“Have you heard about the hafnium bomb?”

I have heard of it but need to study it in greater depth. Hafnium is interesting stuff. The folks in the spacecraft thermal protection business were once all a twitter over hafnium diboride. Supposably it was going to revolutionize entry vehicle design. Then they discovered hafnium diboride shatters like glass when subjected to thermal shock (works fine if it’s warmed up slowly). People no longer talk about hafnium diboride (another “good idea” that didn’t work).

It frustrates me that an honorable and virtuous man like Jimmy Carter was such a terrible President.

Perhaps you would be less frustrated if you understood that Carter is neither honorable nor virtuous, but a vain, vicious cretin.

“… in the interest of full disclosure, I also voted for Carter but his short presidency made me a conservative for life…. Today the best Democrat politicians, men like Zell Miller and Joe Lieberman, are quitting the party or being thrown out. The Democrats may enjoy huge gains this November, but they are no longer a positive force in America.”

It frustrates me that an honorable and virtuous man like Jimmy Carter was such a terrible President. Also, Joe Lieberman is a very good man of the highest moral integrity. The Democratic Party’s treatment of Lieberman was an utter disgrace. I suspect if the Democrats had matched Lieberman against G.W. Bush then Lieberman would have won easily in the general election. I completely agree that the Democrats are no longer a positive force in America. The moonbats and our dysfunctional MSM are destroying the political process.

“This straightforward, brute-force pumping won’t work,” Collins concludes. What will work, he says, is a double process in which energy is first stored in a long-lived “isomeric” state — a state that naturally lasts about a year before it radiates. In this way energy can be introduced slowly to avoid overheating. Then another injection of energy pumps the nucleus to a nearby state that lasts only a second, and from this state the actual lasing occurs. This “upconversion” process is done with X-rays.

Once the nucleus is pumped, will it emit gamma rays? To counter the enthusiasm of the gamma ray workers, the organizers of the meeting invited Harry J. Lipkin of Argonne (Ill.) National Laboratory and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, as devil’s advocates for nuclear physics. He reminded the group that the nucleus would most likely get rid of its energy by a process that emits an electron rather than a gamma ray. The laser people responded that they intend to embed the lasing nuclei in a crystal; then a property of the crystal known as Borrmann effect would alter the energy balance so as to make gamma ray emission more likely.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_v130/ai_4539152

Research continues.

Have you heard about the halfnium bomb?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A22099-2004Mar24

I was surfing around the web and found this:

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/3823325.html

The filing date of the patent was 07/23/1973 (pre-Starwars). The patent assignee was the US Atomic Energy Commission. Here’s the fun bit:

“An x-ray laser utilizing flash-heating of a lasing medium to temperatures of the order of the K-shell binding energy of the medium comprising: means for producing a beam of laser radiation having a pulse of up to about 10-12 seconds, a longitudinally extending lasing medium of material having a diameter of up to about 1 micron and a Z in the range between 2 and 30 and an optical phasing network positioned intermediate said radiation producing means and said lasing medium, said lasing medium being axially aligned with said beam of radiation such that said beam produces flash-heating of said lasing medium producing a traveling heat pulse passing longitudinally along the lasing medium at the group velocity of x-radiation through the heated lasing medium causing a population inversion and lasing of the material.”

Ronald Reagan said that he never left the Democrat Party, it left him. Today the best Democrat politicians, men like Zell Miller and Joe Lieberman, are quitting the party or being thrown out. The Democrats may enjoy huge gains this November, but they are no longer a positive force in America.

“I’m guessing that you are a Carter supporter?”

I’m a second generation Californian and a Reagan hater. I did vote for Carter but now regret it. If I could do it over again I would have abstained. I still believe that Carter is a good man (he’d make a great Bapitst preacher) but freely admit that he was a terrible President. Perhaps one of the reasons why I’m so deeply distrustful of B. Hussein is because I once supported Jimmy Carter (been there, done that). I did vote for G.W. Bush and would do so again. I believe my earlier error of supporting Carter has been cancelled out by my supporting G.W. Bush. I will vote for McCain and have already sent in my campaign contribution.

Whitehall said:

“I did work on a fission fragment laser in college in the 70’s. We got maybe 4 coherent photons out of it.”

There’s a book about the guys behind the X-ray laser titled:

“Star Warriors, A penetrating look into the lives of the young scientist behind our space Age Weaponry” by William J. Broad, ISBN: 0-671-54566-3.

I believe(?) the book was written before the follow-on tests showed the X-ray laser didn’t work. At one time, the book was fashionable to read at Lawrence Livermore National Lab where the work was actually done.

I vaguely remember the Livermore X-ray laser was a bundle of thin copper wires. I have no clue how one would get something like that to lase. I’m a bit surprised that no one has figured out how to make a gamma ray laser.

I remember reading a paper on the x-ray laser back in the 80s and thinking it was pretty bogus although the effects on-target would be cool.