Yeah? But how about ashtrays?
Posted on 06/09/2005 6:21:36 AM PDT by anguish
Scientists at the Sandia National Labs in Albuquerque, New Mexico have accelerated a small plate from zero to 76,000 mph in less than a second. The speed of the thrust was a new record for Sandia's "Z Machine" - not only the fastest gun in the West, but in the world too.
The Z Machine is now able to propel small plates at 34 kilometers a second, faster than the 30 kilometers per second that Earth travels through space in its orbit about the Sun. That's 50 times faster than a rifle bullet, and three times the velocity needed to escape Earth's gravitational field.
The ultra-tiny aluminum plates, just 850 microns thick, are accelerated at 1010 g. One g is the force of Earth's gravity. Doing so without vaporizing the plates was possible because of the finer control now achievable of the magnetic field pulse that drives the flight.
Z's hurled plates strike a target after traveling only five millimeters, or less than a quarter-inch. The impact generates a shock wave -- in some cases, reaching 15 million times atmospheric pressure -- that passes through the target material. The waves are so powerful that they turn solids into liquids, liquids into gases, and gases into plasmas in the same way that heat melts ice to water or boils water into steam.
One purpose of these very rapid flights is to help understand the extreme conditions found within the interiors of giant planets in our solar system. By creating states of matter extremely difficult to achieve on Earth, the flyer plates provide hard data to astrophysicists speculating on the structure and even the formation of planets like Jupiter and Saturn.
Didier Saumon, an astrophysicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, noted that the internal structures of Jupiter and Saturn are composed mostly of hydrogen. So knowing its equation of state -- how hydrogen and its isotopes behave at pressures from one to 50 million atmospheres -- is highly relevant to how scientists infer the interior properties of these planets.
An upgrade of the Z Machine is planned for next year and is expected to achieve higher plate velocities.
I can see a billion military applications for this kind of gun -- if they can make it stable enough.
Way faster than my '57 Chevy - but do they have a convertible?
Hillary wishes she some of those plates when she was in the White House.
Did they clock me on my motorcycle again?
Zorba would get a kick out of one of these things.
Maybe that's why they call it the Z machine.
We need one of these in orbit. Then we can rule the world, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA (evil laugh). Imagine what a twenty pound inert depleted uranium projectile would do upon impact in, lets say, Pyongyang.
Ahhhh... the quest for speed! But can it cure cancer?
I had an ex who could hurl plates almost that fast!
PING.....
Yes, if Hillary could have gotten her hands on a Z machine it would have changed history.
Dean's mouth?
The problem would be, however, that the gun would end up flying off in the other direction, probably leaving Earth orbit....
When I read this part:
"faster than the 30 kilometers per second that Earth travels through space in its orbit about the Sun"
I knew that we've finally reached an advanced enough state of technology that we can safely dispose of liberals.
Everyone knows that the level of liberalism has reached dangerously high levels due to the rate that universities have been pumping them out into the environment. We first tried stockpiling them in California and the North East but they've started spilling over into neighboring states.
No one likes the idea of gathering leftists up into underground storage facilities for the fear that a container might rupture allowing their ideology to seep out into public again.
But now, with a little work, I think we could just shoot them all into the sun! It's the only safe way.
Well then...put it on the moon babee! (insert Dr. Evil laugh)
I am sure that issue would be taken care of if the military weaponized the thing.
UNNNGH..
Yeah? But how about ashtrays?
Not with an equivalent blast directed exactly opposite the point of aim.
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