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Comment by adrianN | Hacker News Reader

A few tons of superconductors work very well against bullets.

Who's making a 600 T magnet that weighs only a few tons?

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/115011/how-much-...

You don't need 600 T, just a few tons of superconductor should be enough to stop most bullets. No need run any charge through them, just place them so that most of it is between you and the bullet.

lol this is true.

The 6 order of magnitude resonant eddy current induction looks like the more interesting solution. I could see this being done with a giant beamforming array that would be more practical than a giant steady state magnet. It would be pretty cool to melt a supersonic projectile midflight with eddy currents.

In sci-fi, shields seem to basically evaporate bullets. A shield that melts bullets could be a very cool sci-fi visual; the ship would still need some conventional armor (you still have molten metal flying at you), but it would splat against the armor. Plus it would provide a nice visual for a fresh fleet vs the battle-splattered one that’s seen combat.

From small arms. A heavy machine gun can cut through an engine block and still kill you.

> just place them so that most of it is between you and the bullet.

Easier said than done

I think at that point you probably have to worry about the effect such a strong magnet will have on the brain and nervous system, so probably not the best fit for personal protection.

I’m no rocket scientist, but I feel that statement holds true for bullets too

The bullets are the problem they are trying to use the shield to solve. If the shield also kills the user, that sort of renders the whole thing moot, right?

Not to agree with the actual idea that the magnet is necessarily dangerous, haven’t looked that up…

> If the shield also kills the user, that sort of renders the whole thing moot, right?

Depends, are you the mook hiding behind the shield, or the contractor making and selling a million shield units?

I think you actually have to worry about your soldier not having any metal objects on him because I don’t know what use he’s going to be naked

"He was turned to steel In a great magnetic field"

That’s for stopping the bullet. All I need from a personal bullet shield is to deflect it enough to miss me.

A few tons of steel is cheaper and also works very well against bullets

Not really. Bullet would just orient itself to minimize eddy currents. People would start using thin disc shape bullets that would slide through the magnetic field without much trouble after orienting themselves in the best direction.

https://youtu.be/g0amdIcZt5I?t=735

"Just fire discs" well that's easier said than done, and there's probably a tons of reasons nobody uses discs. One of them is already that we have no experience building or using disc-shaped bullets, especially compared to the trove of experience for... bullet-shaped bullets. So that's not a solution as much as it's an indication that this defense mechanism wouldn't be perfect given an adversary with enough time and will. That being said, nothing is ever perfect, and "arms race" are named this way for this exact reason.

> thin disc shape bullets

Very powerful fans blowing in the direction of the flat side

Rings then.

Probably would be more efficient to vaporize a bullet with a directed energy weapon than to stop it with a magnet.

That's true even without power at room temperature. :P

not against silver bullets :-)

A strong magnetic field would affect all (eletrically conducting) bullets, they need not be ferromagnetic. This would work better on silver bullets than steel, actually (because of better conductivity).

(This is obviously not practical)

or more practically, titanium bullets.

the lead in them may be a problem though.

fortunately software engineers know there is no silver bullet

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