For the sake of this question, let's say I were the secret service, and wanted to install a system of magnets that could disable the weapon of someone in the oval office. This should be able to target the weapon of an adversary without affecting the weapons of the secret service agents in the room or preferably, any electronics present in the room. Would such a system be possible according to our current knowledge of physics?
Assume there is an existing camera system that's able to determine the location of the assailant's gun as well as an optimal path for the beam to provide the maximum distance from objects we'd like to avoid affecting.
While researching this question, I found a few similar questions, so I suppose a good starting place would be exploring the limits of methods mentioned in these two questions:
- can magnetic fields be redirected and focused at one point (1)
- can a magnetic field be focused at a distance (2)
My intuition says that the accepted answer from (1) would not be useful in finding a solution, since the magnetic field wouldn't be projected from the point of the cone, it would just concentrate the existing field at that point, and wrap back around to the other pole.
The solenoid answer from (1) seems more promising. Based on my currently very limited understanding of magnetism, this seems to imply it could be possible to have a "grid" of coils wrapped around mutually connecting ferromagnetic cores where any two coils on opposing sides of the room could be connected to complete a circuit and serve as a "U shaped solenoid." Since the core material is all mutually connected, the solenoid path for any given coil pair would have extra core material along the unused paths. My intuition says this wouldn't affect it much, but I'm having difficulty finding an answer.
I'd imagine you'd have a capacitor bank release a very large high-voltage electric pulse through that completed circuit, which from what I've read, if either the gun barrel or shell casing were electrically conductive (they usually are - steel and brass respectively) it could possibly be used to either weld the gun barrel to the shell casing, or violently force the gun from the adversary's hand (I assume most likely either the latter or both).
If I correctly understand the accepted answer to (2), and the answers to this similar question, it would not be possible to focus this field with any kind of lens-like effect so that it concentrated at a point in the center of the room, so it seems like this would end up as a magnetic beam that is strongest at the coils, and both weaker and wider towards the center where the target might be.
So the problem I'm having with continuing along these lines of thought is I'm unsure how to determine how much the beam would have expanded given a distance from the poles and the field strength at the poles (if relevant).
The patent mentioned in this answer to (1) describes a way of focusing a magnetic field using opposing pairs of like-poled magnets positioned directly in front of the corresponding pole of the unopposed magnet (our solenoid arm mentioned above). Based on the previously mentioned answers about focusing a magnetic beam, this seems like it could be used to decrease the width of the beam at its origination points, but would not directly influence its inevitable expansion and corresponding weakening towards the center of the room.
So, is this task possible within the laws of physics? Am I correctly understanding the things I've found in my research? Does the method I discuss make any sense?
