Given how the first proximity blasts were felt immediately by the Romulans then I'd argue that the sensor readings they had would not warrant bombarding a huge volume of space. The Enterprise's problem was that they couldn't get a decisive hit without getting closer and/or visual and that would leave them vulnerable to the Romulan plasma weapon. I think the Enterprise would have eventually gotten "lucky" like they did against the distant (but visible) Klingon ship in "Errand of Mercy" and scored a direct hit. It just would have taken longer with the cloaked Romulan.
Phaser shots that miss...
- Thread starter Gil T.Azell
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Given how the first proximity blasts were felt immediately by the Romulans then I'd argue that the sensor readings they had would not warrant bombarding a huge volume of space. The Enterprise's problem was that they couldn't get a decisive hit without getting closer and/or visual and that would leave them vulnerable to the Romulan plasma weapon. I think the Enterprise would have eventually gotten "lucky" like they did against the distant (but visible) Klingon ship in "Errand of Mercy" and scored a direct hit. It just would have taken longer with the cloaked Romulan.
^Of course the whole "depth charge" approach taken in BoT -- like the use of "shock waves" from explosions in space in general -- doesn't make sense, because space is a vacuum and has no substantial medium to propagate shock. The phaser shots shouldn't have affected the Romulans at all unless they were virtually direct hits.
^ TOS did establish in "The Ultimate Computer" that phasers do have a kinetic component so a phaser "proximity blast" spherical shock wave in space would be consistent with what was presented in TOS.
KIRK: Already sounded the Red Alert. All right, Mister Sulu, phasers one one hundredth power. No damage potential, just enough to nudge them.
KIRK: Already sounded the Red Alert. All right, Mister Sulu, phasers one one hundredth power. No damage potential, just enough to nudge them.
^But it still doesn't make sense in real-world terms. Few TV writers understand how things work in space. They just treat it like the ocean.
^Sure not in real-world terms. But at least they were smart enough to call it something not "real-world". If it were a laser then yeah it wouldn't make sense. But since it's a "phaser" it goes along with the whole "warp drive" and "dilithium" magic 
(Although, there is such a thing as laser propulsion aka kinetic energy from light, so it's not completely out-there
)
(Although, there is such a thing as laser propulsion aka kinetic energy from light, so it's not completely out-there
)
The problem isn't the phaser, the problem is the vacuum of space. Shock waves are a property of the medium the weapon occupies, not of the weapon itself. Since there is no propagating medium in space, no weapon of any kind should be capable of generating a shock wave there. It's just fundamental ignorance on the part of the writers -- as bad as having a ship's orbit decay when it loses power (though at least that can be justified if you assume it's a forced orbit instead of a normal orbit).
But how does energy cause kinetic damage? It would cause thermal or radiation damage. It would not be a shock, i.e. an abrupt and damaging increase in pressure, because there is no medium to impart pressure. It would not constitute a wave either, because it's not something propagating through a medium. It would be a burst of radiation, and that's something fundamentally different.
To put it another way, a shock wave is a more intense sound wave. They're different manifestations of the same principle, pressure variations propagating through a medium. There is no sound in space, therefore there is no shock in space.
If you set off a nuclear explosion a few kilometers away from a ship in vacuum, the ship would be exposed to intense radiation, which could certainly be deadly to the crew inside, but there would be no significant kinetic component. There'd be no booming or trembling or being pushed off course. There'd just be lethal radiation sleeting silently through their bodies. Same with an antimatter explosion, i.e. a photon torpedo. So if even such devastating weapons wouldn't do it, why would a phaser beam do it?
The answer is that it does it because it's more dramatic and more consistent with the audience's expectations. It's poetic license. It doesn't have a legitimate physical rationalization.
If I were to rephrase it, phasers cause kinetic damage from the sudden acceleration forces that the phaser energy exerts on the target. We know "real world" things like the Sun (and anything that radiates energy) exerts radiation pressure regardless if there is a medium or not. The only difference here is that phaser energy would be significantly more energetic since we're working from evidence from TOS.
I'd guess that'd depend on the size of the nuclear explosion whether the kinetic component would be significant
How do you know that a photon torpedo does not have a kinetic component from it's explosion? A near miss from a photon torpedo prior to entering the nebula in "The Wrath of Khan" would qualify for a kinetic shockwave.
Well that's the obvious answer, but on the other hand, it's a biased question
Does FTL travel in the form of Warp drive need a legitimate physical rationalization? Or Vulcan Mind-melds and katras? When did Star Trek need to meet the standards of hard scifi?Overall, I'd say TOS kept the phaser idea vague and yet consistent enough that it makes sense inside it's own fictional universe, IMHO. YMMV of course.
The thing that I notice in that clip is that the Enterprise can only fire phasers or torpedoes from one location. I would think that the team behind the remastering would have fixed what was an issue caused by budgets and time constraints. We know from "Balance of Terror" that the Enterprise is equipped with more than one battery. So, why didn't they show the Enterprise firing her weapons from different areas of the ship? Also, I felt there was something off about one of the shots. This is when the Enterprise is attempting futility to hit the raider, and we see the shots coming out from under the hull. The angle seemed very wrong to me. (Personally, I think the remastering is a failure. The effects already feel dated, and they created more problems than they solved.)
One last thing, before I get called out for using the wrong terminology for the ship's weapons, the word battery comes directly from the episode. According to wikipedia, the word battery, when used by the navy, described a group of guns. For instance, the German warship Bismarck had a primary battery of eight 15-inch guns, a secondary battery of 12 5.9 inch guns, and a tertiary battery of anti-aircraft guns with varying calibers.
According to the episode "Balance of Terrors", the Enterprise had port, starboard, and midships batteries. So, if the Enterprise had failed with one of the batteries to make a hit, wouldn't it stand to reason that one of the other batteries would take up the work and make the attempt at hitting a target?
As for the idea that shockwaves can't be produced in space, this is wrong. Shockwaves do exist in space. Ten years ago, the Hubble Telescope recorded a shock wave produced by the gases emitted by a collapsing star collided with cosmic gas and dust. According to another source I read, if the space vehicle is close enough to the explosion and the resultant shock wave,the vehicle would experience this effect.
One last thing, before I get called out for using the wrong terminology for the ship's weapons, the word battery comes directly from the episode. According to wikipedia, the word battery, when used by the navy, described a group of guns. For instance, the German warship Bismarck had a primary battery of eight 15-inch guns, a secondary battery of 12 5.9 inch guns, and a tertiary battery of anti-aircraft guns with varying calibers.
According to the episode "Balance of Terrors", the Enterprise had port, starboard, and midships batteries. So, if the Enterprise had failed with one of the batteries to make a hit, wouldn't it stand to reason that one of the other batteries would take up the work and make the attempt at hitting a target?
As for the idea that shockwaves can't be produced in space, this is wrong. Shockwaves do exist in space. Ten years ago, the Hubble Telescope recorded a shock wave produced by the gases emitted by a collapsing star collided with cosmic gas and dust. According to another source I read, if the space vehicle is close enough to the explosion and the resultant shock wave,the vehicle would experience this effect.
I'd guess that'd depend on the size of the nuclear explosion whether the kinetic component would be significant
You're still not getting it. Most of the damage caused by a nuclear explosion going off in atmosphere is caused by the atmosphere itself. The atmosphere is heated into plasma, creating the fireball, and is forced to expand at great velocity, causing devastating blast effects. (Also, most or all of the electromagnetic pulse effects generated by a nuclear explosion would be absent without an atmosphere.) A nuclear bomb going off in vacuum will be far less damaging than an equal-sized bomb going off in atmosphere. There'd be no fireball, just a split-second blinding flash, and there'd be no physical blast, just a burst of radiation and thermal energy. Sure, the material of the bomb itself would be vaporized and expand outward, but that's a very small amount of material and would very quickly dissipate.
Here's a great site with more info on the topic:
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/spacegunconvent.php#id--Nukes_In_Space
According to it, there is one thing that could cause an "impulsive shock" if the bomb went off close enough: it would actually heat the hull of the ship enough to flash-vaporize part of it, and that sudden vaporization would create a shock wave through the ship itself that would bounce back and forth and cause damaging internal stresses. But that would only happen if the explosion went off at very close range, less than a kilometer. And it's not something that would presumably happen to a starship protected by deflector shields.
(EDIT: Although, come to think of it, it could kinda work if the Romulan Bird-of-Prey had ablative shields like the Defiant instead of energy shields. Ablative armor is armor that absorbs energy by partially vaporizing. Again, though, the problem is that the explosions would have to be within a few hundred meters, and that's unlikely when we're talking about a space battle on the scale of millions of kilometers or more.)
Because as I said, the kinetic shock does not come from the weapon. It comes from the medium in which the weapon detonates. It's the same reason there's no sound in space, as I said. It doesn't matter whether the weapon is a nuke or a photon torpedo or a magic fireball conjured by the Great Prophet Zarquon. The shock comes from the medium, so if there's no medium, there's no shock.
It makes no sense to cite fictional examples when I'm talking about a principle of real physics and how fiction gets it wrong.
Well that's the obvious answer, but on the other hand, it's a biased question
Hey, you're the one who's trying to come up with a physical rationalization. I'm the one saying that it can't be done, that you should just accept it as poetic license because your attempts at physical rationalizations don't work.
And warp drive actually does have a very solid physical rationalization, by the way:
http://omnis.if.ufrj.br/~mbr/warp/
Because they were trying to be faithful to the design sensibilities of the original rather than being needlessly revisionist. The original always showed the phasers firing from one place.
Of course shock waves exist in space when there's a medium to propagate them such as a nebula. And yes, there is a very, very thin interstellar medium throughout the galaxy. But it's a matter of degree. The less dense the medium, the less forceful the shock wave. Again, shock waves are basically the same thing as sound. Surely you're aware that sound propagates more clearly through a thick atmosphere than a thin one. And sound travels better and faster through water or solid matter than it does through air. There's quite simply more material to transmit the energy.
So of course space isn't a complete vacuum, but its medium is so tenuous that it's a vacuum compared to Earth's atmosphere. We're talking on the order of a hydrogen atom or two every cubic kilometer. Even a nebula is going to be immensely thinner than our atmosphere -- more like the density of the solar wind around Earth, maybe a few atoms per cubic centimeter. So yeah, if a cosmic explosion causes a shock wave in the interstellar medium, it would have a (very, very slow) effect on large-scale structures like nebulae or cosmic dust clouds. But if you're in a spaceship on a scale of less than a kilometer, then only a smattering of atoms are going to come into contact with your ship, and you'll feel effectively no shock of any kind.
Not all shock waves are equivalent. A shock wave, by definition, is simply a propagating disturbance through a medium. It can be strong or weak. It can propagate through a dense medium or an incredibly tenuous one. Some kinds of shock wave, in dense enough mediums, can be destructive to a human body or vehicle. But the kinds of shock wave that propagate through the interstellar medium are far too tenuous to be relevant on a human scale.
I'd guess that'd depend on the size of the nuclear explosion whether the kinetic component would be significant
You're still not getting it.
I get that you want a medium to account for the kinetic impact. What I don't get is why you don't accept that radiation in a vacuum cannot impart kinetic energy. The whole concept of solar sails and laser propulsion is built around this as a form of propulsion.
Yes, and a quote from it:
"Please understand: I am NOT saying that nuclear warheads are ineffective. I am saying that the amount of damage they inflict falls off very rapidly with increasing range. At least much more rapidly than with the same sized warhead detonated in an atmosphere.
But if the nuke goes off one meter from your ship, your ship will probably be vaporized. Atmosphere or no."
In "Balance of Terror", the nuclear device detonated at < 100m. Like I said, it would depend on the size of the nuke to make up for the distance to get the same effect as depicted in the episode.
Considering that the Romulan BOP was getting rocked with phaser "proximity blasts" while she was cloaked then what's the problem? They had a pretty decent sensor reading, good enough for the first "proximity blast" to be felt by the Romulans and the distance detonated from the ship is left open so it could have been easily within a few hundred meters.
If you ignore real life radiation pressure then okay
TOS is a fictional story with its own set of rules. If they modified their physical rules we should account for it. For us to ignore it makes no sense in this discussion unless the whole goal was to talk about something going on at NASA instead of TOS
I'm just pointing out the fictional basis why it is consistent in TOS and it just happens that there is real world physics to support it (which doesn't happen everyday
)You're the one who is trying to come up with a physical rationalization as to why it can't be done. However the only way your rationalization to work is for you to ignore real world physics (and fictional physics too.)
Like I said, I was pointing out the fictional rationalizations and am perfectly fine with it being fictional work. However there happens to be real world physics to go along with it so it works pretty well even though it may rub your sensibilities the wrong way.
Hey didn't you just say:
"Hey, you're the one who's trying to come up with a physical rationalization."
Warp drive is poetic license too
The funny thing here is that one person's "wrong physics" is another person's "science fantasy". The fine line into "science fiction" is somewhere in the middle
Throwback said:
Agreed.
The shot you speak of looks like the ship moved above the plane of the primary hull making that shot wonky at best. The second problem with the shot is that the episode established the Orion ship making passes at the Enterprise at above Warp 8 making it next to impossible for the E to hit it. That shot instead slowed the Orion down to some crazy slow speeds so it could do the equivalent of a barrel roll in front of the E to avoid getting hit. Ugh
Oh, come on, why is it so hard to understand that these things are matters of degree? The kinetic energy imparted by light is infinitesimal. You need something with extremely low mass and extremely high surface area -- like something that's ten kilometers square and has a mass of a few hundred grams -- to get a meaningful acceleration, and even then it's so gentle that it takes days to build up any significant velocity. For something as compact and massive as a starship, the effect would be inconsequential.
I mean, really, just think about it. If light had as large a kinetic component as you're suggesting, the Sun's light would push the planets out of orbit.
But we weren't talking about that nuclear device, we were talking about the use of blindly fired phasers as "depth charges" against the Romulans. I was simply using a nuclear explosion as a real-world analogy, something that's very powerful yet still imparts no significant kinetic effect at more than a few hundred meters.
The problem is that space is immense. This is another thing TV writers always get wrong -- they treat space as a tiny place with tiny distances, comparable to fighting on land or sea or air. Even "close" combat in space would probably be on the order of thousands or tens of thousands of kilometers. On that scale, a margin of error of a few hundred meters would be so infinitesimal that there'd hardly be any point in using the cloaking device. Heck, you'd get the same margin of error just from lightspeed time lag over the distance between ships. The episode implied that they only had a rough idea of the Romulan ship's location, and on the scale of an interstellar space battle, "a rough idea" would mean maybe within a few planetary diameters, not a few hundred meters.
I'm also not convinced that a phaser beam can "explode" in any sense.
If you ignore real life radiation pressure then okay
As I explained, it's minuscule enough that it effectively can be ignored in this context. When you go outside on a sunny day, the sunlight is exerting radiation pressure on you, but you aren't noticeably affected by it or even aware that it's there. So yes, I do ignore it in most contexts, and so do you.
I'm just pointing out the fictional basis why it is consistent in TOS and it just happens that there is real world physics to support it (which doesn't happen everyday
And I'm pointing out that you're misunderstanding some fundamental things about that real-world physics and that it actually does not apply the way you're claiming it does.
No, I'm not. You're offering physical rationalizations that are wrong, and I'm correcting your misconceptions about the real physical principles that you're improperly trying to apply. I don't really care that much about the fictional "science," but it does matter to me when people fail to understand how real science works.
Warp drive is poetic license too
Yes, but the difference is that it's a fictional concept that, as it happens, did turn out to have a valid scientific basis. That does not apply to random, unaimed phaser beams acting like depth charges. And if there is some scientific way to justify that, it's not one of the hypotheses you've proposed.
You get the matter of degree enough to place your example at distances where the amount of push is inconsequential but also well outside of the parameters of the argument. Why not put your example alot closer to the source of radiation and argue from there?
Oh wait, you do...
and at close-range, under a few hundred meters you recognize that it can have a significant kinetic energy.
I was talking about phasers fired like "flak", not "depth charges". If you're thinking of "depth charges" then that's where we differ since the "depth charges" does require a medium to be most effective whereas "flak bursts" are doing damage from either a direct hit or shrapnel (or released phaser energy).
blssdwlf said:
Well, I agree partially here. But, a cloaking device in "Balance of Terror" was the difference between an immediate direct hit from the Enterprise and the near-misses. If the margin of error were a few planetary diameters, then there wouldn't be these near-misses. We're left with then that the sensor readings were pretty darn close.
I was just building off Timo's hypothesis of a "sheath" that enclosed the energy. It's just one of many explanations that happens to fit the observed events of the episode.
On one hand, you point out that radiation energy imparts minuscule kinetic energy (but you use an example of 93,000,000 km away from the source where it isn't relevant to the distances we're talking about) and on the other hand you admit that at close-range, under a few hundred meters a radiation burst, from a nuclear explosion, could have a significant kinetic energy to it.
Before lecturing about "real science", let's confirm where you're going since your own words are supporting my argument.
Yes, but the difference is that it's a fictional concept that, as it happens, did turn out to have a valid scientific basis. That does not apply to random, unaimed phaser beams acting like depth charges. And if there is some scientific way to justify that, it's not one of the hypotheses you've proposed.Warp drive is poetic license too
Radiation pressure is something proven experimentally whereas no one has managed to build an FTL drive (yet).
And to recap, my hypothesis is that those are "aimed phaser pulses that act like flak bursts" which is not like your "unaimed, phaser beams acting like depth charges" version of it.
The way I see it is phasers start out with a certain intensity as they are beamed from the source. They degrade as they travel across a distance, so the closer the proximity the more powerful the effect at contact. Eventually they will dissipate into nothing.
The Romulan energy weapon was a kind of torpedo, in that it would continue tracking the target. This is why the Enterprise couldn't evade it (otherwise, why not back off on an angle and let the thing pass you by). "Detonation" was simply making contact with the target, where the energy will react violently with matter. And apparently the weapon travels slower than phasers, as well as dissipates at a faster rate.
I have no idea how a pure energy weapon could "follow" a target. As I see it, some kind of guidance system is necessary, unless the composition of the substance has an inherent attraction for material objects or whatever residue is left behind from warp or impulse engines. If it has a guidance system, then it's more like a photon torpedo. The visual depiction doesn't show anything metallic, but one could just chalk that up to a graphics deficiency or oversight.
The Romulan energy weapon was a kind of torpedo, in that it would continue tracking the target. This is why the Enterprise couldn't evade it (otherwise, why not back off on an angle and let the thing pass you by). "Detonation" was simply making contact with the target, where the energy will react violently with matter. And apparently the weapon travels slower than phasers, as well as dissipates at a faster rate.
I have no idea how a pure energy weapon could "follow" a target. As I see it, some kind of guidance system is necessary, unless the composition of the substance has an inherent attraction for material objects or whatever residue is left behind from warp or impulse engines. If it has a guidance system, then it's more like a photon torpedo. The visual depiction doesn't show anything metallic, but one could just chalk that up to a graphics deficiency or oversight.
"Oversight" in another sense of the word would do fine as an explanation. Namely, the cloud of plasma could be propelled and steered by a warp field projected by the firing vessel.
This would nicely explain why Scotty thought the ship was not warp-powered - at the time of the analysis, all the warp power had been channeled into propelling the weapon!
It might also mean Spock got his analysis wrong, too. The cloak wouldn't be particularly energy-hungry (many later episodes and movies go to prove the system actually operates just fine even at low power levels) - the firing of the plasma cloud would be the immense power hog that explains the need to decloak at the moment of firing.
Timo Saloniemi
This would nicely explain why Scotty thought the ship was not warp-powered - at the time of the analysis, all the warp power had been channeled into propelling the weapon!
It might also mean Spock got his analysis wrong, too. The cloak wouldn't be particularly energy-hungry (many later episodes and movies go to prove the system actually operates just fine even at low power levels) - the firing of the plasma cloud would be the immense power hog that explains the need to decloak at the moment of firing.
Timo Saloniemi
Since we're on the highly speculative topic of energy weapons, I have a question. Why do photon torpedoes appear like brilliant balls of light? We do see that they are capsule based, as illustrated in the movies and other Star Trek series. So, if it's launched and it turns into a brilliant ball of energy/plasma, you'd think that would destroy any circuitry on board. The whole thing lights up as a destructive blob of energy and heads on its way to a target. Because, in most of the cases we see torpedoes launched, they travel in a linear fashion, either hitting or missing their target. They don't behave like they have a guidance system at all.
It's only in "The Undiscovered Country" that we see something different--Spock and McCoy modify a photon torpedo and let it fly. It "sniffs" out the cloaked Bird-of-Prey and lands a direct hit. Definitely "guided" in this case, to track traces of a cloaking device. Well, that would seem to be much harder than tracking a visible ship! Anyway... it's curious, because in that special case the torpedo doesn't look as brilliantly bright as other torpedoes we usually see launched.
Based on this, I'd expect torpedoes to be guided. Maybe there is special shielding of the circuitry that can withstand the radiation and power of the glowing armed warhead of the torpedo. In addition to guidance, it would help time the detonation upon impact, doing whatever micro adjustments in mere nanoseconds are required.
Thoughts?
It's only in "The Undiscovered Country" that we see something different--Spock and McCoy modify a photon torpedo and let it fly. It "sniffs" out the cloaked Bird-of-Prey and lands a direct hit. Definitely "guided" in this case, to track traces of a cloaking device. Well, that would seem to be much harder than tracking a visible ship! Anyway... it's curious, because in that special case the torpedo doesn't look as brilliantly bright as other torpedoes we usually see launched.
Based on this, I'd expect torpedoes to be guided. Maybe there is special shielding of the circuitry that can withstand the radiation and power of the glowing armed warhead of the torpedo. In addition to guidance, it would help time the detonation upon impact, doing whatever micro adjustments in mere nanoseconds are required.
Thoughts?
If I were to guess as why photon torpedoes "glow" it would be that the glow is some kind of:
-energy shielding or sheath that contains the photon energy and/or
-provides protection to the torpedo allowing it to punch through weapons fire or shielding better.
OTOH, there was a Voyager episode that showed a closeup of the torpedo case glowing like the Genesis device from TWOK right before it exploded in a Borg ship... Maybe the casing is transparent to photon energy but the internals are shielded?
In the TOS episode, "The Changeling", a photon torpedo hit Nomad at 90,000km away while it was at bearing 123 mk 18 or basically off to the side and slightly behind the Enterprise so torpedoes are not "linear fashion" at all, IMHO.
-energy shielding or sheath that contains the photon energy and/or
-provides protection to the torpedo allowing it to punch through weapons fire or shielding better.
OTOH, there was a Voyager episode that showed a closeup of the torpedo case glowing like the Genesis device from TWOK right before it exploded in a Borg ship... Maybe the casing is transparent to photon energy but the internals are shielded?
In the TOS episode, "The Changeling", a photon torpedo hit Nomad at 90,000km away while it was at bearing 123 mk 18 or basically off to the side and slightly behind the Enterprise so torpedoes are not "linear fashion" at all, IMHO.
There isn't in Real Life™, but there is in Trek: Subspace.
We could derive all the characteristics of a photon torpedo from air-to-air missiles if we really wanted.
They glow? Well, sure - their engines are relatively more powerful and less shielded than those of starships (aircraft). They may even operate on a slightly different, simplified principle (rockets rather than turbofans/jets).
http://australianaviation.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/ORD_AIM-120_AMRAAM_Launch_F-15C_lg.jpg
They steer to hit? That's what missiles do, despite the name.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4g4_jzqBJnA
They mostly appear to fly straight? That's because being really, really fast is a winning strategy for AAMs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MBDA_Meteor
That's my guess: photon torpedoes are all about speed of delivery, and there are extremely few situations where it pays off to let one of them putter around at low speeds looking for targets. Given how extremely maneuverable starships seem to be, it would be folly to allow a torpedo to stoop down to a dogfight!
Timo Saloniemi
They glow? Well, sure - their engines are relatively more powerful and less shielded than those of starships (aircraft). They may even operate on a slightly different, simplified principle (rockets rather than turbofans/jets).
http://australianaviation.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/ORD_AIM-120_AMRAAM_Launch_F-15C_lg.jpg
They steer to hit? That's what missiles do, despite the name.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4g4_jzqBJnA
They mostly appear to fly straight? That's because being really, really fast is a winning strategy for AAMs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MBDA_Meteor
That's my guess: photon torpedoes are all about speed of delivery, and there are extremely few situations where it pays off to let one of them putter around at low speeds looking for targets. Given how extremely maneuverable starships seem to be, it would be folly to allow a torpedo to stoop down to a dogfight!
Timo Saloniemi
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