• neidu2@feddit.nl
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    5 months ago

    Just get it over with and start building an equatorial particle collider already.

        • Routhinator@startrek.website
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          5 months ago

          We currently can’t block enough radiation to make space travel safe for humans in long term situations unless we are blessed with the calmest of space weather based on some recent news about the long term effects on the kidneys in the conditions of space travel (source, I believe the research still needs to be corroborated https://phys.org/news/2024-06-astronauts-kidneys-survive-roundtrip-mars.pdf )

          We’re still not at the Star Trek radiation screen level, unfortunately. So I’m not confident we can isolate this well enough. Earths magnetic field and atmosphere do a lot of work for us, and we still cannot replicate their function well enough to make it safe for humans long term. And this is a project that was put underground because it was more sensitive than humans.

          • onion@feddit.de
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            5 months ago

            I think we could easily shield this, it would just be stupendously expensive to bring all that lead up there

      • neidu2@feddit.nl
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        5 months ago

        Surely the collective noun for a group of particle physicists has to be A Theory.

    • Asidonhopo@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Honest question could this be feasible with a few dozen satellites positioned above the Van Allen Belts to accelerate particles, and just letting the particles raw dog the solar wind and ride around Earth’s gravity well between each acceleration satellite? Cause that would be badass

      • lurker2718@lemmings.world
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        5 months ago

        No, to orbit the earth at an height of let’s say 1000 km you would need a speed of around 7km/s. If you go faster, you don’t follow an circular orbit. Wirh around 11km/s you would be so fast to leave the gravity well of earth. The particles in those colliders are almost moving at the speed of light. To be exact, they move only 3.1m/s slower than the speed of light, so almost 300000km/s. They would fly almost straight and would be barely influenced by the gravity well.

    • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Skip that. Put it in orbit and make it double as a solar collector array and beam the extra energy back down.