quote:Why would and explosion create an EMP? Simply intense heat?
An explosion is either naturally conductive or can be made conductive. In the case of the FCG, the EMP is created by the effect of a rapidly moving "short circuit" created by the wavefront of the explosion''s shockwave. I don''t know how the explosion is utilized in an HPM.
quote:What if you, say, have an open-ended cone mesh and establish an EMP inside it, will it be directed out of the open end?
I''m not sure about this one. I think this would be a very interesting experiment.
This is just a guess without doing any math as to what would happen:
The EMP in the direction of the cone''s base would be much stronger, and probably faster. The cone mesh would absorb the pulse and become strongly negatively charged. Depending on the strength of the pulse and composition of the mesh, the cone may melt. The charge would dissipate quickly as the electrons fell back and reemitted the energy as photons, creating a weaker secondary pulse (some of the energy would instead be changed into heat, hence the melting) The secondary pulse would be strongest in the direction of the cone''s opening (all sides would at least partially reemit in the direction of the opening, in addition to unrelated directions). The weakest direction of the secondary pulse would be behind the point.
This is mostly pointless, though, as the FCG is at least partially directional anyway.
