I was wondering whether overheating of guns could be solved by magnets?
Coming from a country where firearms are pretty much only available for the police, military and criminals, I don't really have much knowledge on actual gun usage, except for what I see in movies and YouTube.
I noticed there are many guns that could shoot loads of bullets per minute, but they can't sustain either due to munition shortage and/or overheating.
That combined with the little I know about fusion reactors, I was wondering something.
In fusion, the heat is contained by not letting the hot plasma touch the sides of the tokamak (or other any other magnetic confinement device).
So I wonder, would it be possible to perfect a barrel in such a way that the bullet could travel through the barrel without touching the sides?
I am not sure what causes the heat, the friction of the bullets with the barrel and/or the hot gasses pushing it out, but would it be possible to confine anything that heats up the barrel (and rest of the gun) with magnets as well?
I guess it would need a lot of precise engineering, and could perhaps work better on larger systems (artillery?).
And not sure, but the magnets would probably also need some electricity (but only for a very short time?) to become more powerful and maybe even speed up the projectile with maglev-like tech? (but only for a short amount of time I guess?)
Hopefully some here can follow my thoughts and tell me why it won't work (else it was probably already used ;) ), or else how we can patent this ASAP :D
