arXiv subjects

Charles Hirlimann

Publications and source records attributed to Charles Hirlimann.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2022

The gravitational potential energy of the Great Pyramid

The calculation of the energy required to raise a constituent block of the Khufu pyramid and the knowledge of the mechanical energy that a worker in charge of the lifting of the blocks can produce per working day allows an estimate of the minimum number of workers. necessary for the establishment of a base of the pyramid. It emerges that this number is limited to a maximum of less than 2,000 workers over a working season, ie less than 200 present each day simultaneously on the site. In addition, the calculation of the flow of blocks leads to the ineluctable conclusion that the construction could only be done in a massively parallel working mode, undermining the hypothesis very often put forward of the use of ramps to convey the blocks to their final destination.

physics.pop-ph↗

arXiv2016

Laser induced nuclear waste transmutation

When producing electricity that collects the mass energy that is available at the time of the induced disintegration of radioactive elements, other unstable elements are produced with half-life span durations ranging from less than one second to hundreds of thousands of years and which are considered as waste. Managing nuclear waste with a half-life of less than 30 years is an easy task, as our societies clearly know how to keep buildings safe for more than a century, the time it takes for the activity to be divided by a factor of 8. High-activity, long-lasting waste that can last for thousands of years or even longer, up to geological time laps, cannot be taken care of for such long durations. Therefore, these types of waste are socially unacceptable; nobody wants to leave a polluted planet to descendants.

nucl-ex↗

arXiv2014

Understanding Branly's effect through Induced Tunnelling

At the end of the nineteenth century Édouard Branly discovered that the electrical resistance of a granular metallic conductor could drop by several orders of magnitude when excited by the electromagnetic field emitted by a distant electrical spark [ ]. Despite the fact that this effect was used to detect radio waves in the early days of wireless telegraphy and more recently, studied in the field of granular materials, no satisfactory explanation of the physical origin of the effect has been proposed. In this contribution, we relate the Branly effect to the induced tunnelling effect first described by François Bardou and Dominique Boosé [ ].

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2007

Understanding the Branly effect

At the end of the nineteenth century Édouard Branly discovered that the electrical resistance of a granular metallic conductor could drop by several orders of magnitude when excited by the electromagnetic field emitted by an electrical spark. Despite the fact that this effect has been used to detect radio waves in the early times of wireless telegraphy and more recently studied in the field of granular materials, no satisfactory explanation of the physical origin of the effect has been given yet. In this contribution we propose to relate the Branly effect to the induced tunnelling effect first described by François Bardou and Dominique Boosé.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗