Recent content by Eric Muller

Darn. And here all these pop sci articles have me thinking about antimatter for hypothetical FTL drives (Alcubierre/White). I get that the possibility of FTL is very controversial and that's a topic for another thread. But I was raised on Star Trek. The Alcubierre/White stuff has me very...

@e.bar.goum: Thank you for the detailed explanation. I'm not familiar with luminosity or intensity as I am learning all of this via wikipedia, and not through formal academic training. I thought beta+ was all the same be it from isotopes or beams, so why not isotopes? I follow your point...

So a big challenge seems to be keeping the stuff around. If that could be a mastered it would be a big leap forward. I am curious is why all of the labs seem to use beams, instead of masses of beta+ emitting isotopes?

Thanks for the link. I read it over. I think I'll hold off on the radioisotope thing. As I said earlier, this was all speculation. And in the process I have learned quite a bit more than I knew before.

@mfb: Ah, charge densities and proton rich isotopes. I will explore these topics. I pieced together my pet idea this morning after reading about beta decay. One can only get so far in two hours, and then its lunchtime. I figured there had to be more science to learn. Thanks for the leads...

Hi everyone, We know that positrons are emitted from certain isotopes and that isotopes form as a by-product of nuclear fission in reactors. So, I'm curious if positrons could be manufactured by the neutron bombardment of a stable isotope, such as Na, and then using the resulting beta-emitting...