Pretty interesting video that talks mostly about real life Particle Accelerators (Cyclotrons, and the reboot’s Snychrotron) and it’s applications…
Very cool! Thanks for posting this!
Where’s Bart? That dude blows my mind with his thoughts on it all!
Here I am!
I’ll report my quote from facespace.
He’s absolutely correct. The beauty of good sci-fi is that it makes technology plausible. Granted, the name was given by the fans, and not the production staff (correct me if I’m wrong on that), but I’ve always ran my head cannon with the fan derived name.
Cyclotrons do need shielding, as they emit high energy radiation, although I’m not certain as to the type. From what I’ve read it looks like microwave radiation and possibly alpha radiation (more on that in a minute). A few papers I googled up had mentioned thick concrete structures to house their PET cyclotrons.
So, my main thing I"ve always championed was that the pack uses a nuclear fuel to power the oscillator needed to accelerate the protons. Spengler makes the claim that the power cells have a half life of 5,000 years, which puts it Curium-246 (Cu-246) in the neighborhood with a half life of 4,730 years. The neat thing about Cu-246 is that it’s been used in Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators and it has primarily an alpha decay, which can be blocked with thin shielding.
Alpha radiation sucks if you ingest it, but for the most part cloth and skin can deflect it, hence it’s use in smoke detectors. So if the cyclotron and the powercells have alpha decay particles coming off them, some thin shielding can be used. Maybe an aluminum sheet that could double as a faraday cage to protect from the microwave emissions.
Pulling more from the fan named parts, I would say the HGA would use hydrogen to cool the cyclotron to help eek a bit more current out of it by keeping things cool (keeps the natural resistance down).
So the RTG is used to power the pack, specifically the electromagnetic coils and the oscillator to power the cyclotron. Stream is controlled through aperture adjustments in the thrower.
I have put way too much thought in this. LOL. But the things I think about when I have some downtime at work and still can’t stop thinking about electrical systems.
Now, one caveat here is that I’m a power guy. I primarily deal with big, multiphase voltages for a utility company. I have a rudimentary understanding of nuclear physics (my job is to ensure all the electrical components in our plants keeps the nuclear stuff in its safe state) and I’m even worse with particle physics. I’m sure if I ran the numbers, the size of pack we’d need to actually do what the boys in grey do would be unwieldy. That’s what makes the sci-fi tech awesome. It’s grounded in some form of fact, but the fantasy takes over and runs with it. The big concern would be how much voltage would I ideally need to run the oscillator and electromagnets, which dictates the size of the RTG (and honestly the powercell source, but I ran with a movie quote on this rabbit hole trip). The velocity of the proton is more determined by the size of the cyclotron and the frequency at which the oscillator can function.
The only thing I would say is he misquoted the elevator scene with “particle accelerator”. Venky says “nuclear accelerator”, but that’s just semantics. Either or, I don’t see the NRC giving a license on these. LOL
Where’s the “mind blown” emoji?
As an aside, has anyone heard of the Russian scientist who stuck his head directly in the path of a proton stream?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoli_Bugorski
Dude survived!
They were called Proton Packs in GB II.
Egon said “before we go any further, we should go back and get our Proton Packs” during the underground “subway” scene.
I’m paraphrasing of course, but the name is canon. (according to Egon (Harold Ramis) in GB II)
He meant “Cyclotron”, which was coined by Norm Gagnon, so yes, it was named by a fan…
Reference: http://www.gbfans.com/wiki/Proton_Pack_Part_Names
No offense Hijacker, but I disagree with your assessment of the Hydrogen Gas Actuator.
Actuator means it measures out Hydrogen. So it’s probably measuring out snippets of hydrogen gas before injection into the cyclotron/booster.
I suspect the booster tube is acting like a power transformer, but plasmically based (gas filled). I gas core rod, with tubing coils around it. I believe this is amplifying signals from the ion arm, and using them to set the phase of the proton stream.
I dunno, but since when did “actuator” mean “measure”? I’m not sure what you do for a living, but both Hijacker and I have electronics degrees, and I have never heard of actuators being designed to perform “measurement” as a primary function… I could be wrong, but normally actuators are meant to set things in motion (the Hydrogen), the measuring would most likely be done by a separate sensor somewhere else in the pack, not the actuator itself…
I’m a power engineer by trade.
Actuators don’t just randomly get things moving, there is some precision to it (English fumbling).
I suppose the hydrogen could be used for cooling, but hydrogen is basically protons with electrons… so probably a phase in the protonic generation. No?
Of course it’s not random, but it’s primary function is NOT to measure, as you so implied… again, probably English fumbling, the three of us are all probably saying the same thing, just jumbling our words around…
Yeah, probably. I just don’t think the hga is a coolant system though.
BTW, as someone with a degree in electronics, what are your thoughts on the ion arms resistors? And how they are hooked up to pneumatic parts?
The most I myself can figure is that parts of the system handle energy in a plasma state, and the resistors are being used to modify the charge. The heat would melt plastic tubing, so it would have to have a special coating. Just weird seeing those two parts together.
Your thoughts?
I never really thought of it much, honestly… Hijacker is better at that than I am… LOL! As much as I love the prop, I still look at the design as a prop… 
The Clippard valve on the pack could be used for regulation of the hydrogen from the HGA(which always looked like some sort of pump motor to me) into the booster tube assembly maybe as a proton source.
The Clippard on the thrower could regulate an Argon flow to the thrower barrel,maybe injected by the red tubing connected to the banjo pressure fittings. Argon is used in ionized plasma and directed energy weapons like this Tesla cannon demonstrates. https://youtu.be/SzqtAoJjV8Y
The thrower probably uses a powerful magnetic field to manipulate and channel the particle stream from the pack.
It probably throws alot of heat for the power source for the magnetic choke and that is where the heat sink comes into play on the thrower. There may be some sort of wave guides inside the hose from the pack to the thrower to channel the particle source.
Possible. But the 3/4 tubing from next to the vacuum pump is next to the pressure reg clippard. I would assume it would be a part of some vacuum purge of the cyclotron system.
While I can understand plasma in some parts of the system, I’m not sure you would want plasma out the wand. I mean, if ghosts are negatively charged, wouldn’t you want as pure a positive proton charge as possible? And not a neutral?
I don’t think the booster is a proton source, I think it is a signal booster, from the ion arm.
Mayyyyybe…
This always caught my eye when I would get bored and research if a proton pack was possible or not.
Well, what Bart and I meant was that the term Cyclotron was coined for that particular part of the Proton Pack by a fan, but we know Cyclotrons actually exist (and the image you posted is pretty much the same item that is being described in the video in the first post…)
Gotcha.
Hydrogen is a great cooling agent. We pump it through our turbine generators at our plants to cool them down and eek a few more megawatts out of them.
A solenoid would be better to meter out a substance, but actuators are good at the same thing. The HGA could just be an SOV. But we’re also running off fan derived names.
Where do you work?