the return of the nuclear-powered aircraft

(George) wrote in message . com...
(Prowlus) wrote in message . com...
looks like the USAF is considering jamming a reactor into one of their UAVS

http://popularmechanics.com/science/...gs/index.phtml

Think they'll resurect the "glow-in-the-dark" brigade too?

The nuclear reaction they use in the article is very probably wrong.
It defies nuclear theory and the experiment that caused all the hype
about it could not be duplicated by Lawrence-Livermore. Given as LLNL
is one of the premier nuclear research labs, I doubt that this
technology would be used by the Air Force.

http://www.llnl.gov/llnl/06news/News...-01-08-05.html

Lawrence Livermore did not duplicate the experiment.
From the above link ....
"Using the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne, which has more than
100,000 times higher X-ray intensity than the dental X-ray machine
used in the original experiment"

Any high school science grad should notice it isnt the same
experiment.

" In other words, the X-ray irradiation did not decrease the time it
takes for hafnium to decay; a result that Becker and the team claim is
consistent with nuclear physics."

"In other words"? Did the Lawrence Livermore people actually say that
or is this a journo being to simplistic?

"Becker said. "Because the previous findings were so significant, our
team felt the experiment deserved to be repeated and verified."

So why didnt they duplicate the experiment exactly?

Maybe the Gamma Ray's are only triggered by low-intensity X-Rays?
People tried to produce fission for years with fast nuetrons, the
sucessfull approach, to use slow moving nuetrons, is rather
non-intuative.

I have high school physics only.
If electro magnetioc radiation can influence the electrons of the atom
to produce radiation why shouldnt shorter wavelength radiation
stimulate the nucleons? If this is possible I suspect the most
important variable is the frequency of the X-Rays (wavelength matching
the size of nucleons orbits?) not the intensity. No mention is made in
the supplied link as to wether L.L used the same frequency of X-Rays.

Remember the nucleus is weird, the weak force repels nucleon at short
range and the strong force atracts at long range (or is that the other
way around?).
So the idea that a weak X-Ray may stimulate gamma rays but a stong
X=Ray doesnt isnt all that inconsistant with sub-nuclear weirditties.

Jeremy Thomson