Magnetic field shocklessly shoots pellets 20 times faster than rifle bullet

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15 August 2001 News

A magnetic field that accelerates pellets faster than anything except a nuclear explosion has been developed experimentally at the US Department of Energy's Sandia National Laboratories. Jokingly dubbed 'the fastest gun in the West,' the machine that generates the field is actually 'the fastest gun in the world,' according to Sandia physicist Marcus Knudson.

Marcus Knudson holds two flyer plates in his right hand and chambers of his high-tech gun in his left. In the background is the innermost sanctum of Sandia's Z accelerator, where a rapidly expanding magnetic field drives pellets faster than any mechanism on earth

The propulsion speed is 20 km/s - almost three times that necessary to escape the earth's gravity (about 7 km/s). A rifle bullet is typically propelled at 1 km/s.

Sandia's Z accelerator propels coin-sized pellets (flyer plates) only a few hundred millimeters to gain information on the effect of high-velocity impacts. The data is being used to simulate the effect of flying space junk impacting the metal skin of an orbiting observatory and is expected to aid materials scientists trying to balance lightness against strength for satellite and observatory shells. The technique also has potential as a hypervelocity 'kinetic kill' weapon that, emanating from a lighter, more mobile source than the Z machine, still could strike disabling blows through an adversary's heavy armour.

The Z machine uses 20 million amps to produce an evolving magnetic field that expands in approximately 200 ns to reach several million atmospheres of pressure. The relatively gentle acceleration means the plates are neither distorted, melted, nor vapourised, as they would be if shot from a gun.

www.sandia.org

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Magnetic field shocklessly shoots pellets 20 times faster than rifle bullet

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