Neutronium Armor: Could it Actually Protect?

[SkepticJ]

When nature creates a normal neutron somewhere near the axis of rotation of the Milky Way it throws in what behaves like a singlet positronium that is the seed to the conversion of the neutron to a proton - a spinning electron is ejected with much energy leaving the charge only of the remnant positron still within the neutron shell. Occasionally nature fails to insert a singlet positronium and the result is a mule-neutron that is without the ability to decay so that it simply collects together with other mules and gets denser and denser. Dont forget that there are anti-mules with which the mules could annihilate although spins and magnetics might impede any mixing. Cheers, Jim PS. If this model seems unbelievable just call it sci-fi!

Can you give some proof of this? Sounds interesting, if true.

 

[NEOclassic]

Hi Skeptic, Not only is the conversion of a neutron to a proton, its daughter, accepted universally but the process is extremely spontaneous evidenced by the accompanying expulsion of a highly energetic electron with 0.783 MeV of energy (and an anti-neutrino that must be emitted in order to ballance off the spin-a-half that the electron carries off intrinsically) which can be accounted for as follows: There is internal to the neutron shell (whose mass and spin does not change with this convulsion) a singlet positronium unlike-charged (and galaxy created orbit of an electron and a positron) tiny neutral orbit. This orbit is the source of the electron energy as follows: 0.511 MeV due to the quantum leap of the positron mass from its
orbit to its zero mass at neutronic center, plus 0.256 MeV, the orbital kinetic energy of the expelled electron, plus 0.016 MeV, the energy required to strip the anti-spin from the bare positive charge of the proton. Like I said earlier, if this model is unbelievable, just treat it as Scifi. Cheers, Jim

 

[Anne.O.Neimau]

This is now a long-disused thread. However, maybe somebody will visit again, and respond.

The original question was, as the rest of this thread makes clear, obviously Science-Fiction in nature. Most of the responses addressed why Neutronium Armor couldn't be made/used/exist, (at least, with our current understanding of the Universe). They did not actually address the question itself, which starts with the presumption that such armor could somehow exist.

Since I can envision ways in which such armor could exist (although I can't tell you how craft it), I think most of you have completely dodged a legitimate question.

Examples of Neutronium Armor that could probably maintain existential stability include:

1. A neutron star - Interpose a neutron star between a target and an attack, and you ipso facto have neutronium armor. What would be the characteristics and utility of such armor in this case? For example, I would suspect it would not provide very effective armor against the gamma-ray blast of a quasar because of gravitational lensing. If you were close-enough to the neutron star that the lensing effect didn't "erase" the neutron-star's shadow, they you were probably "too close" to the neutron star in the various ways already presented in this thread. However, I haven't even attempted to run the math, so I might be way off on how much the gravitational lensing effect would bend the paths of the cosmic rays.
2. Thin, hollow neutronium shell - IIRC, the theoretical net gravitational "pull" inside a massive but thin hollow sphere (regardless of density) is zero, within the interior. Obviously, this mathematically assumes "thin" equals "zero thickness", which can't actually happen. However, what happens if "thin" equals "a minuscule percentage of the spherical radius"? Again, I haven't run the math (and it's been 3 decades since I used any calculus), but I suspect that there would be a fair-sized spherical interior region that exhibited tolerable levels of gravitational flux. Basically, we are most-worried about tidal effects across the largest chord of the object(s) we are attempting to shield with the armor. If this assumption is correct, then obviously there is some size of hollow sphere for which the net gravitational effect at the sphere's surface is sufficient to maintain the neutronium state. Granted, this may require more matter than exists in the known universe, but still it *could happen* ;-)
3. Gigantic Hollow Tube - Like the already-referenced Star-Trek doomsday machine. I'm not at all certain of the gravitational-flux physics of a hollow neutronium cylinder, spinning at a high-enough rate around its axis to maintain a cylindrical shape. It's mere existence would probably constitute a pretty good doomsday machine, even without some postulated star-annihilating weapon. However, postulating another sci-fi favorite - gravitic technology - might allow the maintenance of a "safe" region along the axis of the cylinder. At least, away from the ends, anyway. Again, what would the armor-characteristics of an enormous, rapidly-spinning cylinder of neutronium be?

Science Fiction, in it's "purest" sense, involves postulating some as-yet-impossible effect, and analyzing the implications on the rest of the otherwise-held-constant universe, both in terms of societal impact (the most popular expression of sci-fi), and in terms of pure physics. I feel that, in this latter expression, this question about neutronium armor is, in fact, a legitimate physics question. If some technique did exist for crafting neutronium armor, what are the resulting physical-science implications?

For example, the much-postulated sci-fi technology of "gravitics" - the ability to artificially manipulate the gravitational field in a given volume of space - would probably lend itself quite well to the collection, machining, and maintenance of neutronium. On the other hand, while anti-gravity, tractor-beams, and pressor-beams are obvious implied applications of gravitics, I think you could make some pretty dandy force-fields, too. A "black-hole level" repulsive gradient in a sphere around a "constant 1-gravity" spaceship interior would probably be a much better armor than "mere" neutronium. It might also incidentally provide a means of faster-than-light travel, since the ship-interior would be totally divorced from the rest of the universe - and thus, it's position might be an imaginary number only, which can be adjusted without pesky relativistic effects - until the force-field was deconstructed.

Similarly, some sort of "stasis" time-stop technology would allow the maintenance-of-state of neutronium (or anything else). Of course, a true stasis field would also probably be a better armor than "mere" neutronium, since there can be no energy-propogation in a time-stopped environment.

 

[Anne.O.Neimau]

In terms of my "gut" answer to the original question, I think it depends upon what you are attempting to armor against. Physical/Kinetic attacks might not be defended against as well as you might think. I suspect that the speed of sound through neutronium is pretty darned high, so kinetic attacks would rapidly be translated to the other side of the armor as a shockwave. Neutronium Armor plus internal buffer (like, kilometers of empty space between the protected target and the interior of the thin-sphere shell) might ameliorate this effect. But, if we're considering planet-sized thin-shell neutronium armor, we're probably also considering comet-massed relativistic kinetic projectiles. Might such an impact cause undesirable "spalling" off the interior of our shell, showering the target with high-speed neutrons?

"Classical" radiation-attacks are probably well defended against, with neutronium. I doubt X-rays and the like propagate through it at all. Extremely high-energy radiation (like being directly in the path of a relatively-nearby quasar radiation-stream) is another question entirely. Especially if neutronium is essentially a superfluid, it might be possible for intense-enough radiation to "blow it aside" to form a temporary hole.

The effects of gravitational attacks would also be of interest. Clearly, "low-grade" attacks aren't having much effect against something with a density in the billions-tonnes-per-cc range, if you've already solved the problem of how to maintain proximity to such a massive substance in the first place. However, I see two likely areas of concern against "higher-grade" attacks: tidal-effect warping of the armor-surface; and power-drain on your mechanism for maintaining a safe interior state.

Both of these are basically attacks on whatever mechanism is used to maintain the neutronium armor's configuration. If this is an "understood" physical process (the large thin sphere, or the spinning cylinder), then it should be possible to calculate the amount of gravitational flux required to cause dangerous tide-based thinning of the sphere, or disastrous structural imbalance of the spinning cylinder. If the state-maintenance mechanism is purely speculative (e.g. gravitics), then does the "attacker" have a force-multiplier advantage over the defender? In other words, is neutronium likely to be an innately-unstable state-of-matter (I think the thread consensus is "yes"), so that a local "overload" of the global state-maintenance effect might cause catastrophic failure?

 

[Vanadium 50]

IIRC, the theoretical net gravitational "pull" inside a massive but thin hollow sphere (regardless of density) is zero, within the interior. Obviously, this mathematically assumes "thin" equals "zero thickness", which can't actually happen. However, what happens if "thin" equals "a minuscule percentage of the spherical radius"? Again, I haven't run the math (and it's been 3 decades since I used any calculus), but I suspect that there would be a fair-sized spherical interior region that exhibited tolerable levels of gravitational flux.

Nope. A thick shell still has zero field inside it. (Think about it - the very outermost layer is a thin shell, so we can ignore it, and the then next layer is also a thin shell, and so on all the way down.

This is why one should bound one's speculation with calculation.

 

[fedaykin]

" When industrial diamonds are created using tremendous pressure they don't suddenly revert to their original form when the pressure is removed. "

At STP, diamonds are actually slightly less stable than graphite. Diamond won't become graphite very quickly, but if I recall correctly from the book "The New Alchemists" diamond in some earlier diamond synthesis machines was capable of bouncing back to graphite. I think one of the researchers stated that it was the world's best spring. I thought that was a little funny to mention that as an example of stability.

 

[granpa]

a large nucleus with all neutrons would be unstable (some of the neutrons would convert to protons by emitting electrons) so presumably armour made of neutron star material would be too.

why not use white dwarf material as armour instead? its my understanding that degenerate material can be produced here on earth.

 

[Vanadium 50]

why not use white dwarf material as armour instead? its my understanding that degenerate material can be produced here on earth.

If you mean white dwarf material has been produced on earth, that's wrong.

If you mean materials with a degenerate electron gas, that's correct. We call them "metals" and people have been building armor out of them for centuries.

 

[granpa]

I mean material that has been put under enough pressure to become degenerate.

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-diamond-anvil-cell.htm

The diamond anvil cell is a machine used by physicists to put samples under extremely high pressures (up to ~360 gigapascals) for the purpose of researching their properties, including phase transitions, atomic bonding, viscosity and diffraction levels, and crystallographic structure. Diamond anvil cells can simulate pressures of millions of atmospheres, recreating conditions similar to those at the center of the Earth or inside the gas giants. They are among the only laboratory apparatus capable of creating forms of degenerate matter like metallic hydrogen.

http://uplink.space.com/printthread.php?Cat=&Board=askastronomer&main=689723&type=thread

 

[Vanadium 50]

That is not white dwarf material.

Metallic hydrogen is, as the name suggests, metallic. Like I said above, a metal.

 

[granpa]

metallic hydrogen is degenerate material. white dwarf material is degenerate material.

why do you assume it can't be metallic and degenerate at the same time?

 

[cristo]

This thread is from three years ago, when the forum rules were somewhat different to what they are today. Overly speculative posts, or personal theories are not permitted in the technical forums. Thus, I am closing this thread.