3 ms·

So we definitely need to visit one of these and harness it to drive high energy physics experiments.

by jl6 4y ago

uejfiweun 4y ago
I would love to do a 6-month rotation at humanity's magnetar research outpost. Seems like a great setting for a movie or video game.
- jl6 4y ago
  Since these things only last for a short amount of time (cosmically speaking), physicists of the future will be like today’s tornado chasers, planning thousands of years in advance in order to park their detectors at just the right spot for a chance to wind their windows down, stick their heads out, and get their hair Einstein’d in the passing star death shockwaves.
  - throwawaymaths 4y ago
    I believe this was the premise of the star trek: tng episode "evolution" featuring Dr Kelso.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jcims 4y ago
I saw an article a couple of weeks ago, possibly here, titled something like 'please don't build another large hadron collider'. It made me wonder if we could build a trap of sorts (like a large magnetic funnel, almost certainly in space) to direct exogenous (?) energetic particles to a target rather than accelerating them ourselves. Clearly nature can put more mustard on them than we can. My guess is the challenge would be the relatively low counts, but maybe with a large enough trap that wouldn't be a problem.
- elorant 4y ago
  We've spotted such particles. Like this one for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh-My-God_particle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh-My-God_particle But how would we harness them? They travel almost to the speed of light and we have no indication where they will pop. And even if we knew the general direction, we're talking about something infinitesimal small. You'd need to have some really big obstacle that could be mobile. LHC's magnets are like five storey buildings.
  - jcims 4y ago
    That’s the one that came to mind. No idea, sounds like a problem for engineering. :)

So we definitely need to visit one of these and harness it to drive high energy physics experiments.

by jl6 4y ago

So we definitely need to visit one of these and harness it to drive high energy physics experiments.

I would love to do a 6-month rotation at humanity's magnetar research outpost. Seems like a great setting for a movie or video game.

jl6 4y ago
Since these things only last for a short amount of time (cosmically speaking), physicists of the future will be like today’s tornado chasers, planning thousands of years in advance in order to park their detectors at just the right spot for a chance to wind their windows down, stick their heads out, and get their hair Einstein’d in the passing star death shockwaves.
- throwawaymaths 4y ago
  I believe this was the premise of the star trek: tng episode "evolution" featuring Dr Kelso.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jcims 4y ago

I saw an article a couple of weeks ago, possibly here, titled something like 'please don't build another large hadron collider'. It made me wonder if we could build a trap of sorts (like a large magnetic funnel, almost certainly in space) to direct exogenous (?) energetic particles to a target rather than accelerating them ourselves. Clearly nature can put more mustard on them than we can. My guess is the challenge would be the relatively low counts, but maybe with a large enough trap that wouldn't be a problem.

elorant 4y ago
We've spotted such particles. Like this one for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh-My-God_particle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh-My-God_particle But how would we harness them? They travel almost to the speed of light and we have no indication where they will pop. And even if we knew the general direction, we're talking about something infinitesimal small. You'd need to have some really big obstacle that could be mobile. LHC's magnets are like five storey buildings.
- jcims 4y ago
  That’s the one that came to mind. No idea, sounds like a problem for engineering. :)