Science jargon? Proton axe, protonic inversal axe?

NMLevesque

NMLevesque

Commie Ghost
It does electric damage as far as I can tell. Not sure how protons factor into that, or what inversal would even mean. If it was just inverse, then wouldn't they call it the inverse proton axe instead? Or is this just pure, unadulterated, science-themed gibberish? Wild speculations welcome.
 
NMLevesque said:
It does electric damage as far as I can tell. Not sure how protons factor into that, or what inversal would even mean. If it was just inverse, then wouldn't they call it the inverse proton axe instead? Or is this just pure, unadulterated, science-themed gibberish? Wild speculations welcome.
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gonna say it's nothing but gibberish. Protons give off a positive charge, but to have them on their own is a bit 'wut' on its own. So...no idea how that's supposed to electrocute people or do damage. Anyone got a clue?
 
Dang. I was kind of hoping it had something to do with (charged) particle weapons, but I could never figure those out. Or that there was some kind of retro sci-fi logic that was being referenced, like some of the weirder shit in Half-Life. That and I have no idea why anyone would make an energy axe...maybe that's why it's not a top tier weapon, even against robots. Videogame logic suggests that a high tech energy enhanced melee weapon should be stronger than ordinary ones low tech ones. So I suppose that it isn't--could have some significance, if I *really* wanted to read into it.
 
Well, I guess you could think about a proton axe like this: The blade is actually contained positive charged hydrogen plasma (so, protons), and since plasma is hot and charged it would put a lot of hurt into a target, especially a robot.
A proton inversal could mean contained antimatter, either positrons (anti-electrons), or anti-protons. An anti-proton coming into contact with a proton would disintegrate immediately. Wouldn't use it as a hand-held weapon, though, since you'd basically trigger a FUCKHUEG explosion everytime you hit someone with it. Or maybe it somehow turns protons into anti-protons, disintegrating the target's atoms and, again, triggering a FUCKHUEG explosion.
But no, it's mostly a reference to Wasteland (proton ax) and Ghostbusters (total protonic reversal. It would be real bad).
 
Or it could invert the quarks composing the proton, changing up quarks to down quarks and vice versa, which would transform the proton into a neutron, leading to disintegration of the atoms and a shower of radiation. Again, not very good for anyone standing nearby.

But yeah, pop culture, mainly.
 
peadar87 said:
Or it could invert the quarks composing the proton, changing up quarks to down quarks and vice versa, which would transform the proton into a neutron, leading to disintegration of the atoms and a shower of radiation. Again, not very good for anyone standing nearby.

But yeah, pop culture, mainly.
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Wouldn't a nucleus made of neutrons still be potentially stable, bound together by the strong force? I mean, the lattice would immediately disintegrate, but the nuclei could still be intact.
Forced total positron decay would be fun... I guess the blade of the axe would be made of concentrated W+ bosons, however that would work.
 
Hassknecht said:
Wouldn't a nucleus made of neutrons still be potentially stable, bound together by the strong force? I mean, the lattice would immediately disintegrate, but the nuclei could still be intact.
Forced total positron decay would be fun... I guess the blade of the axe would be made of concentrated W+ bosons, however that would work.
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Hmm... Interesting point. This is getting well above my pay grade, but this would seem to suggest that a neutron will try and decay into a proton and an electron if there isn't a nearby proton occupying the relevant energy level. I guess with your background you'd be better placed than me to say if I've interpreted that right
 
peadar87 said:
Hmm... Interesting point. This is getting well above my pay grade, but this would seem to suggest that a neutron will try and decay into a proton and an electron if there isn't a nearby proton occupying the relevant energy level. I guess with your background you'd be better placed than me to say if I've interpreted that right
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Eh, I'm a condensed matter physicist, nuclear physics isn't my field, either.
But yeah, since protons are lighter it would be favourable for neutrons to decay into protons if Pauli exclusion allows it. Dineutrons have been observed, apparently, but they're not actually bound states, and all states with more than two neutrons are hypothetical at best.
So yeah, nuclei made of purely neutrons aren't actually stable. Kinda thought they were, but I think I mixed up the neutron-degenerate matter in neutron stars with this, which only exist due to gravity overcoming electron degeneracy pressure and thus preventing beta decay.
 
Here we have @Hassknecht and @peadar87 discussing nuclear physics when the actual explanation is more likely something along the lines of "it reverses the polarity of the neutron flow via the process of multi-modal reflection sorting at the event horizon of an exploding singularity."
 
Ben Soto said:
Here we have @Hassknecht and @peadar87 discussing nuclear physics when the actual explanation is more likely something along the lines of "it reverses the polarity of the neutron flow via the process of multi-modal reflection sorting at the event horizon of an exploding singularity."
Click to expand...
Well yeah, we established it right at the beginning that it's all just technobabble :D
But it's always fun to do some word-association and see what the closest real-world-science is ^^
 
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