.

I'm aware that space-based weapons do not have that same limitation.

Understood. But based on the fluff description, the roles are still switched. You are describing a neutron beam stabilized by a laser-guide beam; not a laser being stabilized by a "neutron flow".

The weapon is being described as a laser; the "neutron flow" is doing something for it.

 

[Sigtrygg]

I just thought of something that might work. Neutrons have mass but no "charge". So think of them as balls of dense matter. So they could be propelled by a gravitic "rail gun". Very focused to as to minimize spread. If you get my poor analogy.

It's been suggested a few times that using gravitic acceleration is a means to which neutron particle accelerators could be made possible. If the beam is moving at a high fraction of c which it would have to be to be a useful weapon at Traveller ship combat ranges then its half life (there are two values, which defy explanation, and the answer to which may lead to new physics)

The thing is neutrons do have charge, it is just that the charges balance and cancel, but they are there. The quarks within the neutron have either positive or negative charge, and the "colour" charge is a "charge" with three flavours or values (red, green, blue) that balance out and are thus neutral (white)

Here is the interesting thing, if we were at the scale of protons and neutrons then there may well be temporary charges and induced temporary charges, much like the van der valls forces and the like experienced by atoms and molecules. If we had the technological nounce to manipulate matter at that scale (much like meson and damper tech must) then it may be we could make use of those transitory charges.

or just handwave gravitics , magical artificial gravity that has never been described or explained...

I view the manipulation of strong and weak forces for meson and damper tech to be science fiction, gravitics on the other hand is pure science fantasy - until an author can suggest a mechanism rather than it just is.

 

[WHULorigan]

So is Jump drive, Maneuver Drive and a half dozen other things in Traveller it’s sci-fi not science fact. I’m not even sure you could quantify Traveller as Hard Scifi. If you’re so concerned with the science of the game setting I suggest you limit yourself to 2300 it’s at least closer to Hard scifi.

It is not about whether or not it is science-fact. The Charted Space Setting has always made the attempt to have some reasonable scientific description as a basis for the operating principles of its tech (more nebulous as the TL increases, of course). That is what separates Science-Fiction from Science-fantasy. (Which is also another genre).

All Sci-Fi necessarily takes liberties with what we know now; otherwise, it wouldn't BE Sci-Fi - it would be Science-Fact with a fictional storyline (i.e. run-of-the-mill fiction). The particular genre of Science-Fiction to which the Charted Space Setting belongs is what was considered speculative fiction / (relatively) hard science fiction and Space Opera of the Golden Age of Sci-Fi (modified somewhat by what has been discovered in science and technology since then, of course). Hyperdrive, Jump Drive, Reactionless Drive, Fusion Torch drives, Plasma Rockets, etc., all had their place in such settings, and a greater or lesser degree of explanation, depending on how advanced it was deemed to be. But some degree of plausibility (relative to the era of writing) was always attempted, nonetheless. Or it was just introduced as a given in the background without undue explanation. Charted Space has sometimes been described as "Hard Space-Opera", to coin a term.

Totally meaningless technobabble explanations do not fit the Charted Space Setting, or the Sci-Fi genre to which it belongs. Those types of explanations belong more to Science fanstasy and comic books. Charted Space is not pure Hard Sci-Fi. But it is semi-hard. And it is Space Opera that is Harder Sci-Fi than most of that genre and has been that way since the inception of the setting.


And BTW, I have been playing Traveller since 1982 Classic Traveller. And I own all of the subsequent versions, and the Original GDW and Mongoose editions of 2300AD. I think I am fairly well qualified to speak on what Traveller has and has not been historically from an objective standpoint. So, I suggest you keep your opinions as to what games other people should limit themselves to playing based on their understanding and preferences to yourself. I am not telling you what to play at your table, or how to play it, or what things to allow in your personal sessions or campaigns; do not tell me what or how to play in mine, either. I am not discussing what anyone should or should not personally like, nor would I. But I will discuss objectively what belongs in the baseline setting, and what does not.

The discussion above has been OBJECTIVE as to the baseline setting of the Charted Space Universe.

 

[Sigtrygg]

At some point as TLs progress the science fiction has to become more handwavium due to the need to invent fictional physics. The important thing for fictional physics is that it achieves the desired new technology in a consistently applicable manner, the new physics needs to have parameters established.

Jump drive - opens a rift into extra-dimensional hyperspace. Is a hyperspace with different physics and different dimensions a scientific possibility? As things stand we can write the maths for it but we haven't a clue as to the technology that could make it a reality, nor the ontological explanation for it.
Damper and meson tech - manipulation of the strong and weak interactions... scientifically possible, but he mechanisms and technologies not so much...

Gravitics and acceleration compensation are the outliers - there is no handwavium for how gravitics even works or what the limits on the technology limits are, it is the real handwavium of Traveller. This is likely due to that here in the real world gravity is still being argued about. Is is quantisable? Can the gravitaional interaction be unified with the other interactions? You can read textbook after textbook where physicists describe gravity as a force, while others say it isn't, and then all the handwavium as they discus interactions...

I was reading about "mercury engines" as the motive power behind the UAPs and ARVs so beloved of UFO conspiracy theorists. Mercury has the unusual property that its electrons are moving close to the speed of light, so could adding angular momentum to mercury tip the relativistic effects of mercury electrons into the realm of new physics?
No, just no, but fun to speculate

 

[MarcusIII]

Sure. But I would just call that a Neutron Beam. No Laser involved. No stimulated emission of EM-Radiation.

Right but if they are trying for a stream of protons that are tight like coherent light the 'laser' label may have stuck even though not technically correct.

 

[WHULorigan]

Right but if they are trying for a stream of protons that are tight like coherent light the 'laser' label may have stuck even though not technically correct.

Possibly . . . an interesting speculation.

But of course protons (and neutrons and electrons) cannot truly be tight like a coherent beam of light because they are half-integer spin fermions which obey the Pauli Exclusion Principle and when constrained individually occupy exclusive quantum states, unlike Photons which are whole integer-spin Bosons, which do not (and can all be collapsed into a single quantum state).

 

[MarcusIII]

Possibly . . . an interesting speculation.

But of course protons (and neutrons and electrons) cannot truly be tight like a coherent beam of light because they are half-integer spin fermions which obey the Pauli Exclusion Principle and when constrained individually occupy exclusive quantum states, unlike Photons which are whole integer-spin Bosons, which do not (and can all be collapsed into a single quantum state).

I didn't assume they could be made "coherent" like photons but they could be propelled in a straight line relative to each other thus not scattering but being "coherent" in their vector.

 

[WHULorigan]

I didn't assume they could be made "coherent" like photons but they could be propelled in a straight line relative to each other thus not scattering but being "coherent" in their vector.

One of the things that was discovered with the SDI Defense Experiments back in the 1980s was that charged particles in vacuum (even in a beam) tend to self-repel and rapidly end up as a charged particle "cloud". The solution (at least with charged particle accelerators in vacuum) was to take your projectile material (such as neutral hydrogen) and strip it of its electron and then accelerate the positive nucleus (proton) down the barrel, and let the nuclei pass through a cloud of their stripped electrons at the muzzle, thus re-neutralizing the beam to negate the repulsion in vacuum problem after leaving the weapon. You thus ended up with a relativistic beam of neutral hydrogen.

Something similar would have to be done for your scenario above, but that would not be insurmountable.

 

[MarcusIII]

Something similar would have to be done for your scenario above, but that would not be insurmountable.

Neutrons aren't charged in that sense so would not self repel so that wouldn't be an issue. Right?

 

[WHULorigan]

Neutrons aren't charged in that sense so would not self repel so that wouldn't be an issue. Right?

Probably not. I do not think magnetic moment would cause a problem, but I could be wrong . . .

(Yes neutrons - for some reason I had protons in my mind - probably because they were mentioned upthread)

 

[MarcusIII]

Probably not. I do not think magnetic moment would cause a problem, but I could be wrong . . .

Right, they are magnetically negative but aren't easily moved by electrical fields so should be ok if not used in conjunction with strong magnetic fields.

 

[WHULorigan]

That I didn’t know. Though the ideal of a neutron laser is in a lot of games. We need a TL 16 or 17 spinal mounts since the disintegrator got bumped up to TL 20.

In one of the old CT JTAS Articles (one that was actually discussing some of the SDI Results mentioned above concerning C-PAWS & N-PAWS ironically), the author proposed an "A-PAWS" (Anti-Particle Accelerator Weapon System) that fired Anti-Neutrons (I suppose neutral AntiHydrogen would work as well and I am surprised he didn't suggest it given the article's topic). He called it a "V-Gun" (for "Vaporize") and it spanned Spinal Mounts TL15-18 IIRC.

That might fit your bill for a Main Weapon in that TL range that fits the Setting.


Also, Classic SciFi and Traveller/T5 have had "Disintegrators" (sometimes called "Disruptors") that come in two flavors:

1. The "Classic" Traveller DISINTEGRATOR that suppresses the Residual Strong Nuclear Force (as it does in Damper-Tech) but causes the entire Nuclei of atoms to become unbound.
2. The T5 Disruptor/Disintegrator (lower TL than the disintegrator above) a la Larry Niven's Pierson's Puppeteers that suppresses the charge on the electron and causes molecules to dissociate and atoms to ionize and/or plasmify.

 

[tytalan]

It is not about whether or not it is science-fact. The Charted Space Setting has always made the attempt to have some reasonable scientific description as a basis for the operating principles of its tech (more nebulous as the TL increases, of course). That is what separates Science-Fiction from Science-fantasy. (Which is also another genre).

All Sci-Fi necessarily takes liberties with what we know now; otherwise, it wouldn't BE Sci-Fi - it would be Science-Fact with a fictional storyline (i.e. run-of-the-mill fiction). The particular genre of Science-Fiction to which the Charted Space Setting belongs is what was considered speculative fiction / (relatively) hard science fiction and Space Opera of the Golden Age of Sci-Fi (modified somewhat by what has been discovered in science and technology since then, of course). Hyperdrive, Jump Drive, Reactionless Drive, Fusion Torch drives, Plasma Rockets, etc., all had their place in such settings, and a greater or lesser degree of explanation, depending on how advanced it was deemed to be. But some degree of plausibility (relative to the era of writing) was always attempted, nonetheless. Or it was just introduced as a given in the background without undue explanation. Charted Space has sometimes been described as "Hard Space-Opera", to coin a term.

Totally meaningless technobabble explanations do not fit the Charted Space Setting, or the Sci-Fi genre to which it belongs. Those types of explanations belong more to Science fanstasy and comic books. Charted Space is not pure Hard Sci-Fi. But it is semi-hard. And it is Space Opera that is Harder Sci-Fi than most of that genre and has been that way since the inception of the setting.


And BTW, I have been playing Traveller since 1982 Classic Traveller. And I own all of the subsequent versions, and the Original GDW and Mongoose editions of 2300AD. I think I am fairly well qualified to speak on what Traveller has and has not been historically from an objective standpoint. So, I suggest you keep your opinions as to what games other people should limit themselves to playing based on their understanding and preferences to yourself. I am not telling you what to play at your table, or how to play it, or what things to allow in your personal sessions or campaigns; do not tell me what or how to play in mine, either. I am not discussing what anyone should or should not personally like, nor would I. But I will discuss objectively what belongs in the baseline setting, and what does not.

The discussion above has been OBJECTIVE as to the baseline setting of the Charted Space Universe.

I also have played the game since the beginning I hate to tell you this but one of the inspirations for Traveller was StarWars which is sci-fantasy. Marc Miller himself has said that Traveller is not Hard Scifi

I’ll leave you now to your toxic self