If lasers are antiquates by the TNG era how are Photon Torpedoes still relevant?
- Thread starter Kemp
- Start date
Well, it wouldn't be appropriate then, seeing as they travel faster than light.
Of course it does. Reducing the ship's inertia while the engines are on reduces the object's resistance to movement; turning the field OFF restores its inertia without altering its velocity.
The Enterprise depended on this fact to get out of the rift in "Force of Nature" and also in "Booby Trap." This was also mentioned, IIRC, in "Brothers" where it is stated that the saucer section will fall back to sublight velocity in about two minutes after saucer separation. This is apparently because it preserves some of the forward motion it had while it was traveling at warp, but no longer has motive power to resist drag from the interstellar medium.
Not for impulse engines like torpedoes. The subspace field just reduces the object's inertia so the same amount of thrust will make it easier to move. Once the field is off, the object has the same velocity but a hell of a lot more mass.
Data kept insisting on how dangerous it was to separate the saucer section at warp.
And that's probably one of the reasons why. Once the saucer leaves the warp field it will immediately start to decelerate, and the stardrive section will have to very reverse power to avoid colliding with it; quickly enough for the saucer to get out ahead of them, but not quickly enough that the saucer is also made to decelerate.
All the laser seen in Trek are lower power affairs. There are some who have turbolasers being more energetic. Metal will lacerate ice--but an iceberg can still sink a steel ship.
I thought loose lips sank ships... I'll go now...
Apples and oranges. As already discussed, the fantasy weapons they call "lasers" in Star Wars are nothing of the kind. As evidenced by the absurdity of prefacing "laser" with "turbo," which is a complete non sequitur. "The Cage" aside, when lasers are mentioned in Star Trek, they're meant to be actual lasers, as in Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.
Lasers can't disintegrate a person completely the way a phaser does.
The physics behind this is not entirely clear. You can't destroy matter without a concomitant (massive) release of energy. 'The 34th Rule' novel tries to get around this by saying that phasers shift (or 'phase', ha ha) the matter to another dimension (from which it can be retrieved!) but that's not really backed up by canon. But if that's not the case- where does the matter (or energy) go?
I heard long ago that it was because in it's fully-deployed configuration (wings out), it resembles a bladed weapon.
http://cdn.1001freedownloads.com/vector/thumb/143210/ryanlerch_b-wing_starfighter_-_starwars.png
Nor can you vaporize an object completely (which is what disintegration essentially is) without causing a massive explosion, because the vapor will occupy a far larger volume than the solid or liquid form. That's what explosions are, essentially -- a sudden vaporization and massive, extremely rapid increase in volume, causing a powerful shock wave as the surrounding material is displaced. (Unless the explosion happens in vacuum, in which case there is no shock wave. Every Trek or other sci-fi story showing a starship being rocked by the "shock wave" from an explosion in space is rubbish.)
That wasn't The 34th Rule, it was my own DS9 story, "...Loved I Not Honor More" in the Prophecy and Change anthology. (And the story actually said that while a portion of the constituent particles could theoretically be retrieved, it would be so inefficient a process as to be hardly worth the effort.) And I got the concept from the TNG Technical Manual, which says on p. 136, under Setting 8, Disruption Effects: "Cascading disruption forces cause humanoid organisms to vaporize, as 50% of affected matter transitions out of the continuum." Or, as it was phrased on p. 27 of the behind-the-scenes Writers' Technical Manual, Third Season Edition, "About fifty percent of the disrupted matter disappears from this continuum as high-energy converted particles (the reaction takes place in a very short distance from the target, so thermal effects travel only a few inches)." Not canon, no, but canon-adjacent.
Although even if only half of the mass of a disintegrated target becomes water vapor, carbon dioxide, etc., then there should still be a half-size explosion, which would still be pretty big.
I've been asking that same question myself. If the matter was released in the air, you'd have a big explosion and a big cloud that would expand for sometime before it dissipates in the air. The temperature of the cloud would burn everything in the vicinity. In the Apple lightening had the same effect as a phaser when it hit people which would mean that it wasn't an ordinary bolt of lightening but something completely different.
I had read that logic in some book some where else before.. long long time ago.. and I am completely agree with that. It seems that the more powerful laser couldn't be created through conventional way as the way they had use to create laser weapon, thus they need to find a new method for it, in which we called it phaser. But if i remember correctly there are several beam weapon generation between laser and phaser, such as ion beam, graviton beam (i think this is the one used on Babylon V era), neutron beam, and errr.. i forgot about the rest. The next gen weapon like phaser, distruptor, and plasma are surprisingly matching with Startrek technology for fed, klingon, and romulan respectively. Though i never heard about polaron and compressor beam until i watched DS9.
"Remember" based on what?
A graviton beam is basically a tractor beam. It's an odd thing to put in a list of weapons.
And Babylon 5 was set in 2258-62, so its "era" was essentially equivalent to the TOS era (between "The Cage" and "Where No Man...", or simultaneous with the Kelvin movies to date). And of course it's a separate universe, so I don't know why you'd put it in this list.
We already have those, essentially.
Why would it be surprising that "phaser," a fictitious term invented by Star Trek, would match with Star Trek technology? ("Disruptor" is also a fictitious term, but it dates back at least as far as 1931.)
Of course not, because they're imaginary terms that were invented for DS9. The Berman-era Trek shows were fond of making up random new particle names for variety's sake. There is a phenomenon in physics called a polaron, but it isn't a particle per se, more a polarization state in a charged medium. I have no idea why the Trek technobabble creators thought that "compressed" or "compression" was a meaningful term to stick in front of "tetryon beam weapon" or "phaser rifle."
Yes and sorry about that , i didn't mention it earlier, that the book i had read weren't about any of SW, ST, or Babylon V. They didn't mention any of those title either. That's why i surprised to find the conformity between the topic. The book focused more on physics analysis of a the scifi weapon in global perspective and listed it in grade.
Unfortunately, I read it on my school's library in old days.. hmm it's already eighteen years ago i guess.. also except for the weapon i had heard from startrek, i vaguely remember about the detail. Unfortunately i didn't read about those graviton beam's article either. That weapon weren't my interest at that time, but how bout if different technology's approach resulting in more power had make those "tractor beam" into weapon? Like borg's tractor beam? Well that just my opinion anyway. Sorry english isn't my native, so u may found many grammar error. XD
Unfortunately, I read it on my school's library in old days.. hmm it's already eighteen years ago i guess.. also except for the weapon i had heard from startrek, i vaguely remember about the detail. Unfortunately i didn't read about those graviton beam's article either. That weapon weren't my interest at that time, but how bout if different technology's approach resulting in more power had make those "tractor beam" into weapon? Like borg's tractor beam? Well that just my opinion anyway. Sorry english isn't my native, so u may found many grammar error. XD
Here is something strange involving lasers:
http://laserstars.org/amateur/scifi.html#meteor
http://forgetomori.com/2010/science/laser-stars-laser-planets/
Some have suggested that droppin an asteroid into a star can generate a powerful natural laser
http://laserstars.org/amateur/scifi.html#meteor
http://forgetomori.com/2010/science/laser-stars-laser-planets/
Some have suggested that droppin an asteroid into a star can generate a powerful natural laser
biggest problem is being able
to fire weapons in warp there are multiple reasons the sr17 couldnt carry armaments you cant change the laws of physics if the phasers and torpedo can travel faster than the ship why dont they make the ships faster anything else and they are either stating inside the ship or hotting thier own ship not to mention how can you keep the weapons inside of a warp bubble if anytime the warp field collapses the ship isnout of warp : not to mention how any light based weapon would be able to firer and sppeds faster than light :
to fire weapons in warp there are multiple reasons the sr17 couldnt carry armaments you cant change the laws of physics if the phasers and torpedo can travel faster than the ship why dont they make the ships faster anything else and they are either stating inside the ship or hotting thier own ship not to mention how can you keep the weapons inside of a warp bubble if anytime the warp field collapses the ship isnout of warp : not to mention how any light based weapon would be able to firer and sppeds faster than light :
