IUPAC currently recognises 118 chemical elements. The last twenty have half-lives shorter than Australian prime ministers, and are of equally limited utility to science. However, physicists have predicted that an island of nuclear stability may exist around element 126, containing long-lived isotopes. We propose that this island is actually 400 light-years away.
one of the things I find amusing is how scifi loves using neutronium armor.
If you removed neutronium from the super-dense gravity of it’s star… it would go off like a neutron bomb. A very big, neutron bomb. a single teaspoon of the stuff would probably crack the earth open. a single gram of the stuff would be more powerful than any nuclear weapon ever developed.
and people just love slapping that stuff onto the outside of their starships.
They also use it for walking and whatnot, of course, but that’s an add-on. The real purpose is so they can siphon off some neutron star stuff and hold it between them and an enemy without it exploding.
you know… I wouldn’t put it past starfleet to think that was a good idea.
I mean, they don’t use surge protectors, they don’t use seatbelts, they don’t have handrailing. They don’t secure their cargos. and there are those times where the gravity gets conked out. (also I’m pretty sure that the gravity field that extends past the hull would attract all sorts of nasties, and some neutronium getting blasted off would be enough to vaporize the ship. even just a few grams.)
Clearly the gravity capacitors are aligned in such a way that in the case of gravity failure, the outer gravitronic shell fails first, causing the neutronium to evacuate safely in the direction of anyone else, while the inner shell maintains for a second or so longer, preventing an implosion.
That, and transporter shenanigans. They just beam up the neutronium before shutdown.
one of the things I find amusing is how scifi loves using neutronium armor.
If you removed neutronium from the super-dense gravity of it’s star… it would go off like a neutron bomb. A very big, neutron bomb. a single teaspoon of the stuff would probably crack the earth open. a single gram of the stuff would be more powerful than any nuclear weapon ever developed.
and people just love slapping that stuff onto the outside of their starships.
Well thats what the artificial gravity is for.
They also use it for walking and whatnot, of course, but that’s an add-on. The real purpose is so they can siphon off some neutron star stuff and hold it between them and an enemy without it exploding.
you know… I wouldn’t put it past starfleet to think that was a good idea.
I mean, they don’t use surge protectors, they don’t use seatbelts, they don’t have handrailing. They don’t secure their cargos. and there are those times where the gravity gets conked out. (also I’m pretty sure that the gravity field that extends past the hull would attract all sorts of nasties, and some neutronium getting blasted off would be enough to vaporize the ship. even just a few grams.)
Clearly the gravity capacitors are aligned in such a way that in the case of gravity failure, the outer gravitronic shell fails first, causing the neutronium to evacuate safely in the direction of anyone else, while the inner shell maintains for a second or so longer, preventing an implosion.
That, and transporter shenanigans. They just beam up the neutronium before shutdown.