Naahh. Many fields are generated by pairs of flat plates, which may be stacked (like those radiator thingamabobs on the shoulders of that ship) or placed at an angle (like wings of that ship), with variable geometry often featuring in both setups.
Not to mention that Trek is notorious for its "gravity plates", which may be what's built into those wings for the all-important planetary landing function of the BoP. A bit like the repulsorlifts of Star Wars technology: shaped a particular way for some nonsensical technobabble reason that allows them to look cool.
Timo Saloniemi
It's not a question of generation but field shape and stability.
Fields naturally create spherical envelopes such as the suns magnetic envelope or the planets. But when stressed the sun's fields lines break when the surface speeds at different latitudes become unaligned. This stresses the fields lines and broken lines of magnetism leads to prominence or flares maybe even CME (coronal Mass ejections).
On planets stress on the field comes from the sun in the form of solar wind shrinking the sunward envelope and stretching out the dark side envelope.
This is a good example of field line behavior
http://nylander.wordpress.com/2006/07/15/horseshoe-magnets/
The U shapeds magnet helps to shape the field.
This is is all dependent on conducting materials.
In starship we've seen that the hull is a conducting material. That the field can be shaped by the hull implies these are comparatively weak fields as strong fields will still create a spherical field despite stress or odd conductor shape.
@Saquist: From following the thread about the Bussard collectors on the Phoenix, I am convinced you are neither a physicist or an engineer. And from your "their/they're" fail in this thread, I assume you aren't an English major either. It's okay though. The other day my boss tried to explain to me why pouring refractory plaster is like pouring beer. I just said, "Oh, I see," and went on doing my job the way it's supposed to be done when he isn't looking.
I'm curious, though; how is it that an emitted field is made weaker by the object it is emitted from?
--Alex
I'm neither a physicist nor engineer, I am but a lowly drafter.
As for the English. I type to be understood not for perfection.
Normally a field is going to dominate what ever object it's being emitted from by more than a thousand fold. But if you're dealing with a comparatively weak field then a conductor will influence it's shape. As weak fields are influenced by the shape, sharp edges can serve to further weaken the apex between the two poles as it attempts follow the conductor. Apparently starships generate fairly weak warp fields/sub space fields...OR they are easily shaped by a conducting material but in any case we get field shapes like this...
http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/treknology/warpfield.gif
http://suricatasblog.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/bluewarptest.jpg
Just going on canon Chakotay does give us some indication that hull geometry is some sort of factor in ship construction when he sees the Dauntless. There is a relationship with these odd shaped ships and their warp speeds. Birds of Prey and War Birds (despite their power) are warp 8 ships with warp nine being extreme. We also see that ships that have mega amounts of power have no problem with high warp like Borg Cubes and the Scimitar.
