What would happen? PBW

[Zer0 Kay]

when talking particle beam weapons you really have 3 main flavors.
the positive charged particle weapon.
the neutral particle beam
and the negative charged particle weapon sometimes called an electro laser or ion gun

with the positive charged weapon, you strip some or all of the electrons off the nuclei of the "fuel atoms" then accelerate them to typically relativistic speeds and "throw" them at your target. note I am simplifying a lot, but that is the general idea. and the specific atoms used don't really matter, except in an engineering sense. note its quite possible that a particle beam weapon firing protons (electron stripped hydrogen) could fire its atoms at 90-98% of light speed, and one firing silver atoms at 50-70% of the speed of light to get similar effects, or another 90% speed of light silver particle beam that just throws less silver atoms at a time.

How many of those flavors are rifts?
Rifts particle weapons run on eclips and no other ammunition is listed as being used.
needing to load a cartage of silver and break it down to atoms then launching them to me would seam to be a inefficient use of resources.

In addition as I understand it a neutral particle weapon starts by ionizing the atom by striping away electrons or adding electrons. That means it likely changes the silver atom to something else.

Then obviously Rifts is 31 flavors...

[Zer0 Kay]

Why are so many assuming liquid. I want to accelerate atoms of silver fast enough to penitrate

A grenade or other explosive device wrapped in silver would accelerate the hell out of some silver atoms. Granted the atoms would be grouped together to form molecules of silver, which given enough of them makes a mass of the element silver. Which is accelerated all to hell and back by the explosion. Plus you get a really nice BOOM out of it.

(I commented before reading the entire thread)

The following link might provide a better explanation on how/why silver effects Vampires/werewolves/the supernatural.

https://mythology.stackexchange.com/que ... e-vampires

TL:DR Silver is pure. Monsters are impure. Therefore contact with it (I don't believe it has to be penetration, merely physical contact imho) hurts them. Like matter/anti-matter. You can't put them together without bad things happening.

Yeah... well that isnt stated as such in Rifts.

[Zer0 Kay]

And +2 for walking away in slow motion.

Human shielding exists in space, but it isn't the same as being on the surface; still, a particularly energetic solar flare will be catastrophic. The goal of any particle beam weapon is a high-energy, high-current beam. The theory predicts rapid vapourisation of a small chunk of the target.

And another +1 for removing his sunglasses in perfect timing with secondary explosions.

[Zer0 Kay]

And +2 for walking away in slow motion.

Human shielding exists in space, but it isn't the same as being on the surface; still, a particularly energetic solar flare will be catastrophic. The goal of any particle beam weapon is a high-energy, high-current beam. The theory predicts rapid vapourisation of a small chunk of the target.

Arent the billions of microholes also damaging?

Or by virtue of their size to they essentially auto seal?

The interactions will be microscopic, so there won't be any holes. When one particle impacts another, the affected particle accelerates which causes a temperature increase. The goal of particle beam weapons is to raise that temperature to the temperature of vapourisation. The American SDI programme aimed to vaporise one cubic centimetre of material. To do this requires high-energy and high-current particle beams.

Isn't that effect better performed at longer ranges with lasers?

Depends on what constitutes better performance. A laser deposits its energy on the surface, and it conducts from there into the material. A particle beam deposits its energy inside (possibly even on the other side of) the substance. The particle beam probably vapourises the material much faster than the laser.

What if you shot a hollow, cross-shaped projectile made of silver and filled with holy out of a rail gun at a vampire?

The silver rips open a wound, while doing whatever crosses do to vampires these days. At the same time, the cross breaks up as it passes through the undead flesh, and a splash of holy water jets through the vampire's innards at supersonic speeds.

Rail or coil? The burst firing weapons called railguns are more likely coilguns which wouldn't be able to shoot silver anything as silver isn't ferrous. A railgun on the other hand could use an armature to push that out, but why bother just get a boomgun and fill it with silver flechettes with crosses etched on it.

Couldn't a coilgun accelerate a ferrous sabot?

So it's range vs. delivery method. Aren't lasers supposed to be able to cause crystalline instability in hard materials causing explosive results rather than vaporization?

Yes a cool gun could do ferrous sabots. I always imagine them as a simple system with bearings quickly fed into a pulsing array... hmm. Everytime I hear or read sabot I automatically think discarding. The silver bearing could just have a ferrous ring around it... heck could just skip the sabot and go with a ferrous core and a silver shell.

[Zer0 Kay]

Just to make a point here.
Silver bullets do half damage to vampires supposedly due to issues relating to their small size.
Now if a bullet is so little it is doing half damage, a few atoms of silver is... well its background count. Vampires don't take damage for breathing in the vicinity of a silver mine. Nor do they melt due to humidity.

A sliver particle beam is a rube-Goldberg device that would need magic to make it work. Now as a 'delivery method' for a TW now your talking. In that context it has the sort of 'flavor' that fits.

Oh please everyone knows Rube-Goldberg devises are TW devices.

As for breathing near a silver mine I doubt silver produces much if any dust and that dust is unlikely to be light enough to be taken aloft by a breeze.

[eliakon]

Just to make a point here.
Silver bullets do half damage to vampires supposedly due to issues relating to their small size.
Now if a bullet is so little it is doing half damage, a few atoms of silver is... well its background count. Vampires don't take damage for breathing in the vicinity of a silver mine. Nor do they melt due to humidity.

A sliver particle beam is a rube-Goldberg device that would need magic to make it work. Now as a 'delivery method' for a TW now your talking. In that context it has the sort of 'flavor' that fits.

Oh please everyone knows Rube-Goldberg devises are TW devices.

As for breathing near a silver mine I doubt silver produces much if any dust and that dust is unlikely to be light enough to be taken aloft by a breeze.

The point is that pico gram quantities of silver are not going to hurt a vampire any more than atmospheric water does.
And silver ore does produce dust. And the dust does contain silver. And that dust does go air born. And breath of dust has more silver than years of particle beam fire...
Since we know canonically that atmosphiric water/silver/salt/sawdust/uranium are not enough to kill off all the supernatural critters on Rifts earth (or else they would be dead) exposure to an even lower quantity of the material isn't going to do anything.

Now sure, a GM can decide that anythign with the word "silver" in it automatically is undead slaying... but thats up to them to make that change to the game.

[Natasha]

Relativistic particles have energies much larger than the binding energies that differentiate gases and solids. A relativistic particle interacts with solids precisely as it does with gases. That is, a solid is just a dense gas. So, treating relativistic particles as tiny bullets is incorrect. In real life (which Rifts isn't) you'd have to get into high-energy particle physics.

That said, it's your game (and your topic), follow the path you want. If you're going to use a classical dynamics, that's cool; and I'm happy to follow that path if you want.

But what if it wasn't traveling at relativistic speeds... (tangent) why aren't all speeds relativistic because isn't it all relative to the observer? More serious tangent at what fraction of light speed does it become relativistic? I could look it up but I have a feeling your answer will be more entertaining.(/tangent) what non-relativistic speed would an atom have to travel to penetrate flesh.

Back to the relativistic. If a PBW is using silver atoms is it possible for some of those atoms to come to rest in the body it is penetrating?

Here "relativistic" relates to Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, which accurately describes high-speed objects. That term is opposed to "classical", which began, formally, with Newton's Principia. Galileo's Principle of Relativity is not strictly correct, and Einstein's Principle of Relativity provides the fix. The divergence of the classical mathematical expression for kinetic energy from the relativistic expression starts to become significant around 12% the speed of light—which is a lot faster than anything we encounter in our everyday lives. Therefore, "classical" dynamics is just a special case of "relativistic" dynamics.

Einstein did more than bring Galilean Relativity into correctness; he also asserted that all observers measure the same speed of light. Indeed, this was consistent with Maxwell's hypothesis that light was an electromagnetic phenomenon. When Maxwell developed electromagnetism, he derived an electromagnetic wave equation which predicted all such waves travel at the same speed and he knew that light was a wave from Thomas Young's 1801 experiment.

Anyway, what happens if an object travelling at the speed of light approaches another object going at the speed of light on the same axis? The classical theory says the relative speed is twice the speed of light. Einstein's theory says this is impossible. And, so, there are different methods for even measuring relative speed when high speeds are involved.

In most cases, yes, the relative speed depends on the relative motion of source and observer.

The Americans' SDI programme asserted that charged particle beams (CPBs) are thermal kill weapons. The basis for that analysis is thermal diffusion, which occurs rapidly in-depth. The damage done is by way of vapourising the target. Given the density of solid matter, the predicted penetration is probably as small as a couple of centimetres, which is generally sufficient according to the ten kiloJoule criterion that they developed. So it seems reasonable to say a CPB will not pass through a body, or at least not very far beyond.

Note that a neutral particle beam behaves precisely like a CPB once inside the target.

Thank you for the awesome lesson.

My pleasure. Any time.

So it's range vs. delivery method. Aren't lasers supposed to be able to cause crystalline instability in hard materials causing explosive results rather than vaporization?

Yes a cool gun could do ferrous sabots. I always imagine them as a simple system with bearings quickly fed into a pulsing array... hmm. Everytime I hear or read sabot I automatically think discarding. The silver bearing could just have a ferrous ring around it... heck could just skip the sabot and go with a ferrous core and a silver shell.

Even in a solid, the atoms are wiggling. When the atoms come orderly and repetitively together, they form a crystalline solid. All metal and salt (and many minerals) are crystalline. The regular spacing of atoms with bonds held together by the same strength results. With a uniform temperature increase, the atoms wiggle faster, and then at the melting point the bonds all pop at the same time. The substance goes from a solid to a liquid. That is why crystalline solids melt suddenly all at once. An explosion might be the result. If it is, then vapourisation is not required. But if there is no explosion, then the molten material must be removed. The motion of the target might be sufficient if there is, say, air flow. But the requirement to remove the material is why those weapons are designed to vapourise.

Now that you mention it, an explosion (and vapourisation) could, off the top of my head, cause an amount of mechanical damage at the point due to a local pressure change.

[guardiandashi]

the reality is that you have to remember that even "solids" are mostly open /empty space and its not necessarily true that a breath of air/dust would have more silver in it than a years worth of particle beam fire. (assuming that the particle beam was firing silver particles. )

first there are a number of factors that would have to go together to determine the details.
1 the energy output of said particle beam weapon.
2 the speed the silver particles are traveling at.
3 the mass of particles required to do the damage (energy transfer)
4 the amount of wasted energy/particles per shot
etc.

now as I understand it with particle beams they actually have a lot in common with railguns/coilguns, but the big difference is kind of like a shotgun firing shot vs a shotgun firing slugs, except that in some ways its kind of like those stupid "shotguns" with the really long barrels

[eliakon]

the reality is that you have to remember that even "solids" are mostly open /empty space and its not necessarily true that a breath of air/dust would have more silver in it than a years worth of particle beam fire. (assuming that the particle beam was firing silver particles. )

first there are a number of factors that would have to go together to determine the details.
1 the energy output of said particle beam weapon.
2 the speed the silver particles are traveling at.
3 the mass of particles required to do the damage (energy transfer)
4 the amount of wasted energy/particles per shot
etc.

now as I understand it with particle beams they actually have a lot in common with railguns/coilguns, but the big difference is kind of like a shotgun firing shot vs a shotgun firing slugs, except that in some ways its kind of like those stupid "shotguns" with the really long barrels

Considering how particle beams work...
I would say it is a fairly safe assumption that they are accelerating pico-grams of silver maybe nano-grams.
This is because if they were accelerating anything more the recoil would punch the weapon through mountains.
Remember a PB weapon is accelerating its ammunition to a significant fraction of the speed of light... equal and opposite and all that.
So the number of individual atoms accelerated at any one time is going to be absurdly low. Basically it is going to be nano scale or lower.
Which means that levels of silver detectable by mere chemical tests are going to be millions of times higher.

Be that as it may... its still billions of times smaller than a bullet which is so small that it gets its damage reduced...
So yeah. Funny idea. But its about as 'realistic' as arguing that vampires melt if you breath on them because you exhale water vapor.

[Zer0 Kay]

the reality is that you have to remember that even "solids" are mostly open /empty space and its not necessarily true that a breath of air/dust would have more silver in it than a years worth of particle beam fire. (assuming that the particle beam was firing silver particles. )

first there are a number of factors that would have to go together to determine the details.
1 the energy output of said particle beam weapon.
2 the speed the silver particles are traveling at.
3 the mass of particles required to do the damage (energy transfer)
4 the amount of wasted energy/particles per shot
etc.

now as I understand it with particle beams they actually have a lot in common with railguns/coilguns, but the big difference is kind of like a shotgun firing shot vs a shotgun firing slugs, except that in some ways its kind of like those stupid "shotguns" with the really long barrels

Considering how particle beams work...
I would say it is a fairly safe assumption that they are accelerating pico-grams of silver maybe nano-grams.
This is because if they were accelerating anything more the recoil would punch the weapon through mountains.
Remember a PB weapon is accelerating its ammunition to a significant fraction of the speed of light... equal and opposite and all that.
So the number of individual atoms accelerated at any one time is going to be absurdly low. Basically it is going to be nano scale or lower.
Which means that levels of silver detectable by mere chemical tests are going to be millions of times higher.

Be that as it may... its still billions of times smaller than a bullet which is so small that it gets its damage reduced...
So yeah. Funny idea. But its about as 'realistic' as arguing that vampires melt if you breath on them because you exhale water vapor.

Alright, and feel free to jump in on this Natasha, so how long does it take for a person to recover from the recoil of a picogram of silver?

Fourty-nine grams, the weight of some .50 cal rounds, is 49 trillion picograms. How many pictograms can be fired and barely felt as recoil to where it requires no recovery time?

Maybe instead we should look at it like a stream of fluid. A fireman with a high pressure hose. What is the energy that causes that? How much is that energy?

With that amount of constant force how many picograms can be accelerated to .5C?

With that many picograms needed to produce the felt constant recoil of a fire hose how long would it take to eject 49 trillion picograms?

[Zer0 Kay]

If it helps a fire hose 8 to 10 bar (116-290 psi).

[The Beast]

Mystically speaking, would atoms of silver even be considered the same as a silver bullet or sword? I'm asking this because mystically speaking moonlight and reflected sunlight are already considered to be different than sunlight direct from the source even though all three are originating from the same ball of fire one astronomical unit away.

[Natasha]

Linacs today are 100s of metres long. Cyclotrons are more compact than linacs, but their magnets are huge. A hand-held accelerator capable of achieving the same energy and current predicted to vaporise a cubic gramme of matter is firmly in the realm of SCIENCE!.

The bulk matter is probably too massive for electromagnetic acceleration and is not the "ammunition" of particle beam weapons. We may as well stick to the existing weapons in such scenarios.

The Blood Boiler suggests that a water cutting weapon and introducing silver that way is not effective against vampires. Which probably means depositing silver via particle beams is not useful, but maybe the Game Master wants to develop a kind of "silver radiation sickness" for vampires.

Nothing is more silver than a silver atom, of course, and the rules say the purer the silver, the better. But something else is going on. It seems to be the surface area of the impacting object.

[Hotrod]

Just curious... do particle beam rifles count under W.P. Energy Pistol/Rifle or under W.P. Heavy? Or is it just a judgment call?

[guardiandashi]

Just curious... do particle beam rifles count under W.P. Energy Pistol/Rifle or under W.P. Heavy? Or is it just a judgment call?

generally particle beams are heavy due to the size of the weapon required to make them work.

this is definitely a case where IMO it comes down to the style of the weapon being more important than what it fires.

if you had a particle beam in a pistol package I would use wp energy pistol.
if it was in a rifle package wp energy rifle.
if like in most cases, heavy energy package then heavy energy or heavy md weapons

[Blue_Lion]

Just curious... do particle beam rifles count under W.P. Energy Pistol/Rifle or under W.P. Heavy? Or is it just a judgment call?

generally particle beams are heavy due to the size of the weapon required to make them work.

this is definitely a case where IMO it comes down to the style of the weapon being more important than what it fires.

if you had a particle beam in a pistol package I would use wp energy pistol.
if it was in a rifle package wp energy rifle.
if like in most cases, heavy energy package then heavy energy or heavy md weapons

Yea one of the draw backs is they do not tell you what the default WP is for weapons so you have to make educated guess.
A general rule of thumb you could use If the single shot(not pulse) MD is equal to or greater than 6d6 treat it as a heavy weapon.

Some heavy weapons do have rifle stocks so it can be confusing. Take the P7 it looks like a rifle build but seams a heavy weapon, same with the CS plasma weapon.

[eliakon]

Mystically speaking, would atoms of silver even be considered the same as a silver bullet or sword? I'm asking this because mystically speaking moonlight and reflected sunlight are already considered to be different than sunlight direct from the source even though all three are originating from the same ball of fire one astronomical unit away.

And The Beast wins the cookie
Magic is not science (which is why vampires do not melt under starlight/moonlight)

[Natasha]

As I said, it could be a question of quantity. Not all lasers bore a hole through humans. Lying under a full moon on a crystal clear night will not burn human skin. A globe of daylight seems to lack the required intensity to damage vampires.

[Blue_Lion]

As I said, it could be a question of quantity. Not all lasers bore a hole through humans. Lying under a full moon on a crystal clear night will not burn human skin. A globe of daylight seems to lack the required intensity to damage vampires.

Vampires are as I understand it damaged by an amount of daylight required for life to exist.
If we take that to mean the amount of light for our plants to conduct photosynthesis then the moon may not meet that requirement. I would think that a glob of daylight if it allows humans to see would be at a level of light that plants can conduct photosynthesis.

But Metapysics often breaks the laws of physics.

[Zer0 Kay]

Mystically speaking, would atoms of silver even be considered the same as a silver bullet or sword? I'm asking this because mystically speaking moonlight and reflected sunlight are already considered to be different than sunlight direct from the source even though all three are originating from the same ball of fire one astronomical unit away.

An atom of silver is still silver no where does it say only bullets or swords made of silver damage the creatures any weapon made of silver any non weapon that can be used as a makeshift weapon coated in silver so it is the silver not so much the form. In the case of the sun it may not even be the light since we know reflections don't work and UV grenades don't work so it must be the image of the one true sun is what causes them damage and no they can't just close they're eyes or deny that it isn't the true sun. Just like it is the image of the cross however in this case it doesn't have to be the one true cross it is any cross even the shadow of one.

[Zer0 Kay]

Linacs today are 100s of metres long. Cyclotrons are more compact than linacs, but their magnets are huge. A hand-held accelerator capable of achieving the same energy and current predicted to vaporise a cubic gramme of matter is firmly in the realm of SCIENCE!.

The bulk matter is probably too massive for electromagnetic acceleration and is not the "ammunition" of particle beam weapons. We may as well stick to the existing weapons in such scenarios.

The Blood Boiler suggests that a water cutting weapon and introducing silver that way is not effective against vampires. Which probably means depositing silver via particle beams is not useful, but maybe the Game Master wants to develop a kind of "silver radiation sickness" for vampires.

Nothing is more silver than a silver atom, of course, and the rules say the purer the silver, the better. But something else is going on. It seems to be the surface area of the impacting object.

Ah but that blood boiler bit said they have to be cut with silver... well a water cutter doesn't inject it does cut so it would be cutting rather than trying to inject the silver into them... that being said though would mean that leaving bits of silver behind won't do anything. NOW how about in that water cutting tool using silver for the abrasive (moving water and slashed by silver) also has bits of wood in it. If we slash the heart and the detritus left behind has wood in it does that count as being staked? Is it the wood or the method of piercing the heart that does the trick?

I was thinking of making S-Rounds instead of DU rounds one time, since silver can be made radioactive, but someone said that the books specifically said that it isn't the radiation but the uranium that retards the bio-regeneration... so I house ruled it anyway because come one Ceritus Dominus the Star Dragon doesn't have bio-regeneration and makes people sick that come near him and... well they get radiation poisoning. So Ceritus the only dragon without bio-regen is radio active and U and DU (which is still radio active, which I'm sure you know but not everyone does) rounds stop bio-regen so I figured it was the radiation not the element.

What does happen with linacs or cyclotrons if you put a say bullet in them?

[Zer0 Kay]

As I said, it could be a question of quantity. Not all lasers bore a hole through humans. Lying under a full moon on a crystal clear night will not burn human skin. A globe of daylight seems to lack the required intensity to damage vampires.

Vampires are as I understand it damaged by an amount of daylight required for life to exist.
If we take that to mean the amount of light for our plants to conduct photosynthesis then the moon may not meet that requirement. I would think that a glob of daylight if it allows humans to see would be at a level of light that plants can conduct photosynthesis.

But Metapysics often breaks the laws of physics.

ugh... that is so meta.

[eliakon]

Mystically speaking, would atoms of silver even be considered the same as a silver bullet or sword? I'm asking this because mystically speaking moonlight and reflected sunlight are already considered to be different than sunlight direct from the source even though all three are originating from the same ball of fire one astronomical unit away.

An atom of silver is still silver no where does it say only bullets or swords made of silver damage the creatures any weapon made of silver any non weapon that can be used as a makeshift weapon coated in silver so it is the silver not so much the form. In the case of the sun it may not even be the light since we know reflections don't work and UV grenades don't work so it must be the image of the one true sun is what causes them damage and no they can't just close they're eyes or deny that it isn't the true sun. Just like it is the image of the cross however in this case it doesn't have to be the one true cross it is any cross even the shadow of one.

And we are ALSO told that impure silver and small quantities reduce the damage
And for that matter we are told that weapons made of silver damage. Not energy beams of silver.
And since PB weapons do energy damage not physical damage... well silver doesn't do energy damage....
And that shadows of crosses do not damage them anymore, only direct physical contact with an actual cross or other holy symbol.
And of course that while sunlight hurts, tiny sunlight aka starlight does not

So the claim that "a couple atoms of silver must hurt vampires" fails on pretty much every level unless you allow people to breath on vampires for water damage (since there is more water in your breath then there is silver this hypothetical beam)

[Natasha]

As I said, it could be a question of quantity. Not all lasers bore a hole through humans. Lying under a full moon on a crystal clear night will not burn human skin. A globe of daylight seems to lack the required intensity to damage vampires.

Vampires are as I understand it damaged by an amount of daylight required for life to exist.
If we take that to mean the amount of light for our plants to conduct photosynthesis then the moon may not meet that requirement. I would think that a glob of daylight if it allows humans to see would be at a level of light that plants can conduct photosynthesis.

But Metapysics often breaks the laws of physics.

I don't know about your first sentence; I'm willing to accept it.

Photosynthesis is a chemical reaction that increases as incident light intensity increases, generally speaking. But the intensity arguement, as it were, isn't bulletproof; lights exist that are far more intense than Globe of Daylight. On the other hand, the wavelength also matters in photosynthesis.

Linacs today are 100s of metres long. Cyclotrons are more compact than linacs, but their magnets are huge. A hand-held accelerator capable of achieving the same energy and current predicted to vaporise a cubic gramme of matter is firmly in the realm of SCIENCE!.

The bulk matter is probably too massive for electromagnetic acceleration and is not the "ammunition" of particle beam weapons. We may as well stick to the existing weapons in such scenarios.

The Blood Boiler suggests that a water cutting weapon and introducing silver that way is not effective against vampires. Which probably means depositing silver via particle beams is not useful, but maybe the Game Master wants to develop a kind of "silver radiation sickness" for vampires.

Nothing is more silver than a silver atom, of course, and the rules say the purer the silver, the better. But something else is going on. It seems to be the surface area of the impacting object.

Ah but that blood boiler bit said they have to be cut with silver... well a water cutter doesn't inject it does cut so it would be cutting rather than trying to inject the silver into them... that being said though would mean that leaving bits of silver behind won't do anything. NOW how about in that water cutting tool using silver for the abrasive (moving water and slashed by silver) also has bits of wood in it. If we slash the heart and the detritus left behind has wood in it does that count as being staked? Is it the wood or the method of piercing the heart that does the trick?

I was thinking of making S-Rounds instead of DU rounds one time, since silver can be made radioactive, but someone said that the books specifically said that it isn't the radiation but the uranium that retards the bio-regeneration... so I house ruled it anyway because come one Ceritus Dominus the Star Dragon doesn't have bio-regeneration and makes people sick that come near him and... well they get radiation poisoning. So Ceritus the only dragon without bio-regen is radio active and U and DU (which is still radio active, which I'm sure you know but not everyone does) rounds stop bio-regen so I figured it was the radiation not the element.

What does happen with linacs or cyclotrons if you put a say bullet in them?

idk what it is about staking the heart but if you can punch a stake through the breastbone I reckon anything is possible.

I'd be ok with radiation preventing regeneration. On the other hand, to some extent, you and I are radioactive, too. So... whatever you want works for me.

The mass of the bullet in an accelerator, if it could be electromagnetically accelerated, would greatly reduce the effectiveness of the accelerator. A linac has a series of electrodes with drift gaps that result in a series of accelerations. A cyclotron does essentially the same thing but is more compact because large electromagnets are used to keep the particle in circular motion. A particle accelerator, if it could accelerate a bullet, is probably just another word for a coil gun.

[Zer0 Kay]

As I said, it could be a question of quantity. Not all lasers bore a hole through humans. Lying under a full moon on a crystal clear night will not burn human skin. A globe of daylight seems to lack the required intensity to damage vampires.

Vampires are as I understand it damaged by an amount of daylight required for life to exist.
If we take that to mean the amount of light for our plants to conduct photosynthesis then the moon may not meet that requirement. I would think that a glob of daylight if it allows humans to see would be at a level of light that plants can conduct photosynthesis.

But Metapysics often breaks the laws of physics.

I don't know about your first sentence; I'm willing to accept it.

Photosynthesis is a chemical reaction that increases as incident light intensity increases, generally speaking. But the intensity arguement, as it were, isn't bulletproof; lights exist that are far more intense than Globe of Daylight. On the other hand, the wavelength also matters in photosynthesis.

Linacs today are 100s of metres long. Cyclotrons are more compact than linacs, but their magnets are huge. A hand-held accelerator capable of achieving the same energy and current predicted to vaporise a cubic gramme of matter is firmly in the realm of SCIENCE!.

The bulk matter is probably too massive for electromagnetic acceleration and is not the "ammunition" of particle beam weapons. We may as well stick to the existing weapons in such scenarios.

The Blood Boiler suggests that a water cutting weapon and introducing silver that way is not effective against vampires. Which probably means depositing silver via particle beams is not useful, but maybe the Game Master wants to develop a kind of "silver radiation sickness" for vampires.

Nothing is more silver than a silver atom, of course, and the rules say the purer the silver, the better. But something else is going on. It seems to be the surface area of the impacting object.

Ah but that blood boiler bit said they have to be cut with silver... well a water cutter doesn't inject it does cut so it would be cutting rather than trying to inject the silver into them... that being said though would mean that leaving bits of silver behind won't do anything. NOW how about in that water cutting tool using silver for the abrasive (moving water and slashed by silver) also has bits of wood in it. If we slash the heart and the detritus left behind has wood in it does that count as being staked? Is it the wood or the method of piercing the heart that does the trick?

I was thinking of making S-Rounds instead of DU rounds one time, since silver can be made radioactive, but someone said that the books specifically said that it isn't the radiation but the uranium that retards the bio-regeneration... so I house ruled it anyway because come one Ceritus Dominus the Star Dragon doesn't have bio-regeneration and makes people sick that come near him and... well they get radiation poisoning. So Ceritus the only dragon without bio-regen is radio active and U and DU (which is still radio active, which I'm sure you know but not everyone does) rounds stop bio-regen so I figured it was the radiation not the element.

What does happen with linacs or cyclotrons if you put a say bullet in them?

idk what it is about staking the heart but if you can punch a stake through the breastbone I reckon anything is possible.

I'd be ok with radiation preventing regeneration. On the other hand, to some extent, you and I are radioactive, too. So... whatever you want works for me.

The mass of the bullet in an accelerator, if it could be electromagnetically accelerated, would greatly reduce the effectiveness of the accelerator. A linac has a series of electrodes with drift gaps that result in a series of accelerations. A cyclotron does essentially the same thing but is more compact because large electromagnets are used to keep the particle in circular motion. A particle accelerator, if it could accelerate a bullet, is probably just another word for a coil gun.

Thanks for the laugh. So now I'm thinking a coilgun that uses microbeads of silver but they'd have to have a ferrous core. Using the same amount of power used to accelerate the larger round... would that result in a faster shot or would we then have issues with gaussian field size and the edges being strong enough to manipulate the microbeads where it wasnt able to effect larger masses and then cause the beads to jam up? Of course it should be an easily solvable issue.

[guardiandashi]

As I said, it could be a question of quantity. Not all lasers bore a hole through humans. Lying under a full moon on a crystal clear night will not burn human skin. A globe of daylight seems to lack the required intensity to damage vampires.

Vampires are as I understand it damaged by an amount of daylight required for life to exist.
If we take that to mean the amount of light for our plants to conduct photosynthesis then the moon may not meet that requirement. I would think that a glob of daylight if it allows humans to see would be at a level of light that plants can conduct photosynthesis.

But Metapysics often breaks the laws of physics.

I don't know about your first sentence; I'm willing to accept it.

Photosynthesis is a chemical reaction that increases as incident light intensity increases, generally speaking. But the intensity arguement, as it were, isn't bulletproof; lights exist that are far more intense than Globe of Daylight. On the other hand, the wavelength also matters in photosynthesis.

Linacs today are 100s of metres long. Cyclotrons are more compact than linacs, but their magnets are huge. A hand-held accelerator capable of achieving the same energy and current predicted to vaporise a cubic gramme of matter is firmly in the realm of SCIENCE!.

The bulk matter is probably too massive for electromagnetic acceleration and is not the "ammunition" of particle beam weapons. We may as well stick to the existing weapons in such scenarios.

The Blood Boiler suggests that a water cutting weapon and introducing silver that way is not effective against vampires. Which probably means depositing silver via particle beams is not useful, but maybe the Game Master wants to develop a kind of "silver radiation sickness" for vampires.

Nothing is more silver than a silver atom, of course, and the rules say the purer the silver, the better. But something else is going on. It seems to be the surface area of the impacting object.

Ah but that blood boiler bit said they have to be cut with silver... well a water cutter doesn't inject it does cut so it would be cutting rather than trying to inject the silver into them... that being said though would mean that leaving bits of silver behind won't do anything. NOW how about in that water cutting tool using silver for the abrasive (moving water and slashed by silver) also has bits of wood in it. If we slash the heart and the detritus left behind has wood in it does that count as being staked? Is it the wood or the method of piercing the heart that does the trick?

I was thinking of making S-Rounds instead of DU rounds one time, since silver can be made radioactive, but someone said that the books specifically said that it isn't the radiation but the uranium that retards the bio-regeneration... so I house ruled it anyway because come one Ceritus Dominus the Star Dragon doesn't have bio-regeneration and makes people sick that come near him and... well they get radiation poisoning. So Ceritus the only dragon without bio-regen is radio active and U and DU (which is still radio active, which I'm sure you know but not everyone does) rounds stop bio-regen so I figured it was the radiation not the element.

What does happen with linacs or cyclotrons if you put a say bullet in them?

idk what it is about staking the heart but if you can punch a stake through the breastbone I reckon anything is possible.

I'd be ok with radiation preventing regeneration. On the other hand, to some extent, you and I are radioactive, too. So... whatever you want works for me.

The mass of the bullet in an accelerator, if it could be electromagnetically accelerated, would greatly reduce the effectiveness of the accelerator. A linac has a series of electrodes with drift gaps that result in a series of accelerations. A cyclotron does essentially the same thing but is more compact because large electromagnets are used to keep the particle in circular motion. A particle accelerator, if it could accelerate a bullet, is probably just another word for a coil gun.

Thanks for the laugh. So now I'm thinking a coilgun that uses microbeads of silver but they'd have to have a ferrous core. Using the same amount of power used to accelerate the larger round... would that result in a faster shot or would we then have issues with gaussian field size and the edges being strong enough to manipulate the microbeads where it wasnt able to effect larger masses and then cause the beads to jam up? Of course it should be an easily solvable issue.

Lets say you have 2 railguns (coilguns) that both apply a certain amount of energy accelerating their rounds.
If one round weight was 1kg, and the weight of the other was 1g then assuming all the energy transferred to the rounsd was the same, then the 1g round would theoretically would be traveling approximately 1000 times faster, although that doesn't actually happen. Because thereare other factors involved.

[Zer0 Kay]

As I said, it could be a question of quantity. Not all lasers bore a hole through humans. Lying under a full moon on a crystal clear night will not burn human skin. A globe of daylight seems to lack the required intensity to damage vampires.

Vampires are as I understand it damaged by an amount of daylight required for life to exist.
If we take that to mean the amount of light for our plants to conduct photosynthesis then the moon may not meet that requirement. I would think that a glob of daylight if it allows humans to see would be at a level of light that plants can conduct photosynthesis.

But Metapysics often breaks the laws of physics.

I don't know about your first sentence; I'm willing to accept it.

Photosynthesis is a chemical reaction that increases as incident light intensity increases, generally speaking. But the intensity arguement, as it were, isn't bulletproof; lights exist that are far more intense than Globe of Daylight. On the other hand, the wavelength also matters in photosynthesis.

Linacs today are 100s of metres long. Cyclotrons are more compact than linacs, but their magnets are huge. A hand-held accelerator capable of achieving the same energy and current predicted to vaporise a cubic gramme of matter is firmly in the realm of SCIENCE!.

The bulk matter is probably too massive for electromagnetic acceleration and is not the "ammunition" of particle beam weapons. We may as well stick to the existing weapons in such scenarios.

The Blood Boiler suggests that a water cutting weapon and introducing silver that way is not effective against vampires. Which probably means depositing silver via particle beams is not useful, but maybe the Game Master wants to develop a kind of "silver radiation sickness" for vampires.

Nothing is more silver than a silver atom, of course, and the rules say the purer the silver, the better. But something else is going on. It seems to be the surface area of the impacting object.

Ah but that blood boiler bit said they have to be cut with silver... well a water cutter doesn't inject it does cut so it would be cutting rather than trying to inject the silver into them... that being said though would mean that leaving bits of silver behind won't do anything. NOW how about in that water cutting tool using silver for the abrasive (moving water and slashed by silver) also has bits of wood in it. If we slash the heart and the detritus left behind has wood in it does that count as being staked? Is it the wood or the method of piercing the heart that does the trick?

I was thinking of making S-Rounds instead of DU rounds one time, since silver can be made radioactive, but someone said that the books specifically said that it isn't the radiation but the uranium that retards the bio-regeneration... so I house ruled it anyway because come one Ceritus Dominus the Star Dragon doesn't have bio-regeneration and makes people sick that come near him and... well they get radiation poisoning. So Ceritus the only dragon without bio-regen is radio active and U and DU (which is still radio active, which I'm sure you know but not everyone does) rounds stop bio-regen so I figured it was the radiation not the element.

What does happen with linacs or cyclotrons if you put a say bullet in them?

idk what it is about staking the heart but if you can punch a stake through the breastbone I reckon anything is possible.

I'd be ok with radiation preventing regeneration. On the other hand, to some extent, you and I are radioactive, too. So... whatever you want works for me.

The mass of the bullet in an accelerator, if it could be electromagnetically accelerated, would greatly reduce the effectiveness of the accelerator. A linac has a series of electrodes with drift gaps that result in a series of accelerations. A cyclotron does essentially the same thing but is more compact because large electromagnets are used to keep the particle in circular motion. A particle accelerator, if it could accelerate a bullet, is probably just another word for a coil gun.

Thanks for the laugh. So now I'm thinking a coilgun that uses microbeads of silver but they'd have to have a ferrous core. Using the same amount of power used to accelerate the larger round... would that result in a faster shot or would we then have issues with gaussian field size and the edges being strong enough to manipulate the microbeads where it wasnt able to effect larger masses and then cause the beads to jam up? Of course it should be an easily solvable issue.

Lets say you have 2 railguns (coilguns) that both apply a certain amount of energy accelerating their rounds.
If one round weight was 1kg, and the weight of the other was 1g then assuming all the energy transferred to the rounsd was the same, then the 1g round would theoretically would be traveling approximately 1000 times faster, although that doesn't actually happen. Because thereare other factors involved.

Lets not seeing as how a railgun and a coilgun are COMPLETELY different things. I understand if everything is simple, an increase power equals increase in velocity but things aren't always that simple. In a railgun it uses Lorentz forces to propel an armature (which may be the round or push the round). A single round is able to travel down the rails at a time, if another is introduced it becomes a parallel circuit halving the power, hopefully not reducing speed to a point where it welds the armature in place permanently destroying the gun or the rails, if the gun was intelligently made to allow the rails to be quickly replaced. In the case of a coilgun it uses Gaussian forces using electromagnets to pull the round and if pulsed correctly can fire multiple rounds quicker repetition than a railgun. But because it is based on a gauss field it is very possible that it effects rounds of different sizes differently. For example a larger round wouldn't move from the weaker forces at the edge of the field but a round a tenth its size may and prematurely be pulled into the fields fouling up the timing.

[eliakon]

Thanks for the laugh. So now I'm thinking a coilgun that uses microbeads of silver but they'd have to have a ferrous core. Using the same amount of power used to accelerate the larger round... would that result in a faster shot or would we then have issues with gaussian field size and the edges being strong enough to manipulate the microbeads where it wasnt able to effect larger masses and then cause the beads to jam up? Of course it should be an easily solvable issue.

Lets say you have 2 railguns (coilguns) that both apply a certain amount of energy accelerating their rounds.
If one round weight was 1kg, and the weight of the other was 1g then assuming all the energy transferred to the rounsd was the same, then the 1g round would theoretically would be traveling approximately 1000 times faster, although that doesn't actually happen. Because thereare other factors involved.

Lets not seeing as how a railgun and a coilgun are COMPLETELY different things. I understand if everything is simple, an increase power equals increase in velocity but things aren't always that simple. In a railgun it uses Lorentz forces to propel an armature (which may be the round or push the round). A single round is able to travel down the rails at a time, if another is introduced it becomes a parallel circuit halving the power, hopefully not reducing speed to a point where it welds the armature in place permanently destroying the gun or the rails, if the gun was intelligently made to allow the rails to be quickly replaced. In the case of a coilgun it uses Gaussian forces using electromagnets to pull the round and if pulsed correctly can fire multiple rounds quicker repetition than a railgun. But because it is based on a gauss field it is very possible that it effects rounds of different sizes differently. For example a larger round wouldn't move from the weaker forces at the edge of the field but a round a tenth its size may and prematurely be pulled into the fields fouling up the timing.[/quote]
Why not just chalk up that pretty much everything in Rifts runs off of SCIENCE! and not science?
I mean seriously, the science in palladium is so rubbery you can bounce bricks off of it.
While it is not quite as bad as TOON it is definately less rigid than even Star Trek... and thats saying something considering that most of Trek runs on technobabble.

[lather]

Probably because they like science and math....

[Natasha]

The farther you get from the centre of the axis through a solenoid, the larger the difference at each end. So if the length of the solenoid is small, then the difference at the ends will be small. You can use the Biot and Savart Law to derive an expression for the field strength along the axis as you depart from the centre.

On the axis, some distance x from the centre, the size of the field is
B = (μ[sub]0[/sub]nIr[sup]2[/sup])/(2(x[sup]2[/sup]+r[sup]2[/sup])[sup]3/2[/sup])
where n is the number of turns, I is the current, and r is the radius.
At the centre, the simpler expression may be used
B = (μ[sub]0[/sub]nI)/2r

[Natasha]

I was bored on a long train trip and worked out the trajectory (ignoring air resistance and surface curvature).

The size of the force that accelerates the bullet is F = ILB where I is the current, L is the total length of the coils in series, and B is the field size calculated from the previous post. The size of B is assumed constant so that the work done accelerating the bullet from rest to the gun's muzzle velocity is W = FL. From the work-kinetic energy theorem that becomes W = 0.5mv² where m is the mass of the bullet and v is the muzzle velocity, v[sub]0[/sub].

If we set the origin of the coordinate system for the bullet once it leaves the gun at time t = 0 we can integrate Newton's second law of motion to get the parametric equations for the x- and y-coordinates as functions of time

x(t) = x[sub]0[/sub] + (v[sub]0[/sub] cos θ)t
y(t) = y[sub]0[/sub] + (v[sub]0[/sub] sin θ)t - 0.5gt²

where θ is the angle of elevation; a completely horizontal shot is θ = 0. If the origin of the system is at the muzzle, then x[sub]0[/sub] and y[sub]0[/sub] both equal 0 and the equations simplify.

Solve x(t) for t and substitute into y(t) to get the Cartesian equation y(x). The resulting equation is quadratic in x and linear in y; therefore, the shape of the bullet's trajectory is a parabola. The Cartesian equation describes the curve; the parametric equations tell where the bullet is and when.

The maximum height reached by the bullet is at the vertex of the parabola which occurs when the vertical velocity is zero. That is

h = (v[sub]0[/sub] sin θ)² / 2g

The time to reach this altitude is

t = (v[sub]0[/sub] sin θ) / g

which is the same amount of time it takes for the bullet to fall from the vertex to the ground. So the total flight time is 2t. Note the symmetry of the motion. It predicts that a bullet dropped from rest some height h lands at the time as a bullet fired horizontally from h. Tests verify this prediction.

The range of the bullet is

R = ((v[sub]0[/sub] (v[sub]0[/sub])(sin 2θ)) / g

Note that for a given muzzle velocity, the maximum possible range is where 2θ = 1, which is when θ = 45°. The range is the same for complementary angles like 30° and 60°.

Accounting for air resistance, even in the simplest case where the size of the resistance is directly proportional to the bullet's velocity, adds complexity to the analysis. In fact, the timing equation is transcendental so an analytic expression does not exist. The solution is best left to computers and numerical methods.

[Zer0 Kay]

I was bored on a long train trip and worked out the trajectory (ignoring air resistance and surface curvature).

The size of the force that accelerates the bullet is F = ILB where I is the current, L is the total length of the coils in series, and B is the field size calculated from the previous post. The size of B is assumed constant so that the work done accelerating the bullet from rest to the gun's muzzle velocity is W = FL. From the work-kinetic energy theorem that becomes W = 0.5mv² where m is the mass of the bullet and v is the muzzle velocity, v[sub]0[/sub].

If we set the origin of the coordinate system for the bullet once it leaves the gun at time t = 0 we can integrate Newton's second law of motion to get the parametric equations for the x- and y-coordinates as functions of time

x(t) = x[sub]0[/sub] + (v[sub]0[/sub] cos θ)t
y(t) = y[sub]0[/sub] + (v[sub]0[/sub] sin θ)t - 0.5gt²

where θ is the angle of elevation; a completely horizontal shot is θ = 0. If the origin of the system is at the muzzle, then x[sub]0[/sub] and y[sub]0[/sub] both equal 0 and the equations simplify.

Solve x(t) for t and substitute into y(t) to get the Cartesian equation y(x). The resulting equation is quadratic in x and linear in y; therefore, the shape of the bullet's trajectory is a parabola. The Cartesian equation describes the curve; the parametric equations tell where the bullet is and when.

The maximum height reached by the bullet is at the vertex of the parabola which occurs when the vertical velocity is zero. That is

h = (v[sub]0[/sub] sin θ)² / 2g

The time to reach this altitude is

t = (v[sub]0[/sub] sin θ) / g

which is the same amount of time it takes for the bullet to fall from the vertex to the ground. So the total flight time is 2t. Note the symmetry of the motion. It predicts that a bullet dropped from rest some height h lands at the time as a bullet fired horizontally from h. Tests verify this prediction.

The range of the bullet is

R = ((v[sub]0[/sub] (v[sub]0[/sub])(sin 2θ)) / g

Note that for a given muzzle velocity, the maximum possible range is where 2θ = 1, which is when θ = 45°. The range is the same for complementary angles like 30° and 60°.

Accounting for air resistance, even in the simplest case where the size of the resistance is directly proportional to the bullet's velocity, adds complexity to the analysis. In fact, the timing equation is transcendental so an analytic expression does not exist. The solution is best left to computers and numerical methods.

And you are a wonderful science goddess.

Thanks again!!

[Natasha]

Thanks and you're welcome. I summarised all this in an app: http://nk-ui.herokuapp.com/ -- it's a free server so sometimes it takes a few seconds to wake up because it falls asleep after a period of non-use.
I put it together kinda quickly but I think it's correct. Next time I get some free time, I'll work on the part with air resistance as it dramatically affects the trajectories.