The possibilities for the emergence of new types of nuclear weapons have been of justifiable concern and have generated healthy interest. For historical reasons a number of diverse approaches had been considered under a single umbrella topic of Ballotechnics. Consensus developed that it was inappropriate to use such an umbrella.
Recent division of the article Ballotechnics produced a new page Induced gamma emission, abbreviated IGE. The remaining ballotechnics page continues to focus upon the issues of mini-nuclear weapons and is of no concern here. The new IGE article reviews the first (and orderly) 60 years of research into an interdisciplinary field aiming to use various types of photons to accelerate the release of the internal energies stored in nuclear isomers. If this were law instead of physics, we could say that part of IGE was settled case law by 1999. Potential applications were esoteric and comfortably far in the future.
At the turn of the millenium the situation with IGE was inverted with the publication of an experiment reporting IGE from Hf-178m2 that worked much better than "expected". Controversy has raged for 6 years since, producing mostly material that does not meet the high standards of Wikipedia. Despite the unsettled state of knowledge about this particular example of IGE, there is the recurring intent to be able to say something about this more consequential focus of IGE. With Hf-178m2, storage times are conveniently long and released energies may be very large.
I hearby grant the The Barnstar of Diligence to Drac for his tireless efforts to expand and correct the IGE article while at the same time mediating the disputes over the controversial aspects of the topic. So much work to ensure a little corner of the wiki is right deserves recognition. Maury 18:37, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
