Re: starship-design: A few thoughts on drag & exoitc stuff(was 'still doing stardrives')

["AJ & AJ Crowl" <ajcrowlx2@ozemail.com.au>]

Hi Group,

----- Original Message -----
From: N. Lindberg <nlindber@u.washington.edu>
To: L. Clayton Parker <lparker@cacaphony.net>
Cc: <KellySt@aol.com>; <jthunderbird@nternet.com>;
<starship-design@lists.uoregon.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, February 10, 1999 3:55 AM
Subject: starship-design: A few thoughts on drag & exoitc stuff(was 'still
doing stardrives')


> One of the candidates for the 'dark matter' that accounts for 90%
>of our universe and our galaxy is a low-rest mass particle called the
>axion.  This is one of those wierd things that are predicted by SUSY and
>superstring theories.  It has the interesting property that it decays into
>photons in the presence of a strong magnetic field.  Of course, if they
>exist in large quantity in interstellar space, the magnetic field from any
>Bussard scoop would cause their decay.  At low speeds (relative to the
>galactic DM halo) the microwaves produced wouldn't be a big deal, but at
>high speed they could produce enourmous effects.  I have no idea whether
>this would produce drag, thrust, or a force normal to the path.
> Best Regards,
> Nels Lindberg
>
Interesting thought. Reminds me of Haisch and co's work on inertia as the
ZPF's reaction to an accelerating charge. Perhaps Dark Matter will turn out
to be neutralinos instead, since some researchers think they've actually
found a few. I think if you're moving fast enough to worry about axion decay
you'll be fending off a whole lot more radiation from interstellar gas
interacting with your scoop fields - synchrotron radiation would get pretty
bad ar close to c.

Adam