This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Of course the country that makes games, anime and manga full of giant mechs with railguns does it first
Nanomachines, son!
Played college ball ya know!
Stop asking for a grey goo incident or we're going to have a grey goo incident
wake me.... when you have railguns
I hear that there is no other way to kill Godzilla.
They fired a certain scientific railgun. Nice.
Hey look out for a certain scientific accelerator and a magical index as well.
Sad Zumwalt noises.
Damn, I was just researching EM based weaponry for a fiction book. Didn't expect to see this kind of news for a few years based on what I found.
Here, this'll probably make your day: MARAUDER plasma railgun. The first simulations were done in 1990, the first real-world test was done in 1993. They estimated that by 2000, their prototype would be capable of firing a plasma toroid at 3% of the speed of light.
My understanding is that the little we know about it is a result of someone either not taking the project seriously, or forgetting to classify the research. The result was that the early research got leaked to the public while the later research is believed to have become classified, which is why the otherwise successful project suddenly disappeared.
Edit: removed a redundancy
Top secret = classified...
I thought I'd heard that "classified" and "top secret" were levels of classification for info, but after looking it up it looks like you're correct.
That's what I based a different weapon on in my table top rpg world :)
Been possibly for a long time. Whether or not it’s a practical solution is another story.
Eh, I could hand wave the important bits behind "war-time research and development in a universe where physics isn't exactly the same", but it wouldn't really work for the story I want to tell. I want it to highlight a bit of an important side character, so if I'm hand waving their area of expertise, it falls apart.
My mate in high school used to make these. He'd wind his own electromagnetic little tunnel thing, apply current, and the little metal projectile used to shoot through walls. Was pretty amazing.
That's pretty cool, and dangerous
The Venn diagram for those two things is just a single circle
They should try getting info on whatever they can about MARAUDER. Might be better at intercepting missiles than a railgun that fires physical projectiles.
