Are Transphasic torpedoes an extension of the phased cloak?

[ConRefit79]

Are transphasic torpedoes an extension of the phased cloak minus the cloak part? I know the books expand on them, saying the phases constantly change. So that must mean once they get passed the shields, they revert to standard phase before detonating.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

The way I always understood is was that anything that was phased meant it could pass through normal matter and even shields because they temporarily phase out of normal space. I imagine that something Transphasic is even more advanced than Phasic in some way shape or form.

So what happens? The Torpedo is fired, it temporarily phases out of normal space, the Torpedo then passes through the Borg shields and hull. It then phases back into normal space within the cube which causes it to detonate a normal weapons payload.

Since within a Borg cube there is an atmosphere the matter/anti-matter explosion of the torpedo creates a massive shockwave destroying the cube.

 

[Deks]

Probably a highly advanced form of phasing technology.
Simple phasing wouldn't be enough in the long run against the Borg.
These weapons were made specifically to fight Borg vessels, so it stands to reason that transphasic torpedoes are akin to what transwarp is to standard warp drives.

Also ... I doubt these torpedoes would have a same yield of photon torpedoes that Voyager usually carries.

If you recall, a single photon torpedo was able to obliterate a Borg probe only because it detonated near the power matrix (and the crew originally aimed to disable it).

A second time, a photon torpedo detonating inside a Borg Sphere induced moderate damage to it (enough to cover Voyager's escape) but did not destroy it (I would surmise another 2 torpedoes detonating inside would do the trick).

A cube would likely be much harder to take down if you take into consideration it's size, mass and the materials used in construction (which one would think would be able to produce protection against antimatter explosion to a good degree like on any Borg ship).

Future materials in starship construction are probably good in offering partial protection against antimatter explosions.
Which is why you don't see ships exploding after one torpedo detonates inside the hull.
They would usually end up destroyed after several hits which were carefully aimed.

Or by detonating near the Warp Core.

 

[tau136]

Harking back to college Latin . . . Trans just means across so that's a torpedo which phases across a barrier.

Technically it could be triggered to dephase & explode a number of ways: on proximity to mass, after a set time or distance, on detecting the target species, on detecting any significant power source. If it dephased inside the fabric of the opposing ship or only dephased after exploding it would cause damage unlike anything else.

 

[alpinedigital]

"One theory states that they use the transphasic cloak technology to penetrate a ship's hull, and detonate within the ship, but another says that transphasic torpedoes are based on generating a destructive subspace compression pulse. Upon detonation the torpedo delivers the pulse in an asymmetric superposition of multiple phase states. Shields can only block one subcomponent of the pulse. The other subcomponents deliver the majority of the pulse to the target. Every torpedo has a different transphasic configuration, generated randomly by a dissonant feedback effect to prevent the Borg from predicting the configuration of the phase states."

Although I've not read anywhere else about the second explanation of their function, I'm willing to explore that as a possibility. Until then, we at least know of transphasic cloak technology and that would be the best explanation of what came out of those experiments.

 

[BolianAuthor]

"One theory states that they use the transphasic cloak technology to penetrate a ship's hull, and detonate within the ship,

This is the line of reasoning behind it that I subscribe to, personally, only without the cloaking aspect, and by merely using constantly shifting phase variances in its shielding.

 

[Deks]

Doesn't make sense to use standard torpedoes for that.
Too ineffective on Borg ships.
You'd need much more than 2 regular phased photon torpedoes to obliterate something the size of a Borg cube.

In Endgame, we know Voyager used at first 2 and then 1 transphasic torpedo to obliterate 2 Borg cubes.
It stands to reason the yields of the torpedoes were raised to accommodate the design.
Voyager would have the capacity to increase the charge of torpedoes, and future Janeway would have the details on how to pack it in the same package.

After all, the crew didn't spend all that time working on the armour alone.
Besides, we don't know just how much time the crew spent creating and applying the ablative generators to the hull (could have been days).