h a l f b a k e r yBirth of a Notion.
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Isabel shivered. The night was cold, and would last a full three months. Life in the Deep South was exciting, but so very, very cold. The survival gear helped immensely--she'd be dead without it--but so far nothing could help her shake the perpetual chill deep in her bones.
Tonight would be different.
Isabel rechecked the equations for the fifth time, then turned her attention to a small silvery pellet on the table. A thick layer of sintered platinum encased the payload. Ingredients like this were hard to come by.
All the tests showed it was safe. The gas discharge tube was silent. Fluorescent dyes remained dark. Weeks of hydrochloric acid didn't touch the platinum. Power output remained constant. Even so, Isabel hesitated. The consequences of failure were all too severe.
She poured herself a glass of melted snow, dreaming of being warm for the first time in months. Isabel shivered again, and not from the cold this time. She steadied her resolve, grabbed the pill, and swallowed it.
She didn't feel much of anything, which was good. After an hour or so, Isabel realized she was no longer shivering. It was still chilly, but not the biting cold she had almost become used to. So far, so good. Isabel wasn't looking forward to swallowing the pill a second time, but the results were worth it.
Isabel debated whether or not to publish her test. The findings were significant, but there would be many questions about where the plutonium came from. But all this could wait. Right now, she was warm!
General-purpose heat source
https://en.wikipedi...purpose_heat_source
Mentioned in my anno [notexactly, Dec 07 2018]
Human Heat Reclamation
Heat_20Exchanger_20...)arctic_20Explorers
[bs0u0155, Dec 07 2018]
Canary girls
https://en.wikipedi...g/wiki/Canary_Girls
The yellow peril, literally ... [8th of 7, Sep 22 2020]
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This sounds disturbingly like "The Little Match Girl". You may not like how it turned out in the end (Let's just say, never use your own product) |
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A radiothermal emitter capable of significantly augmentating a human's energy budget isn't going to fit in a // small pellet // form factor. The fissile implosion core of the Trinity gadget - a just-subcritical mass - was described as being "warm, like a live rabbit". Warm - not hot. And that was a sphere, with the best achievable volume/surface area ratio of any solid form. |
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...and even if you could swallow this amount, as [8th] points out, it is an amount which is nearly critical. I hope the packet has a warning about getting too intimate with someone else who has swallowed one of these pills.
Also, of course, not only "bad physics", but bad physiology too - even when you feel really cold, your core temperature is probably fine. The body will sacrifice skin temperature to protect internal organs - when this fails, you've got hypothermia. |
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Yes but, conversely, if there is a source of central heat the
body will increase blood flow to the skin, so I suspect you
would feel warmer. |
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It would be technically possible to circulate a warmed, biologically-inert fluorocarbon fluid through the lower bowel. |
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The Intercalary's YouTube channel - where else ? |
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You shouldn't believe anything other members of my family
tell you. |
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The video is pretty convincing (unfortunately). We would actually prefer to be informed that it's fake. |
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// A radiothermal emitter capable of significantly
augmentating a human's energy budget isn't going to fit in a
// small pellet // form factor. // |
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Really? A single GPHS pellet [link] appears to be about 3 cm
wide by 3 cm long and produces 62.5 W when new. IIRC (and
I'm saying this here for the second time in as many days),
the human body's idle power consumption is about 100 W. |
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[8th of 7], I believe the confusion arises from the different isotopes of plutonium. Atomic weapon pits are made of Pu-239, which has a much longer half-life than the Pu-238 used in atomic heaters. This means Pu-238 decays faster, producing greater power for a shorter period of time. |
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It's not bad physiology, either. A few Watts of internal heat will greatly reduce the need to produce said heat from shivering. The same effect can be observed when drinking a cup of hot cocoa. |
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//the human body's idle power consumption is about 100
W// |
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//It's not bad physiology, either. A few Watts of internal
heat will greatly reduce the need to produce said heat
from shivering.// |
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Heat is generally a by-product of normal physiology. Most
energy is used to generate then maintain a series of ion-
gradients, Na+/K+/Ca2+/H+ that sort of thing. That 100W
of idle is a by-product of keeping those gradients
maintained, a bit like a float charger on a battery - we're
in a high energy state while resting. Mammals maintain a
high body temperature so when they feel like doing a bit
of chemistry, like eating/growing/moving it's fast and
consistent. Occasionally that requires deliberate heat
generation for which there are many existing methods.
Most studied are the uncoupling proteins that partially
short-circuit mitochondria, and trade heat for efficiency.
Some mitochondria, like those in people of northern
latitudes, are naturally a bit leaky - heat is a free bonus
but marathon times may suffer. |
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Shivering is deliberately dissipating ion gradients in
muscles so that mitochondrial heat generation occurs
while they work to re-establish those gradients, and is
something of an emergency method. If you want to be
warmer, then insulation, activity, and dinitrophenol are
all more sensible than plutonium. Or maybe try a heat
exchanger to reduce waste <link>. |
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I can vouch for DNP - shirtsleeves in November, no problem. |
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That's not the dnp, you were just in the tropical wing
of the greenhouse. |
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_The_ tropical wing? You make it sound like there's only one. |
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//The_ tropical wing? You make it sound like there's
only one.// |
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Mere discression. If I had accidentally established a
breeding colony of saltwater crocodiles I'd be
tempted to "forget" about the southern hemisphere
collection until a suitable Australian could be
blamed. |
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Any Australian will do. After all, they're probably all guilty of something, and if not them personally, one of their ancestors. |
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//breeding colony of saltwater crocodiles// |
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*saltwater* you say? Damn. Well, that would explain why
they kept swelling and bursting. On the plus side, if you can
catch them just before they explode, you get twice as many
handbags out of one of them. |
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// Pu-239, which has a much longer half-life than the Pu-238 // |
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Rather than ingesting the nuclide, why not microencapsulate it and integrate it into clothing ? Everlasting self-heating motorcycle gloves would sell well. |
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But don't shake hands with anyone wearing the same thing ...
Pu will go prompt critical (although not supercritical ) from intrinsic neutron flux alone. |
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//dinitrophenol//
I just got around to looking up 2,4-dinitrophenol (as
mentioned above).
Holy. Shit.
Is there anything nasty it DOESN'T do? Toxic (both ingested
and skin-contact), herbicidal, explosive, aah! |
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It stains the skin yellow. The colour can't be washed away; it's a matter of waiting until the epidermis wears away and is replaced. That can take a while. |
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Female munitions workers in WW1 were nicknamed "canaries" because exposure to polynitrated aryl compounds like picric acid and TNT stained their skins yellow... |
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// Pu will go prompt critical (although not supercritical )
from intrinsic neutron flux alone.// |
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You won't be concerned about a little chill after that, so
it works after a fashion. |
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//Is there anything nasty it DOESN'T do? Toxic (both
ingested and skin-contact), herbicidal, explosive, aah!// |
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Bah, I can think of 1000 compounds off the top of my
head that are more toxic. A gram of DNP and you'll be
warm for a day, a gram of nicotine and you'll be cold
forever. The interesting thing is it's breadth of action
based upon a fairly universal mechanism - it's a
protonophore, i.e. it facilitates the transport of H+ across
membranes or any lipophilic environment really.
Wherever there's life there's water, and therefore a few
H+, and membranes. Life also requires ion gradients, all
of which ultimately equilibrate with H+. So enough
protonophore activity will ultimately collapse every ion
gradient in an organism. |
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// A gram of DNP and you'll be warm for a day // |
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"Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day, but set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life ..." |
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