I planned the whole time to use a clip from Dune of the Holtzmans shields. 100% the best visual of an energy shield - other than I guess being able to make a real one...
So wasn't there some development on a skin for the vehicle that produces its own electricity from the movement of the craft? I could be mixed up here. But either way, I'm confident that the same technology will open the door to partial capture for electrical generation.
-What were you working on in NASA, dad? _A CREW-HAT. But they rejected the design.._ -How hard can it be to design a new "NASA" cap.. Why did they reject it? _It turned out too big and heavy.._ -How heavy? _25'000Kg, but still a huge improvement.._
I think there may be an active shielding application for reentry vehicles. Watching starship form a plasma sheath made me think we could try deflecting the plasma as a way to heat shield the vehicle. May also apply to hypersonic aviation
I like the way you think. That is novel. Hi IQ style. But... As it happens, the only reason there is a plasma around any reentry vehicle is because the speed of the vehicle versus the air. The leading surface hits the air molecules so fast it heats them to the point of kicking loose their electrons, making said plasma. 1mm before striking them, they are not ionized, so no magnet or electric field can move them out of the way. But it gets worse. The air is actively being used as a brake. If it was possible to move the air out of the way, the ship would have no braking, and would "land" on the surface at 17,000 mph. We prefer 0 mph as a better landing speed. 😂
@@FelonyVideos not debating the cause of the plasma…. But plasma is generally conducive regardless of how it is produced. A pulsed field should be able to be produced that would not only reduce the heat on the tiles- but actually increase the resistance by pushing the plasma out. The heat would of course be absorbed by the generator creating the field…. So no free lunch- but maybe an optimization exercise.
@@FelonyVideos I was thinking the air would initially go through the magnetic field, hit the vehicle and start ionizing, once the plasma layer develops the magnetic field would create a cushion between the plasma and vehicle. At those speeds I don't think the magnetic field would be able to delfect anything just force the plasma off the vehicle slightly, creating an insulating layer. This would likely create a large pressure differential so it would be interesting to simulate the overall effects to the vehicles aerodynamics
At 4:21 you said 99.99 times the speed of light instead of 99.99 percent the speed of light and I was like hold up 😂 The graphic has the % though so it's ok
@@Garrett0329 I don't imagine he interpreted it as 'calling out' so much as some good natured teasing from someone who clearly enjoyed his content. I have another account where I publish educational content on computational EM. I wouldn't be bothered at all by a comment like the one I made
You know I've been working on my first science fiction novel for well over three years now, and its yt channels like this that genuinely help me ground some of my absurdly fictional concepts in at least pseudo plausible science.
The best sci-fi's (imo) are the ones which have relevance to reality, so I'm pleased to hear this. Lots of absurd concepts are edging closer to reality anyway. warp drive has become alcubierre drive, and this video shows promises on shielding. If we get the energy production of fusion, we're good to go.
@@Nidvard I'm sure every SF writer has their own opinion on this, but for me anyway, SF Is the best vehicle for Demonstrating very human and down to Earth realities with regards to our failings, but in a way that we are far Less likely to be offended by, because of the fantastical setting. With a strong focus on the human condition, we can also explore what that might mean for our future assuming our mastery of science and technology continues to grow. The actual science behind the fiction is not personally the most important thing to me, but I have a deep respect for the scientific method, and feel I must make the best effort I possibly can to try and honor that.
One of my favorite types of shields is a gravity shield. Fucking around with space time in front of your ship so projectiles curve away from your ship. The drawbacks are you need to predict where your enemy is going to shoot. You can’t throw it on reactively as by the time you see a relativistic projectile or laser it’s already too late. You also run the risk of curving an otherwise glancing blow into a bullseye. Battles turn into a contest of who’s gunners can outwit the opponents shielding.
@@bendybruce a variation of this was a gravity hammer. Why not turn the bending of space time in your shields into a weapon? Turn the gravity up to 11 within the enemy ship. You can add distance limitations to make this a short range use only thing. These are all variations on how to use the classic gravity generator tech in different unique ways.
I'm sure it's covered in more detail in the actual paper, but it feels like th shadow would be offset by the increased brightness when the protons are deflected into the unshaded areas; a shadow doesn't provide 'shade' if most of the light is still reaching the surface. This feals more like it creates caustics, like light ripples on the bottom of a pool. Sure, the dark areas are darker but the light areas are brighter leading to the same overall radiation exposure. I'd be happy to be wrong.
I highly doubt particles moving that fast are going to get deflected and keep moving in the same general direction unless they hit the very edge. Shining light on a mirror shines the light back at you, not on the wall next to the mirror.
@@bobbygetsbanned6049 Deflection and reflection are different, though. Deflection just needs to push the particles to the side a bit so they can continue on their way. I had the same concern about caustics but didn't think to call it that. If those electrodes are just nudging the particles to areas between the shadows, then it's no improvement. If the astronauts sit in the same place frequently, it would focus the radiation on smaller areas of their bodies, increasing the risk of cancer. But like the OP, I'd be happy to be wrong.
If you're merely deflecting the particles, then aren't you just concentrating them into the non-shielded parts of the pattern? I suppose if you stacked enough layers of this matrix, then the " tortuous path" you created would have equal probability of reflecting or letting through any given particle?
Surely if you deflect through the first layer, the second layer would just deflect back into the spaces protected by the first layer, thus solving nothing. What you actually need to do is deflect the particles into channels that flow around the ship and back into space.
Yep, you can see in the image that it's brighter in between the non-shielded parts. In that case, you'd probably want a cone of circles of points, with the smallest circle/point forward most, so that any particle can be deflected entirely around a habitable area, like how the some of grid particles were deflected to the outside. Alternatively, you could only protect the parts of a ship that needed to be protected from radiation, and let the parts that can handle much more radiation have much more radiation.
Yeah I noticed this too, it’s not sending the particles 180 degrees back the way they came, it’s only throwing them a few degrees off and funnelling them into more concentrated areas between the gaps.
yeah, theyll develope infinitesimal invisibilty to everyone of earth and theyll be able to phase throughout walls with ease. it isnt toggleable though.
Cool beans! i want one to wear around my head to shield from all the waves being shot around. Sometimes I can't even listen to the radio because of all the strong interference.
protons always have a positive charge, that's the definition of the proton. If it had negative charge it would be an electron. For charged ions, they are charged as electrons are stripped away, making them positive charge. So no, no opposite charge.
@@lafeechloe6998 "fair part" means a few subatomic particles which immediately disintegrate and this is completely harmless. This occurs when particles interact with something, usually the atmosphere. With such a shield those particles would be deflected and never have the chance to interact to make antimatter
I think that to test this shield around the earth, there are enough radiation belts, inside which satellites like SUBESAT can be launched, which can then be returned to the ground and their surface examined under an electron microscope for radiation damage.
Was thinking the same thing with the van Allan belt (may have spelt that wrong). However, it's going to be down to having a launch vehicle to get prototypes there and could well be achievable once starship is able to take payloads into orbit and possibly bring them back for testing.
@DrBenMiles as an accelerator physicist, by and large I liked your video. However, I do have a comment about you saying what is achieved by old school particle smashers only being in the MV range, especially when showing what appears to be a synchrotron animation. What you said was true about electrostatic fields ie Van de Graaf accelerators, etc. However cyclotrons and synchrotrons are not limited to the MV range. Otherwise we wouldn't have TeV protons at LHC at CERN. The difference is time dependent fields in microwave cavities, that can get up to TeV energy gains with a closed loop or GeV energy gains in linear systems like SLAC. If you were, however, talking about accelerating gradients, in units of energy per unit distance, MeV/m, for example, you would be roughly correct. Our best microwave accelerators still only have gradients around a few 100MeV /m. Luckily we have plasma acceleration, dielectric accelerators, etc, which push the gradient up to GeV or even TeV per meter. It may be possible, with enough plasma density and energy in a laser pulse or particle beam, to get up to EeV or ZeV / m gradients before the high energy density physics gets so interesting that the plasmas are too unstable to provide that gradient over an appreciable distance. Good luck out there!
You should check out the Boeing patents for the plasma shield. Pretty cool way to tank particles and all kinds of stuff. No details but I think it uses lasers to create a plasma and devices to control the magnetic fields to form the plasma into a shield. Stops bullets and even photons.
I felt like "I" was being bombarded with high energy information in this video, I loved it. The amount of information injected into my brain by Dr Miles was amazing, as was the subject. Wow, what a high energy rush! Love the information available on this channel.
I think it would take more energy to accelerate them to match the spacecraft's velocity than whatever energy could harnessed from their charge. But maybe they could do some work on the way by. (Honestly I don't know. Physics is not my forte, it's just fun to think about.)
Ideally we need to resolve the radiation issue of the cosmos before we dive into the radiation of the cosmos. One main reason why deep space is off limits. Absorption of radiation. Passing through the lowest density of the radiation belt was a mission. Dealing with direct radiation now. Deep space. Anything outside of Earth's Radiative belt.
I was thinking the same thing. An example we have on Earth, the "vaneless ion wind generator". is a wind-based generator where an ionizer makes a charged cloud, and the wind blows particles around. We are already 3D printing weird "magical" antenna for highly directional devices.
@@JB52520 I think you misunderstood. I'm not talking about charge. We want the energy that is described in the video as doing so much damage to the craft on impact. The energy imparted by relative velocity. We don't want to use energy to accelerate them. When air blows into a wind turbine, you don't expend energy to slow it down. You let it hit the blades and cause them to spin to generate energy. So if you can take the energy that would normally destroy the spacecraft, and use it to somehow generate power for the craft, that's what I'm talking about.
A third problem are the collisions with the interstellar medium with a rapidly moving spacecraft. I'm working with the Breakthrough Starshot communications team, looking at how to communicate with laser-driven sailcraft moving at 0.2c. Erosion due to the ISM is a significant problem.
Subbed. Since I was a child, I have believed that we need, artificial gravity, shields, and fusion. I have given up on fusion, but we need dual nuclear generators, one breeder and one normal to share the fuel rods between them. We can do all this now I think, but rotating a space station is an immense undertaking.
There have been many inventors that have been deleted from the world because of those types of inventions/patents. Shadow govs/corpos are to blame for humanity's lack of progress past petro.
@@guillermorobledo2842It doesn’t need shadow gov’s as the out in plain sight governments & organisations have done quite a good job of slowing tech development historically.
Always interesting and I might not get it all but I allways get some of it. Thankyou. The added bonus of the electrostatic method of course if the dipole is unbalanced might be some thrust!
@@hamasmillitant1dude, this technology with do absolutely nothing to a nuclear detonation. This is meant to block stray particles traveling through space, not a small STAR at practically point blank range. Stop being such a doomer and lighten up, this technology is a good think that could help us explore and even make new homes in the future.
@@MadScientist267 This is why I honestly think space colonization will never actually happen. No one wants to sacrifice what they have on earth unless you're a nerd.
@@poetryflynn3712 "That's why I honestly think that new world colonisation will never happen, nobody wants to sacrifice what they have in Europe unless you're a religious extremist".
I love this video. You do a great job at explaining this stuff. Did anyone ever think to create a battery array that would hold needed charge for spacecraft while providing the magnetic shielding at the same time? Can't the battery electrodes be configured to create a geometric array that would provide the magnetic shielding needed? Taking it one step further, why not utilize the Seebeck effect as there are significant differences in temperature on lit and dark sides of the spacecraft, or between the exterior and interior. Wishful thinking on my part perhaps
If you also build a deflector a ways out ahead of the direction of travel, say on a long boom, you don't need to deflect the particles as strongly for the particles to miss the vessel (as long as you don't deflect any particles that would otherwise miss, onto the vessel). That also protects the vessel from any magnetic/electric fields used, though obviously means more assembly/risks of damage and disconnection through the boom.
I wouldn’t be caught dead in a trip to mars without 30-40 meters of water surrounding the living quarters. That’s cool if you want to make a deflection shield in addition. But still need the 30-40 meters of water completely surrounding any space humans occupy on all sides.
I was wondering if the same kind of deflector would deflect electrically-neutral bits of gas and dust? It might be just as important to protect the ship and crew from cosmic rays as to protect both from micrometeoroids and microscopic space debris. Maybe if you embed the electrode array in an insulating aerogel, you can protect from both. Great video, sorry you were sick. Best wishes.
Is this why the electrostatic grid requires much lower voltages than originally calculated: instead of trying to apply an equal electric force to stop the charge particle in its tracks, the grid applies a force at right angles and adds a velocity component at right angles to the initial direction of motion causing the charge particles to miss the central area where the crew is? Edit: Kind of like how judo, rather than blocking the punch, redirects it allowing the blow to keep much its original momentum except it's directed away from the person.
With the correct mix of materials a force field can be produced that is impenetrable by even light . It allows things inside the field to occupy a spectrum of the fabric of space time that is not visible.
8:27 question, isn’t space cold? Like sub -200 C well within the range of superconducting materials. Why can’t they use space itself to cool the superconductor? Sorry if it’s a dumb question. Just curious and looking to learn.
Because space is a vacuum, there are no particles around to conduct heat away from the spacecraft. One of the challenges in space is actually to not overheat because the only way to lose heat is through radiation.
As have been mentioned space is cold but also empty, with constant radiation from the sun, combined with heat-producing components which produces heat, where the only way to dissipate that heat is due to radiation. Imagine how much colder you'd be if you swim in 10c water compared to it being 10c in the air, you cool down a lot faster in the water as it conducts temperature. in space, there is nothing to conduct such temperature. Look at JWST, the reason why it has all those layers of foil is to stop heat radiation from the sun, and when deployed it needed a long time to be able to get the temperatures low enough for it to function, and that was with active cooling systems. And remember this, no sincere questions are ever dumb, it just goes to show you are interested in learning. Dumb people don't want to learn.
@@Nidvard I've often wondered if there is an interesting combined approach here. Using something like a plasma or ion type thruster, whereby the stream of inert propellant is first used as a "refrigerant" to extract heat from a system before the stream is then full accelerated by the main engine.
@@NeilStansbury sure, but then you're left with the issue of cooling the propellant down to those temperatures, and you would also be dependent on accelerating non stop. Idea isn't bad though, it's a similar idea to how most rocket engines are cooled these days
this is a much better video than the average and definitely better than expected despite title aluding to it being goody good good i didnt expect it to be juicy good. Positively surprised here.
The shape of the shielding on the electrostatic model makes me suspect that the particles that would have struck the shielded areas are simply being directed onto the unshielded areas. That's fine if you can shield the entire region occupied by the spacecraft, but layering offset shields won't do the trick. Particles that pass through the unshielded areas of the first layer would get redirected into the unshielded areas of the 2nd layer. The only way laering would work is if you can preferentially redirect incoming particles in one direction. Each layer redirects away from the spacecraft in the center, so whatever particles that get through one layer have a chance to get redirected away by the next. IDK if that's possible or not.
There are two other older designs that I know of. I have the papers somewhere but I'm moving house so they will be impossible to find for a while. One used long kilometer diameter cable loops with charge flows producing a big but low power magnetic field. This trades size for mass and complexity. Field strength is low but the large field means the particle is pulled to the center of the loop. The habitats are close to the loop. There are too versions. One standing on poles on the moon protecting habitats there and one held circular by cable based mass torsion systems. Two counterrotating cables tethered to the other. Centrifugal force holds them circular at low mass. The other proposed system clads the ship with magnetic sheets and fires a particle beam an the very low angle. The magnetic fields bend the beam around the hull forming a migma sheathe. A electron beam fired astern helps. The result is a sheathe of particles going at right angles to the hull. Any dangerous particles are either deflected or entrained. Both were in the British interplanetary society magazine years ago.
Uhm pretty sure we are already fielding experimental plasma shield on the battlefield. I read an article saying that boeing had a system it was testing on abrahams tanks. Its thin panels of explosive charge on all sides of the tank and some kind of radar or ultrasonic detection system surrounding the tabks peripheral. When it detects an incoming rocket, it detonates the plates facing the munition, yhis produces a shockwave of compressed atmospheric gases. Then microwave emitters send out a powerful pulse in the same direction, the pulse ionizes the shockwave of compressed air creating a wall of plasma that detonates the incoming munition at a safe distace that wont penetrate the tank armor. Im not sure if they are fielding this yet or if it was just in testing stage, but i do remember it was boeing that was developing it. Not sure how useful it would be in space without atmosphere to create plasma but it's still pretty interesting tech for here on earth, hopefully they find something more positive to use it for besides warfare 🤷🏽♂️
Thanks for dumbing that down enough to be informative AND entertaining. Very consumable content, for such a deep and complicated subject. I’m still waiting for ge and cern to get together and create that time travel machine that Titor was talking about…. 🤷♂️🤯🎯😝 ANY DAY GUYS! GET ON WITH IT!
The propulsion system is the force field, the approaches covered here were completely wrong or backwards. By using the first layer to induce a voltage from the particles themselves, coupled with a frequency mirroring reaction, would more than power the shielding, it would also power the propulsion system. This would result in the capability of traveling at the speed of the particles interacting with the system, or levitate above the earth and other planets surfaces.
14:26 One step beyond is the RAM-scoop. Deflect the particles into a material chamber, and expel as thrust on the back end of the vessel. Mere field tech and hardly new actually. 14:51 They can use a mere cyclotron for testing purposes. In nature NTL (near transfer of light) hadrons are unlikely. If any vessel is moving at like 0.1 LS (c) the particles they encounter the most would not exceed 0.2 LS, which can be created artificially by a cyclotron. Specially single protons. The problem isn't these charged protons, but the actual non-charged colloidal matter particles. They'd need ionisation before they can be deflected by any field.
Awesome video, thanks for all the work you put into it! How much do we need to worry about high energy electromagnetic waves / photons compared to the high energy particles? Would we need to include additional engineering for that, or is that not as much of a concern? And if it is a concern, how much of a challenge is it?
electromagnetic forces are carried by photons, and with high enough energy this gets into gamma radiation. This can't be stopped by any electromagnetic field of any kind, so the only way we have to shield against anything like that now is dense mass, as in lead, other metals or as starship plans it, water. Some plans (ideas at this stage) would be that certain compartments of starship with be shielded by among other things the water which is brought along the journey, so when they are at risk of coming across large amounts of gamma radiation the crew would shelter inside said compartments. This doesn't eliminate the problem though, and at this stage this is the best we got. Photons can interact with electrons however, so if any electromagnetic shielding were able to hold/lock electrons in place as an extra barrier, that could possibly help (in my uneducated guess)
This may seem like a stupid question but the final design presented is not a reflector but a deflector. Which means the areas out of the shadows were still being hit by protons. So the final graphic of moving a second array offset from the first means either, the particles will just deflect around those again, or indeed hit the shield. So how does that solve the shotgun GCR effect? I don't see how that shadow translates to shielding effectiveness.
Great video, and exciting ideas! Maybe we'll actually "make it out there" one of these days. I've always thought it's our "natural next step." It's all out there just waiting for us - why stay cooped up in the house we were born in?
Perhaps finding a way to get them to work in tandem. Radiation is still energy, if it could harnessed, the deflected rays energy used to help power the magnetic shield, be interesting. ^.^
'Water Armour' lining the inside of the outer walls of the spacecraft may be a good alternative that would protect against a great deal while doubling as water storage that wouldn't consume additional resources or require energy
The other problem with electrostatic repulsion to stop charged particles, aside from the crazy high voltages needed, is that what stops things of one charge only makes those of the opposite charge worse. Magnets can bend both types aside - albeit to opposite sides, but that's fine.
I saw a documentary back in the early 90s that talked about how a factory that produced sheet plastic like cellophane. There was a walkway where the sheet was directed overhead then back down. Under certain conditions it would create a static barrier. People couldn't walk through it and the researcher was amazed to see a fly stuck inside it unable to escape.
You need water shield. Water in liquid state is the best shield possible. Just don't let it freeze or turn into steam.... Also this video is indirect proof we have never walked on the moon... We are just developing deep space shields NOW as you can see...
Someone is going to say "Awesome! We have energy shields now!", thinking that these shields will protect our spaceships from enemy weapons fire. NOT! This shielding will only deflect harmful particle radiation, up to a certain energy level. It will not stop lasers, missiles, bullets, fast moving meteors, or even slow moving ones. And if the ship is on a collision course with an asteroid, better change that course as quickly as possible; otherwise the ship will be like a splattered bug on the surface of the asteroid. For particle radiation deflection, this is actually a great breakthrough. As we continue to develop the technology, it will soon be miniature enough to be practical on all spacecraft. The biggest obstacle to its practicality is at this time, weight, which adds more to what the ship's thrusters must accelerate to the desired speed, meaning more weight in the form of fuel and its containers. Now there is some promising experiments concerning massless thrust, but it is still in its infancy! Still there have been some small amount of successes in the studies and experiments. If these two technologies become practical, and can be used in one ship at the same time, it will revolutionize the space travel industry.
Weight of the system is one thing, but also the weight of any energy production to keep this up. To get the weight into place can soon be done rather easily when starship becomes viable. And if this is used for a interplanetary transport system the logistics of weight becomes less significant, also because such a transport system can be set to an continuous orbit with intercepts both earth and mars
Unfortunately, kinetic barriers (to protect against kinetic weapons or asteroids) may not be possible, unless there are new physics yet to be discovered.
@@bgsmember3650 more or less all weapons used in human history are kinetic weapons.. And we have good ways to deal with those, it's a new invention called "wall"
I wonder if we could absorb and harness the energy rather than deflect it. A conductive layer of shielding over an array of micro wireless chargers and a base layer of conductive shielding. A layer of h2o would further absorb any residual particles and dually act as a salt water capacitor. A regulating circuit to sense the incoming voltage and charge a stepped down high voltage capacitor bank. The capacitor(s) would then drain to charge the onboard batteries For very large bursts of energy we could include a switched drain circuit powering the tesla coil like shielding. For directed energy weapons with smaller implications a general use shield could incorporate this and power up a tungsten or quartz headlight to dissipate the energy.
why not combine both approaches. Have the magnetic wrapped by the electrostatic deflection. Both could be at lower power/magnetic levels and offer the same deflection hopefully combining the advantages of both rather then the disadvantages of both.
On the note of cooling I mean the vacuum of space is a vacuum that would help insulate the superconductors meaning you would need to cool them less because every all the cooling you're doing days effective longer, now help prevent a kind of heat osmosis you also have to insulate it from the ship itself but still even with that same amount of coolant should be able to cool it for longer
This type of deflector shield would also be a detector array, constantly monitoring the interaction between the generated electrostatic energy & the energy of the incoming particles. Perhaps even being able to do things like monitor what direction they're coming from & what parts of the spacecraft would need the most power to the shields. Is there any way that they could use the energy from the incoming particles to both run the system & modulate the power needed to run it. That way, more energetic (higher electron volt) particles would both see a velocity reducing drain as they interacted with the shielding & the intensity of the shield would autonomously adapt to the higher/lower energy levels of the incoming particles in a synergistic way (saving both power needs & wear on the shielding). Could an augmentive effect to the electrostatic shielding be achieved by cycling the strength of bands of shielding in a sequence (I don't recall the specific name for this kind of effect) to create a dynamically flowing shield (rippling down along the spacecraft, or at least away from a center point where the most emissions would be coming from), rather than a fixed one. You could visualise it like how air moves around a supersonic aircraft as it passes the speed of sound. Rather than incoming particles being deflected just a bit, the effect would be cumulative, with particles being deflected a bit, then a bit more, then more, then more - almost dragging the particles around the entire spacecraft before letting them go.
Idk how they can stack that mesh to make it cover the holes in shielding coverage because the particles are simply deflected around those nodes and would become concentrated around the second layer of nodes, effectively undoing the deflection of first layer
electrostatic mitigation of lunar dust and martian dust on solar panels is an old thing yet we speak today as if these are still discoveries to be made, how does that relate to shields? Perhaps these are also ahead of mainstream the way military tech is often ahead of commercial..?
How about creating a Bussard collector to gather ions into the center of a magnetic pipe then spew them out the rear at a higher speed? Basically an Ion thruster using outside ions as reaction mass.
I wonder if they combined the properties of physical shielding with the magnetic properties of the material it's made of. Like if they were made of aluminum they could still use a large electromagnet but they could spread the force out among many particles and slow them down with electromagnets. The problem I see would be the effect of eddy currents would diminish greatly if the aluminum were molten and in tiny particles.
I've come up with four force field systems, the first is the same as Bell labs a static discharge, the second electromagnetic induced eddy currents in incoming metal, the third graphene balloons, the fourth using high frequency increasing amplitude longitudinal mono-polarised waves that would combine at a certain distance, as higher amplitude longitudinal waves travel faster than lower amplitude ones.
Just one problem though. The particles are deflected. Scattered. Not blocked. So the particles will all just be diverted through the gaps. Even offset, the "sieve" effect will persist. So well... Only a portion will be diverted in directions that lead them to miss, even when offset. Offsetting multiple grids may even divert particles scattered in directions that would cause them to miss, back on trajectories that will make them hit.
The most important thing to remember is that the weight problem isn’t as big as it seems at first - once you have a particle repulsor shield, just dump particles into it and you have an engine
4:20 - you said "99.99999......9999 TIMES the speed of light" 🙀😱 I haven't even seen the whole video. I just had to stop and have a good WTF?! laugh 😂😭🤣
32 Mev/m is not the record for rf high energy accelerators. Your number likely comes from recent superconductor cavities, normal conductor in copper rf cavities have performed at gradients up to 3x this running at over 100Mev/m. I worked on tests at Slac often with these cavities.
It sounds like the deflector shield answer is to use the protons/capture them to generate enough power to deflect there effects. The shield would be like a solar panel except directing the proton into a multi reflector condensing the protons in a circular array or to a point to create a high voltage current that would be used to create a large magnetic field. Hence using a portion of the protons to refract the other protons. Potentially, you could use a parabolic curve design to focus the protons to a focal point on a carbon rod. What with and how to direct that much energy to charge a Tesla coil to handle 200megavolts and store some of it too would be the challenge. The point is how to maintain enough energy on a space station to hold a force field. If you had to lift that much energy storage and coil into space it would be impossible. Finding a way to use the environmental energy and leverage it against itself would be the answer. It would be an unlimited defense against proton radiation. For every action there is an opposite reaction. Next to flying a kite with wire and a key I’m already over my head. That’s all I got 🤷♂️
meanwhile ernst brüche, tektronix and basically every CRT based oscilloscope has used electrostatic deflection the math behind hit is well understod. the ability to deflect beams of high energy with low potential fields has also been known about and used for well over 100 years now. The only novel thing i have seen is the idea to create an electrostatic lens array that reduces the total radiant power at a large distance.
5:37 MeV and MV are two different animals. Mega electron Volts is a measure of power and mega-volts is half of the equation to determine power. Where are the amps or whatever?
When you told about chainmailing the effect of active shielding i thought of Heavy Object. While this piece of art is pretty interesting and fun to watch the point of my attention is the technology behind those Objects - they are sphere-shaped battle machines that have only single small (obviously gated) hole to get a pilot inside and all connections to outside world such as weapons power, mobility systems, etc. are managed thru armor - which acts as a conductor also. It cannot withstand huge kinetic impacts but is pretty much ok with plasma/photon types and now i can almost assmeble a picture why. While it is a Sci-fi the armor of Heavy Objects is not (i believe) really magical material you can cast into slabs and use as is - its is complex multi-layer onion shell - which gives me an idea we dont need that shit to be armor and for weapons, but we can make something like this as a shielding against cosmic radiation with little to none weakspots cus any type of outside apparatus can be slapped to the body itself with no need of wiring, additional holes.
10:00 Is the magnetic field unable to deflect a bunch of slower moving particles as well as it can deflect a single ultra high energy particle? I just wonder if an outer layer of physical shielding with inner layer of magnetic shielding might work. Beats me, just wondering.
I had heard that there was a third off shoot to the other two approaches that involve injecting a plasma into the charged area that enhances the effectiveness of the electrostatic approach because the particles of the plasma have their own mass and charge too. Could you add a video addressing this other approach? I think they call it the artificial magnetosphere method.
So they made an electrostatic shield at a 3M (sellotape and film) factory by accident. There's a few snippets of info about this out there, but it happened before the Internet was popular. I'd love to see a proper mini-doc on this as most vids here on RUclips are very short.
So, I wonder why no one has taken Earth's approach - spin a strong magnet and create a sphericalagnetic field. Yes, I understand the Earth's core is too large & spins too fast to be practical, but that covers a planet. We just need to cover a spaceship. Also, are all of these efforts trying to eliminate these particles completely? Not even Earth's magnetic field does that. We should only reduce to that level.
emm, 50% of deflection, but does it deflects it outside of the screen (screen is in the test, but protecting object in the production)? Otherwise it will deflect it to the another area of the protecting object. Are there any concepts for capturing and using high energy particles to charge something?
I have a question about the deflector grid array mentioned at the end. From the graphics and animation it looks like the particles are deflected around the the grid. But would this not result only in an smaller affected area but a similar dose where some areas have no radiation and others higher?
A matrix with electric charge over a dielectric region. Their cage-like models demonstrate the principle, but have gaps in the protection. Their solution was to add an additional offset layer. I would instead work with the scale; at the lower limit, they're describing a capacitor. Incorporate electrodes in the lamination of the hull. If it needs a more complicated structure, treat it as a metamaterial problem.
When it comes to this kind of way-out-there physics, I'm at a loss. A fleeting thought occurred while watching the Dr's video. Part of the problem is generating the amount of power needed to counter the incoming particles/waves. Would there not be value in using these same particles to produce the power to defeat them? Not unlike a water wheel? Not in structure but in concept. The main issue, though, may be the destructive nature of the particles on whatever mechanism is used to interact with them. But, continuing the water wheel analogy, the goal would be to use the water's force, as it rushes past, to generate the power to produce the shielding needed. But, again, it was a fleeting thought...
The ideal form of a magnetic field is a sphere. Why don't we construct a spherical ship with a kind of superconductive permanent magnet that can be electrically amplified if necessary? The thick shell inside the sphere could also be shielded in the conventional way and individual layers could be polarized differently.
I planned the whole time to use a clip from Dune of the Holtzmans shields. 100% the best visual of an energy shield - other than I guess being able to make a real one...
I hope you mean the version of Dune with Patrick Stewart and Sting.
@@omnijack 100%
@@omnijackYou mean the janky square shit? Interesting movie, but that shield vfx was janky af.
I think the approach is a little backwards the shield needs to simply draw the particles in a stream past the vehicle
So wasn't there some development on a skin for the vehicle that produces its own electricity from the movement of the craft? I could be mixed up here. But either way, I'm confident that the same technology will open the door to partial capture for electrical generation.
-What were you working on in NASA, dad?
_A CREW-HAT. But they rejected the design.._
-How hard can it be to design a new "NASA" cap.. Why did they reject it?
_It turned out too big and heavy.._
-How heavy?
_25'000Kg, but still a huge improvement.._
Keep your chin up dad, you'll get it one day.
I think there may be an active shielding application for reentry vehicles. Watching starship form a plasma sheath made me think we could try deflecting the plasma as a way to heat shield the vehicle. May also apply to hypersonic aviation
Think about fusión reactors i think it would br similar to that besides being far less efficient
Initially they wanted to drop the heat tiles and pump fuel mist into the plasma to form a sort of bubble
I like the way you think. That is novel. Hi IQ style. But... As it happens, the only reason there is a plasma around any reentry vehicle is because the speed of the vehicle versus the air. The leading surface hits the air molecules so fast it heats them to the point of kicking loose their electrons, making said plasma. 1mm before striking them, they are not ionized, so no magnet or electric field can move them out of the way. But it gets worse. The air is actively being used as a brake. If it was possible to move the air out of the way, the ship would have no braking, and would "land" on the surface at 17,000 mph. We prefer 0 mph as a better landing speed. 😂
@@FelonyVideos not debating the cause of the plasma…. But plasma is generally conducive regardless of how it is produced. A pulsed field should be able to be produced that would not only reduce the heat on the tiles- but actually increase the resistance by pushing the plasma out. The heat would of course be absorbed by the generator creating the field…. So no free lunch- but maybe an optimization exercise.
@@FelonyVideos I was thinking the air would initially go through the magnetic field, hit the vehicle and start ionizing, once the plasma layer develops the magnetic field would create a cushion between the plasma and vehicle. At those speeds I don't think the magnetic field would be able to delfect anything just force the plasma off the vehicle slightly, creating an insulating layer. This would likely create a large pressure differential so it would be interesting to simulate the overall effects to the vehicles aerodynamics
A science channel that isn't clickbait? Subscribed.
At 4:21 you said 99.99 times the speed of light instead of 99.99 percent the speed of light and I was like hold up 😂
The graphic has the % though so it's ok
Listening in the kitchen, spilt my tea, not OK! 😅
I'm a dummy. Good catch 👍
Dude….the world is still spinning. You got his point so well you called him out for it? Pity
@@Garrett0329 I don't imagine he interpreted it as 'calling out' so much as some good natured teasing from someone who clearly enjoyed his content.
I have another account where I publish educational content on computational EM. I wouldn't be bothered at all by a comment like the one I made
Yeah, I was wondering if anyone else was going to say something 👍
You know I've been working on my first science fiction novel for well over three years now, and its yt channels like this that genuinely help me ground some of my absurdly fictional concepts in at least pseudo plausible science.
The best sci-fi's (imo) are the ones which have relevance to reality, so I'm pleased to hear this.
Lots of absurd concepts are edging closer to reality anyway. warp drive has become alcubierre drive, and this video shows promises on shielding. If we get the energy production of fusion, we're good to go.
@@Nidvard I'm sure every SF writer has their own opinion on this, but for me anyway, SF Is the best vehicle for Demonstrating very human and down to Earth realities with regards to our failings, but in a way that we are far Less likely to be offended by, because of the fantastical setting. With a strong focus on the human condition, we can also explore what that might mean for our future assuming our mastery of science and technology continues to grow. The actual science behind the fiction is not personally the most important thing to me, but I have a deep respect for the scientific method, and feel I must make the best effort I possibly can to try and honor that.
One of my favorite types of shields is a gravity shield. Fucking around with space time in front of your ship so projectiles curve away from your ship.
The drawbacks are you need to predict where your enemy is going to shoot. You can’t throw it on reactively as by the time you see a relativistic projectile or laser it’s already too late. You also run the risk of curving an otherwise glancing blow into a bullseye.
Battles turn into a contest of who’s gunners can outwit the opponents shielding.
@@oxjmanxo LOVE IT!
@@bendybruce a variation of this was a gravity hammer. Why not turn the bending of space time in your shields into a weapon? Turn the gravity up to 11 within the enemy ship. You can add distance limitations to make this a short range use only thing.
These are all variations on how to use the classic gravity generator tech in different unique ways.
I'm not sure it'd stop a photon torpedo, but it's a step in the right direction... 😄
A mirror could stop a photon torpedo. A proton torpedo would be the big challenge 😂
@@FutureAIDev2015 I see which side you'll be on in the coming Trek Wars... 🤪
@@hervigdewilde3599 unfortunately, r/whoosh... Huh?
@@FutureAIDev2015 Proton torpedoes are Star Wars, whereas photon torpedoes are Star Trek. 🤣
@@hervigdewilde3599 Ahhh... A photon torpedo would technically just be a laser though wouldn't it
I'm sure it's covered in more detail in the actual paper, but it feels like th shadow would be offset by the increased brightness when the protons are deflected into the unshaded areas; a shadow doesn't provide 'shade' if most of the light is still reaching the surface.
This feals more like it creates caustics, like light ripples on the bottom of a pool. Sure, the dark areas are darker but the light areas are brighter leading to the same overall radiation exposure. I'd be happy to be wrong.
Exactly.... where are they deflected towards?
I highly doubt particles moving that fast are going to get deflected and keep moving in the same general direction unless they hit the very edge. Shining light on a mirror shines the light back at you, not on the wall next to the mirror.
@@bobbygetsbanned6049 Deflection and reflection are different, though. Deflection just needs to push the particles to the side a bit so they can continue on their way. I had the same concern about caustics but didn't think to call it that. If those electrodes are just nudging the particles to areas between the shadows, then it's no improvement. If the astronauts sit in the same place frequently, it would focus the radiation on smaller areas of their bodies, increasing the risk of cancer. But like the OP, I'd be happy to be wrong.
If you're merely deflecting the particles, then aren't you just concentrating them into the non-shielded parts of the pattern? I suppose if you stacked enough layers of this matrix, then the " tortuous path" you created would have equal probability of reflecting or letting through any given particle?
Surely if you deflect through the first layer, the second layer would just deflect back into the spaces protected by the first layer, thus solving nothing. What you actually need to do is deflect the particles into channels that flow around the ship and back into space.
I wander about catching some of the particles to generate power@@-_James_-
Yep, you can see in the image that it's brighter in between the non-shielded parts. In that case, you'd probably want a cone of circles of points, with the smallest circle/point forward most, so that any particle can be deflected entirely around a habitable area, like how the some of grid particles were deflected to the outside.
Alternatively, you could only protect the parts of a ship that needed to be protected from radiation, and let the parts that can handle much more radiation have much more radiation.
I was wondering this too, but surely JPL and NASA would have thought of this... The deflection must be a greater angle.
Yeah I noticed this too, it’s not sending the particles 180 degrees back the way they came, it’s only throwing them a few degrees off and funnelling them into more concentrated areas between the gaps.
"Crew-hat" makes sense because you wear a hat to protect yourself from the sun. This hat protects the whole crew at once. 😂
Any astronaut caught in the blast would, of course, develop superpowers.
yeah, theyll develope infinitesimal invisibilty to everyone of earth and theyll be able to phase throughout walls with ease. it isnt toggleable though.
Cancerman! Idk how he turned into a crab, but it's still a cool superpower.
Cool beans! i want one to wear around my head to shield from all the waves being shot around. Sometimes I can't even listen to the radio because of all the strong interference.
Another reason for discounting the electrostatic approach, even for energies that are doable, is that some particles have the opposite charge.
protons always have a positive charge, that's the definition of the proton. If it had negative charge it would be an electron.
For charged ions, they are charged as electrons are stripped away, making them positive charge.
So no, no opposite charge.
@@NidvardYou don't find high energy electrons to be a problem?
And cosmic rays also see some anti-protons.
@@NidvardHigh energy cosmic events produces a fair part antimatter particles
@@JohnDlugosz if you knew how high energy electrons work and interact then you wouldn't either.
If its protons or anti-protons really is irrelevant
@@lafeechloe6998 "fair part" means a few subatomic particles which immediately disintegrate and this is completely harmless. This occurs when particles interact with something, usually the atmosphere. With such a shield those particles would be deflected and never have the chance to interact to make antimatter
Thank you, Dr. Miles you are an incredible teacher. Thank you very much for bringing this.
I think that to test this shield around the earth, there are enough radiation belts, inside which satellites like SUBESAT can be launched, which can then be returned to the ground and their surface examined under an electron microscope for radiation damage.
Was thinking the same thing with the van Allan belt (may have spelt that wrong). However, it's going to be down to having a launch vehicle to get prototypes there and could well be achievable once starship is able to take payloads into orbit and possibly bring them back for testing.
I subscribed because you ask the right questions and your hands on approach .
Welk done!
That was a great presentation. Thank you!
@DrBenMiles as an accelerator physicist, by and large I liked your video. However, I do have a comment about you saying what is achieved by old school particle smashers only being in the MV range, especially when showing what appears to be a synchrotron animation.
What you said was true about electrostatic fields ie Van de Graaf accelerators, etc. However cyclotrons and synchrotrons are not limited to the MV range. Otherwise we wouldn't have TeV protons at LHC at CERN. The difference is time dependent fields in microwave cavities, that can get up to TeV energy gains with a closed loop or GeV energy gains in linear systems like SLAC.
If you were, however, talking about accelerating gradients, in units of energy per unit distance, MeV/m, for example, you would be roughly correct. Our best microwave accelerators still only have gradients around a few 100MeV /m.
Luckily we have plasma acceleration, dielectric accelerators, etc, which push the gradient up to GeV or even TeV per meter.
It may be possible, with enough plasma density and energy in a laser pulse or particle beam, to get up to EeV or ZeV / m gradients before the high energy density physics gets so interesting that the plasmas are too unstable to provide that gradient over an appreciable distance.
Good luck out there!
You should check out the Boeing patents for the plasma shield. Pretty cool way to tank particles and all kinds of stuff. No details but I think it uses lasers to create a plasma and devices to control the magnetic fields to form the plasma into a shield. Stops bullets and even photons.
I felt like "I" was being bombarded with high energy information in this video, I loved it. The amount of information injected into my brain by Dr Miles was amazing, as was the subject. Wow, what a high energy rush! Love the information available on this channel.
Ideally, we'd want to "capture" these particles, and translate their energy to into usable power for the craft.
I think it would take more energy to accelerate them to match the spacecraft's velocity than whatever energy could harnessed from their charge. But maybe they could do some work on the way by. (Honestly I don't know. Physics is not my forte, it's just fun to think about.)
Ideally we need to resolve the radiation issue of the cosmos before we dive into the radiation of the cosmos. One main reason why deep space is off limits. Absorption of radiation. Passing through the lowest density of the radiation belt was a mission. Dealing with direct radiation now. Deep space. Anything outside of Earth's Radiative belt.
I was thinking the same thing. An example we have on Earth, the "vaneless ion wind generator". is a wind-based generator where an ionizer makes a charged cloud, and the wind blows particles around. We are already 3D printing weird "magical" antenna for highly directional devices.
@@JB52520 I think you misunderstood. I'm not talking about charge. We want the energy that is described in the video as doing so much damage to the craft on impact. The energy imparted by relative velocity.
We don't want to use energy to accelerate them. When air blows into a wind turbine, you don't expend energy to slow it down. You let it hit the blades and cause them to spin to generate energy.
So if you can take the energy that would normally destroy the spacecraft, and use it to somehow generate power for the craft, that's what I'm talking about.
A third problem are the collisions with the interstellar medium with a rapidly moving spacecraft. I'm working with the Breakthrough Starshot communications team, looking at how to communicate with laser-driven sailcraft moving at 0.2c. Erosion due to the ISM is a significant problem.
This is a correct and the effect is well known. The solution can be found in my post above.
Subbed. Since I was a child, I have believed that we need, artificial gravity, shields, and fusion. I have given up on fusion, but we need dual nuclear generators, one breeder and one normal to share the fuel rods between them. We can do all this now I think, but rotating a space station is an immense undertaking.
There have been many inventors that have been deleted from the world because of those types of inventions/patents.
Shadow govs/corpos are to blame for humanity's lack of progress past petro.
@@guillermorobledo2842It doesn’t need shadow gov’s as the out in plain sight governments & organisations have done quite a good job of slowing tech development historically.
Always interesting and I might not get it all but I allways get some of it. Thankyou. The added bonus of the electrostatic method of course if the dipole is unbalanced might be some thrust!
Star Wars and Star Trek fans rejoice
also useful in the coming nuclear war to protect those that can afford it :P
@@hamasmillitant1dude, this technology with do absolutely nothing to a nuclear detonation. This is meant to block stray particles traveling through space, not a small STAR at practically point blank range.
Stop being such a doomer and lighten up, this technology is a good think that could help us explore and even make new homes in the future.
@@hamasmillitant1i dont think you will be able to protect anything then
YESSIR
Still waiting for a hoverboard and self drying clothes.
Excellent quality deep(ish) post's there, Dr. Miles !
Not enough people talk about this major roadblock to space travel...👍
Not enough people talk about why space travel is not only pointless but also pointless, and likely pointless.
@@MadScientist267 This is why I honestly think space colonization will never actually happen. No one wants to sacrifice what they have on earth unless you're a nerd.
@@poetryflynn3712 "That's why I honestly think that new world colonisation will never happen, nobody wants to sacrifice what they have in Europe unless you're a religious extremist".
@scotthillard3418 Exactly lol, we aren't changing our nature anytime soon.
@@poetryflynn3712I don't know who this "no one" is, but it certainly isn't me. The first chance I get I'm jumping ship to something new.
I love this video. You do a great job at explaining this stuff.
Did anyone ever think to create a battery array that would hold needed charge for spacecraft while providing the magnetic shielding at the same time? Can't the battery electrodes be configured to create a geometric array that would provide the magnetic shielding needed? Taking it one step further, why not utilize the Seebeck effect as there are significant differences in temperature on lit and dark sides of the spacecraft, or between the exterior and interior.
Wishful thinking on my part perhaps
If you also build a deflector a ways out ahead of the direction of travel, say on a long boom, you don't need to deflect the particles as strongly for the particles to miss the vessel (as long as you don't deflect any particles that would otherwise miss, onto the vessel). That also protects the vessel from any magnetic/electric fields used, though obviously means more assembly/risks of damage and disconnection through the boom.
I wouldn’t be caught dead in a trip to mars without 30-40 meters of water surrounding the living quarters. That’s cool if you want to make a deflection shield in addition. But still need the 30-40 meters of water completely surrounding any space humans occupy on all sides.
Dude, it makes sense. Radiation hat for the crew. Crew hat. Cheers!😊
This was good information, you've earned a new sub today. Thanks for all your hard work.
Very interesting explanations. Thank you very much!
I was wondering if the same kind of deflector would deflect electrically-neutral bits of gas and dust? It might be just as important to protect the ship and crew from cosmic rays as to protect both from micrometeoroids and microscopic space debris. Maybe if you embed the electrode array in an insulating aerogel, you can protect from both. Great video, sorry you were sick. Best wishes.
Absolutely top shelf video. Thank you very much. Subscribed 👍
Is this why the electrostatic grid requires much lower voltages than originally calculated: instead of trying to apply an equal electric force to stop the charge particle in its tracks, the grid applies a force at right angles and adds a velocity component at right angles to the initial direction of motion causing the charge particles to miss the central area where the crew is?
Edit: Kind of like how judo, rather than blocking the punch, redirects it allowing the blow to keep much its original momentum except it's directed away from the person.
With the correct mix of materials a force field can be produced that is impenetrable by even light . It allows things inside the field to occupy a spectrum of the fabric of space time that is not visible.
This is now my favourite you tube channel
8:27 question, isn’t space cold? Like sub -200 C well within the range of superconducting materials. Why can’t they use space itself to cool the superconductor? Sorry if it’s a dumb question. Just curious and looking to learn.
Because space is a vacuum, there are no particles around to conduct heat away from the spacecraft. One of the challenges in space is actually to not overheat because the only way to lose heat is through radiation.
That ran through my mind too.
As have been mentioned space is cold but also empty, with constant radiation from the sun, combined with heat-producing components which produces heat, where the only way to dissipate that heat is due to radiation.
Imagine how much colder you'd be if you swim in 10c water compared to it being 10c in the air, you cool down a lot faster in the water as it conducts temperature. in space, there is nothing to conduct such temperature.
Look at JWST, the reason why it has all those layers of foil is to stop heat radiation from the sun, and when deployed it needed a long time to be able to get the temperatures low enough for it to function, and that was with active cooling systems.
And remember this, no sincere questions are ever dumb, it just goes to show you are interested in learning. Dumb people don't want to learn.
@@Nidvard I've often wondered if there is an interesting combined approach here. Using something like a plasma or ion type thruster, whereby the stream of inert propellant is first used as a "refrigerant" to extract heat from a system before the stream is then full accelerated by the main engine.
@@NeilStansbury sure, but then you're left with the issue of cooling the propellant down to those temperatures, and you would also be dependent on accelerating non stop.
Idea isn't bad though, it's a similar idea to how most rocket engines are cooled these days
this is a much better video than the average and definitely better than expected despite title aluding to it being goody good good i didnt expect it to be juicy good. Positively surprised here.
Well done Dr. Ben.
The shape of the shielding on the electrostatic model makes me suspect that the particles that would have struck the shielded areas are simply being directed onto the unshielded areas. That's fine if you can shield the entire region occupied by the spacecraft, but layering offset shields won't do the trick. Particles that pass through the unshielded areas of the first layer would get redirected into the unshielded areas of the 2nd layer. The only way laering would work is if you can preferentially redirect incoming particles in one direction. Each layer redirects away from the spacecraft in the center, so whatever particles that get through one layer have a chance to get redirected away by the next. IDK if that's possible or not.
Good to see that you enjoy SFIA ;) Would have recommended it otherwise, but I recognize some of those visuals :P
There are two other older designs that I know of. I have the papers somewhere but I'm moving house so they will be impossible to find for a while.
One used long kilometer diameter cable loops with charge flows producing a big but low power magnetic field. This trades size for mass and complexity. Field strength is low but the large field means the particle is pulled to the center of the loop. The habitats are close to the loop. There are too versions. One standing on poles on the moon protecting habitats there and one held circular by cable based mass torsion systems. Two counterrotating cables tethered to the other. Centrifugal force holds them circular at low mass.
The other proposed system clads the ship with magnetic sheets and fires a particle beam an the very low angle. The magnetic fields bend the beam around the hull forming a migma sheathe. A electron beam fired astern helps. The result is a sheathe of particles going at right angles to the hull. Any dangerous particles are either deflected or entrained. Both were in the British interplanetary society magazine years ago.
Brilliant explanations of some very interesting science 👍
Wow, you didn't lose me once. That was an impressive summary.
Uhm pretty sure we are already fielding experimental plasma shield on the battlefield. I read an article saying that boeing had a system it was testing on abrahams tanks. Its thin panels of explosive charge on all sides of the tank and some kind of radar or ultrasonic detection system surrounding the tabks peripheral. When it detects an incoming rocket, it detonates the plates facing the munition, yhis produces a shockwave of compressed atmospheric gases. Then microwave emitters send out a powerful pulse in the same direction, the pulse ionizes the shockwave of compressed air creating a wall of plasma that detonates the incoming munition at a safe distace that wont penetrate the tank armor. Im not sure if they are fielding this yet or if it was just in testing stage, but i do remember it was boeing that was developing it. Not sure how useful it would be in space without atmosphere to create plasma but it's still pretty interesting tech for here on earth, hopefully they find something more positive to use it for besides warfare 🤷🏽♂️
Fascinating! Well done.
Thanks for dumbing that down enough to be informative AND entertaining. Very consumable content, for such a deep and complicated subject. I’m still waiting for ge and cern to get together and create that time travel machine that Titor was talking about…. 🤷♂️🤯🎯😝 ANY DAY GUYS! GET ON WITH IT!
Inverted screws with electro static protection would deal with coverage, it would also help with propulsion assuming ion drivers are used
The propulsion system is the force field, the approaches covered here were completely wrong or backwards. By using the first layer to induce a voltage from the particles themselves, coupled with a frequency mirroring reaction, would more than power the shielding, it would also power the propulsion system. This would result in the capability of traveling at the speed of the particles interacting with the system, or levitate above the earth and other planets surfaces.
14:26 One step beyond is the RAM-scoop. Deflect the particles into a material chamber,
and expel as thrust on the back end of the vessel. Mere field tech and hardly new actually.
14:51 They can use a mere cyclotron for testing purposes. In nature NTL (near transfer of light) hadrons are unlikely.
If any vessel is moving at like 0.1 LS (c) the particles they encounter the most would not exceed 0.2 LS, which can be created artificially by a cyclotron. Specially single protons.
The problem isn't these charged protons, but the actual non-charged colloidal matter particles.
They'd need ionisation before they can be deflected by any field.
Awesome video, thanks for all the work you put into it!
How much do we need to worry about high energy electromagnetic waves / photons compared to the high energy particles? Would we need to include additional engineering for that, or is that not as much of a concern? And if it is a concern, how much of a challenge is it?
electromagnetic forces are carried by photons, and with high enough energy this gets into gamma radiation. This can't be stopped by any electromagnetic field of any kind, so the only way we have to shield against anything like that now is dense mass, as in lead, other metals or as starship plans it, water. Some plans (ideas at this stage) would be that certain compartments of starship with be shielded by among other things the water which is brought along the journey, so when they are at risk of coming across large amounts of gamma radiation the crew would shelter inside said compartments.
This doesn't eliminate the problem though, and at this stage this is the best we got.
Photons can interact with electrons however, so if any electromagnetic shielding were able to hold/lock electrons in place as an extra barrier, that could possibly help (in my uneducated guess)
This may seem like a stupid question but the final design presented is not a reflector but a deflector. Which means the areas out of the shadows were still being hit by protons. So the final graphic of moving a second array offset from the first means either, the particles will just deflect around those again, or indeed hit the shield. So how does that solve the shotgun GCR effect? I don't see how that shadow translates to shielding effectiveness.
I love your excellent grammar and pronounciation. And, of course, your contents as well.
Great video, and exciting ideas! Maybe we'll actually "make it out there" one of these days. I've always thought it's our "natural next step." It's all out there just waiting for us - why stay cooped up in the house we were born in?
This is awesome and the mesh seems to be the most logical and feasible. Good news. I can’t wait to see the Enterprise zooming off. Lol.
"It will be an exciting FIELD to watch for the next few years"
I see what you did there
Perhaps finding a way to get them to work in tandem. Radiation is still energy, if it could harnessed, the deflected rays energy used to help power the magnetic shield, be interesting. ^.^
'Water Armour' lining the inside of the outer walls of the spacecraft may be a good alternative that would protect against a great deal while doubling as water storage that wouldn't consume additional resources or require energy
The other problem with electrostatic repulsion to stop charged particles, aside from the crazy high voltages needed, is that what stops things of one charge only makes those of the opposite charge worse. Magnets can bend both types aside - albeit to opposite sides, but that's fine.
So doubly cool that someone worked out how to navigate round the problem ;^>
The proper conductors and or semi conductors can do things we haven't discovered yet regarding force fields
I saw a documentary back in the early 90s that talked about how a factory that produced sheet plastic like cellophane. There was a walkway where the sheet was directed overhead then back down. Under certain conditions it would create a static barrier. People couldn't walk through it and the researcher was amazed to see a fly stuck inside it unable to escape.
That's a very interesting documentary!
You need water shield. Water in liquid state is the best shield possible. Just don't let it freeze or turn into steam....
Also this video is indirect proof we have never walked on the moon... We are just developing deep space shields NOW as you can see...
Someone is going to say "Awesome! We have energy shields now!", thinking that these shields will protect our spaceships from enemy weapons fire.
NOT!
This shielding will only deflect harmful particle radiation, up to a certain energy level. It will not stop lasers, missiles, bullets, fast moving meteors, or even slow moving ones. And if the ship is on a collision course with an asteroid, better change that course as quickly as possible; otherwise the ship will be like a splattered bug on the surface of the asteroid. For particle radiation deflection, this is actually a great breakthrough. As we continue to develop the technology, it will soon be miniature enough to be practical on all spacecraft. The biggest obstacle to its practicality is at this time, weight, which adds more to what the ship's thrusters must accelerate to the desired speed, meaning more weight in the form of fuel and its containers.
Now there is some promising experiments concerning massless thrust, but it is still in its infancy! Still there have been some small amount of successes in the studies and experiments. If these two technologies become practical, and can be used in one ship at the same time, it will revolutionize the space travel industry.
Weight of the system is one thing, but also the weight of any energy production to keep this up.
To get the weight into place can soon be done rather easily when starship becomes viable. And if this is used for a interplanetary transport system the logistics of weight becomes less significant, also because such a transport system can be set to an continuous orbit with intercepts both earth and mars
Unfortunately, kinetic barriers (to protect against kinetic weapons or asteroids) may not be possible, unless there are new physics yet to be discovered.
@@bgsmember3650 more or less all weapons used in human history are kinetic weapons.. And we have good ways to deal with those, it's a new invention called "wall"
I wonder if we could absorb and harness the energy rather than deflect it.
A conductive layer of shielding over an array of micro wireless chargers and a base layer of conductive shielding. A layer of h2o would further absorb any residual particles and dually act as a salt water capacitor.
A regulating circuit to sense the incoming voltage and charge a stepped down high voltage capacitor bank.
The capacitor(s) would then drain to charge the onboard batteries
For very large bursts of energy we could include a switched drain circuit powering the tesla coil like shielding.
For directed energy weapons with smaller implications a general use shield could incorporate this and power up a tungsten or quartz headlight to dissipate the energy.
why not combine both approaches. Have the magnetic wrapped by the electrostatic deflection. Both could be at lower power/magnetic levels and offer the same deflection hopefully combining the advantages of both rather then the disadvantages of both.
5:49 Lightning actually just struck outside when I saw this at the same time! THAT MATRIX UPDATE IS GREAT!
On the note of cooling I mean the vacuum of space is a vacuum that would help insulate the superconductors meaning you would need to cool them less because every all the cooling you're doing days effective longer, now help prevent a kind of heat osmosis you also have to insulate it from the ship itself but still even with that same amount of coolant should be able to cool it for longer
This type of deflector shield would also be a detector array, constantly monitoring the interaction between the generated electrostatic energy & the energy of the incoming particles. Perhaps even being able to do things like monitor what direction they're coming from & what parts of the spacecraft would need the most power to the shields.
Is there any way that they could use the energy from the incoming particles to both run the system & modulate the power needed to run it. That way, more energetic (higher electron volt) particles would both see a velocity reducing drain as they interacted with the shielding & the intensity of the shield would autonomously adapt to the higher/lower energy levels of the incoming particles in a synergistic way (saving both power needs & wear on the shielding).
Could an augmentive effect to the electrostatic shielding be achieved by cycling the strength of bands of shielding in a sequence (I don't recall the specific name for this kind of effect) to create a dynamically flowing shield (rippling down along the spacecraft, or at least away from a center point where the most emissions would be coming from), rather than a fixed one. You could visualise it like how air moves around a supersonic aircraft as it passes the speed of sound. Rather than incoming particles being deflected just a bit, the effect would be cumulative, with particles being deflected a bit, then a bit more, then more, then more - almost dragging the particles around the entire spacecraft before letting them go.
Idk how they can stack that mesh to make it cover the holes in shielding coverage because the particles are simply deflected around those nodes and would become concentrated around the second layer of nodes, effectively undoing the deflection of first layer
If this ends up ever being scalable, or if whatever is grows out of this, it would be a huge discovery
Excellent video, thanks
electrostatic mitigation of lunar dust and martian dust on solar panels is an old thing yet we speak today as if these are still discoveries to be made, how does that relate to shields? Perhaps these are also ahead of mainstream the way military tech is often ahead of commercial..?
This does not relate to shields.
Military tech gets their components from the same factories that produce components for commercial products.
How about creating a Bussard collector to gather ions into the center of a magnetic pipe then spew them out the rear at a higher speed? Basically an Ion thruster using outside ions as reaction mass.
I wonder if they combined the properties of physical shielding with the magnetic properties of the material it's made of. Like if they were made of aluminum they could still use a large electromagnet but they could spread the force out among many particles and slow them down with electromagnets. The problem I see would be the effect of eddy currents would diminish greatly if the aluminum were molten and in tiny particles.
I've come up with four force field systems, the first is the same as Bell labs a static discharge, the second electromagnetic induced eddy currents in incoming metal, the third graphene balloons, the fourth using high frequency increasing amplitude longitudinal mono-polarised waves that would combine at a certain distance, as higher amplitude longitudinal waves travel faster than lower amplitude ones.
Just one problem though. The particles are deflected. Scattered. Not blocked. So the particles will all just be diverted through the gaps. Even offset, the "sieve" effect will persist. So well... Only a portion will be diverted in directions that lead them to miss, even when offset. Offsetting multiple grids may even divert particles scattered in directions that would cause them to miss, back on trajectories that will make them hit.
The most important thing to remember is that the weight problem isn’t as big as it seems at first - once you have a particle repulsor shield, just dump particles into it and you have an engine
What a gem. Subbed!
4:20 - you said "99.99999......9999 TIMES the speed of light" 🙀😱
I haven't even seen the whole video. I just had to stop and have a good WTF?! laugh 😂😭🤣
32 Mev/m is not the record for rf high energy accelerators. Your number likely comes from recent superconductor cavities, normal conductor in copper rf cavities have performed at gradients up to 3x this running at over 100Mev/m. I worked on tests at Slac often with these cavities.
It sounds like the deflector shield answer is to use the protons/capture them to generate enough power to deflect there effects. The shield would be like a solar panel except directing the proton into a multi reflector condensing the protons in a circular array or to a point to create a high voltage current that would be used to create a large magnetic field. Hence using a portion of the protons to refract the other protons.
Potentially, you could use a parabolic curve design to focus the protons to a focal point on a carbon rod. What with and how to direct that much energy to charge a Tesla coil to handle 200megavolts and store some of it too would be the challenge.
The point is how to maintain enough energy on a space station to hold a force field. If you had to lift that much energy storage and coil into space it would be impossible. Finding a way to use the environmental energy and leverage it against itself would be the answer. It would be an unlimited defense against proton radiation. For every action there is an opposite reaction.
Next to flying a kite with wire and a key I’m already over my head.
That’s all I got 🤷♂️
meanwhile ernst brüche, tektronix and basically every CRT based oscilloscope has used electrostatic deflection the math behind hit is well understod. the ability to deflect beams of high energy with low potential fields has also been known about and used for well over 100 years now. The only novel thing i have seen is the idea to create an electrostatic lens array that reduces the total radiant power at a large distance.
5:37 MeV and MV are two different animals. Mega electron Volts is a measure of power and mega-volts is half of the equation to determine power. Where are the amps or whatever?
He used the righ terms...
When you told about chainmailing the effect of active shielding i thought of Heavy Object. While this piece of art is pretty interesting and fun to watch the point of my attention is the technology behind those Objects - they are sphere-shaped battle machines that have only single small (obviously gated) hole to get a pilot inside and all connections to outside world such as weapons power, mobility systems, etc. are managed thru armor - which acts as a conductor also. It cannot withstand huge kinetic impacts but is pretty much ok with plasma/photon types and now i can almost assmeble a picture why.
While it is a Sci-fi the armor of Heavy Objects is not (i believe) really magical material you can cast into slabs and use as is - its is complex multi-layer onion shell - which gives me an idea we dont need that shit to be armor and for weapons, but we can make something like this as a shielding against cosmic radiation with little to none weakspots cus any type of outside apparatus can be slapped to the body itself with no need of wiring, additional holes.
10:00 Is the magnetic field unable to deflect a bunch of slower moving particles as well as it can deflect a single ultra high energy particle? I just wonder if an outer layer of physical shielding with inner layer of magnetic shielding might work. Beats me, just wondering.
I had heard that there was a third off shoot to the other two approaches that involve injecting a plasma into the charged area that enhances the effectiveness of the electrostatic approach because the particles of the plasma have their own mass and charge too. Could you add a video addressing this other approach? I think they call it the artificial magnetosphere method.
So they made an electrostatic shield at a 3M (sellotape and film) factory by accident. There's a few snippets of info about this out there, but it happened before the Internet was popular. I'd love to see a proper mini-doc on this as most vids here on RUclips are very short.
I wonder if the recent break-throughs concerning virtual magnetic fields generated by meta-materials will play into this development down the line.
So, I wonder why no one has taken Earth's approach - spin a strong magnet and create a sphericalagnetic field.
Yes, I understand the Earth's core is too large & spins too fast to be practical, but that covers a planet. We just need to cover a spaceship.
Also, are all of these efforts trying to eliminate these particles completely? Not even Earth's magnetic field does that. We should only reduce to that level.
emm, 50% of deflection, but does it deflects it outside of the screen (screen is in the test, but protecting object in the production)? Otherwise it will deflect it to the another area of the protecting object. Are there any concepts for capturing and using high energy particles to charge something?
I wonder if this could be used in conjunction with a method of capturing (some) of the energy of those high speed particles to recoup some energy
Would a bunch of strong neodymium magnets lining the habitat be enough to protect you inside?
Nice one Ben
Yay. Awesome ❤
I have a question about the deflector grid array mentioned at the end. From the graphics and animation it looks like the particles are deflected around the the grid. But would this not result only in an smaller affected area but a similar dose where some areas have no radiation and others higher?
A matrix with electric charge over a dielectric region. Their cage-like models demonstrate the principle, but have gaps in the protection. Their solution was to add an additional offset layer. I would instead work with the scale; at the lower limit, they're describing a capacitor. Incorporate electrodes in the lamination of the hull. If it needs a more complicated structure, treat it as a metamaterial problem.
When it comes to this kind of way-out-there physics, I'm at a loss. A fleeting thought occurred while watching the Dr's video. Part of the problem is generating the amount of power needed to counter the incoming particles/waves. Would there not be value in using these same particles to produce the power to defeat them? Not unlike a water wheel? Not in structure but in concept. The main issue, though, may be the destructive nature of the particles on whatever mechanism is used to interact with them. But, continuing the water wheel analogy, the goal would be to use the water's force, as it rushes past, to generate the power to produce the shielding needed.
But, again, it was a fleeting thought...
The ideal form of a magnetic field is a sphere. Why don't we construct a spherical ship with a kind of superconductive permanent magnet that can be electrically amplified if necessary? The thick shell inside the sphere could also be shielded in the conventional way and individual layers could be polarized differently.