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Re:A superconducting shield for astronauts by ars on Thursday August 06, 2015 @02:43PM (#10018484)
Is it possible to make a magnetic configuration that will repel all charged particles?

Won't particles moving in the right direction be attracted and you'll irradiate everyone inside when they slam into the shield, with some extra energy from it?

Re:A superconducting shield for astronauts by norea-armozel on Thursday August 06, 2015 @03:20PM (#10018722)
I'm guessing there would be multiple shields in a configuration to funnel any radiation away from the crew sections. But I still think you would need to harden the ship with some material like water to impede the fastest particles or something even more dense.
Re:A superconducting shield for astronauts by Steuard on Thursday August 06, 2015 @08:02PM (#10020241)
The nice thing about magnetic fields is that all charged particles are deflected: the positive ones bend one way, and the negative ones bend the other.

In a lot of situations, the particles will actually spin along helical paths whose net motion is along the magnetic field lines. In the case of Earth, that means that the charged particles eventually make their way to one or the other pole... and as the field lines descend into the atmosphere, those particles create auroras. Neat stuff!

Re:A superconducting shield for astronauts by euyyn on Thursday August 06, 2015 @09:32PM (#10020493)
That's why the comment you've replied to says "particles with the right direction", not "particles with the right charge".
Re:A superconducting shield for astronauts by delibes on Thursday August 06, 2015 @07:45PM (#10020199)
Well the planet Earth has a nice shield with exactly this issue. Particles are channeled to the north and south poles, where they hit the atmosphere and generate the colourful aurora in the sky :)

So perhaps there's going to be a cool spaceship with it's own aurora?! Or you could try and channel the particles into a collecting device, bombard them into a fluid, trigger muon generation and try to catalyse a fusion reaction. Probably wouldn't break even but it'd be fun to try.

Re:A superconducting shield for astronauts by seanflyon on Friday August 07, 2015 @05:43PM (#10025188)
Though on Earth it's our atmosphere that stops the high energy particles.