Important problem for plasma cosmologists and physicists

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rcglinsk
Posts: 101
Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2008 10:06 pm

Important problem for plasma cosmologists and physicists

Unread post by rcglinsk » Tue Apr 15, 2008 10:27 pm

Hi Folks,

I'm new to the forum and relatively new to the ideas of plasma cosmology. I wanted to put out what I think is an important area of research for plasma cosmologists and physicists alike. The single greatest barrier to space travel and economic exploitation of space is the danger of sending human beings outside the Van Allen Belts. One of the most interesting solutions to the problem I've read about has been to use a plasma shield of sorts. You take a mesh of wire to create electric fields to hold the plasma in place, then energize some hydrogen gas into a plasma state. The resultant magnetic fields will deflect the charged particles of the solar wind. Now, of course scale is a big problem, and effective deflection is impossible on a small scale. However, I read an interesting article recently about the Chernobyl nuclear site. Aside from being a refuge of biodiversity (humans have stayed away), the inside of the Chernobyl reactor has seen some interesting evolution. A dark fungus lives on the walls of the old reactor and it actually eats the radiation from the core. They have a chlorophyll-like molecule that is excited by higher energy photons. The principle problem with using water as a mass shield to radiation is the water molecules may have absorbed the worst of the solar wind, but the radiation they gave off afterwards was also dangerous. I think the fungus from Chernobyl will eat presently or could be caused to by simple exposure and evolution to eat the radiation that comes out of the water molecules after they absorb solar wind. So, with a layered protection mechanism: proper flight planning to avoid predictable solar explosions, a plasma shield to deflect weaker particles, water to absorb the higher energy particles, fungus to absorb the side effects of the water shield, and radiation badges to monitor individual exposure, I think institutional space travel could be realized in a safe way. We can't get lunar dirt and turn it into space based solar panels unless we can send people to the moon reliably to mine it.

So, to summarize, let's encourage the plasma physics and plasma cosmology community to work hard on the problem of how to create a plasma shield for a spacecraft. Space is the future of humanity and space industry is the future of our economy.

Sincerely,
Ryan Glinski

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