Slaver stasis fields

This is one of my favorite games, explore a strange ramification of a
technology described in a story.

In this case I have been daydreaming about stasis fields again. Take an
empty aluminum soda can, which is a conductor. Form a slaver stasis field
over the metal surface of the open can, both the inside and outside surfaces
are now inside the stasis field. The field is a perfect reflector for all
forms of mass and energy for everything but the opening at the side of the
top of the can.

Drop a one gram mass of Uranium 235 into the can and point the opening at
someone you don't like. The U-235 always has a few spontaneous fission
reactions going on, but because the surface area of a 1 gram mass is large
compared to the volume they almost always escape without causing additional
fission reactions. Inside the stasis can however the neutrons which do not
go directly through the opening are reflected back in the direction they
came from over and over again until they go through one of three reactions.
They might escape through the opening at some random bounce from the stasis
can bottom, but this is a reduced chance because the bottom is curved and
tends to bounce the neutrons toward the can walls instead of up towards the
surface. You do want to keep the opening pointed away from yourself because
those neutrons that do escape release enough ionizing radiation to kill you
dead. The second option is that the neutron might decay into a proton and
electron pair, with a neutrino also emitted. The third option is the
neutron keeps passing through the U-235 gram until it collides with and
fissions an atom of Uranium. When this happens the fission products
separate at high kinetic speed and an average of 2.5 more neutrons are
released to bounce around inside the can. Because the neutrons move so fast
and the volume of the can is so small this release quickly, as in within a
few milliseconds, cascades in a chain reaction.

Congratulations you just set off a miniature nuclear explosion in your own
hand. Have no fear, as long as you had the opening pointed away from
yourself you might still live to tell about it, and produce children.
Fissioning one gram of U-235 completely would give you 22,800 Kw-h of
energy, which would power an average American home for 2 years, but how much
actually will fission before escaping through the hole in the top as a
superheated beam of plasma?

To make the problem more interesting you could coat the gram of Uranium in a
non-conductor, say wax paper for simplicity, and drop it in the aluminum can
while it is still regular aluminum. Then you use a thin object like a tooth
pick to pull the metal flap at the top most of the way back to the closed
position, leaving just about a 1 mm gap at the edge and no gap at the middle
of the top. This way when you put the stasis field on the Aluminum of the
can it will still wrap around all the conductive metal but not the wax paper
encased U-235 gram inside the can. Now the gap the plasma and neutrons can
escape through is trivial compared to the size of the can and the fission
can take place much more thoroughly before the plasmasized U-235 and fission
products escape.

Of course if you really want a good bang for your buck just add as many wax
paper coated U-235 grams as you can fit and still close the mouth of the
can, at 22,800 Kwh of energy for every gram it doesn't take many to make a
real BOOM, and even with the small gap the plasma will be 200,000,000
degrees or so in temperature and will express its potential as an explosive
heating of the volume of air, water, or soil around it. It won't be hot
enough to pierce the stasis field, but all that energy will be released in a
second or less of time. 1 Kiloton of explosive energy is defined as the
release of 1 Trillion calories of energy. That is equivalent to 3.9 Billion
BTU's of energy or 1,163,000 Kwh so for every 51 grams of U-235 you get 1 Kt
of energy released. My aluminum soda pop can will hold at least 355 grams
of liquid or about 3000 grams of U-235, about 59 kt of energy released 1
second after the stasis field activates. I don't recommend you try holding
the can while this release is occurring, that is about three times the yield
of the Nagasaki bomb and four times the yield of the Hiroshima bomb.

No wonder the ARM suppressed the Stasis field!

Allen W.

Assuming it's cheap enough, you can do anything with a stasis field. Take a
sheet of cardboard. Punch holes in all 4 corners (now, 'cause you won't be able
to later). Spray it with handy Acme conducting spray. Lay it REAL flat and
send the charge through it. Bingo, a standard construction sheet that's paper
thin, incredibly light, infinitely strong, and a perfect insulator. Mass
produce a few standard modules and build EVERYTHING with them.

Coat your girders in your skyscraper when the building's still a framework.
Presto, one handy office structure that's as earthquake proof as you're gonna
get, unless it falls over completely.

There are some serious questions about what kind of information passes through
a stasis field. For instance, if I run a charge through one of those mylar
helium balloons, will it still float? If that works, long distance lighter
than air craft become a snap. Fill it with hydrogen with no danger of
explosion. Heck, fill it with vacuum . . .

If I coat and stasis a bowling ball, will it sink in the pool?

IIRC, some bonehead mentioned to Niven that you could take a 4 light year long
dowel, put it in stasis, put one end here and the other at the nearest handy
star, and move it back and forth, with the results appearing 4 light years away
instantaneously, and BINGO you've blown holes in relativity. And Niven started
backing away from known space . .