A while back I asked some questions about Nuclear Dampers. What about Meson screens? Nuclear Dampers work on the strong force in atomic nuclei. Would a Meson Screen protect a vessel against the blast wave of particles following a nuclear explosion? Would the MEson Screen prevent the hard radiation found on a post-nuclear battlefield from doing harm to a vessel crew on a long-term scouting mission? Could a Meson screen (more correctly a meson shield) be used to protect a city from nuclear radiation in a nuclear war? Assuming, of course the city could avoid a direct hit.
Dampers v. Fields
- Thread starter Horatius
- Start date
Meson screens proterct ships and installations against whatever it is that meson guns shoot. They don't protect against anything else.
And if you know what it is that meson guns do and how they do it, you're one up on the rest of Our Olde Hobby. We've been wrestling with that little conundrum for over 25 years now.
Nuclear dampers, as explained in LLB4:Mercenary and Striker, either prevent nuclear decay, speed it up, or both. That little trick allows them to either prevent nukes from going off (prevent) or let nukes fizzle without going off (speed up).
From this description, it follows that dampers can also be used to clean up radiological contamination by 'goosing' normal decay at higher rates. Of course, the energy released from this accelerated decay; primarily in the form of heat, is another problem.
Have fun,
Bill
And if you know what it is that meson guns do and how they do it, you're one up on the rest of Our Olde Hobby. We've been wrestling with that little conundrum for over 25 years now.
Nuclear dampers, as explained in LLB4:Mercenary and Striker, either prevent nuclear decay, speed it up, or both. That little trick allows them to either prevent nukes from going off (prevent) or let nukes fizzle without going off (speed up).
From this description, it follows that dampers can also be used to clean up radiological contamination by 'goosing' normal decay at higher rates. Of course, the energy released from this accelerated decay; primarily in the form of heat, is another problem.
Have fun,
Bill
I always thought of it the other way. You damp the background radiation to a healthy level and wait for the damped discharge to bring it down to safe levels.
Of course the site will take a LOT longer to reach a safe background level. But in the meantime as long as the dampers don't fail you could live there normally. It becomes just another utility bill to pay (Air, water, heating, power, damping...).
Conversely you could just ground a large ship with a good damper to strip salvageables and lift refugees from the nuked area.
Veltyen,
That's a nice twist on it and equally plausible to my idea of 'goosing' things along. Requiring permament damping installations to keep things habitable is a nifty adventure seed too...
"Bad guys have seized control of the regional damping center and are holding it for ransom. We need your help!"
I always figured the thermal effects of speeding up decay rates wouldn't make much difference to the area in question. After all, it's been nuked already!
Have fun,
Bill
If you can speed up decay rates with a nuke damper then you have a weapon that makes mesons look wimpy. Think about it, escalate decay to a high enough rate then everything effectively becomes fissable. As a beam weapon or an alternative missile warhead that is truly fearsome.
Hence why I assumed that you would use them the other way around.
Hence why I assumed that you would use them the other way around.
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
Actually veltyen that sounds a lot like a "Meson" gun to me
A beam that ignores armor (or rather the way I look at it, uses the armor/hull to in some way focus/effect the beam) and causes a huge internal explosion with lots of radiation.
A beam that ignores armor (or rather the way I look at it, uses the armor/hull to in some way focus/effect the beam) and causes a huge internal explosion with lots of radiation.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
There's a reason why it says in Mercenary that nuclear dampers lead to disintegrator weapons... 
Anything that can modify decay is scary. As a probabilistic quantum event it shouldn't be subject to cause and effect.
The only way I know to currently modify decay is to accelerate the object to near C, and rely on relativistic time dilation to slow temporal space according to the decaying object.
Hmm. Doing a little google research on this shows another way to increase decay rates artificially. Some types of decay increase under pressure (by a statistically insignificant but measurable amount - about 0.2%).
*smacks self* Too much physics. Return to space opera mode. Ahhh. That's better.
The only way I know to currently modify decay is to accelerate the object to near C, and rely on relativistic time dilation to slow temporal space according to the decaying object.
Hmm. Doing a little google research on this shows another way to increase decay rates artificially. Some types of decay increase under pressure (by a statistically insignificant but measurable amount - about 0.2%).
*smacks self* Too much physics. Return to space opera mode. Ahhh. That's better.
PHYSICS ALERT!!!
So we agree that a Nuclear Damper tewaks strong nuclear forces in the nucleus of the atom. (That was discussed at length in the post on Nuclear Dampers. q.v.)
So a Meson screen interferes or blocks Pi-Neutral Mesons (Pions), according to cannon and The Traveller Adventure (the old Red Book Adventure).
So we're blocking a meson of a particular energy and radioactive decay rate. Fine. I can live with this.
I've checked at Wikipedia. I've read all the associated links. I'm only slightly more confused as to what a meson is than when I started. Mesons were originally predicted to be the particles that held nuclei together? (That would make them gluons, wouldn't it?) Mesons are made up of an even numbered pair of quarks; don't quarks come in 3's? And whats a virtual particle have to do with this?
Back to Pions, if they're the lightest of the meson particles, wouldn't they be the most difficult to control?
Since a Pion has a half-life of 2.6 × 10−8 seconds, and a meson gun works by taking a particle that has little or no interaction with conventional matter and getting it to decay inside the target, thereby exposing the squishy bits (humans et al.) inside the target to be exposed to the radioactive decay of the meson; this makes a Meson Gun little more than a military-grade particle accelerator.
So taking the fact that a Meson Screen blocks mesons from decaying inside their target, I can only see one way to get this to work:
1. A meson screen interferes with the relativistic time that the meson exists. Or
2. A meson screen produces some field that causes the meson to immediately decay. (See option 1.) OR
3. A meson Screen generates a field that is composed of a material that the meson (or Neutrino) interacts with.
Thoughts on any of this?
So we agree that a Nuclear Damper tewaks strong nuclear forces in the nucleus of the atom. (That was discussed at length in the post on Nuclear Dampers. q.v.)
So a Meson screen interferes or blocks Pi-Neutral Mesons (Pions), according to cannon and The Traveller Adventure (the old Red Book Adventure).
So we're blocking a meson of a particular energy and radioactive decay rate. Fine. I can live with this.
I've checked at Wikipedia. I've read all the associated links. I'm only slightly more confused as to what a meson is than when I started. Mesons were originally predicted to be the particles that held nuclei together? (That would make them gluons, wouldn't it?) Mesons are made up of an even numbered pair of quarks; don't quarks come in 3's? And whats a virtual particle have to do with this?
Back to Pions, if they're the lightest of the meson particles, wouldn't they be the most difficult to control?
Since a Pion has a half-life of 2.6 × 10−8 seconds, and a meson gun works by taking a particle that has little or no interaction with conventional matter and getting it to decay inside the target, thereby exposing the squishy bits (humans et al.) inside the target to be exposed to the radioactive decay of the meson; this makes a Meson Gun little more than a military-grade particle accelerator.
So taking the fact that a Meson Screen blocks mesons from decaying inside their target, I can only see one way to get this to work:
1. A meson screen interferes with the relativistic time that the meson exists. Or
2. A meson screen produces some field that causes the meson to immediately decay. (See option 1.) OR
3. A meson Screen generates a field that is composed of a material that the meson (or Neutrino) interacts with.
Thoughts on any of this?
Fritz_Brown
Super Moderator
Horatius, I think canon (CT) mentions the first option as the basic explanation for a Meson Screen. It throws off the timing for the decay, so it won't happen where targeted.
Ooops, one more thing I forgot to mention...
Unlike a screen (meson or other), dampers are aimed somehow. Descriptions from CT onwards mention 'focussing' the damper's effect on in-coming warheads.
Just how quickly you can 'focus' on a warhead, just how accurate you need the 'focus' to be, and just how rapidly the damper can 'do the voodoo that it do' before you can shift the 'focus' elsewhere are anyone's guess, but a quick look at the tables in LBB:5 High Guard is informative.
- You penetrate or 'beat' a nuke damper by using a higher missile battery factor; i.e. throwing more missiles at it in each salvo thus making it harder to target, focus on, and defang each warhead in time.
- You penetrate or 'beat' a meson screen by by using a higher meson gun factor; i.e. a beam with more EPs in it.
So, while you can 'swamp' nuke dampers with multiple hits, you need to 'burn through' meson screens with each and every hit.
Have fun,
Bill
Unlike a screen (meson or other), dampers are aimed somehow. Descriptions from CT onwards mention 'focussing' the damper's effect on in-coming warheads.
Just how quickly you can 'focus' on a warhead, just how accurate you need the 'focus' to be, and just how rapidly the damper can 'do the voodoo that it do' before you can shift the 'focus' elsewhere are anyone's guess, but a quick look at the tables in LBB:5 High Guard is informative.
- You penetrate or 'beat' a nuke damper by using a higher missile battery factor; i.e. throwing more missiles at it in each salvo thus making it harder to target, focus on, and defang each warhead in time.
- You penetrate or 'beat' a meson screen by by using a higher meson gun factor; i.e. a beam with more EPs in it.
So, while you can 'swamp' nuke dampers with multiple hits, you need to 'burn through' meson screens with each and every hit.
Have fun,
Bill
Assuming dampers could soak up radiation.
Wouldn't it make sense to have a small damper aimed at your own power plant in case of an accident? An accident occurs, the reactor I shut down and damper springs into action, then what?
All of that absorbed radiation would need to go somewhere. It looks like the energy would need to be converted into something else (not sure what) or simply captured as a bunch of neutrons and the like. Hmmm . . . barrels of thick n' creamy radiation sitting around would be kind of dangerous.
Then again what I know about physics could fit on a very modestly sized sticky note.
Rossoneill
SOC-12
T20 has nuclear dampers as a screen not as a focused device .
But before t20 they were focused on the nuclear missile .
But before t20 they were focused on the nuclear missile .
They don't.
They work by controlling the reactions that produce radiation. They either slow down/suspend those reactions or speed them up to a point just below what is dangerous.
In the slowdown mode, the reactions within a nuclear warhead are prevented so no 'boom' occurs. In other words, the warhead becomes inert.
In the speed up mode, the reactions are 'goosed' but still held below the level at which the 'boom' can occur. In other words, the warhead 'fizzes' away.
Have fun,
Bill
