5 ms·
>> There is not enough collisions to get nice statistical Maxwell-Boltzmann distributions. So you need to simulate the ions as individual particles. Key langua
by sandworm101 5y ago
>> There is not enough collisions to get nice statistical Maxwell-Boltzmann distributions. So you need to simulate the ions as individual particles.
Key language: individual particles. A while ago I had this explained to me by a KSP nerd and aerospace scientist. "They don't know why there is extra drag between the electrons and the fuel, but it likely has to due with quantum fields. The engineers building thrusters don't like talking about that stuff. It works. We don't know why it works but we know that it works and can measure how it works. Nuff said."
- archermarks 5y agoIt's pretty unlikely that anomalous transport comes down to quantum fields. The instabilities that probably cause it are complex but are classical in nature.
- sandworm101 5y agoTwo particles travel through an aperture going in the same direction but at different speeds. The aperture is so big and the particles so small that they shouldn't collide or even notice each other. But somehow on the other side of a aperture they appear to have interacted, one accelerating the other. That's starting to look very much like a double-slit type of situation.
- archermarks 5y agoIn this case, we know they would be able to interact via electromagnetic waves. So we would not need to invoke quantum wavefunctions in order to get the right behavior. The tricky bit is predicting the type of wave, their growth, and their propagation characteristics.