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Mark Simmons (scorpio@best.com)
Fri, 10 Nov 2000 13:07:00 -0800
Lim Jyue writes,
> Hi all, Hi all. As mentioned earlier, I wanted to ask some stuff and
>speculate about others on the subject of Minovsky particles in the Gundam UC
>universe.
A heroic effort! Let me take a few minutes to look through the first part...
Minovsky Particles and Basic Applications
=========================================
> As I understand from Mark's web site, Minovsky particles are created
>through the fusion of Helium-3 with Hydrogen.
Actually, helium-3 and _deuterium_, an isotope of hydrogen (you could
call it hydrogen-2). Just as helium-3 has one neutron fewer than normal,
deuterium has one neutron _more_ than normal. In the reaction, the
deuterium gives its extra neutron to the helium-3 to produce regular
helium and hydrogen atoms. (Technically this shouldn't be described as
fusion, since there are the same number of atoms before and after. :-)
>This particle, in its natural
>state, is a eletrically neutral, no rest mass particle, which makes it hard
>to detect when it is at rest.
No, Minovsky particles _always_ have an electrical charge - positive
and negative ones are created in equal numbers during the fusion
reaction, which is why they lock into a grid structure. (Otherwise they
wouldn't interact with each other at all.)
> Compress the I-field sufficiently, and the positively and negatively
>charged Minovsky particles will combine to form a neutral high-velocity,
>high-mass (relative to Minovsky particles) particle called mega-particle,
>which forms the core of Gundam weaponry.
Right. It gets its initial high velocity because, as you compress the
I-field, the potential energy of the compressed Minovsky particles is
expressed as mass; when they fuse into a mega particle, the mass is
actually somewhat _lower_ than it was right before fusion, and the
difference in mass is converted into kinetic energy.
> However, how the Minovsky particles could be shaped into these
>shapes have not been identified. Since the Minovsky particles are
>electrically charged, it is possible that the fields are shaped by
>electrical or magnetic means
That's the official explanation - the I-field is shaped by a magnetic
field, so a beam saber is actually a plasma jet wrapped in an I-field
cylinder inside a magnetic bottle. :-)
Minovsky-Ionesco Reactors
=========================
> The Minovsky-Ionesco reactors utilizes I-fields to enable
>compression of the plasma into a smaller volume in order to speed up
>reactions. This enables the reactor to run on less fuel, as a higher
>percentage is consumed by the reaction and less is left staying around
>enjoying the afterglow of the reaction.
That's not the primary advantage. Rather, the benefit is that fusion
can take place at lower temperatures & pressures thanks to the catalytic
effects of the I-field. (The resulting reactor is also more compact as a
result.)
> This implies that the MS can never quite shut down the MS totally,
>because if so the reactor cannot be started up again due to the lack of a
>plasma containment bottle!
Yep, that seems reasonable. It would be a chicken-and-egg thing...
> However, there is a way around this. The MS could have a primitive
>E-cap system to store Minovsky particles necessary to create the initial
>containment bottle for a long period of time. This system will, on startup,
>form a containment bottle, then inject the fuel (Helium-3 and Hydrogen), and
>maintain the bottle until sufficient Minovsky particles have been created by
>the reactor to sustain the containment bottle.
Hm. Kinda like starting a car from a battery. :-)
> This may also be another explanation why many early MS could not
>fire beam weapons -- much of their Minovsky particle output has been
>diverted to system-critical resources, like maintainence of the containment
>bottle within the reactor.
Nah, that's not the reason. It's that the energy condensor mechanism
required to compress Minovsky particles to the point of fusing into mega
particles is a) huge and b) power-intensive. Only amphibious mobile
suits, which are a) bulky and b) can house high-output water-cooled
reactors, can be equipped with these energy condensors. So it's not so
much the supply of Minovsky particles that's the problem, but rather, the
technical requirements of the device that turns them into mega particles.
Obviously, the degree of I-field compression taking place inside the
energy condensor is far greater than inside the Minovsky-Ionesco fusion
reactor. How come? Because however compressed the reactor I-field may be,
it doesn't start spontaneously emitting mega particles. That would be a
pretty bad scenario. :-)
Beam Weapons
============
> As we all know, beam weapons consist mostly of mega-particles
>created by the compression of charged Minovsky particles. This requires
>large amounts of energy, which most MS simply couldn't supply initially, and
>as a result, most beam weapons comes with a limited number of shots which
>could be recharged slowly, by leeching Minovsky particles from the reactor,
>polarizing them, and compacting them within the gun.
(As noted above, skip the "polarizing" part - the particles are born
pre-charged.) With one exception, all One Year War-era beam weapons
either use E-caps, or are internal mega particle cannons fed by energy
condensors. The only external beam weapon which is actually charged by
the mobile suit's own reactor is the GM's beam spray gun, whose workings
remain somewhat obscure.
> In the late UC 0080s, E-caps became popular, and it was a boon.
No no. The Gundam's beam rifle uses an E-cap - it's a One Year War
innovation. (Also used in the Gelgoog and later Zeon mobile suits, and
employed to store Minovsky particles for beam sabers as well.) The mid-
0080s innovation is the E-pack, a replaceable E-cap which lets you reload
the weapon in mid-combat.
>With the advant
>of E-caps, the beam weaponry market really opened up. This meant that MS
>could be built with smaller reactors, as they now need not worry about
>recharging weapons
No, post-war reactors are just as big. I think perhaps re-cap (har har)
of beam weapon technology is in order here. :-)
> The question here is where the MS gets the plasma from. The most
>obvious answer is from the reactor, but that means that there must be a
>continous pipeline from the reactor to the beam saber. But in 0083, we
>clearly see Gato abandon his beam saber as a decoy -- and it remain lit!
We already know that the beam saber incorporates an E-cap for Minovsky
particle storage. (Unlike the E-cap in a beam rifle, the particles aren't
stored in a super-condensed form such that they're on the brink of
forming mega particles; also unlike the beam rifle, the E-cap's contents
are replenished by the mobile suit's reactor when it's placed in its
charging socket.) Since the saber already has one storage device which is
replenished directly from the mobile suit's reactor, it's a small leap to
suppose it also has a similar system for storing plasma.
> Upon activation, the beam saber extends the containment field, and
>the plasma extends itself out along with the field. As I-fields cannot
>penetrate solid objects, every time the beam sabers strike a solid object,
>the containment field breaks, and plasma flows across the object, burning
>and melting it.
Or to put it another way - since a solid object can pass through an I-
field barrier easily enough, then presumably the target of a beam saber
blow would likewise pass partway into the blade and get a mouthful of
plasma. Either way there's a gap in the I-field shell, through which the
plasma and target come into contact...
> But at a cost. To maintain both beam sabers and beam shield -- I
>can't remember whether F91 MSes uses E-caps -- the reactor must produce more
>Minovsky particles.
Like the beam saber, the beam shield stores enough plasma and Minovsky
particles to run for at least a few seconds after being detached from the
mobile suit. I recall seeing people throwing beam shields in both F91 and
Crossbone Gundam.
>Hence, it is likely that sometime after the development
>of beam shields, the reactor designs of MSes moved towards "hotter" reactors
>-- reactors that had more reaction per unit time -- to produce more Minovsky
>particles and plasma to maintain these weapons.
Yes indeed. The compact mobile suits of the second UC century
apparently use reactor fuel that's "pre-doped" with Minovsky particles
before entering the reaction chamber, to increase their output. This
makes them that much more combustible, which is why the MS-as-bomb tactic
is introduced in F91.
-- Mark
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Mark Simmons / scorpio@best.com / http://www.gundamproject.com/
"If you can kill it, it's not a god, just a good old-fashioned monster."
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