DARPA seeks portable muon-making machine to see through almost anything
- Reference: 1658727071
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/07/25/darpa_portable_muon_generator/
- Source link:
Muons are subatomic particles that behave a lot like electrons but are around 200 times heavier. As the US Department of Energy [1]explains , "Muons created in the atmosphere constantly hit every inch of the Earth's surface and pass through almost any substance."
Many scientists have noted that measuring the passage of muons offers the chance to measure the interior of whatever object the particles pass through during the 2.2 microseconds or so they exist before decaying into an electron and neutrinos. Boffins have already done this on targets such as the pyramids of Giza, using the constant rain of atmospheric muons that bathes the Earth every day, and techniques that aren't vastly different to those used with gamma rays, X-rays, neutrons, protons, and electrons in imaging applications.
[2]
DARPA imagines using muons to do things like scanning buildings "to characterize internal structures and detect the presence of threat materials such as special nuclear materials."
[3]
[4]
"Other potential applications include rapidly mapping the location of underground tunnels and chambers hundreds of meters below the Earth's surface," the Agency asserts.
[5]Defense contractor pays $9m to settle whistleblower's cybersecurity allegations
[6]Behold this drone-dropping rifle with two-mile range
[7]DARPA study challenges assumptions about distributed ledger (and Bitcoin) security
[8]DARPA wants to refuel drones in flight – wirelessly
Humanity has also figured out how to create muons – but as DARPA [9]admits , doing so "requires such high-energy particles that production is limited to large physics research facilities such as the United States' Fermilab national particle accelerator in Illinois and the European CERN accelerator in Switzerland."
Fermilab watches muons at work in a [10]facility that incorporates "a 50-foot-diameter superconducting magnetic storage ring, which sits in its detector hall amidst electronics racks, the muon beamline, and other equipment" – and operates at negative 450 degrees Fahrenheit (-267.8°C), so you'll need the thick mittens.
DARPA thinks it can do better.
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"Our goal is to develop a new, terrestrial muon source that doesn't require large accelerators and allows us to create directional beams of muons at relevant energies, from 10s to 100s of GeVs – to either image or characterize materials," said Mark Wrobel, program manager at DARPA's Defense Sciences Office and boss of the miniature-muon-making program called MuS2.
"Enabling this program is high-peak-power laser technology that has been steadily advancing and can potentially create the conditions for muon production in a compact form factor," Wrobel added. "MuS2 will lay the ground work needed to examine the feasibility of developing compact and transportable muon sources."
"MuS2 aims to employ what's called laser plasma acceleration (LPA) to initially create 10 GeV particles in the space of tens of centimeters compared to hundreds of meters needed for state-of-the art linear accelerators," states DARPA's announcement of the project.
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The Agency has given itself two years in which to figure out how to make 10 GeV muons. A second two-year phase will "aim to develop scalable accelerator designs for 100 GeV or greater and produce relevant numbers of muons for practical applications."
To get the job done, DARPA is on the lookout for folks with experience providing Petawatt-level laser facilities, muon target design, and HPC systems to run simulations, among other esoteric skills.
The Agency has invited would-be muon-makers to attend an [13]event on August 5, at which it will explain MuS2 in detail. ®
Get our [14]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.energy.gov/science/doe-explainsmuons
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Yt5pwV4c5Y3rp0GFZQ7fqAAAAIc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Yt5pwV4c5Y3rp0GFZQ7fqAAAAIc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Yt5pwV4c5Y3rp0GFZQ7fqAAAAIc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/11/aerojet_cybersecurity_whistleblower/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/27/ukraine_drone_rifle/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/22/research_challenges_assumptions_about_distributed/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/14/darpa_drone_wireless_charging/
[9] https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2022-07-22
[10] https://news.fnal.gov/2021/04/first-results-from-fermilabs-muon-g-2-experiment-strengthen-evidence-of-new-physics/
[11] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Yt5pwV4c5Y3rp0GFZQ7fqAAAAIc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[12] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Yt5pwV4c5Y3rp0GFZQ7fqAAAAIc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[13] https://sam.gov/opp/83e9b6d1c5614d2e9545ed898b8f3cf0/view
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: negative 450 degrees Fahrenheit
Yes, you are quite correct. They should have shown it as the -47 Hiltons that it actually is!
Re: negative 450 degrees Fahrenheit
First time I ever saw anyone use anything other than "minus" for a below-zero temperature value. I agree that 5° K is a lot more informative. (Give 'em a Unicode degree symbol, make the Windows laggards gnash their teeth in confusion)
Re: negative 450 degrees Fahrenheit
No degree symbol for Kelvin (or Celcius), that's an olde worlde thing for Farenheit or Centigrade.
Meanwhile, in A.N.Other Area of Incredibly Researched AIdVenturing, ...
....... a Fundamental Essential Proves Itself Virtually Worthy and Absolutely Vital for Human Survival.
That's how to do IT and AI. Nice one, DARPA .... Create an inventive imaginative narrative for constant and secure undisclosed secret international security funding streams to feed fiat to universal supporters to lavishly spend on toys and trinkets which allow the returned funds to be again disbursed and employed in feeding other dreams and more popular virtual realities ...... those daily media presentations chronicling and depicting with moveable pixels the general knowledge states of conflicting co-existences, and in any ground-breaking, Earth-shattering future news, tales with evidence produced of fantastic progress made/discovered/uncovered.
Without the interminable flow of flash fiat cash, and its turning into a wholly virtually supplied and debited ethereal product is a master pilot stroke of pure pragmatic genius, does unbelievably productive progress crash to an almighty halt and in so doing does it, IT and AI guarantee the advent and rise of, from the depths of the resultant despair, a endless string of catastrophic mass extinction threatening events and the end to life as you both may know it and/or would just love it to be.
Safety
While muons are created in the atmosphere constantly, how safe would it to be inside a building being scanned by a directed beam of these things whizzing about at 10GeV or more?
Maybe they should just interpret the title of the article literally.
Instead of developing a portable muon making machine they could just develop a machine which makes portable muons. That way you can stick with Fermilab/CERN sized facilities and just send boxes of muons through the post to wherever they’re needed, or maybe order them through Amazon or do the drop shipping thing through AliExpress … :-)
"DARPA is on the lookout for folks with experience providing Petawatt-level laser facilities, muon target design, and HPC systems to run simulations, among other esoteric skills."
And the best they can offer such rare birds is a 2 year gig with a possible 2 year extension?
Given the nature of post-doc employment this will actually look good.
Fascinating
This endeavour really strikes me as the foundational concepts that make a tri-corder.
It'd be funny if as they were building a tri-corder, they accidentally created hard light and the phaser and then made a tri-corder.
Kind of James Burke-ing the Trek universe.
negative 450 degrees Fahrenheit
Oh come on el-reg ... Fahrenheit in a scientific context is stupid, if you want to give a different scale try Kelvin - much more meaningful when close to absolute zero.