Q for techies: photon torpedo induced supernova?
- Thread starter Kuri
- Start date
....although the lyric is "a gigantic nuclear furnace"! 
If this is getting into specific story ideas now, I'm afraid I have to bow out, for professional reasons. Hopefully I've pointed you in the right direction.
OK had a think about this. Ensign Kuri has a suggestion for the captain...
What if there is an unstable binary system in the galactic neighbourhood, of the type described by @Christopher, that periodically goes nova.
What if my starship hightails it for that system, pursued through warp by its enemy... comes out just in time and passes close to the binary (or even between them, like threading the needle), as a nova erupts?
It wouldn't even have to induce it!
Of course it would be extremely dangerous. That's the point.
Demerits: That would be an incredibly helpful celestial event happening just at the right time, verging on Deus Ex Machina plot resolution. I'd need to foreshadow it carefully during the opening stages of the story. So, ideally if my ship could (again) just be able to add a little push to artificially accelerate such an event, I'd be happier.
Kuri
What if there is an unstable binary system in the galactic neighbourhood, of the type described by @Christopher, that periodically goes nova.
What if my starship hightails it for that system, pursued through warp by its enemy... comes out just in time and passes close to the binary (or even between them, like threading the needle), as a nova erupts?
It wouldn't even have to induce it!
Of course it would be extremely dangerous. That's the point.Demerits: That would be an incredibly helpful celestial event happening just at the right time, verging on Deus Ex Machina plot resolution. I'd need to foreshadow it carefully during the opening stages of the story. So, ideally if my ship could (again) just be able to add a little push to artificially accelerate such an event, I'd be happier.
Kuri
Awww rats. Knew I shouldn't have revealed that spoiler. Totally understand and thanks for your input.
If you have any general ideas on navigating a binary system just as it goes nova, feel free to rejoin the fray.
Kuri
Unfortunately, even with the levels of firepower which Trek ships might have in DS9:"The Die is Cast" there wouldn't be enough firepower to do anything to a star. However, Trek ships have other means of getting results from stars.
Star Trek already has two answers to this. In TNG:"Redemption II" Kurn causes a solar flare by using his ship's warp field in a particular way while near a star's surface to destroy two Bird of Prey. In either DS9: "Shadows and Symbols" Worf does something similar by exploiting a magnetic instability in a sun to trigger a solar mass ejection which destroys a shipyard. In DS9: "By Inferno's Light" the false Dr. Bashir uses a device made from trilithium, tekasite and protomatter to cause the Bajoran sun to supernova. I'll add that in DS9:"Second Sight" they restart a dead star by way of protomatter device.
Out of all of them the trilithium might be all that is needed, because trilithium can halt fusion. I almost forgot the plot of Star Trek: Generations is Soran using trilithium to blow stars up. It turns out trilithium resin is a Starfleet warp core waste product. If the resin and regular trilithium are the same stuff, then it stands to reason every Starfleet starship, and every ship which has a similar power arrangement might have the means to cause a star to go nova. Extraction of the resin can be done quickly with a hand held device, then the stuff could be placed in a regular torpedo and detonated inside the sun.
Just to note it, thanks to a programming upgrade from a Q, Voyager's shields are made powerful enough to survive a dive into a star as it goes supernova, in order to reach the Q continuum the hard way. Voyager got several upgrades like this. That kind of protection level fits with a superduper metaphasic shield, which is also just a matter of programming.
Voyager also accidentally enters the event horizon of a black hole, and gets stuck in it at warp for a few weeks. I think this might be before the shield upgrade.
There should be a simpler way to blind the enemy sensors. If a helium flash is enough to blind the enemy sensors, then they might be blinded by a point blank, full power torpedo activation in line of sight of the pursued ship. In Voyager's "Work Force" the Doctor shoots his own torpedo to make it explode in proximity with greater energy. It should be malarkey, but it works. However, this is also a point against blinding them with regular weapons, even with a fancy trick, because the combat sensors should be designed to handle that kind of barrage unless it is extraordinarily more powerful than what is thought reasonable. You might need a time on target (where each volley moves faster than the last, so the final volley arrives at the same time as the first) solution of several full spreads, all tricked out with phaser boosted activation. The downside to that is, if that kind of attack can be made and doesn't just knock the enemy shield's out, then you might be making the enemy too strong.
With more context it might be possible to come up with a simpler solution which fits. If the hero ship is ahead of the enemy ship enough that it is freely at warp, then given enough space, the ship could do the time on target attack using snail's pace torpedoes. Eventually the pursuing enemy will just run into a cloud of torpedoes.
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Voyager is NEVER a show I would cite as an example of Treknology and what it can or cannot do. Remember, the very episode where they get 'stuck in a black hole', they promptly got every single facet of a black hole completely wrong. We actually LAUGHED at Janeway's idiotic descriptions...
@Go-Captain *looks up trilithium on Memory Alpha and wikipedia* Hmmm... *puts on LOTR orc voice...*
Looks like supernova is back on the menu boys!
That's great. Just what I needed, thanks @Go-Captain! You are hereby promoted to chief science officer.
I just need to sort out a timeline problem: The references all come from TNG era. My story is TOS era (2260s). Is there any in-universe explanation as to why it didn't come up til the 24th Century? (obviously RL explanation is that the writers hadn't thought of it yet)
I mean, was there some major change in warp engines between the two eras that made production of trilithium in the 23rdC not happen? (I know they figured out how to synthesise dilithium by the 24th, but...). If not, we're good to go. In fact, if my science officer is the first to try an experiment like this, that would actually be super neat-o.
So, I'm back to the "light up the star" plot resolution trope. I'll save the accretion disc shenanigans for Round II with this particular enemy (a later story).
Kuri
Looks like supernova is back on the menu boys!
That's great. Just what I needed, thanks @Go-Captain! You are hereby promoted to chief science officer.
I just need to sort out a timeline problem: The references all come from TNG era. My story is TOS era (2260s). Is there any in-universe explanation as to why it didn't come up til the 24th Century? (obviously RL explanation is that the writers hadn't thought of it yet
)I mean, was there some major change in warp engines between the two eras that made production of trilithium in the 23rdC not happen? (I know they figured out how to synthesise dilithium by the 24th, but...). If not, we're good to go. In fact, if my science officer is the first to try an experiment like this, that would actually be super neat-o.
So, I'm back to the "light up the star" plot resolution trope. I'll save the accretion disc shenanigans for Round II with this particular enemy (a later story).
Kuri
TOS era makes this trickier, unfortunately part of the Generations story is how the Romulans were trying to make a weapon, how they had yet to succeed, and how Soran is the one to do it. There is something about the Romulans not being able to be stabilize the trilithium, or the weapon as a whole. It would be worth while for you to watch Generations. Voyager has an episode where they're implicated in a crime, because dilithium can be synthesized into trilithium.@Go-Captain *looks up trilithium on Memory Alpha and wikipedia* Hmmm... *puts on LOTR orc voice...*
Looks like supernova is back on the menu boys!
That's great. Just what I needed, thanks @Go-Captain! You are hereby promoted to chief science officer.
I just need to sort out a timeline problem: The references all come from TNG era. My story is TOS era (2260s). Is there any in-universe explanation as to why it didn't come up til the 24th Century? (obviously RL explanation is that the writers hadn't thought of it yet
I mean, was there some major change in warp engines between the two eras that made production of trilithium in the 23rdC not happen? (I know they figured out how to synthesise dilithium by the 24th, but...). If not, we're good to go. In fact, if my science officer is the first to try an experiment like this, that would actually be super neat-o.
So, I'm back to the "light up the star" plot resolution trope. I'll save the accretion disc shenanigans for Round II with this particular enemy (a later story).
Kuri
What we might have is trilithium being an artificial material with tricky engineering. I don't know what that makes the trilithium resin, perhaps some sort of dilute sticky pile of trilithium mixed with a load of other junk? Maybe trilithium is pure, and since it works in an extremely small quantity maybe you could reasonably have it so the resin works in extremely large quantities. For that to work you would have to declare that the TOS engines store boat loads of resin, but I don't think that fits. The TOS engines do not consume piles of dilithium like coal in a furnace, and I believe the byproduct of trilithium resin comes in very small quantities.
You might be best off with warp field shenanigans, or something less spectacular.
@Go-Captain I was thinking my science officer had requested the engineering officer to start stockpiling the residue right at the beginning of the voyage (they'd normally dispose of it). The engineering officer's like, "Huh? What for?" and the SO's like "Muahahaha I'm a mad scientist who wants to run some tests" (he's getting the idea it might inhibit fusion but not sure how to test it yet). EO secures it in a suspension field for now but keeps nagging the SO that it's unstable and he needs to do something about it or get rid of it - like a ticking bomb.
Then events take over and they forget it until the key moment when they are out of options and the SO's like, "OK... this might or might not work, but what if we transport that trilithium into the star? That might make it go supernova..."
Cue all the moral dilemmas of taking such an action. Then the cap's like, "OK, take the shot."
Whaddyafink about that???
Then events take over and they forget it until the key moment when they are out of options and the SO's like, "OK... this might or might not work, but what if we transport that trilithium into the star? That might make it go supernova..."
Cue all the moral dilemmas of taking such an action. Then the cap's like, "OK, take the shot."
Whaddyafink about that???
Rather than being unique, you could have it so it is standard for ships of the time to just stockpile trilithium resin, a little like how nuclear power plants store spent fuel on site. Depending on how much is created each year, the ships might offload the resin every time the engines get a major overhaul, which itself could be a 5 or 10 year cycle, or they might store it for the entire life of the ship. If the ship is near the end of one of those cycles, and if there is theory pointing toward trilithium being able to halt fusion in addition to its use as a biogenic weapon, similar to how theoretical work on dilithium regeneration inspires Spock, then you might have everything in place in a natural manner.
Since it is Kirk's era it also stands to reason the ships might purposefully carry trilithium resin for use as a biogenic weapon, considering General Order 24. In addition to that, playing off the nuclear waste angle, there could be no efficient, or safe way to dispose of the stuff. Keeping the stuff, most of the time, away from inhabited planets, and on the move, in an armed platform might be considered generally better than continuously keeping it in one place near a solar system.
I just remembered another warp engine waste product.
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Antimatter_waste
Since it is Kirk's era it also stands to reason the ships might purposefully carry trilithium resin for use as a biogenic weapon, considering General Order 24. In addition to that, playing off the nuclear waste angle, there could be no efficient, or safe way to dispose of the stuff. Keeping the stuff, most of the time, away from inhabited planets, and on the move, in an armed platform might be considered generally better than continuously keeping it in one place near a solar system.
I just remembered another warp engine waste product.
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Antimatter_waste
@Go-Captain yeah that sounds pretty good. Thanks!
Now I've got a new question (for all interested!). When a star goes supernova, the explosion coming out maybe goes at 0.1 warp...
(from wikipedia)
"Such extreme catastrophes may also expel much, if not all, of its stellar material away from the star,[5] at velocities up to 30,000 km/s or 10% of the speed of light."
However, it goes on to say that "This drives an expanding and fast-moving shock wave"
I'm wondering about that "fast-moving" bit. IE the speed of that shockwave. If it is no faster than the initial expulsion, then assuming my ship gets at least a few seconds of a window to go to warp speed, Warp Factor 1 will be sufficient to outrun the shock wave.
Correct?
K
Now I've got a new question (for all interested!). When a star goes supernova, the explosion coming out maybe goes at 0.1 warp...
(from wikipedia)
"Such extreme catastrophes may also expel much, if not all, of its stellar material away from the star,[5] at velocities up to 30,000 km/s or 10% of the speed of light."
However, it goes on to say that "This drives an expanding and fast-moving shock wave"
I'm wondering about that "fast-moving" bit. IE the speed of that shockwave. If it is no faster than the initial expulsion, then assuming my ship gets at least a few seconds of a window to go to warp speed, Warp Factor 1 will be sufficient to outrun the shock wave.
Correct?
K
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