It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: playswithmachines
It always makes me laugh to hear that claim. We're 50 years behind, which is why so much of the military is using equipment older than the people crewing it. Instead of slowly leaking things, and giving themselves better and better equipment they just keep using the same old equipment until it falls apart.
Ten to fifteen years, maybe. Fifty, no way. And holding it back in event of a war doesn't make sense either. It would take months under full scale, not building anything else to get the first batch of gear off the line.
originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: Hermit777
That doesn't mean it has anything to do with the element 115 Lazar claimed. Of course there was going to be a 115, since the Table is in numeric order.
originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: Hermit777
He described an element 115. That doesn't make it the same one that was later discovered. When they come out and release details that match his description then you can say he was right. Until then, he picked a number that wasn't on the periodic table at the time, and gave it amazing properties.
originally posted by: Cauliflower
a reply to: Zaphod58
Probably still non disclosure for folks in the service, heard they might try selling the public a SI7N3 platform?
We will be moving to windows 10 with Optane for personal computers soon.
"The power source is a reactor. Inside the reactor, element 115 is bombarded with a proton, which plugs into the nucleus of the 115 atom and becomes element 116, which immediately decays and releases or radiates small amounts of anti-matter. The anti-matter is released in a vacuum into a tuned tube, which keeps it from reacting with the matter that surrounds it. It is then directed toward the gaseous matter target at the end of the tube. The matter, which in this case is the gas, and the anti-matter, collide and annihilate totally converting to energy. The heat from this reaction is converted into electrical energy in a near one hundred percent efficient thermoelectric generator. "
Lots of impressive sounding stuff about reactors and bombarding with protons and all that. But read it again. Antimatter and matter are converted into energy. Fine. But where does the antimatter come from? From element 115 when it is "bombarded with a proton" by the ship's reactor. Hmmm. And just exactly HOW MUCH energy would your reactor have to put into each proton to have it create an antiproton?? Well, exactly the mass energy of an antiproton! And how much energy do you get back out when the antiproton annihilates? EXACTLY THE SAME AMOUNT OF ENERGY THAT YOU PUT INTO CREATING IT!!
(Actually, you can't just make an antiproton by itself, you have to make a proton/anti-proton pair. So your reactor needs to put in 2 "protons-worth" of mass-energy into each proton in the beam.)
If you have to MAKE your own antimatter on board, your system produces NO NET ENERGY AT ALL!! You put 2 protons worth of energy in, and you get 2 protons worth of energy out! In fact, the BEST this system could do would be to make ZERO energy, but in fact, it would more likely USE far more energy than it would make.
Conservation of energy rears it's ugly head, and once again - it looks like Bob's saucer is going nowhere fast!
originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: Hermit777
Except they really don't. He claimed that you couldn't create 115 in a lab, it had to occur naturally, it had a melting point of something like 2000K, and it created an antimatter effect to propel the ship.
They created 115 in a lab, so that's right out, the melting point is 670K, so he's wrong about that, and the antimatter effect is wrong as well. They were predicting Element 115 back in the 1960s, with predictions going up into the 120s on the table. The current half life of Element 115 is 200 miliseconds.
Then you get into the problems with Lazar's background claims that could never be verified.