How do phasers differ from lasers?

[Destructor]

Well, Star Wars can't help but "win" because it's a fairy-tale universe where the technology is basically magic. Star Trek is at least nominally a humanistic universe bound by the laws of nature. Granted, a lot of ST bends the rules so much that there's little distinction anymore, but it's a rather pointless comparison, kind of like asking whether Sherlock Holmes could beat Harry Dresden. At most, it's an intellectual exercise, not something that should really be taken seriously.

I've got a friend who swears up and down that 'Doctor Who' and 'Star Trek' are as 'scientifically inaccurate' as each other. He said that once you are going FTL and beaming things and replicating things you've basically already entered fantasyland, and all the crazy thing the TARDIS does all occupy the same degree of make-believe. I think you can still have degrees of suspension of disbelief, that Star Trek at least TRIES to respect science, whereas Who (particularly New Who) basically handwaves magic as science and that's that.

 

[Christopher]

^Right. Trek has drawn on actual science consultants a lot of the time, and has occasionally even listened to them. Granted, Doctor Who had science consultants in its early years -- Kit Pedler, the co-creator of the Cybermen, was a medical scientist who was brought onto the show's staff in 1966 specifically to inject more hard-science content. But it gave up trying to be remotely plausible decades ago. Trek has more science in its genome than DW ever had.

And there's a difference between fantasy and stuff we haven't invented yet. Warp drive may be very unlikely, but there's sound relativistic theory behind it, and Trek's warp drive actually inspired real theoretical work in the field. Trek-style teleportation is unlikely, but quantum teleportation is a real thing that has important applications in computer science. And replicators are just advanced 3D printers, a technology that's becoming commonplace today. So Trek's "fantasies" tend to have one foot in reality.

 

[Maurice]

Replicators are magic transporter fairydust versions of 3D printers.

 

[Timo]

...Which IMHO is the more logical approach. Trek was created back when "radiation" was still the scientishy thing to do future, and "materials" showed no promise as a means to space travel, futuristic weapons, universal cures or other amazing achievements. So the heroes of Trek are masters of radiation, fields, and this mysterious "phasing". With such powerful hammers, 3D printing ought to look like a nail, too: why not apply magical fields to it?

I guess the real difference between Star Wars and the Star Trek / Doctor Who / Stargate type of TV show phenomena is the need to stay current. Some of this comes from the fact that the latter are indeed TV phenomena predominantly, and not movies; movies can afford to "stay still" and indeed are better off for it, while TV has to reinvent itself every two weeks. But a lot comes from the setting, where the heroes are either contemporary humans from Earth or then pretty damn close to those. In order to stay current, the TV shows indeed derive from today's news; Star Wars benefits far more from deriving from 13th century literature.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Sheesh, you guys are overthinking this. The difference between lasers and phasers is that one goes "Pew, pew, pew!" and the other goes "SssssSSSSHHHWHAK!"

Yep.

Replicators are magic transporter fairydust versions of 3D printers.

Yep.

 

[Christopher]

Replicators are magic transporter fairydust versions of 3D printers.

But the point isn't in the details, it's in the concept. Lots of science fiction has presented versions of hypothetical technologies that seemed like "fairydust" at the time, but that inspired people to figure out how they could be done in reality. That's the difference between fantasy and science fiction. Fantasy shows things that don't exist and never could, while science fiction shows things that don't exist yet but might be made real someday, albeit in not exactly the same form. Jules Verne was wrong about the mechanism used to launch a capsule to the Moon, about how gravity would work along the way, and about what they'd find when they got there, but he was right about a lot of other specifics, or at least on the right track. And that's what made it science fiction rather than fantasy.

After all, SF is not just about the mechanics of future inventions, it's about their ramifications on society. What matters about replicators in Trek isn't that they're based on transporters, it's that the ability to manufacture things at will is a thing that exists and has an effect on people's everyday lives and the society they live in. Granted, Trek didn't explore those ramifications in as much depth as a lot of other science fiction did, e.g. Wil McCarthy's Queendom of Sol series, in which a transporter/replicator-like nanotechnology fundamentally transformed all of civilization and the nature of life itself. But it did essentially predict an innovation that is starting to become real, and that's a win in science fiction terms.

 

[Tim Walker]

I understand that the U.S. Navy has deployed a laser weapon aboard ship. In appearance the weapon resembles a telescope (a laser, after all, is an optical device). Targets listed: small boats, drones.

 

[Christopher]

And I'm sure the Navy's laser doesn't go "pew-pew." If anything, it's probably more an electrical humming noise from the power system. Something struck by a sufficiently powerful laser weapon would be flash-vaporized at the point of contact with a sound that, ironically, would be a lot like a gunshot.

There are prototype wireless tasers that use a UV laser to ionize a path in the air for an electric current to follow, like small-scale lightning. They would make a pretty taserlike sound, most likely.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

And I'm sure the Navy's laser doesn't go "pew-pew."

The remark that lasers were the pew-pew ones was explicitly made in the context of Star Wars lasers.

But since we're waxing poetic about how science fiction inspires people to build real things, how long, I wonder, before we have real lasers that go pew-pew, or lightsabers? Or planet-busting super-lasers? Are we sure it will be never?

 

[Timo]

That depends solely on one factor: will the people who design the planet-busting death ray still remember Star Wars?

That old movie is the only connection such a weapon will have with the word "laser". But engineers are suckers for poor in-jokes, so if there's even a single Warsie in the team, all is lost...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tim Walker]

As both the Trek and Star Wars weapons are fictional, they will do whatever the plot demands. The only real consistencies may be in the sounds they make. So, yes, the only significant difference is whether they go pew pew pew pew, or zzzzzzttt. or whatever.

 

[Nebusj]

That depends solely on one factor: will the people who design the planet-busting death ray still remember Star Wars?

You mean the Nicoll-Dyson Laser?

 

[JES]

Whether we ever have a planet busting energy weapon will depend on if we ever need one (or if some evil despot wants one, and can afford it).

Whether we're ever going to be able to build one depends on if we can build an emitter that is big and tough enough to handle the necessary energies, and whether or not we can build a power source big or powerful enough in the first place.

 

[Ithekro]

Is the recent Clone Wars and Rebels episodes are to be understood, the Death Star's superlaser is sort of a giant lightsaber. Or at least it uses giant versions of the crystals used in lightsabers to produce the beam it uses to destroy planets (and capital ships).

 

[Christopher]

Whether we ever have a planet busting energy weapon will depend on if we ever need one (or if some evil despot wants one, and can afford it).

We never would need one. Actually blowing a planet apart is humongous overkill if you just want to wipe out its inhabitants, since they only live on a very thin layer of its surface. You want to wipe out a civilization, just chuck an asteroid at it, or a small spacecraft moving at a high percentage of lightspeed. It worked for killing off the dinosaurs (except those pesky birds -- next time!), so it could work for devastating a technological civilization (assuming you could get past any orbital defenses against such attacks). As long as you render the surface uninhabitable, there's no point wasting the energy to break apart the planet itself.

Well, correction, there is one circumstance in which an advanced civilization might need the means to break apart the mass of a planet: If it's into building Dyson Spheres or other such megastructures and needs the construction material. But then it's not a weapon, it's an engineering tool. Destruction is always much easier than creation.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

That depends solely on one factor: will the people who design the planet-busting death ray still remember Star Wars?

You mean the Nicoll-Dyson Laser?

For reference:

Nicoll proposed the Nicoll-Dyson Laser concept where the satellites of a Dyson Swarm act as a phased array laser emitter capable of delivering their energy to a planet-sized target at a range of millions of light years.[30]

[...]

30. ^ Nicoll, James (2005-03-20). "Re: A Moon base is too far; an asteroid ship better alternative". Newsgroup: sci.space.tech. Usenet: d1kl0p$c9q$1@reader1.panix.com.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Nicoll#Nicoll-Dyson_Laser

 

[SicOne]

Sheesh, you guys are overthinking this. The difference between lasers and phasers is that one goes "Pew, pew, pew!" and the other goes "SssssSSSSHHHWHAK!"

At least that's how my seven-year-old grandson, a young veteran of both the Star Trek and Star Wars cinematic universes, answered this sage question. And he even asked me to distinguish between TOS-era phasers and TNG-era phasers. A prideful moment.

So if I ever retire as mod, he'd be a worthy successor?

Once he gets his union card, yep.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Whether we ever have a planet busting energy weapon will depend on if we ever need one (or if some evil despot wants one, and can afford it).

We never would need one. Actually blowing a planet apart is humongous overkill if you just want to wipe out its inhabitants, since they only live on a very thin layer of its surface. You want to wipe out a civilization, just chuck an asteroid at it, or a small spacecraft moving at a high percentage of lightspeed. It worked for killing off the dinosaurs (except those pesky birds -- next time!), so it could work for devastating a technological civilization (assuming you could get past any orbital defenses against such attacks). As long as you render the surface uninhabitable, there's no point wasting the energy to break apart the planet itself.

Well, correction, there is one circumstance in which an advanced civilization might need the means to break apart the mass of a planet: If it's into building Dyson Spheres or other such megastructures and needs the construction material. But then it's not a weapon, it's an engineering tool. Destruction is always much easier than creation.

Another circumstance would be promote an elevated fear factor to any opposition. Sure, it's really unnecessary and wasteful of energy to actually blow apart an entire planet, but the fact that the Empire has the resources and the will to do that nonetheless could send a very simple message across the galaxy that there's no such thing as overkill when punishing its enemies.

 

[JES]

Whether we ever have a planet busting energy weapon will depend on if we ever need one (or if some evil despot wants one, and can afford it).

We never would need one. Actually blowing a planet apart is humongous overkill if you just want to wipe out its inhabitants, since they only live on a very thin layer of its surface. You want to wipe out a civilization, just chuck an asteroid at it, or a small spacecraft moving at a high percentage of lightspeed. It worked for killing off the dinosaurs (except those pesky birds -- next time!), so it could work for devastating a technological civilization (assuming you could get past any orbital defenses against such attacks). As long as you render the surface uninhabitable, there's no point wasting the energy to break apart the planet itself.

Well, correction, there is one circumstance in which an advanced civilization might need the means to break apart the mass of a planet: If it's into building Dyson Spheres or other such megastructures and needs the construction material. But then it's not a weapon, it's an engineering tool. Destruction is always much easier than creation.

Then that answers that question. The only government power that would care about a weapon capable of destroying a planet would be one that wants to show off their technological and military might, not caring that they could wipe out their enemies with lesser effort and resources.

And given the fact that our society doesn't seem to be headed in a direction where we'd consider such wanton destruction to be considered acceptable, I'd have to agree: it's never going to happen.

 

[SicOne]

^ Until it does.