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Science and Technology
Technology: Monopole Magnets
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Alpha Centauri Forums
Science and Technology
Technology: Monopole Magnets
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| Author | Topic: Technology: Monopole Magnets |
| The Thomas A Stobie |
posted 12-25-98 07:51 PM ET  
This technology requires Superstring Theory and Silkskin Alloys. It is required for Unified Field Theory and Nanominaturization. It permits formers to build mag-tubes (which function like Civ 2 railroads). The help file says: ****** |
| Shotgun |
posted 12-25-98 08:17 PM ET
Well, It's a bit hard for me to imagine a monopole magnet, but considering that it can be used for mag-tubes, which, lets say propell some sort of mag-car or train, it can probably be sucessfully used in propulsion technology altogether. The possibilities are many, and the first thing that comes into my mind is some sort of Railgun weapon. Everyone knows the basics of a railgun, yet we can't produce one today. Well, with monopole magnets, magnetic propulsion should come easy, thus making railguns, magtrains and such very possible indeed. |
| Thue |
posted 12-25-98 08:39 PM ET
I read in an article that some researcers consider Monopole Magnets possible (read:they won't say it isn't possible) unfurtunently I can't remember any details. The science fiction writer Larry Niven (the guy who write Ringworld) use them as an important part of the story in one of his books (I can't remember what made them usefull, I'll see if I can find the book) |
| Wraith |
posted 12-25-98 09:08 PM ET
Hail, Actually, Shotgun, railguns are possible today. Rather a lot of them have been built, and if you really cared, you could go put one together yourself (powering it would be a chore, but you could build one). There's been quite a bit of research into this area, and there are military prototypes (ie. 300 shots per minute, although only for 12 shots, at a ridiculous power consumption), not to mention amateur enthusiast built. Silkskin alloy? I'm not positive these are the right books, but has anyone read the Hyperion series? I read it long (long) ago, and seem to remember something about silkskin combat suits. Incredibly thin and strong, with some really odd properties. Wraith |
| The Thomas A Stobie |
posted 12-25-98 11:09 PM ET
Current railguns and magnetic trains use bi-polar magnetics that change polarity as the load moves on the track. |
| Yoru |
posted 12-25-98 11:41 PM ET
Hmm.. The greatest benefit I'd see from monopole magnetics would be the elimination of the energy required to switch poles for maglev propulsion.. As it stands, dipole maglevs have to shift their magnets' magnetic poles in order to remain both propelled and hovering. Monopolic magnets wouldn't have to shift, since one pole could be built into the "propellee" (thing to be propelled) and the other into the shaft/chassis of whatever it's being propelled along (gunbarrel, mag tube). Since this would effectively negate all friction save for that by air, much smaller forces would be needed to produce acceleration. This means that applying the same force to something floating around via magnetics creates a much larger acceleration... As for applications... I'm at a loss to see how it would help, except for producing a neo-frictionless surface. Unless you could somehow switch the monopole on and off, meaning insert your slug into a negative-charged barrel, then "activate" it so it suddenly becomes positively charged.. The silksteel alloy would likely help to prevent the tube or barrel from bursting, so the projectile would be flung forward at a high speed with near-negligible power required to do so.. Hrm.. |
| Telastyn |
posted 12-26-98 12:39 AM ET
actually most current railguns are simply electrified rails with a slice of metal (the "bullet") to complete the circut. the electic current creates a magetic field which causes the slice of metal to accelerate down the rails. technically speaking: there are 3 basic fields, gravity,electric field, and magnetic field. a gravity field is always pointed towards a point of mass an electric field directly away or towards(depending on the +- of charge) a charged particle. a magnetic field rotates around a flow of charge particles. The unified field theorem is the one explination of these three phoenomena. A monopolar magnet is mathematically proven to exist, but we haven't found any. |
| Shotgun |
posted 12-27-98 08:09 PM ET
Yeah, Railguns maybe are possible today, but most probably the technology for creating one is very crude and bulky, to say the least. But, if a monopole magnet could be used in a railgun, I'm sure the "output" would be very much higher then it is in todays railguns, that do or do not exist in some secret us lab military lab  |
| Zorloc |
posted 12-28-98 11:54 AM ET
Telastyn - an electric field and mag field are really the same thing... The four primary forces: The weak force and EM have been combined into the Electro-Weak Force. Leaving us three forces that cannot as of yet be explained as a single expression. |
| SnowFire |
posted 12-28-98 12:53 PM ET
Actuallly, they've pretty well combined the Strong nuclear force, Weak nuclear force, and electromagnetic force into one, sort of. But gravity is the tricky one to integrate. One problem with railguns is that if you want a really fast projectile, you have to have a pretty long barrel. Don't expect rail-handguns any time soon. |
| Jazzman |
posted 12-30-98 01:53 PM ET
X military man here. Rumor has it that the navy already has rail tech on some of the battleships. These are really big guns and as of yet there is no way to reduce their size to a man sized weapon yet. |
| Ares |
posted 01-15-99 10:35 AM ET
I haven't heard that the have found any monopole magnets yet. But according to the Theory of relativity, monopole magnets HAVE to exist. But I don't think they have found anyone yet. |
| sbj |
posted 01-15-99 09:12 PM ET
Ares: What part of relativity requires monopole magnets to exist? |
| Milamber |
posted 02-09-99 01:42 PM ET
Yes i would like to know that as well Ares. Also what would the field diagram look like on a monopole magnet. |
| Angelique |
posted 02-10-99 03:53 AM ET
Anyone out there really interested in this should consider looking at "Classical Electrodynamics" by Jackson, it's sort of the holy book on classical ED, has a section on magnetic monopoles (i like the one on plasma more myself). The (mathematical) way of getting a monoplole is to take a simple electomagnet (toroidal shape coil) and start stretching it out (keeping one end at the origin for example and taking the other end along the x axis to infinity) and making it thinner also. At firs the magnetic field lines coming out of the end at the origin will "flock" to the direction of the receeding end but as the distance grows to infinity the fieldlines even out and you are left with a magnetic field resembling a monopole (you can see this if you expand the mag. field into its multipole expansion and increase the distance between poles; everything except the monopole term goes to zero). Now to finish the job you have to integrate out the infinately thin line of the electromagnet and viola you have the fiedl equation for a magnetic monopole. The theory of gravity by einstein does not require magnetic monopoles to exist. Some string theories predict their existance, however, mostly they predict too many of them to conform with experimental lower limits (see http://pdg.lbl.gov). Whether mag. monopoles will make it easier to do build railguns and such is questionable in the least. With a bit of imagination you can achieve almost all the effects you need with dipole fields. Of course monopoles would (assuming you had some sort of substance/particles, "monopolium", which you could charge with magnetism) save energy as one wouldn't need a constant current to keep the field up. On the other hand one would still have to move these charges around to get an accelerating magnetic field so for that purpose one is still better off with superconducting dipoles. |
| mr Geko |
posted 02-10-99 04:58 PM ET
I read somewhere that the rail gun already exists although in a testing stage obviously. They have a bunch of prototypes out, but the problem with it is that as the bullet is proppeled forward it gains such a high velocity that the bullet is vaporized as it exists the nozzle, creating a kind of plasma shield around the nozzle, this would make it rather difficult to hit someone with! So perhaps the rail run is too good\powerful\fast.BTW I don't have any solid prove for this but I have reason to believe it is true. Anybody else read about this?? mr. Geko |
| Vger |
posted 02-10-99 05:18 PM ET
Hi, About 9 years ago I saw a projectile for a railgun in developement for the army. It was translucent plastic with a metal basecap and about the size and shape of the plastic Tang containers only with a concave base. When fired the projectile becomes a plasma and zaps the heck out of whatever it hits. Or so I was told.
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| Wraith |
posted 02-10-99 06:08 PM ET
Hail, There are a number of railgun project and prototypes around these days. The info about the projectile becoming a plasma seems rather doubtful, however. Check out for a lot of railgun info. Wraith |
| maestro |
posted 03-18-99 04:31 PM ET
I met a student here at Georgia Tech who claimed to have built a low power railgun during high school for a science project. It never worked and the reason he gave (which I think makes sense) is that he could never get the relays to switch the electromagnets fast enough. Also he couldn't match the timing precisely to where the projectile was in the tube at that moment. The theory that he used (if I remember correctly) is linearly pulsing electromagnets. The projectile starts at one end and a ring magnet immediately in front of it pulls it further down the barrel. Do this often enough and fast enough and you have a primitive railgun. |
| MadMordigan |
posted 03-21-99 04:10 AM ET
You know what gets me...in CIV 2 you could move from one end of the continent to the other in 5 years on steam technology... Yet on alpha centauri we need some hand waving (ie monopole magnets) to achieve the same effect. Perhaps the Unity crew never learned the Brute Force and Ignorance theory of mechanichal design? |
| StargazerBC |
posted 03-21-99 02:58 PM ET
It's kinda cool when you can go into a Game catageory and find a discussion about GUT and string theory ::grins:: God forbid It's a Sunday and I'm about to think. String Theory (Yang Mills, well I think the one with 26 and/or 10 dimensions) suggests that at 10^-33 (beginning of universe/"big bang") there were a lot of monopoles. Also, the amount of fermions are equal to bosons (energy particles equal to the amount of mass particles). Anyway, that's why I thought it made sense that Monopole tech came before Unified Theory. It would be cool to have a mass weapon with no range dissipation (at least a farther than avg.). Now, why weren't there Universe creating Technology after Unified theory? hmmm |
| araanor |
posted 03-22-99 08:44 AM ET
I recently read about a new theory about something they call "supermembranes"... It's supposed to be a sort of flat particle (well not really a particle) which is rolled into a string and is then called a superstring. The dimension of space is along the x-line and the dimension of time is along the y-line. Rolled inside the supermembrane are 9 other dimensions contained. These nine other dimensions are supposedly very hard to comprehend due to the nature of them. Hope I have confused someone else 'cept me |
| Ascendent |
posted 03-23-99 05:30 AM ET
Another possible application of Monopole magnets would be in motors, or any kind of device that requires rotation. Cheers, Rob |
| DanS |
posted 03-23-99 01:31 PM ET
Test failed. Bringing this post to the top. |
| googlie |
posted 06-20-99 11:46 PM ET
Bringing this to the top to see if we can open it |
| M_ashwell |
posted 06-23-99 10:22 AM ET
please correct me if im wrong but they have rail guns fitted to elete lynz helicopters as they have no recoil they use urainium as the " bullet " as it has a large RMM |
| Edward the fish |
posted 06-23-99 11:37 AM ET
i atemted to make a rale gun stile asembly for my year 12 fisics and sucseded to a point. i created a prototip using coiles of wier (~1000 terns of .2mm coper each) arond a peas of pvc pipe. the projectile was a simaler elecro magnet (diferant shape ofcors) the problem was that it only prodused a fors of 5 nutons at 1 amp and my tests found that at over 1 amp for over 1 second i wod birn out my wier. (very crued i know) the thery for this is you hava magnet that is puled by another magnet and one need to stop when thay line up otherwise thay will be puled back together. a monopole magnet wold mor than duble the atractiv force but you need a way to tern it of after the projectile is pased. asid from all that ther is the factthat magnets dont haf poles at all if you folow the lines of force back into the body of the magnet ther is no point from wich thay origonate. Edward |
| MichaeltheGreat |
posted 06-25-99 12:47 AM ET
M_ ashwell - what do you mean by "elete lynz helicopters?" The Apache and SuperCobra use chain guns, firing conventional (i.e. powder combustion) rounds, with a depleted Uranium shell. Uranium is used for its hardness, thus it's ability to penetrate armor without breaking up. The gun recoil is handle conventionally, with gas venting and a form of shock absorber. Weight and center of gravity are far more important design considerations in helos than the gun recoil would be. |
| M_ashwell |
posted 06-28-99 02:02 PM ET
mabye my friend was lying to me? ahh well neway hand-held railguns would be perfect "recoil less" guns i'm not sure about the recoil rate tho? |
| Shadwhawk |
posted 06-30-99 04:07 PM ET
Except...railguns are not recoil-less. 'For every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction.' It applies to both chemical and magnetic propellant. Projectile goes out the barrel at a high velocity. There -must- be a reaction on the gun. Put to magnets together. Flip 'em so that they're pushing against each other. You feel a force on your hand, pushing backwards, while you push the other one across the table or whatnot. The same would happen with a railgun. You use a railgun to fire a slug at mach 3, and there -will- be a reaction on the gun, depending on the mass of the projectile and the mass of the gun. You can use all sorts of fancy stuff to try to counter-act the recoil, but there -will- be recoil. Just a little rant. The Railgun rifles in the movie Eraser were said to fire at either a quarter or half the speed of light. At -those- velocities, the gunners would have been flung backward at several hundred gravities, if they could somehow hold onto the gun. And, Edward, please tell me english isn't your first language. Shadowhawk |
| googlie |
posted 07-09-99 01:50 PM ET
Bumping Note to readers - after the great forum crash in march, only a handful survived - this is one. if we want a technology section, we have to make do with htese few (the multipost ones) and ignore the titles googlie |
| Zoetrope |
posted 07-12-99 05:59 AM ET
As Shadwhawk said, the recoil depends on the mass and velocity of what you're firing. To be precise, the force of recoil is the rate of change of the momentum of the projectiles being fired - momentum being mass times velocity (for each projectile). We regularly use lightspeed railguns. These are called flashlights. A laser that had a light output comparable in energy to the projectiles of a military grade railgun would be a destructive weapon indeed. It would be pouring out Hydrogen bomb levels of energy continuously. Come to think of it, that _is_ what the sun does (magnified about a thousand million times), so the weapon would, in metric language, be a "nanosun" device. I wouldn't turn it on at sea level, or stand any closer to it than the moon. |
| M_ashwell |
posted 07-13-99 06:47 AM ET
wow we have some smart people in here lets start up the UoE and atempt to trancend ok enough of the jokes (not that they were funny) how is this for an idea take 1 industrial sized rail gun add one Gw lazer ok here goes fire the slug (choce of metal is yours) as it leaves the barrel super heat the slug until it turns to plasma (is this called plasmaizing?) the momentum will carry the plasma forward until it hits a target any theorys on how this would/wouldn't work pls c u later M E Ashwell |
| Shadwhawk |
posted 07-13-99 12:09 PM ET
It'd be a better idea to just fire at the target with the GW laser. I'm not quite sure how you'd turn the slug into plasma without just evaporating the thing first. Then there's the whole atmosphere thing to deal with. The super-heating of the air next to the slug would rapidly expand the air, and it'd throw the slug way off target (a couple people are experimenting with this exact process by using laser-exploded air to propel a rapidly spinning top-like object a few dozen feet straight up). Even if you could get around that, there's the problem of keeping the slug in a plasma state. It won't just -stay- like that; it'll shed energy very fast, and return to a vapor cloud or whatnot. Then, there's the problem that the plasma slug wouldn't stay together. Remember, atoms in an object move faster as you apply energy to them. It'd fly apart into vapor before the laser could transfer enough energy to turn it into plasma. Even if you could somehow get past that problem, there's the whole conservation of energy thing. When you change something's energy state, there's a net loss. A plasma railgun slug would deliver less energy to the target than a normal railgun slug along with a gigawatt laser. Zoetrope, I assume you mean that for a laser to have the -kinetic- force of a railgun, it'd be sun-scale in terms of power output. Certainly true, but a laser doesn't need kinetic energy to damage a target...flash-vaporizing whatever it touches is plenty, and you can do that with many orders of magnitude less power. Shadowhawk |
| M_ashwell |
posted 07-13-99 02:29 PM ET
ok anyone played syndicate wars if you launched large urainium rods from orbit as they re-entered they would melt and when they hit they would burn through most things. also use my Gw lazer to melt the rod (i WILL make on orbital plasma cannon!) and prehaps plasmairising (is this actually a word?)it please shoot this theory down with any thing you can think of! M E Ashwell |
| Shadwhawk |
posted 07-13-99 05:12 PM ET
Ahh...the Satellite Rain. Great weapon, if you don't die using it. I find the Plasma Lance to be a better weapon, though.This type of weapon has been proposed, being called Thor (at least, I think it was....I'm just going off of Niven's Lucifer's Hammer book here), but was dismissed along with most of the star wars weaponry. You take a 3-6' steel (titanium, whatever) rod, stick some sturdy fins on for guidance, stick a tough optical sensor on the nose, and drop it from orbit (with a bit of a boost). Comes down with the force of a small meteorite. -Excellent- tank killer, good runway killer, good hardend defense killer. Not to mention a nice way to really screw up infantry. Just one of these things would probably ruin an aircraft carrier, and sink smaller ships outright. -drool- Again, you couldn't make this thing plasma. It'd basically 'shatter' when it hit the atmosphere. The things would probably develop a coating of plasma on their descent, but that would depend on their speed, profile to the atmosphere, and what they're made out of. Shadowhawk |
| M_ashwell |
posted 07-14-99 08:06 AM ET
shadowhawk, are we the only ones posting in here it seems to my posting weapon theorys and you knocking them down!!! |
| Rakeesh |
posted 07-14-99 09:48 AM ET
Speaking of droolish weapons. If anybody has played C&C: Tiberian Dawn they had a pretty kick ass weapon in that. The 'Ion Cannon'. That thing rocked! It killed most of the annoying buildings (base defenses, sam sites) in one hit. I think they need orbital weapons platforms in SMAC. Those would be so ::drool:: cool. You know, pick an area for it to be all geo-synched with (or whatever they call it) and launch it. It'd probably be like those artillery shots, except it hits 99.9% of the time (clouds and weather would probably mess with it a little) and has a bigger attack radius. Another nice feature would be destroying bases with it. (New atrocity! YAY!) It could be one of those drop.. things you guys were talking about, or an ion cannon, or a planet buster dropper (::drool: . You know like the other things in SMAC you could pick what weapon/reactor/armour (for defense from those defense sats.) it had. They should probably fall after a while to make it fair though. BTW what the heck is a 'Nexus Manifold'?! Those words don't even make sense together. |
| mindwormh8er |
posted 07-14-99 03:51 PM ET
How do you make magtubes?! I have the technology! |
| Rakeesh |
posted 07-14-99 08:39 PM ET
You just hit the 'r' button again when giving terraforming commands. To build those distance tubes (thats what I call them) hold down CTRL and T to get the mag tube cursor. Then click on the spot you want the tube to go to. |
| M_ashwell |
posted 07-15-99 05:50 AM ET
no one answered my question is plasmaising a word? |
| Exile |
posted 07-16-99 10:25 AM ET
My take on the uses of monopols: Use them to create the levitation systems for ANYTHING. No wheels or water tention (is that right?) to slow them down means less energy required to move them, thus less fuel comsumtion...Plus you could just coast once you got fast enough. (think of the Landships from Heavy Gear) Sattelite launcher. I saw a TV show about a test conducted about using a BIG gun to lauch sattelites into orbit cheaper then using a manned spacecraft. Well, using the rail gun theory, a bullet holding the sattelite within it could be launched into Earth orbit. well, those are my two thoughts on how they can be used. I believe the sniper rifle in Syndicate is a rail gun, something about how it accelerates the bullet to Mach 3, recoil would be hell but I'm sure a cyborg could handle that. -Violence is not the answer. Violence is the question. Yes is the answer Exile |
| sandals |
posted 07-16-99 11:35 AM ET
Orbital mechanics will tell you that a satellite launcher using a gun isn't such a great idea. If you fire this thing from the ground with orbital velocity, its orbital perigee wil be below the Earth's surface - it will return to the ground. You could avoid this by having a kick stage in the projectile, but that propulsion ssytem has to stand up to the high accelerations. |
| M_ashwell |
posted 07-17-99 03:57 AM ET
i see the point if you can create a feild in the reverse direction of the planets magnetic feild then the thing will float they have been making things fly like that for a while they can make a frog fly by placing it in a strong magnetic feild ( that was a scary sight !) but the magnetic forces of a planet are nothing compared to its gravitational feild so it wouldn't work (sorry) any way i like the idea of a using a rail gun to launch satilites. prehaps if the secondary propultion systems can be suspended in a fluid (always good for shock absorbance) see you all later M E Ashwell |
| M_ashwell |
posted 07-20-99 06:12 AM ET
this thread will not dissapear ok! |
| M_ashwell |
posted 07-24-99 08:00 PM ET
ping |
| SirPenguin |
posted 07-26-99 03:48 PM ET
Ave Look for books by Michio Kaku. He is some sort of physicist who writes for the regular human being. The ones I read were rather good, and some of the material sunk in. His books include: Visions : How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century, Hyperspace : A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps and the Tenth Dimension, and Introduction to Superstrings and M-Theory (Graduate Texts in Contemporary Physics). I've only read the first two, but I enjoyed them. Also, I heard on the CBC last Saturday (July 24) that magnets have something on their surface which directs the magnetic fields around them. Could we make monopole magnets by manipulating these little bits in one direction (perhaps up)? I assume that somebody has thought of this before, and since it obviously doesn't work, why? |
| Xerxes314 |
posted 07-27-99 09:40 PM ET
Well, the effect that you're talking about is superconductivity. Since a current loop generates a magnetic field and a superconductor can generate current essentially for free, it's impossible (well, nearly impossible) to make a magnetic field go through a superconductor. Instead, it generates enough of its own field to cancel out the other field. This makes for cool effects like those floating magnets you see on the cover of Science. It doesn't really have anything to do with Magnetic Monopoles, though. Monopoles are an exotic fundamental particle (like an electron), which would have to be left over from the Big Bang. They would be insanely massive (maybe as massive as a whole cell). Of course, nobody has ever seen any such thing, but they're predicted by certain GUT contenders. |
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