posted
I think it's been pretty much explained, but I'll summarize the clarification of my earlier answer.
Take the mass (in kilograms) of the fuel (matter + antimatter, or two times either one of them since they have to be equal), multiply it by the square of the speed of light (in meters per second) and divide that answer by the time for which the production of enegy is sustained (in seconds). This will give you the amount of power, which is measured in watts. If you skip dividing by the time, you'll get the amount of energy (in joules).
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posted
I'm more than a little disturbed to learn that plasma no longer exists. I thought it got dark rather early tonight...
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quote:Originally posted by Nevod: Plasma: Inexistent in real life, so dunno. Bou they may be sucking out ZPE, so probably about equal to M/AM.
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So, I assume the sun is nothing more than a huge buring pile of tires left over from the Tkon Empire?
Plasma exists, and it is used in in many industral processes and scientists play with it in the lab all the time.
Sun is huge fusion reactor. Fusion is plasma, but it's incorrect(I think, IMHO) to call fusion reactors 'plasma reactors'.
M/AM generates 90000 Terajoules/kg. But black hole is safer: 1) No volatile fuel. 2) Gravitational attraction depends on mass and distance. It's not always ripping stuff apart instantly. 3) It is possible to quickly create and destroy black hole. You need stream of positrons and stream of electrons colliding with each other. If contact area has enough particle density, black hole will form. Then you need an electrical and spinning magnetic field to sustain it. Currently, black hole was sustained for 6 seconds with stabilisaton and for one thousandth of a second- without containment.
So black hole is far more useful than M/AM.
David Templar; SW don't use 'usual' fusion. If you want to discuss it, go to Forums section in http://www.spacebattles.com
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capped
I WAS IN THE FUTURE, IT WAS TOO LATE TO RSVP
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posted
if only they could tap the geek energy here... oh wait you guys are are all pretty tapped already
[ February 24, 2002, 06:30: Message edited by: CaptainMike ]
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quote:Originally posted by Nevod: Fusion is plasma
Let's just get things straight, for anyone who didn't take a fifth-grade science class. Plasma is ionized gas. That's it. It's what you get when you get gas hot enough. It's the fourth* state of matter; in order of increasing temperature, you have solid, liquid, gas, and plasma.
Plasma is very real. In the sun, it is the result of the intense heat and pressure all that hydrogen is under. It is found in fusion reactors, for the few minutes we can keep them running. Plasma torches are used in some industrial applications. Boeing (I think) is even working on a plane-mounted plasma cannon for military use.
* Recently, physicists have identified a fifth state of matter, the poetically named Bose-Einstein condensate. It's colder than solid, and what they used to make light slow to a crawl. So depending on how you're numbering the states, plasma could be the fifth: Bose-Einstein condensate, solid, liquid, gas, and plasma.
[ February 24, 2002, 09:02: Message edited by: Ryan McReynolds ]
posted
TNGTM page 68: 1 pod = 100m^3 of antimatter. States Enterprise has 30 pods = 3,000m^3 of antimatter for a normal mission period of 3 years.
Page 69: deuterium tank holds 63,200m^3.
OK, mass*speed (c) divided by time
For Warp 7;
M/A ratio of 10:1 = 11 units of mass, 11^3 = 1,331 cubic metre units in total.
So 1331*656c / 60 seconds = 14,552 watts/sec, but if we multiply the seconds to make a full minute (3,600 secs) then that power output goes down to 243 watts/sec. Is that right?
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posted
Nevod: I'll be damned if I ever step inside a spacebattle forum again. Those guys are monsters.
akb1979: I think you're using the wrong unit. It's suppose to be kg (mass), not m^3 (volume). That should account for the difference. How much hydrogen can you pack into 1 m^3 area of space, if the hydrogen is in a "slush" state?
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posted
And aside form that, your answer will be in joules/second, which is the same as watts. Watts/second would indicate that the rate of energy production is accelerating.
And it doesn't matter how much deuterium there is, since there's more deuterium than antideuterium. You can only count the stuff that actually annihilates, which will be an equal amount of matter and antimatter.
So, given the numbers we already have...
3000 m3 of antimatter an equal mass of matter 5 years (157 784 760 seconds) of power generation c2 = 89 875 517 873 681 764
Now all we need is the desity of the elements involved (anyone know the answer?) and have the equation modified to account for those figures and that the supply is for 3 years, not 5. The latter is easy: 157,784,760/5*3=94,670,856 seconds.
-------------------- If you cant convince them, confuse them.
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posted
Just a few ballpark figures to help keep the discussion going. The maximum yield for a fusion bomb is approximately 0.5% of the energy stored in a given mass M, so your basic M/AM reaction is roughly 200 times as efficient as a fusion reaction.
As for the power output, the total annihilation of 1 kilogram of matter and 1 kilogram of antimatter releases the energy equivalent of exploding 43 one megaton H-bombs. This is approximately 4.3 x 10^24 ergs (4.3 septillion ergs).
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Registered: Aug 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Nevod: Fusion is plasma
Let's just get things straight, for anyone who didn't take a fifth-grade science class. Plasma is ionized gas. That's it. It's what you get when you get gas hot enough. It's the fourth* state of matter; in order of increasing temperature, you have solid, liquid, gas, and plasma.
Plasma is very real. In the sun, it is the result of the intense heat and pressure all that hydrogen is under. It is found in fusion reactors, for the few minutes we can keep them running. Plasma torches are used in some industrial applications. Boeing (I think) is even working on a plane-mounted plasma cannon for military use.
* Recently, physicists have identified a fifth state of matter, the poetically named Bose-Einstein condensate. It's colder than solid, and what they used to make light slow to a crawl. So depending on how you're numbering the states, plasma could be the fifth: Bose-Einstein condensate, solid, liquid, gas, and plasma.
Fusion occurs in very hot plasma under high pressures. But even very high energies of atomic nuclei can't penetrate Culon(spelling?) electrostatic repulsion. There, you need effect known as quantum tunneling to accomplish this. Quantum tunneling is ,well, 'overload' of Heisenberg equation.
I know that plasma is real, but I know about my mistake: I meant plasma reactors, not just plasma.
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