Hey you guys. Basically I have some technical mastery of an engineering program that allows you to design pretty much anything. So what I made is a type of ship based cannon. It is 79 feet head to toe. It is called the Singularity Cannon MK1. Basically it generates a gravitational singularity (black hole) and encasses it in a shield that is generated by a device attached outside of the shield of the gravitational singularity, the device is powered by the energy radiated by the singularity. The gun than use extremely powerful electromagnets to accelerate the gravitational singularity (with the small shield generator attached to the back end of said singularity) and fires it at an incredible speed. The inspiration for this weapon came from the idea of kinetic projectiles such as sabot round. The effectiveness of a kinetic penetrator is in it's speed and mass. So I didn't have to look far for the most dense thing possible, a gravitational singularity is a thing with infinite density and no mass. Infinite density coupled with the supermagnets that drive it to incredible speeds pretty much means if it hits the hull of a ship it could in theory punch in one way, and pretty much drive through the hull for a good 100 meters. The shield ensures that the singularity translates it's potential kinetic energy into destructive kinetic energy. It also ensures that the singularity does not evaporate too soon. After ramming through a several dozen meters the shield generator would be too damaged and would fail, than the singularity would evaporate probably with little to no damage caused by the black hole. But the kinetic damage would be very effective. Now the effects on shields would be interesting, I would guess it would be pretty decent against shields and best case scenario it punches through them. But that is unlikely. One of the reasons Im posting it is I'm hoping someone from one of the sciforums sifi fleets, or the sifi cities would like to use it on their ships/bases. With that in mind, I only designed the mechanism of the physical gun, I did not design the generator, turret, or housing to fire it from. That I leave up to you. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! This is a side view the front of the weapon is facing to the left and the rear of the weapon is facing to the right Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! This is a front view If anyone wants to use it for any reason on their ship/base/city you don't have to ask, all you need to do is for the first time you post it or the pictures just enter the link to this thread. That way you don't have to explain what it looks like or how it works.
No, it's more of a thread where I'm posting this weapon design. I just wanted to name it this because than people would understand it's context. The next one I make will be labelled Singularity Cannon MKII. But actually that thread sciforums fleet is where you design your own ship and you basically role play with other people. But if you want to make a dedicated thread about your ship go ahead. If you want to you can use this cannon as one weapon on it. Just don't forget to specify what type of turret configuration your using. Ie, is it a single, dual, triple, quad, etc.
So what do you guys think? This is the first generation of the cannon, I will probably make an MK II version, maybe even MK III or MK IV if people from some of the roleplaying threads like it.
You should probably make some matter-anti matter particle gun that can distort space-time, I'd love to see that.
So why is DU used in preference to, say, tungsten (which would give more mass)? How effective would it be if it fired an equivalent mass of flour? No mass? Since density is mass per unit volume then it can't have any density. Wrong. Singularities have mass. Potential kinetic energy? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
if you cannot se the picture here. it is http://www.sciforums.com/album.php?albumid=100&pictureid=532 Dyw, the difference between potential and destructive is that it is possible for a kinetic projectile to simply punch through an object without delivering all the damage it could. ie, if a bullet goes in and than out of your body, so long as it didnt hit anything major it typically is less damaging than a bullet that cavitated through your body or shattered.
I'm going to play devil's advocate here. Shields run by the energy emitted by the black hole that prevent the black hole from evaporating? If it isn't evaporating, it isn't emitting energy and there will be none to run the shields. Even if the shields just contained the energy emitted by the black hole, you are still trying to lift yourself up by your own bootstraps. The shields would take more energy to run than the energy they are trying to contain. A 228,000 kg black hole will evaporate in 1 sec. If you want any of it left on impact, it will have to be formed, launched and reach it target before that. But let's assume that you've solved these problems. You have a shield that will contain your black hole in order to deliver it to your target. For arguments sake, we'll assume a 228,000 kg black hole. and your shied just surrounds it. The radius of the event horizon of such a black hole is 3e-22 m. The energy contained in the black hole (and the energy needed to form it) is on the order of a 5 million megaton nuclear explosive. Then there is the energy needed to accelerate this object up to launch speed. Such an object will indeed punch through any ship. Unfortunately, that's all it'll do. Punch through, leaving a sub-microscopic hole while expending hardly any of its energy. You wasted the vast majority of the energy you generated. You could try to use a bigger black hole, but one of even 1 angstrom in radius would mass as much as a small moon, Hardly something you can launch easily. The upshot is that if you can generate that much energy, you would be much better off just using it to create a standard particle beam that can be adjusted to both expand all its energy on the target and punch through defenses.
Actually black holes do emit energy in the form of hawking radiation whether or not they are evaporating. Secondary, I posted this in the science fiction section for a reason. If I wanted to make it realistic it would be in the general news section...
Evaporation and emitting Hawking radiation are one in the same. The Black Hole loses mass via Hawking radiation. I'm of the belief that even SF should at least try to be realistic when it can be.
>.>.... yah. But typically it depends on your definition. ie, for me I consider a black hole that is evaporating to be a black hole that is losing energy at a greater rate than it is absorbing energy/matter. While your definition is technically correct, it is also somewhat misleading. ie, you could say I am "dying", and technically speaking that is correct, but assuming I die of natural causes it'll take another 60 ish years before I die. Operative word is "can be", the ultimate problem with sifi is that it is in the future, that means that 60%-70% of sifi creations cannot work because they work on principles that may not be realistic or technologies that have not been invented yet.
But you said yourself that the shields ran of the energy emitted, and the only way anything could run off that energy is if there is an energy gradient, or IOW, the energy emitted by the black hole was greater than that coming from the outside. And even a black hole as small as Moon-massed has a hawking temperature of 166 K, which is warmer than the average 107 K temp of the Moon, meanign it would evaporate at Earth orbit distance. When Sf bends the rules, it is so it can tell a story. FTL drives, for instance, let you get another planet/setting for the sake of the story. It would be one thing is the Black hole cannon was a crucial plot element, It is another if you just think it would be cool to have Black hole cannon,
Janus, I am not going to debate quantum physics and gravitational singularity's with you about whether or not this is possible or not, because the fact is that right now, it's not possible, it doesn't matter if your right or I am, that is why it is science fiction. science fiction emphasizes the use of your imagination. It transcends normal rules and hence it is a creative outlook for people like me. I am not going to debate you because the fact is that it's science fiction, by it's very nature science fiction has stuff in it that is pretty hard to believe.
Actually, my main objection isn't whether it is "possible" or not, but that it is "unreasonable". The generation and use of a black hole as a kinetic energy weapon isn't reasonable, as the same energy put into a normal macroscopic object would be just as, or more effective. In this case, the BH is just window dressing. This is opposed to, say, the use of a small BH as a weapon in Niven's "The Borderland of Sol", where its gravity gradient destroyed hyperdrives without destroying the ship. Do not presume to lecture me on the nature of SF, I have been an SF fan for over 40 yrs. (Heck, I met my wife at a SF convention). True science fiction is not "I can do whatever I want, because it's science fiction". If you think it is, then you have a very superficial grasp of the genre.
So your telling me using a black hole as a kinetic energy weapon isn't realistic while a giant f*cking ball that shoots a laser that vaporizes a planet in seconds is?
Again, when SF bends(sometime to the breaking point) the rules, it is for the sake of the Narrative. The Death Star performs a function in the narrative. It establishes the Empire's power (the ability to destroy a planet), and by showing the destruction of a planet, the Empire;s willingness to use it, even if just to supply a lesson. It also had to fit the needs of the narrative in being something that could be destroyed by the hero in the climax of the story.
ahhh, janus, i wasn't designing this weapon just for the hell of designing a weapon, me and other sifi guys have been running a sort of ongoing rpg narrative/story called sciforums fleets and this was one of the weapons for that narrative.
