Does a Directed energy weapon (phaser) remain cohesive in Space

[2 of 10]

Several times in DS-9 and Voyager the Capt, wheather it's Sisko or Janeway tells the tactical officer to fire across the enemy ships bow.
My question is since the focused energy weapon does not impact any object to disperse it's energy. Has it ever been established, just how far does the focused energy stream goes. Since deep space is a vacuum, does that mean that the weapon just keep on going until or if a planet, Moon of any other object is impacted by it.

It would seem that as long as the weapon remains coheasive it may just keep on going until whenever. Or, does the weapon have a limited effictive range before it starts to disperse, has this subject ever been addressed in any Trek show and/or book???

Resistance is Futile

 

[Mistral]

since space isn't really "empty" in all likelihood there is a dispersion effect due to dust/hydrogen atoms interfering with the beam.

 

[Hofner]

I think the phasers are supposed to have a range limit. At least in TOS' "The Tholian Web" the Tholian ships were said to withdraw out of phaser range. (Maybe 100,000 km?)

Robert

 

[c0rnedfr0g]

they should've had more Trek episodes where the ship is randomly hit by a torpedo from a space battle hundreds of years prior

 

[StolenThunder]

Gonna fire (haha!) this over to Trek Tech.

 

[JuanBolio]

Polarized particle weapons will tend to disperse due to subatomic repulsion. Whether or not a phaser is such a weapon is up for debate.

 

[CuttingEdge100]

In terms of lasers, for the most part yes. I suppose the occasional hydrogen atom here and there will slightly disperse the beam, and I've heard that photons even decay after an extremely long time, but it does not have any major effect -- but the time for this to happen and the distance covered would, while not infinite, would be ENORMOUS.

I think the range is reduced in Star Trek because otherwise you'd have ships from other star systems getting hit by phaser or laser beams fired in battles hundreds of years ago.


CuttingEdge

 

[JuanBolio]

Here's a really good page on the science behind possible ship-to-ship space weapons of various kinds, including lasers, particle beams, and other directed-energy weapons:

http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3x.html

 

[Timo]

...The references to phasers having a limited range are probably references to phasers having greatly reduced odds of hitting anything beyond that range. The destructive power might remain, but the beam would be too slow and/or inaccurate to track a maneuvering target beyond that distance.

Timo Saloniemi