104 lines
5.7 KiB
Plaintext
104 lines
5.7 KiB
Plaintext
SUBJECT: LAZAR'S UFO DRIVE MECHANISM FILE: UFO2992
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Lazar's UFO drive mechanism seems highly improbable
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according to current physics. While element 115 may
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eventually be synthesized, it is not expected to have any
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isotopes with half lifes longer than 10-2 to 1 second.
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Even the most stable superheavy elements are expected
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to have half-lives of the order of a few days maximum.
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The second problem is making 115. Current nuclear
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chemistry experiments have stalled around 109 or possibly
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110 as the production rate gets too low. The problem is that
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such elements cannot be built up from lighter ones by successive
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neutron capture in reactors or in nature in supernovas because
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the fission half-lives around 94-100 become too short. Hence
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they have to be made by fusing heavy nuclei (U, Pu, or higher)
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with medium sized nuclei such as Ca, Fe, etc. To get such
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nuclei with their high electric charges to fuse requires so
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much energy that the compound nucleus fissions before it
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can evaporate enough neutrons to deexcite to a stable state.
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Finally, there is no reason to believe that 116 would
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decay into antimatter. The total kinetic energy released by
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the fission of a nucleus of 116 is estimated to be about
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250 to 300 MEV. An antiproton or antineutron has a mass of
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about 940 MEV with the positron or antielectron about 1/1800
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of this. So even assuming there was a plausible route not
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violating any known conservation laws, there is not enough
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energy in the decay of superheavy nuclei to generate atoms
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of antimatter.
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Also, Lazar's physics is suspect. While some theories
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predict that gravity and the strong nuclear force are aspects
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of the same force, the energy level of unification, the point
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at which they become indistinguishable, is about 10 to the 15th
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GEV. Current accelerators are <= about 1000 GEV, far above the
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energies available in atomic nuclei.
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With our technology, scaling up by a factor of 10 to
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the 12th would mean building a machine whose circumference
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is about that of the Milky Way galaxy. If we had access to a
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technology that could reduce this scale to vehicular dimensions,
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do you really think we would even consider building something
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as primitive as the SSC.
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Gravitons are not out of vogue theoretically, but they
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have never been observed due to the weakness of their interaction
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with matter. If the LIGO or similar gravitational wave observatories
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are built, they will provide the first direct evidence for gravitons
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or rather the wave-like aspect of gravitational radiation, which
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is equivalent to the particle aspect by the Correspondence
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Principle. Gravitation is about 39 orders of magnitude weaker
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than the strong nuclear force so even though the SNF may have
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gravity-like properties, they are unobservable even at nuclear
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energies.
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Antimatter per se has not yet been made in the
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laboratory although both positrons and antiprotons are
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made routinely in accelerators and stored. The difficulty lies in
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cooling both components down sufficiently and mixing them to produce
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antihydrogen while still confining them and the resulting neutral
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atoms. It should be doable and I would expect the announcement
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to be made at any time. However, these experiments will produce
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only a few atoms at a time, nowhere near enough for bombs or
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space vehicle fuel.
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Lazar is correct that fission and fusion bombs release
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only a very small fraction of the total available energy. The
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problem here is confinement; the bombs destroy themselves and
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the density of fissionable and fusionable materials drop too low
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for the reactions to procede. Similar problems would exist with
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matter -antimatter reactions as well. It has been predicted that
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matter and antimatter stars might just bounce off each other as
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the annihilation energy released as their outer atmospheres touched
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would push them apart before more than a fraction of their masses
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had been consumed. They might, however, be sufficiently disrupted
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by the shock and acceleration that their cores would be exposed,
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producing two novas. In any case, the collision would be spectacular,
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even if it did not result in mutual annihilation.
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Even if one could 'distort space time' what is to prevent
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the distortion from affecting the vehicle and its crew? There
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might very well be strong gravitational tidal effects which would
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destroy both in the process as a space-time distortion would look
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like a very strong and inhomogeneous gravitational field. Creating
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and terminating such 'distortions' would probably generate
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gravitational radiation. Such strong fields might also create
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Hawking radiation and be visible to outsiders, if not lethal
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to the crew. 'Worm holes,' which might be what Lazar means
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by these distortions, might very well actually be longer and
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slower routes. Lazar needs to think this one through further.
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It is difficult to design a gravitational wave amplifier as
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it would require a source of energy to power a gravitational
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wave generator that could respond to incoming GW's and draw
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on this energy to generate new waves of increased amplitude.
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Perhaps orbiting black holes might contract their orbits in
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response to a passing GW and generate a stronger replica wave
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if the phases were right. If the black holes were electrically
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charged, then perhaps electrical energy could be converted to GW's.
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There are some severe technical constraints, however. Are there
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any engineer/physicists out there who want to try designing a
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GW amplifier?
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**********************************************
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* THE U.F.O. BBS - http://www.ufobbs.com/ufo *
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