tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-845471204082714270.post1552912309723197468..comments2023-10-11T07:28:23.595-04:00Comments on Star Trek Movie Blog: Star Trek Is Not Broken...YetUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-845471204082714270.post-69772356884316787562013-09-18T18:28:27.268-04:002013-09-18T18:28:27.268-04:00Star Trek 2009 & ITD is Crap. You destroyed t...Star Trek 2009 & ITD is Crap. You destroyed the universe that Gene Roddenberry created for a distorted mess and call it STAR TREK. Your ideas are not original a white Khan? How many men in the world are white with the last name Khan? Than the total disregard for science was amazing and it seems like the writers are idiots when it comes to science.<br />o he isn’t likely to succeed. But if he could, how would he go about it? There are endothermic reactions on Earth, like those “ice packs” that aren’t ice at all, but chemicals in a container you can break to mix them and turn the thing cold. That absorbs heat to change chemical bonds, but it is too inefficient for the amount of energy absorption we need here. And besides, they tell us that this is a “cold fusion device.” Ok, that makes no sense. Cold fusion, has of course been debunked -- this sounds like just another Orci / Abrams attempt at getting crackpottery being discussed by more people (see FRINGE). And besides, cold fusion is supposed to gain energy, not absorb it. <br /><br />But ok, if I had to design something that you might call a “cold fusion device,” and have it get rid of energy, how would it work? Well, iron-56 is the most tightly bound atomic nucleus. Every time you fuse two nuclei lighter than that together, you get energy. That’s what powers the sun. Only hydrogen and helium (and a little lithium) were created in the Big Bang. All the other elements up to iron were forged in a star. But stellar fusion only works up to iron. If you try to fuse any two elements to make something heavier than that, you lose energy instead of gaining it. But you can do fusion beyond iron inside a certain kind of supernova (which is what I study professionally). That’s how we get all the elements heavier than iron. Take gold, for example. It was created in a supernova -- but it took energy to produce it. <br /><br />So my idea for a “cold fusion device” would be to do just that: the kind of fusion where you absorb energy instead of gaining it. Looking at this chart, to get the biggest energy sink, we want to somehow fuse iron-56 (binding energy 8.8 Megaelectron Volts (MeV) per nuclear particle, or nucleon) to uranium-238 (7.6 MeV per nucleon). Doing that, we can absorb 8.8-7.6 = 1.2 MeV / nucleon = 2 x 10-13 Joules (J) / nucleon. To absorb 1021 J, it would take 1021 J / 2 x 10-13 J per nucleon = 5 x 1033 nucleons. Since Fe-56 has 56 nucleons (protons and neutrons) per atom, it would take 5 x 1033 / 56 = 1032 atoms of iron. A mole of iron (6 x 1023 atoms) has 56 g of it, so 56g (1032 atoms) / (6 x 1023 atoms) = 1010 g = 107 kg = 2 x 107 lb. So to absorb all the energy in the volcano, Spock’s “cold fusion device” would have to weigh 20 million pounds! He’d start with that much iron and end up with about that much uranium. If he wanted to be an alchemist, he could start with a bigger bomb and turn it all into gold. (Medieval alchemists failed because they didn’t have hot enough ovens).<br /><br />Also: why didn’t they just beam the “bomb” right into the volcano? They couldn’t beam into the volcano because they needed a direct line of sight? Bullshit, the Enterprise beams people through entire planets on a daily basis. You never hear: “Beam me up, Scotty.” “But Cap’n we have to wait until our orbit is above your position, so hold on for an hour or so.” And if so, big deal, fly over the damn thing and beam it in. And don’t give me some BS about how Spock had to arm it. We already have volcano-exploring robots. No, correction, we already had them twenty friggin years ago. <br />http://www.aintitcool.com/node/62867Lawrencehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02697537392157308512noreply@blogger.com