Obsession. Picking One Scene To Pieces.

[T'Girl]

KIRK: Antimatter seems our only possibility.
SPOCK: An ounce should be sufficient. We can drain it from the ship's engines and transport it to the planet surface in a magnetic vacuum field.
KIRK: Contact medical stores. I want as much hemoplasm as they can spare in the transporter room in fifteen minutes.
GARROVICK: Yes, sir.
MCCOY: I presume you intend to use that hemoplasm to attract the creature?
KIRK: We must get it to the antimatter. It seems attracted to red blood cells. What better bait could we have?
SPOCK: There is still one problem, Captain.
KIRK: The blast, yes.
SPOCK: Exactly. A matter-antimatter blast will rip away half the planet's atmosphere.

What can we draw from this short scene?

A single ounce of antimatter is equal to a little more than a one point two megaton explosion.
Kirk and Garrovick seemed to have no problem breathing on the surface (and fighting).
How did that "small" of a explosion rip away half the atmosphere?.
Was the antimatter merely the primary of a larger yield device?
Why not just beam down the blood and use photon torpedoes when the bait is taken?
How did the creature extract the blood from the sealed container?

 

[scotpens]

Wonky science in Star Trek? Impossible! Say it ain't so!

 

[Timo]

Was the antimatter merely the primary of a larger yield device?

I don't think so. If it primed a non-antimatter explosive, Spock wouldn't have specified a "matter-antimatter blast" as the exact mechanism that rips away the atmosphere... And if it merely primed a greater amount of antimatter, then Kirk's one-ounce order would make no sense.

Personally, I think that once the whole Federation went metric, the definitions of things like "mile" and "ounce" were reworked a bit. Or then simply forgotten, so that "an ounce" would become the accepted expression for "as much as you can hold in your hand" or something like that.

Why not just beam down the blood and use photon torpedoes when the bait is taken?

The thing was known to be good at evasion, and to have experience in evading photon torpedoes. Better not give it the luxury of advance warning with already familiar torps approaching from a distance - or risk things like missing-by-ten-feet(meaning the creature might have time to become transparent to the incoming antimatter blast), or torpedo failure, or whatnot. A simple demolition device was the easiest way to go.

What was less clear was why two people had to go down to the surface with the bait and the bomb. But perhaps both Kirk and Garrovick had figured out that the blood would not be enough of a bait, and had firm plans of using themselves as the luring agent, yet couldn't say this out aloud.

How did the creature extract the blood from the sealed container?

Would it be sealed? I mean, our heroes may have figured out how the creature got into the starship - apparently not simply by becoming transparent to matter, but by exploiting a weak point in the ship's outer shell. Starships are likely to have those, since they only have to resist one atmosphere of internal pressure; the critter could have pushed through a membrane in the ventilation system that resists five atmospheres but allows the sixth through. Similar casing could then surround the bait.

But that's probably too much finesse. We already know the critter has the ability to alter its physical nature a lot, becoming invisible to sensors, at least seemingly turning into other substances altogether - and probably using these qualities to become immune to phasers and antimatter blasts as well. It would only stand to reason that it could become transparent to things like starship shells or blood containers. Perhaps just part of it flowed into the container, then reverted back into something that could interact with (eat) blood, then went transparent again and joined the rest of the beast, delivering a load of satisfaction.

Whichever approach it took, this would be in line with the rest of the drama in the episode. The audience should expect vampire-like ability to go through walls from this space vampire cloud!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[blssdwlf]

What can we draw from this short scene?

A single ounce of antimatter is equal to a little more than a one point two megaton explosion.

How did that "small" of a explosion rip away half the atmosphere?.

Actually, based on what happened it was properly equal to a much larger explosion for the shockwaves to be felt by the Enterprise 30,000km away and also blow half the atmosphere off the planet.

My suspicion with TOS is that their antimatter is much, much more potent than "Real World" antimatter.

In another episode, we are led to believe an antimatter charge in a probe could destroy a 11,000 mile long space amoeba in "The Immunity Syndrome" And again, the crew believes that the entire antimatter stores on the Enterprise in TMP is enough to destroy V'Ger from within...

Kirk and Garrovick seemed to have no problem breathing on the surface (and fighting).

Wouldn't Tychos? be a Class-M planet?

Was the antimatter merely the primary of a larger yield device?

I don't think so. Timo makes a good argument as well as none of the dialogue mentions a different explosive in the bomb. Garrovick even compares the power of that 1 oz antimatter to thousands of cobalt bombs (presumably nuclear weapons).

Why not just beam down the blood and use photon torpedoes when the bait is taken?

The gas creature can see it coming and evade the explosion (timing). Although a perfectly timed phaser blast might work.

How did the creature extract the blood from the sealed container?

Probably the same way the creature detected the blood. The container was probably porous enough that the creature could suck it out but the blood would be held inside the container. If the container sealed the blood in so well that the creature couldn't get to it, I would think that the creature wouldn't even be able to detect it either

@Timo - that is an interesting point although we are led to believe in the episode that the creature couldn't just "phase" through the ship's hull. Otherwise it could've easily gotten through the doors into the hallways and it wouldn't be forced to travel through the ventilation system. The episode conveniently left an open port near the impulse engine for the creature to sneak in (and later exit out of)...

 

[Doug Otte]

Personally, I think that once the whole Federation went metric, the definitions of things like "mile" and "ounce" were reworked a bit. Or then simply forgotten, so that "an ounce" would become the accepted expression for "as much as you can hold in your hand" or something like that.

That seems reasonable. Just like, today, in England, people use the expression "...miles better than..." to describe something that's a "lot" better than something else. They don't use miles for actual measurement, but the expression has evolved into something else.

However, I have a hard time believing that Spock would use an expression like that, where he is otherwise always so precise about his measurements.

Doug

 

[The Laughing Vulcan]

Maybe it's anti-Red-matter

 

[Timo]

However, I have a hard time believing that Spock would use an expression like that, where he is otherwise always so precise about his measurements.

True enough. So perhaps when ounce lost its meaning of 28 grams, it reverted back to the highly exact original meaning: that of "one-twelvth of something"?

Perhaps antimatter is measured in 1/12ths of some basic unit that isn't necessarily even a unit of mass? After all, "ounce" today is also a unit of length (it's simply spelled "inch" there), and a unit of force, and so forth.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[The Laughing Vulcan]

An ounce is also a type of snow leopard that weighs between 27 and 54 kilograms.

That's probably enough antimatter to blow the atmosphere clean off.

 

[Wingsley]

If that "anti-grav" bottle Kirk and Garrovick were carrying around contains only an "once" of anti-matter, then that' a pretty hefty container by TOS/23rd century standards. And if it were just anti-matter inside that bottle, why would it need a detonator? Just releasing the anti-matter into Tycho IV's atmosphere would've been more than sufficient to cause an explosion.

On the red planet's surface, Ensign Garrovick remarks that "less than one once of anti-matter here... more powerful than 10,000 Cobalt bombs." It's unclear specifically which weapon he's comparing the anti-matter to. Could "cobalt bombs" have been the "primitive" nuclear weapons-of-choice used during the Earth-Romulan Conflict that Spock alluded to in "Balance of Terror"? Could the space mine that attached itself to the NX-01 (ENT - "Minefield") have been such a "cobalt" device? We have no idea how powerful 10,000 of them could be. This would be especially true if these weapons varied in size.

One thing is for certain: Garrovick could not have been referring to a weapon from Earth's early Cold War. A "cobalt bomb" was, in essence, a "dirty bomb" designed to spread toxic radioactive contamination, not explosive power.

A thought occurred to me: if you sent aside the movies and subsequent TREK series, that round bottle containing Kirk's explosive charge could well have been a photon torpedo. It is, after all, round, and we never saw what a TOS torpedo actually looked like. What confuses me is that Kirk and Spock seem to be implying by their conversation on the Bridge that draining an once of anti-matter from the Enterprise's engines is somehow a special, if not unusual, procedure. Isn't that what starships-of-the-line do? They drain anti-matter from the ship's engines to arm the torpedoes, right? If not, then the implication would be that either the torpedoes get their anti-matter from some other source (??) or these weapons use something other than anti-matter.

Go figure!

For all we know, that anti-grav bomb is either a photon torpedo, or maybe the warhead of one, that was specially rigged by Scotty (and/or the Enterprise's ordinance team) with a tritium charge to really light up Tycho IV's sky that day. (Interesting ambient background noise there, BTW. Which instruments do you think were used to create that effect?)

 

[Wingsley]

An ounce is also a type of snow leopard that weighs between 27 and 54 kilograms.

That's probably enough antimatter to blow the atmosphere clean off.

Wow! This is very intriguing!

It would also make sense that Kirk and Garrovick would need the anti-grav to carry the bomb if it were that massive.

It would also make sense that draining that much anti-matter from the ship's engines would be a big enough deal for Spock to bother mentioning it in summarizing the operation to Kirk during their conversation on the Bridge. And if the magnetic bottle also housed an equal charge of super-explosive tritium, maybe that explains why the Enterprise had to back off to "maximum orbit" to survive the blast. At 30,000 km, for the Enterprise to still experience "shock waves" implies to me that chunks of the planet must've gone flying everywhere!

 

[T'Girl]

Isn't that what starships-of-the-line do? They drain anti-matter from the ship's engines to arm the torpedoes, right?

Considering the distance from the engines to the location of the torpedo launcher, it's unlikely . The antimatter for arming the torpedoes probably comes from a dedicated storage container near the torpedo tubes.

 

[Timo]

...Indeed, in "Errand of Mercy", a Klingon attack that causes damage to Deck 11 is said to have caused some "minor buckling in the antimatter pods". Deck 11 on the ship as usually described must be either in the neck, which the Klingon weapons were not shown impacting, or then on the lowermost part of the saucer, which was indeed hit - and that's where the torpedo launchers are shown to be, too! So we could well argue for separate antimatter tanks in the saucer for loading the torpedoes.

Of course, those might in turn be loaded (every once in a while) by transferring antimatter from the main tanks that are supposedly located next to the power-generating part of the warp engines.

I agree the sphere our heroes dragged along could have been a standard torpedo warhead (perhaps they still have those inside the ST2-style torps?), or then perhaps a standard demolition device. And probably it contained more antimatter than is usual for torps, thereby calling for the special "direct" loading process as opposed to the indirect one involving saucer antimatter tanks. If we accept that an "ounce" is a lot, then we might not need involve alternate explosive methods or devices. Just the machinery for containing the antimatter might warrant the bulk of the spherical device.

As for the "shock waves", I'd argue we're better of if we don't insist that they be pressure waves from the blown-off atmosphere. The dialogue doesn't exactly specify that, and we do hear later on the effects of an antimatter or photon torpedo explosion described in terms of blast waves. Perhaps the ship would have been rattled by an electromagnetic or subspace shock wave primarily, and the whiffs of gas from the planet would not have been a major factor?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[EEE]

What can we draw from this short scene?

A single ounce of antimatter is equal to a little more than a one point two megaton explosion.

Where did you draw that conclusion from? It seems to send all your other loaded questions off into left field. If you take away what I (perhaps wrongly) believe to be an assumption, the whole thing makes sense (in a Sci-fi TV show way).

Heck, I remember hearing an actual scientific postulation that a single anti-matter atom could destroy the universe! (but then again, it was the 60's and there were enough drugs flowing to come up with many crazy ideas... even making a sci-fi TV show without a robot in the cast! *grin*).

Kirk and Garrovick seemed to have no problem breathing on the surface (and fighting).

Um, they hadn't 'ripped away half the atmosphere' yet.

How did that "small" of a explosion rip away half the atmosphere?.

You tell us... you seem to have decided it was a "small" explosion. (My Trek-take isn't that it wasn't a small explosion. Because, as all trekkies know, an ounce of anti-matter will rip away half a planet's atmosphere!)

Was the antimatter merely the primary of a larger yield device?

You tell us... you seem to have decided it was a "small" explosion. (As all trekkies know, an ounce of anti-matter is enough to rip away half a planet's atmosphere! ..why would they need a larger yield?)

Why not just beam down the blood and use photon torpedoes when the bait is taken?

You tell us... you seem to have decided one ounce of anti-matter will be a "small" explosion. (my Trek-take is that a photon torpedo uses a MUCH-MUCH-MUCH smaller quantity than a single ounce of anti-matter, and therefore wouldn't be sufficient)

How did the creature extract the blood from the sealed container?

The same way it takes blood from humanoids that aren't leaking from their circulatory system... science FICTION!

 

[Timo]

Where did you draw that conclusion from?

It's what current science says is the correct yield for the process of 28 grams of antimatter and an equal amount of matter annihilating into energy. Trek science may be different, of course.

Um, they hadn't 'ripped away half the atmosphere' yet.

I think the point there was that the planetoid had to be of a certain minimum size if it had breathable outdoors air. Thus, we would have a quantitative estimate of how hard it would be to "rip away" half the atmosphere of such a place. If Kirk and Garrovick had used breathing masks, then a smaller explosive yield might have been enough to do that to the atmosphere.

The same way it takes blood from humanoids that aren't leaking from their circulatory system...

It shouldn't be difficult to suck blood from the human victims. After the treatment, they looked as if they had whole-body hickeys, just like one would expect from lots and lots of gentle skin-piercing suction...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[EEE]

Where did you draw that conclusion from?

It's what current science says ...
Trek science may be different, of course.

You've already replied for me! ("current" anything has nothing to do with Trek Science(tm)!! ...which is based on 60's technology, knowledge, etc. But even more importantly... it's based on 60's imagination! *grin*)

 

[Timo]

So you don't think that a scientific result should be considered a sound basis for an argument?

Why not? You probably accept that "They were breathing, so the planet had oxygen in the air" would be a true argument. That, too, is a scientific result, based on today's understanding of the way the world works. Of course things may be different in a fictional future, and "They were breathing" is in fact an indication of there being fluorine in the air. But that's pure speculation, not supported by outside sources - not even by other Trek episodes.

Similarly, there's no other evidence, Trek or otherwise, that 28 grams of antimatter annihilating would not produce an explosion of 1.2 megatons. "Obsession" stands alone in describing the explosive qualities of an ounce of antimatter in the TOSverse or indeed the Trekverse. I see no outstanding merit in belittling our current knowledge that 28 grams of antimatter = 1.2 megatons of boom, then.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[EEE]

So you don't think that a scientific result should be considered a sound basis for an argument?

Not in the context of a 1960's fiction show based on imagination!!! (Not to mention I'm not here to "argue" at all. Debate, sometimes. But mostly mental masturbation). Rationalization is much more appropriate to a fictional subject that is over two score years old.

In the context of Trek Science (and 60's postulations that a single atom of anti-matter might annihilate the entire universe) I think they maintained a reasonable level of continuity in this episode.

 

[The Laughing Vulcan]

The Hiroshima bomb, around 20 kilotons, converted 1 gram of matter to energy. An ounce of antimatter, assuming complete annihilation will be about a megaton explosion...

 

[Wingsley]

^ What The Laughing Vulcan said.

The only scientific truth worth taking home from this ep of TOS is that no human endeavor has ever produced, let alone tested, an anti-matter weapon. Therefore, with no empircal evidence, we have no idea what the true destructive power of such a theoretical weapon would be.

And keep in mind that TOS depicts the exploits of starship, as part of a fleet of such starships, exploring our galaxy centuries from today. They've apparently been handling anti-matter for some time, so one can readily assume they would know how to efficiently produce a maximum amount of energy from a minimum amount of anti-matter.

 

[T'Girl]

Kirk and Garrovick seemed to have no problem breathing on the surface (and fighting).

Um, they hadn't 'ripped away half the atmosphere' yet.

What I was saying with that question was that there wasn't a minimal atmosphere to start with and that it wouldn't be so easy to rip away half of a normal atmosphere

I got the explosive yield of antimatter from the Encyclopedia Britannica online, which I like much more that Wiki.

As I understand it, the 58 megatonnes Russian bomb did punch a hole in the Earth's atmosphere so that briefly space did touch the Earth's surface. Then the atmosphere came roaring back in from the sides.