Real-life Plasma Rifles

Theoretically, plasma rifles could exist. The basic principle of plasma weapons revolves around the fact that plasma has some magnetic properties, and can be directed with either an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) or a rail accelerator, also known as an EMP beam.

There is almost no difference between the two methods of directing plasma, except that an EMP by itself spreads out in a ring around the transmitter. This method is only practical for plasma bombs, which the United States Navy is rumored to be developing at the China Lake Test Facility, though without the use of EMP. The rail accelerator, on the other hand, directs the EMP, hence the secondary name of EMP beam. It is the fundamental principle behind the rail gun: a metal rail or tube is charged and discharged at a very high rate, normally in excess of 30 Mhz, with a very high electric potential difference, upwards of 10,000 volts, which produces an electromagnetic field running the length of the rail or tube. The material used for the rail or tube (how about I just call it a barrel?) is what is known as a dielectric, a material that can be rapidly charged and discharged without retaining a static charge. (This rapid discharging creates small EMPs.) The effect of the dielectric is such that it creates an anti-gravity field in the direction its discharging surface is facing. In the case of a rail gun, the discharging surface is facing the center and slightly towards the end of the barrel, creating a frictionless barrel for the ammunition to pass through. (Note: since the discharging surface creates small EMPs, the EMPs are directed and focused into a beam due to the inward facing discharging surface of the dielectric. Hence the name EMP beam.) After the barrel is charged, the ammunition is inserted into the firing chamber (an extenxion of the barrel, also dielectric to produce the anti-gravity field) and charged with another high voltage, opposite the barrel of the gun, but not enough to keep it from being attracted to another high voltage component that will be at the end of the barrel. This muzzle piece has a steady charge, opposite the charge of the ammunition, so that the two will be attracted. They both retain the same voltage, effectively doubling the difference in charge. Once the ammunition is charged, it is released into the barrel, with the anti-gravity field pulling it along at a very high speed, possibly up to the speed of electricity, which is 604,500,000 feet per second in a vacuum. As the ammunition reaches the charged muzzle piece, the muzzle discharges, sending the projectile out of the barrel and along its path. The amunition for a rail gun would most likely be a very dense metal with massively strong magnetic properties, perhaps depleted Francium.

A plasma rifle can operate on the same principle as a rail gun, just replacing the ammunition with plasma. Plasma is defined as a substance which is undergoing constant nuclear reaction. The electrons produced by such reactions creates strong magnetic properties within the plasma, which can be used by an electric field to attract the plasma to it. In essence, a plasma has the same magnetic properties as metals do. Therefore, the plasma rifle operates the same as the rail gun, except the muzzle velocity of the plasma rifle is greatly reduced due to the fact that plasma is much more dense than the sabot rounds used by the rail gun. A very small amount of plasma is required to do massive amounts of damage,however, so a person may not need to carry that much plasma with them to have enough to destroy, say, a whole infantry battalion. The reason behind this is that plasma cannot be contained in anything less than a magnetic field, as it is extremely hot and can melt even carbon, which has the highest melting point of any of the known elements.

This post is getting a little long-winded, so I think I'll end it here. And yes, I was bored when I wrote this; somebody in Disorder's "Plasma-rifle" post asked if a multi-ammo gun could exist, and I started to explain the plasma rifle's feasibility instead. Oh well . . .

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Dude, imagine soldiers equipped with a Plasma-rifle in a couple of years... Sweet!! Then, all hell will break loose, and Doom will really happen. ;)

Yeah, it'll be great! Everyone you know will be fried alive before the EMP bomb goes off and just 'erases' your corner of the world! Fantastic!

Yikes. I hate hearing how great it will be when Doom really happens. Doom is a fiction universe of pain, suffering, chaos and death. It's not like porn or Blue's Clues.

Woooh deadnail, take it easy... I didn't mean it. ;)
(Hey, I didn't capitalize your name!!)

deadnail said:

Yeah, it'll be great! Everyone you know will be fried alive before the EMP bomb goes off and just 'erases' your corner of the world! Fantastic!

Yikes. I hate hearing how great it will be when Doom really happens. Doom is a fiction universe of pain, suffering, chaos and death. It's not like porn or Blue's Clues.

Actually I believe all that an EMP blast would do is fry anything that is electronic. Chaos would still errupt, but it's not as destructive and no one dies (unless they have a pacemaker).

It's a shame that as soon as you fire the gun you will be instantly vapourised since plasma is hotter than the centre of the sun (any thing up to 150 million kelvins) but hey! you win some you loose some......

Hehe, everyone is getting it ass-backwards.

A "Plasma" weapon would most likely fire a stream of plasma gasses with a temperature near aobut 100,000 kelvins instead of actual thermonuclear temperatures.

The big problem with realizing plasma weapons that would fire balls or bursts - being explosive on impact in nature, is that they would start expanding as soon as they left the barrel. This means it acts more like a flamethrower than anything else, and with this temperature it might well just explode and blow you backwards 20 feet (and destroy the gun maybe).

Plasma weapons are more efficient than lasers because weither or not its a beam or burst it will explode on impact with the target. This means that if you are shot it will explode inside you, whereas a laser simply cuts through things.

If anybody remembers the weaponry from "stargate", the staff weapons they had were plasma-based, but had a very low penetration coefficient (i never saw it go *through* anybody, just explode *on* them).

I belive that the peacekeeper weapons in "Farscape" are also plasma based, but very weak in power.

Your physics is all out of wack.

EMP beam? Cool! [continues reading...] Anti-gravity fields? WTF? [continues reading....] Plasma is defined as a substance which is undergoing constant nuclear reaction? Wrong.
And no, it wouldn't travel at around 0.9c like you said because plasma has mass and you surely be shot backwards at around 0.1c(30,000 kilometers per SECOND) if you fired this weapon!

I understand that this whole plasma gun thing is feasible but the energy requirements for the necessary magnetic field are huge. Not only would all local pigeons start flying in the direction of your gun, you may even get your own little aurura doomialis (I kill me, hah!). 8)

the-widow-maker said:

It's a shame that as soon as you fire the gun you will be instantly vapourised since plasma is hotter than the centre of the sun (any thing up to 150 million kelvins) but hey! you win some you loose some......

why is plasma necessarily hotter than the sun??
It's NOT. The sun is much fucking hotter (especially the center) than any plasma you'll encouter on Earth.

CRiZ said:

Your physics is all out of wack.

EMP beam? Cool! [continues reading...] Anti-gravity fields? WTF? [continues reading....] Plasma is defined as a substance which is undergoing constant nuclear reaction? Wrong.
And no, it wouldn't travel at around 0.9c like you said because plasma has mass and you surely be shot backwards at around 0.1c(30,000 kilometers per SECOND) if you fired this weapon!

I understand that this whole plasma gun thing is feasible but the energy requirements for the necessary magnetic field are huge. Not only would all local pigeons start flying in the direction of your gun, you may even get your own little aurura doomialis (I kill me, hah!). 8)

I never said the plasma would travel at 0.9c. I said the muzzle velocity of this weapon would be greatly reduced in comparison to the rail gun. Realistically, the muzzle velocity wouldn't be much more than a bullet, if even as fast as a bullet.

And the thing about the anti-gravity fields? It is the only way to explain what happens when you charge and discharge a dielectric material at a high rate. According to Townsend Brown's research in dielectrics in 1938, charging and discharging a dielectric at a very high rate caused the dielectric material to levitate. The reason it levitated was because the material was discharging from the underside, creating a very strong electromagnetic field that seemed to reverse the effect of gravity.

About my definition of plasma, that's just what I've been taught in all of my science courses. I understand that plasma could also be a superheated gas that seems to have the properties of a liquid.

Oh, and the energy requirements? Since doom takes place in the future, I'm sure by 2704 that we may have the technology to create a miniature power source that produces enough electricity to power a present-day city the size of, say, Chicago.

Some of my explanation may be a little baffling, but bear with me. I'm not a university graduate here, but I have a good knowledge of electromagnetics.

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