How do phasers differ from lasers?

[Christopher]

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.

Right. What makes the Death Star planetbuster weapon just barely justifiable is that the Emperor intended it as a terror weapon, to cow potential rebels into submission. Showing that the Empire had the technological might as well as the ruthlessness to destroy the entire planet where any rebel stronghold might lie, to employ such incredibly unnecessary overkill just because it could, would have made one hell of a statement.

What's less justifiable is that it made the planet blow up in a split-second with the kind of orange fireball associated with a can of liquid fuel blowing up. I always thought that was incredibly stupid-looking, and adding that expanding ring effect in the Special Edition just made it stupider. I wish it had looked more like the destruction of the Genesis Planet, or of the planets blasted by the wave motion gun in Star Blazers. A planet is huge, and its destruction should be a slow process to give a sense of the sheer magnitude of the cataclysm. Just going "poof" like a bigger version of a TIE fighter explosion was deeply underwhelming.

 

[Timo]

Fission bombs are a nice real-world example of an "overkill" weapon. Sure, with the advent of the ICBM, it becomes convenient that a single sortie can kill an entire city. But as a freefall weapon to be dropped from a strategic bomber, the fission weapon offers no real tactical advantage over, say, firebombs.

Getting the one fission bomber above the target is not a less demanding feat than getting a hundred fire bombers there - quite the contrary, in fact, as the single bomber is indispensable but any number of the fire bombers can be lost en route. The city infrastructure will probably be hurt more by the firebombs than the fission bomb, in terms of lost production capacity combined with futile efforts at protecting and then restoring that capacity - it's the same thing with choosing low-caliber ammunition that wounds rather than kills, thus hurting the enemy more than clean-kill ammunition.

But a "clean-kill" fission bomb is impressive, no two ways about it.

I wonder if the phaser isn't the deliberate antithesis of that? Used at the TOS mode, it is a bloodless and apparently painless way of making your enemies disappear. It's not difficult to see how this would utterly fail to impress the brutes of "The Galileo Seven"... Or even the Klingons.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[fireproof78]

A fan fiction is out there that actually has a cross-over between Star Wars and Star Trek, and an explanation of the different weapons, as it comes up. Interesting read, if you like this kind of idea/

Another interesting aspect of the science of lasers, is an experiment in an attempt to see what a "laser bullet" would look like, with the obvious limits that it can't really be seen by the naked eye.

But, sometimes you gotta go for style points

 

[Christopher]

Another interesting aspect of the science of lasers, is an experiment in an attempt to see what a "laser bullet" would look like, with the obvious limits that it can't really be seen by the naked eye.

Which is totally bogus, because it's actually a whole bunch of consecutive laser pulses, and it's just a photographic trick that makes it look like a sci-fi raygun bolt moving down the corridor. Like that trick you can do with a stream of water and a strobe light to make it look like the droplets are standing still in midair. It's scientifically useful for observing the details of how the laser light interacts with its environment at different points along its path, but it shouldn't be taken literally as a single "laser bullet."

 

[fireproof78]

Another interesting aspect of the science of lasers, is an experiment in an attempt to see what a "laser bullet" would look like, with the obvious limits that it can't really be seen by the naked eye.

Which is totally bogus, because it's actually a whole bunch of consecutive laser pulses, and it's just a photographic trick that makes it look like a sci-fi raygun bolt moving down the corridor. Like that trick you can do with a stream of water and a strobe light to make it look like the droplets are standing still in midair. It's scientifically useful for observing the details of how the laser light interacts with its environment at different points along its path, but it shouldn't be taken literally as a single "laser bullet."

Well, it was not my intention to represent it as a "bullet" though I apologize for any confusion. I was not taking it as a literal "bullet." Sorry

More a matter of seeing what a laser would do, since it really is not visible in any practical way. More a matter of the physics of what the laser would do in a real world situation. In a similar vein, though accidentally stumbled upon, the U.S. Navy is apparently experimenting with laser weapons too

My caveat to all of this experimental weaponry is just for the fun of physics.

 

[Christopher]

^Sorry, I wasn't directing my objections at you, but at the people in the media who reported it as a "laser bullet." I should've made that clearer.

 

[fireproof78]

^
Oh, ok

Also, it seems that the media will hype any potential laser weapons as something from Star Trek or Star Wars. I guess I always take such stories with a grain of salt.

 

[SicOne]

Speaking of laser weapons, how long did, say, the laser on the Airborne Laser 747 platform have to dwell upon a boosting missile before it destroyed it?

 

[Ithekro]

I wonder if at some point in the progression of energy weapons, someone will add in some sort of visable light pulse that travels at a speed the human eye can see clearly...to help aim the things. A tracer of sorts for energy weapons.

 

[Timo]

Well, it's a huge shortcoming of visible-beam weapons that every firing draws this blazing arrow pointing straight at the shooter, telling the opponent to aim there...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Christopher]

I wonder if at some point in the progression of energy weapons, someone will add in some sort of visable light pulse that travels at a speed the human eye can see clearly...to help aim the things. A tracer of sorts for energy weapons.

Why would that be necessary? We can't see bullets in flight, unless they're tracer rounds. And there's absolutely no reason why some kind of tracer would need to move slowly in order to let us aim. We already use laser sights to help us aim, and those travel at the speed of light.

Besides, if we're talking about high-tech, futuristic weapons, presumably they'd be able to aim themselves using advanced sensors. We're already getting very close to that capability in real life; there are already prototypes for smart bullets that can redirect themselves in flight to home in on a selected target. A futuristic energy weapon would presumably have sensors that could let it correct its aim toward a selected target and take human judgment largely out of the equation. (Indeed, I assume this must be how 24th-century Star Trek phasers work, by tracking their operators' gaze or something, because there's no evident way of aiming those things otherwise.)

 

[publiusr]

Here is your real laser bank
http://www.redorbit.com/media/uploads/2013/04/120730-N-PO203-076-617x416.jpg
http://www.navytimes.com/story/mili...sers-attached-to-their-weatherdecks/20264193/

"It's working, and it's working beyond our expectations," said Rear Adm. Matthew Klunder, head of the Office of Naval Research...about 59 cents per shot...The laser can be scaled up from simply dazzling a target, to disabling or destroying a target with its 30 kilowatt blast, Klunder said, a unique capability allowing operators to easily step up the level of force from warning shot to destructive intercept....Ultimately, he said, the Navy is looking to deploy bigger lasers that would produce a beam as powerful as 150 kilowatts or greater and that could be mounted on a littoral combat ship or destroyer.

 

[fireproof78]

The next interesting aspect of this development is countermeasures against these weapons. Obviously, it is still in the building phase, but it would be the next phase in understanding this weapon.

I was thinking about this, and the whole laser weapon thing. One interesting, fictional, take is Herbert's Dune and lasguns. The guns, when interacting with shields, would actually create an explosion on the level of an atomic blast, or at least killing shield wearer and gun user.

Given how lasers, specifically, work, I wonder if there is any potential for a reflection based defense system?

 

[Christopher]

Given how lasers, specifically, work, I wonder if there is any potential for a reflection based defense system?

It would have to be an improbably perfect reflector. If it absorbs even a fraction of a military-grade laser's energy, that would be enough to damage or destroy it and ruin its effectiveness. A typical mirror might last a split-second before going poof.

I think the best option might be some kind of ablative armor that absorbs the laser energy through the vaporization of its outer layers. It wouldn't last indefinitely, since it would wear away more with each hit, but it'd be something.

 

[Timo]

Then again, even imperfect reflection would ruin the day for the attacking laser if perfectly reflected to where it came from! Prismatic armor?

Instead of on-hull ablation, one would probably use smokescreens deployed at a distance from the hull. Cheaper to deploy in sufficient volume. A classic in space warfare version is clouds of glass beads: reflection and refraction of electromagnetic death rays across a range of wavelengths, plus nasty kinetic kill for anybody plowing into the cloud unawares.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[anotherdemon]

Trek phasers are technobabble weapons that put out more energy than what's put into them based on the "disintegration" effect.

They have thermal and kinetic properties too, but they're small compared to what they can achieve by disintegrating matter.

 

[Timo]

Cutely enough, the faux terminology is similar to that used for the transporter, a dedicated make-disappear device! Supposedly, "phasing" a thing with either device does not involve energies of the E=mcc sort at all. "Making disappear" isn't the same as converting into energy or vaporizing, just like "making appear" with the transporter doesn't call for energies of creation that only divine beings should possess...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[publiusr]

I remember reading a cold war era book about countermeasures.

Back then, the Scarp SS-9 "City Buster" (the Titan II class Tsyclon LV in civilian clothes) allowed what was known as a FOBS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_Orbital_Bombardment_System

In the book, the warhead was not only surrounded by decoys, but emitted smoke from the nose, was mirrored, and spun rapidly.

Scott Lowther also wrote over at up-ship how even a Casaba howitzer burst can be defeated, if a Typhoon class sub were to ripple fire tungsten warheads at it--shrugging off plasma.

 

[anotherdemon]

You could have a good argument for the transporters actually being related to phasers. One stores what it disintegrates and reintegrates it, whereas the weapon form doesn't bother with the latter.

 

[anotherdemon]

This is of course weapons shown that have the disintegration effect.

Lots of phaser shots in the movies behave similarly to Star Wars lasers (both in bolt and beam form).