5 ms·
If you want to store the beam, you need a ring. And the size of the ring is given by the minimum bending radius, which is given by maximum field strength you ca
by davrosthedalek 6y ago
If you want to store the beam, you need a ring. And the size of the ring is given by the minimum bending radius, which is given by maximum field strength you can achieve, and energy loss from bremsstrahlung in the bends, which you have to put back.
So space doesn't really help: You'll still need a circle of magnets. Approximating the circle with a polygon means you split up a smaller circle with straight segments. But these straight segments are not really useful.
- mrfusion 6y agoThat’s sad. I really thought space could open up some new physics.
- davrosthedalek 6y agoCertainly can, see AMS :)
- mrfusion 6y agoWhat’s that?
- davrosthedalek 6y agoThe Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer: https://home.cern/science/experiments/ams https://home.cern/science/experiments/ams https://ams.nasa.gov/ https://ams.nasa.gov/ It's essentially a HEP-style(ish) particle detector, mounted on the ISS, to study cosmic rays.
- ThomasBHickey 6y agoProbably https://ams.nasa.gov/ https://ams.nasa.gov/, a particle detector on the space station
- chadcmulligan 6y agoCould you bounce the beam backwards and forwards (in space) like a laser to build up the beam strength? It wouldn't weaken in a vacuum like on earth
- davrosthedalek 6y agoYou can't easily reflect the beam, you can only bend it "with a small radius", but then you loose a lot of the energy via synchrotron radiation. You would also need /very/ strong fields. But the basic idea in everything but linear accelerators is the same: You want to reuse the accelerating structure multiple times be recirculating the beam through it many times. Either in a ring/closed loop, like LHC, or in some form of wound up (open) path (Race track mictrotrons, for example)
- MayeulC 6y agoFairly good points. And I guess you would actually need twice the amount of energy for station keeping, unless you were to use an unstable orbit on-purpose, and use the gravity as an assist for accelerating particles, now that I think of it. Well, in any case, so much for the circumsolar collider described in the Three Body trilogy. I guess it might still be doable/useful with some hypothetical future technology, though.