Starfleet Phasers

[scotpens]

I don't think there's any TNG technobabble on the issue. Not on screen, that is. All we have is basic terminology: these rayguns are called “phasers” in virtually all incarnations of Trek. Shouldn't that be for a reason?

Sure. And I think that reason should have something to do with what the word “phase” actually means. There is no real-world meaning of that word that could possibly be interpreted to carry that meaning, and since nearly every sense of the useage related to energy -- particularly DIRECTED energy -- involves the timing characteristics of wave forms, then it's incredibly likely that explanation has something to do with the manipulation of energy waves.

From TMOST (Gene Roddenberry's words are in bold):

A number of early changes were simply an effort to keep Star Trek's technology ahead of present-day scientific developments. This was the reason Gene reversed himself on an earlier decision in the “planning” stage and discarded the term “Laser,” substituting the term “Phaser.”

We were two days into filming on the second pilot when we realized that lasers might very well become commonplace by the time the show got on the air, or at least within the next couple of years. Rather than run the risk of being outdated, we decided to say “phaser” instead. The reason we picked phaser is the “phasing” principle in physics by which power can be increased. It was logical, and it sounded good, so we used it. We didn't want people saying to us three years from now, “Oh, come on now, lasers can't do that.”

Of course, neither G.R. nor anyone else working on the show could have forseen that the biggest future uses of lasers would be scanning barcodes on merchandise and reading the data, audio and images on little plastic discs.

Even the term “phased out of this universe” isn't just bad technobabble; in any real sense of the English language it is, in fact, gibberish.

To me, “phased out of this universe” sounds like a colloquial hyperbole -- like “beat the crap out of someone” or “knocked into the middle of next week.”

 

[Timo]

For our TNG heroes, it's something way more concrete, though - in "The Next Phase" and "Time's Arrow" at least.

And the latter even offers an explanation of sorts: the phase to be manipulated (be it by the special devices peculiar to that episode, by phase cloaks, by transporters or by phasers, or so goes my interpretation) is that of some sort of an "existence wave" that deals with how things exist in time. Nudge things forward or backward in time, and their interaction with the present is altered, lessened, so that they e.g. move more effortlessly from place to place (phase cloak, transporter) or lose existential coherence (phaser).

That's complete nonsense science, of course. But it's a self-contained, coherent branch of nonsense science, which really is the best possible thing for one to have in a scifi show. And "phasing" seems to be the proper terminology for describing that science.

"Time's Arrow" shows how different realms can be reached by tuning one's phase out of this universe and into synch with the other. One wonders which phase setting would move our heroes to Phaser Hell where all their gunned-down enemies went...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[tau136]

Take a knife: whittle some wood, carve some meat, wound a guy attacking you, hamstring some persistent attacker, throat-cut your bete noire. Now make the knife a phaser.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

But if they said so wrt the transporter, and had guns called ionizers, it would again make sense to assume that the two operate on the same principle and that the word "ionize" has gained a new meaning in the 22nd century.

Why? The name "ionizer" implies that the weapon is designed to ionize its targets. Insert technical explanation there. Same again for the transporter: your body is being broken down into a plasma of free protons and electrons and then reconstituted at the other end. This is probably going to be a very painful way to travel, but you can get a workable explanation without totally changing the definition of words for no reason.

And if the words don't mean what they're supposed to mean, why use them at all? If "phase" has nothing to do with real world phase, we might as well just call it "chikimung."

It's possible that the two uses of "phasing" in Trek are unrelated, just like blood plasma and the plasma in our plasma televisions or candle flames are.

Except that in both cases "plasma" is a word with a defined meaning to either the medical community or the scientific community (plasma TVs literally do involve the formation of plasma).

When science discovers some new concept unrelated to anything that came before, they usually invent a new word for it. That's why the word "transistor" exists instead of "solid state vacuum tube." Granted that sometimes an old term can be grandfathered in for an unfamiliar device (the term "hit the gas!" is applicable even if you're driving an electric car) but the old term still has to derive from SOMETHING. That means the only way modern phasers could operate in a way that has nothing to do with REAL WORLD phase is if they're distantly related to a device that DID (phase pistols?) but don't anymore, and instead do something else altogether.

"plasma" was chosen to describe phenomena unrelated to the basic meaning of the word, too.

Not in the real world, no. Again, even plasma displays are so named because of pockets of gas in the display are electronically converted into a plasma and emit light at a controlled frequency. Blood plasma is only so named from the root of the word "plasm" and is parallel and separate from its physical definition.

 

[Timo]

Why? The name "ionizer" implies that the weapon is designed to ionize its targets. Insert technical explanation there. Same again for the transporter: your body is being broken down into a plasma of free protons and electrons and then reconstituted at the other end.

But having the transporter work by adjusting the phase of matter makes exactly as much sense as having it work by ionizing: a physical phenomenon by that name exists, but cannot explain the technology without one adding 99% rationalization. It's fairly irrelevant what this phenomenon is, then - or even whether it underlies the technology at all.

And if the words don't mean what they're supposed to mean, why use them at all? If "phase" has nothing to do with real world phase, we might as well just call it "chikimung."

That's not how language works when you let engineers operate it, though. We get weird, "counterlingual" uses for "booting" or "charging" or "spiking" or "rectifying". And nobody is bothered by the fact that chemists consider solutions to be problems... Language can and will accommodate overlapping jargon.

Except that in both cases "plasma" is a word with a defined meaning to either the medical community or the scientific community (plasma TVs literally do involve the formation of plasma).

Indeed. And "phase" in this case would have a definite meaning for the phase engineers.

Not in the real world, no. Again, even plasma displays are so named because of pockets of gas in the display are electronically converted into a plasma and emit light at a controlled frequency. Blood plasma is only so named from the root of the word "plasm" and is parallel and separate from its physical definition.

So, yes in the real world, yes. "Plasma" has a root word that in a very vague way describes the true nature of blood plasma ("that which gives blood its form"), but does not apply to ionized gas in any way and in fact grossly misleads the reader if he thinks ionized gas has "form". So the people who adapted "plasma" to describe ionized gas did this with blatant disregard to the previous meaning of that word. Indeed, the connection between "real" plasma (blood plasma) and the derived physical concept is unknown, but anecdotal evidence suggests Langmuir simply thought ionized gas looked a bit like blood!

So plasma is currently being grossly misused, and nobody minds. Phase could be grossly misused as well - but "Time's Arrow" suggests that it is not. One can indeed "phase things out of time" or "out of our realm" in the Trek universe, by adjusting the phase of our wavelike existence.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Why? The name "ionizer" implies that the weapon is designed to ionize its targets. Insert technical explanation there. Same again for the transporter: your body is being broken down into a plasma of free protons and electrons and then reconstituted at the other end.

But having the transporter work by adjusting the phase of matter makes exactly as much sense as having it work by ionizing: a physical phenomenon by that name exists, but cannot explain the technology without one adding 99% rationalization.

Pretty much, yeah. 99% is better than 100%.

Besides, I never said "phase of matter." More likely the only thing transporters rely on is some funky use of quantum entanglement where the disjointed particles remain in phase until they reach their destination.

See? Rationalization works just fine without having to change the definition of a word. I'm all for the use of handwavium, but there's no need to replace REAL science with the stuff.

That's not how language works when you let engineers operate it, though.

Even word shifts follow some logical progression. Even the word "booting" with related to computers comes from the word "bootstrapping," meaning a process that builds on itself with little external help.

OTOH, phase isn't an engineering term, it's a mathematical one. Mathematics, unlike engineering, is NOT subject to the quirky whims of engineers.

Indeed. And "phase" in this case would have a definite meaning for the phase engineers.

Yes. This is bound to be in some way related to the definition it holds today, and that gives us a pretty good baseline to figure out what they're talking about.

So, yes in the real world, yes. "Plasma" has a root word that in a very vague way describes the true nature of blood plasma ("that which gives blood its form"), but does not apply to ionized gas in any way and in fact grossly misleads the reader if he thinks ionized gas has "form".

Only if the reader is unfamiliar with the context in which the word "blood plasma" appears. They're homonyms, two completely different words with two completely different meanings.

Now, if you want to make the case that the "phase" in "phaser" is related to "phase of matter," then that's a good example of another similar homonym. Or if it involves some kind of quantum phase shift that instantly turns a certain number of electrons into antiprotons. Any of these will do. The one thing that won't fit here is if you take the word "phase" and invent a totally new meaning for it that doesn't follow from any real or imaginary science. At that point, it's just a chikimunga ray; it works however you want it to work, and ten some.

So the people who adapted "plasma" to describe ionized gas did this with blatant disregard to the previous meaning of that word.

Actually, it was in REFERENCE to blood plasma that the name was first given when the phenomenon was identified in the 19th century. Sort of like the "up, down and strange" quarks are a reference to obscure characters from Victorian literature.

In a way, this partly offers that often ignored possibility with regard to phasers: it may actually be a proper name for the company that makes the weapons, sort of like "Bofors" or "Winchesters." Plenty of real world precedent for that; German aircraft in WWII were often referred to as "Messerschmidts" both by their pilots and by their opponents, and same again for some of the aircraft flown by the Americans in WW-II (Vietnamese civilians sometimes referred to these as "Grummans", which became a catch-all term for any high performance military aircraft) and likewise for the Vietnamese/Soviet Bloc with the ubiquitous "Mig."

So plasma is currently being grossly misused...

No, it's a homonym; a similar word is invented with a different definition. The point is, you can't just take a word and slap any arbitrary definition on it because it sounds cool, especially in science fiction. "Phase" has real definitions in the real world, so if you're going to use the word then you have to link it, somehow, to one of those real definitions. If you don't want to do that, then make up a NEW word that means whatever you want it to mean.

So if you want the term "phased out of our realm" to be anything more than bullshit technobabble that anyone with a high school diploma will laugh at, you've got to either rationalize that as a colloquialism, or rationalize that based on some degree of real-world science.

 

[Timo]

OTOH, phase isn't an engineering term, it's a mathematical one. Mathematics, unlike engineering, is NOT subject to the quirky whims of engineers.

It's very much an electrical engineering term, and electricians would often be surprised to hear of the maths angle. They're at cross-purposes with mathematicians anyway: for a two-dimensional coordinate system (incidentally used for describing the phase property), they label the axes "i" and "j", while a mathematician uses no label for the real axis but picks "i" for the imaginary axis that corresponds to the "j" of electric engineering... Hilarity ensues.

Only if the reader is unfamiliar with the context in which the word "blood plasma" appears. They're homonyms, two completely different words with two completely different meanings.

Bullshit. They are the same word, used in two different ways. Whether one chooses to treat them as homonyms after the fact is a matter of taste, but etymologically this would be incorrect. A real homonym would be like "pallet": the meaning of cargo holder comes from (if we trust Wiktionary here) old Anglo-Norman roots, the meaning of straw bed from the Latin word for straw or chaff, and the heraldic meaning from the (distantly related) Latin word for cutting or slashing, and the three words currently have converged into the exact same English spelling, creating confusion (and false etymologies incorrectly connecting straw bed frames with cargo support structures). But "plasma" comes from the same root in blood and ionized gas alike, and is better compared to the following:

"Nabla" is the name of an old Celtic harp. It's also the name of a differential operator whose symbol is shaped (incredibly vaguely!) like that harp. The two words are not "homonyms", they are one and the same, used for different purposes (and largely to humorous intent, because mathematicians have this sort of perverse sense of humor).

Now, if you want to make the case that the "phase" in "phaser" is related to "phase of matter," then that's a good example of another similar homonym. Or if it involves some kind of quantum phase shift that instantly turns a certain number of electrons into antiprotons. Any of these will do.

The "Time's Arrow" -based rationalization would rely on this, yes. Matter or existence has phase, according to 24th century (and supposedly 22nd century) science, and this can be manipulated to alter other parameters of existence. But it's a bit unlikely that the use of "phase" in this context could withstand rigorous mathematical equating with the phase of conventional waveform analysis. It's just a nicely working analogue, the sort which engineers love to no end. That's how we have things like electric "current" or electron "shells" or "orbital radii".

No, it's a homonym; a similar word is invented with a different definition.

That's not what "homonym" is. What you're describing is a narrow sub-category known as "polyseme" - the Wikipedia example word for that is "mouth", which can be the mouth of a river or the mouth of a fish in that river. The word is one and the same, and only the meaning has been broadened out, in a manner that may be confusing to the uninitiated, or then perfectly obvious to the casual reader, or then anything in between.

The point is, you can't just take a word and slap any arbitrary definition on it because it sounds cool, especially in science fiction.

Usually you can, will, and have to. It's just that you have to justify yourself. It's pretty much like writing a detective story: if you don't give all the clues to the reader, you have failed in writing a detective story (but may still have created an enjoyable piece of literary art), and if you don't give all the definitions pertaining to a fictional future or alternate realm to the reader, you have failed in writing a science fiction or fantasy story. You have to define "warp drive" as being "the means of traveling fast between stars, as opposed to impulse drive" in order to have "Where No Man" work as a piece of science fiction. The episode does that, without having to resort to clumsy exposition - and this automatically supersedes any dictionary definition of "warp". It also defines "phaser rifle" as "a gun almost good enough for killing gods", thereby starting down a path where the word "phaser" gets distanced from dull mathematics and gains a well-defined scifi meaning.

In a way, this partly offers that often ignored possibility with regard to phasers: it may actually be a proper name for the company that makes the weapons, sort of like "Bofors" or "Winchesters."

This is always a nice and enjoyable possibility. The use of the root word "phase" in a very closely related context in ENT sort of undermines it in this particular case, though. (Or the context may be unrelated, but it's hellishly difficult to argue that when we so clearly see that "phase pistol" is the same as "hand phaser" in every practical sense.)

Another commonly quoted possibility is that "phaser" is an acronym or a mutated acronym - in which case we could argue that the "PhASE" in "PhASE gun" is the original acronym and is not (necessarily) related to the waveform concept of phase, and the verb form of "phasering" has evolved from there, further back-evolving so that the thing that does phasering is the phaser. Sort of the reverse of how we got "lasing" from the acronym "LASER". Engineers do a lot of that - and the military loves acronyms, especially the misleading ones...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

OTOH, phase isn't an engineering term, it's a mathematical one. Mathematics, unlike engineering, is NOT subject to the quirky whims of engineers.

It's very much an electrical engineering term...

Only insofar as the application of sinusoidal equations to describe electrical relationships.

and electricians would often be surprised to hear of the maths angle.

LOL What?! Electricians never use the term EXCEPT in a mathematical context!

Bullshit. They are the same word, used in two different ways.

No, they're homonyms. Different words with the same spelling and pronunciations but different meanings. Sort of like "fire" as in active combustion and "fire" as in termination from a job.

The "Time's Arrow" -based rationalization would rely on this, yes. Matter or existence has phase, according to 24th century (and supposedly 22nd century) science, and this can be manipulated to alter other parameters of existence.

Fine. You win. A wizard did it, so just slap whatever arbitrary definition you want onto any existing scientific term you want.

 

[Omega_Glory]

The reason for phasers vaporizing stuff is that it looked really cool on 1960's TV. A dramatic story is the priority.

 

[Mr Silver]

it looked really cool on 1960's TV

Yes but I'd imagine another reason would be that it was cheaper than spending episode budgets on makeup wounds and other such stuff