enabling technology

by

tony kordyban

it began innocently enough some years ago when i joined the celsius society.   like other professional organizations, it had dues, a newsletter, and chapter meetings on topics like, “liquid crystal thermography:  colorful gimmick or diagnostic dead end?”  then came the tap on the shoulder and the whispered invitation to become a premium member.  “it wouldn’t be the celsius society if we didn’t have many degrees of membership,” it was explained to me.  i went through the initiation ceremonies, learned the secret handshake and the latin passwords.  it seemed silly, but it was a small price to gain the company of noted thermal aficionados.  plus the closed-door meetings always had an open bar.

years passed, and eventually i gained entry to the constantan level.  soon after, i was invited to the annual international meeting.  treasure-map-like directions led me to a villa outside of florence, italy.  to my surprise, i was the only guest.  the gate guard somehow knew me without an introduction.  he conducted me down a long hall, whose walls were covered with oil portraits.  he explained they were the giants of thermal engineering throughout history.  being as they were thermal engineers, even i had trouble figuring out who they were.

inside a richly appointed study, i was presented to the inner circle.  they all knew my name, but identified themselves only by numbers, as was the inner circle tradition.

“by now you realize,” number six explained, “the celsius society is more than a lame technical association.  its roots stretch into antiquity, although it didn’t really catch on until archimedes.  since the beginning, we have been collecting and guarding the secrets of thermal technology.  being thermal secrets, there has never been that much interest from the public anyway, so it hasn’t exactly been difficult preserving their secrecy.”

i stifled a laugh.  he continued, “why do they need guarding?  as you point out in your seminars, thermal engineering is an enabling technology.  nobody buys a computer because of its amazing fans.  they’d rather it didn’t have fans at all.  they choose a game console to play games, not for its liquid metal heat sink interface material.  the interface material and the fan enable the exotic electronic technology so that there can be game consoles and computers.”

“what’s so secret about game console cooling?” i asked.

members of the circle exchanged subtle smirks.

“the point,” number six said, “is that the technology that enables can also be the technology that prevents.  we can share, or we can withhold those secrets.  we hold the power to decide which projects succeed, and which will not succeed.  you may be surprised at the technical developments we have enabled over the centuries:  steelmaking, fine china, the brick pizza oven –“

“the steam engine?” i guessed.

“not exactly.  we merely gave james watt a hint for improving the process of brewing scotch whiskey!  he took it upon himself to extend the use of it to building a steam engine.  fuel cells, rocket motors, the thermos bottle, naturally.  there was quite an argument over the nuclear weapons thing.  seemed like a good idea at the time, what with the nazis and all.”

i said, “what have you said no to?”

number six smiled.  “remember when dean kamen announced he was working on a new invention that was going to change everything?  a year later he came out with the segway.  let’s just say the segway was not what he originally had had in mind.”

number four put down her diet coke and said, “that brings us to why we invited you here.  from time to time, we reveal one of our secrets to a special someone, someone with a worthy purpose.  someone who may be trusted.”

“worthy?”

“we know of your work on the human brain unit project at your former employer.  it would have exploited disembodied human brains to create a neural net-based telecommunication system.  the project had to be scrapped, purportedly because the cooling system was unworkable.  our own engineering review determined that, in reality, the human brain unit could have been cooled in a practical manner with ordinary off-the-shelf technology.  nevertheless, the project was shelved, and you left that employer.  so we have concluded that you must have stifled the project based on ethical principles.”

“uh, yeah, ethics, that’s what it was,” i said, tugging at my shirt collar.

“upon finding such a kindred spirit, we take him under our wing.  which leads us to the unveiling.”  number four removed a cloth covering a crystal candy dish.  she pulled a gray pebble from it, and without a word, tossed it into the fire burning in the fireplace.  the fire died in seconds.  number four plucked the pebble out of the embers with her bare hand and tossed it to me.  i caught it gingerly, but it wasn’t hot at all.

“coldstone,” she said, “a material of, for all practical purposes, nearly infinite specific heat.  it can instantly absorb huge amounts of heat energy without a measurable increase in temperature.  some think that it dissipates energy by sending out complimentary pairs of tachyons, half into the past and half into the future.  that is not important.  what you might do with such a material is.”

the pebble now was making my fingers uncomfortably cold.  “this stuff is a true heat sink!” i said, “i know of something this coldstone stuff could make or break.”

“indeed,” number four said.

“my development team is struggling to cool a very high power infrared laser.  the goal for the laser is to deliver a 230 megawatt burst to a target for one second.  that isn’t the hard part.  the laser can do that already.  the problem is that the highest laser efficiency is only 10%.  so when the 230mw is zapping the target, the laser assembly itself has to get rid of about 2 gigawatts of heat, all at once.  without liquid cooling on the scale of niagara falls the laser destroys itself.  but with a bucket or two of coldstone, maybe – “

number three scribbled something on the back of a gilt-edged envelope, then asked, “this target:  would it happen to have a mass of about 90 kilograms, that is, about 200 pounds?”

i nodded yes.  there was a collective “hmmm,” from the circle.

“and the latent heat of vaporization of the target?”

“essentially the same as water, about 2 million joules per kilogram.”

there was a gasp.  number four snatched the coldstone pebble from me.

“what’s wrong?” i asked, sensing another kind of chill in the room.

“your goal is to strike a target, with the mass and latent heat of a typical human body, with enough energy to vaporize it in one second.  you are building a buck rogers death ray,” said number three.

the candy dish was almost in my reach.  “sure, but vaporizing somebody is probably only one of many uses for such a, uh, device,”  i tried.  the cloth was draped over the dish again.

i grasped at one last straw.  “coldstone would make a very effective shield against such a laser!”  too late.  i was politely but quickly escorted to the gates of the villa.

i have not been invited to the international meeting again.  nobody in the celsius society seems to have even heard of an inner circle or coldstone.  when i try to convince anyone about a mysterious organization that hordes thermal secrets to control the development of technology, they laugh at me.

vaporizing a human is not easy

how much energy does it take to vaporize somebody?  we’re talking about zapping him with a beam so he disappears.  the only real way to do that is to turn him literally into vapor.

for an idea of the minimum energy to accomplish that, let’s assume the human body is a skin full of 100% liquid water.  that’s close enough for an order of magnitude calculation.  also, our zapping target has a mass of 90kg (200lb.)

first our death ray has to raise the temperature of this bag of water from normal body temperature (98.6f or 37°c) up to the boiling point of water.  the energy to do that is calculated from:

energy _heating = mass x specific heat _water x ( t _boiling – t _{normal body} )

energy _heating = 90kg x 4174 j/kg °c x (100°c - 37°c)

energy _heating = 23.7 mj

at 100°c our victim would already be seriously uncomfortable, or even dead, but he would still not have disappeared.  the death ray still has most of its work ahead of it.  it has to change the 90kg of water from liquid to vapor.  the energy to do that is:

energy _vaporization = mass x latent heat of vaporization of water

energy _vaporization = 90kg x 2,260,000 j/kg

energy _vaporization = 203.4mj

it takes nearly ten times as much heat to vaporize as to heat the body up to the boiling point.  the total energy needed (at the very least) to vaporize a human body is about 227mjoule.  to qualify as a zap, it should happen in about 1 second, which demands the death ray deliver 227mw to the target.  that sounds like a big number, but is only about $6 worth of electricity.

the big problem is at the death ray gun itself.  if its efficiency is anything like a real laser, then at best it is 10%.  efficiency is defined :

efficiency = output energy / input energy

heat = input energy – output energy

heat = output energy / efficiency – output energy

if the gun has to deliver 227mj to the target, it must generate within the gun itself 2,043mj.  firing once per second, the gun must get rid of about 2gw of heat.  that means a lot of mass or a lot of surface area, or both, which makes it very, very big.  even if you could package it as a hand weapon, it would not be very practical.  when you pull the trigger to blast your enemy, you vaporize yourself and the nine people next to you.