Adalast

I was doing some thinking about light and how it behaves and trying to figure out what the smallest we could focus a beam of photons would be. In my research, I think the answer would be something related to the frequency of the light, but i'm not sure. basically i was wondering if it would be possible to focus a beam of light into a singularity of sorts, and if any odd things might happen at that point depending on energy levels, frequency, etc.

not that there is any way i know of to actually do it with perminant magnets, but is there any way to create a spherical configuration with all of one pole pointing towards the center? or will the poles shift themselves over time. if you could create something with overlapping fields that would in essance make a solid magnetic wall of a single polarity with a void in the center, then the positrons or electrons should simply bounce around off of the barriers. the only problem i could forsee would be that they might try to travel directly along a field line and escape... but could enough overlapping correct this. i'm not quite sure how big it would have to be, but many small magnets spaced close together in a large diameter sphere might work. *edit* read the above post about stable fields. since that basically refutes my concept... could it be possible to use the magnetic mirroring effect of a super conductor to achieve the effect? you'll have to excuse me, i get a little eccentric when it gets late. perhaps i should do a little more research on the forces and concepts at work in the mirroring effect to see if it could be utilized.

i was actually just thinking about inertial forces acting on antimater. technically it should still have mass since mass as we know it is calculated as an absolute value. so gravity and inertia should affect a coherent mass of antimatter as it does matter. as far as containment goes, the only thing i could think of would be to use super conductors to generate a strong enough magnetic field, but then we would need to have ambient temperature super conductors, and that's a whole nother topic. the ideal situation for containing and utilizing antimater would be in space. as a weapon, there would be less likelihood of a contamination, and as an energy source.. well... you could get rid of it fairly easily should containment fail. the most ideal containment method would a series of hyper-magnetic materials that required little to no electric current to maintain a stable field arranged to create a bubble around the antimater. a detenator would be a moot point in my opinion... just point the damn thing at whatever you want to destroy and fire... impact will take care of mixing it with the correct amount of matter to release it's destructive potential. and just because i love to do it, it is theoretically possible to have an entire solar system.... or galaxy for that matter (no pun intended) created out of nothing but antimater. since it should theoretically behave exactly as normal matter, fusion should still occur just as it does in the sun and give of exactly the same amount of energy. i wonder if there would be any real way to detect such an existence without finding out the hard way. another question that should be posed imho, is how much energy do you think spacetime could technically support before something funky happens? honestly, 270 megatons is a really big number, especially from a 1kg catalyst... what would happen if you used, say, a 1 metric ton catalyst? 100 tons? how high could the energy release go before the normal laws of physics would begin to skew... till the fabric of spacetime begins to warp? eventually something would have to happen that would be interesting.

i was actually considering dark energy vs. the expansion of spacetime on the way home from a meeting today. the half hour drive alone leaves for quite a bit of time to percolate an idea. my idea takes a few liberties with the theories of relativity, the big bang and the actual function of time. what i was wondering is, what if the term "flow of time" is actually not too far off? if you were to consider an unmeasured energy particle for time (tempron) was created along with the big bang along with all space and energy. i say energy here for the sake of argument that by relativity, matter is little else than condensed energy. so if we follow the model of relativity that considers space to be a sort of fabric, then i will call time kind of like a soupy mix of temprons. now that i've basically outlined the liberties i'm taking with the current theories as i understand them, i'll talk about my idea. what if what we percieve as the passage of time is actually the "settling" of this tempron soup into the fabric of space. as more temprons settle into the mesh of space, it swells and expands. also, if you are still considering temprons as that soup, then it would pool near objects of great mass, which would give a result similar to the effects theorized in the deep gravity wells of black holes and such.