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The Best Particles

I like...

  • Chronitons

    Votes: 10 31.3%
  • Tachions

    Votes: 12 37.5%
  • Neutrinos

    Votes: 5 15.6%
  • Verterons

    Votes: 7 21.9%
  • Gravitons

    Votes: 7 21.9%
  • Tetryons

    Votes: 12 37.5%
  • Omicron Radiation

    Votes: 1 3.1%
  • Theta Radiation

    Votes: 2 6.3%
  • Omega Particles

    Votes: 7 21.9%

  • Total voters
    32

Jadzia

on holiday
Premium Member
Science heads are definitely turned whenever there's mention of particles in a startrek episode.

Of these commonly recurring particles, which turns your head the most?
 
I didn't think warp particles were a single type, but a mixture. They often talk about warp plasma mixture. But what do I know.
 
I like the sound of Tetryons, but have no idea what they are about. Also checked the elusive in real life Gravitons.

What is the difference between Chronitons and Tachyons?
 
Chronitons exist in a state of temporal flux, so are associated with time travel and temporal law breaking physics. You can penetrate shields with them, and step outside of the normal flow of time. Antichronitons normally reverse the effects of chronitons.

Tachyons are faster than light speed. Hypothetically possible in real science. Not really a particle in itself but a name given to any particle that is faster than light. In star trek, we get the impression there is only one kind of tachyon. They are generally associated with warp and transwarp. (Sisko's solar sailing ship achieved warp speeds because it caught naturally occurring tachyons in its sails.) They are also associated with time reversal phenomena. They are used to close temporal anomalies.

Tetryons are well defined in real physics as being 4 quark structures. (Mesons=2, Baryons=3) In the trek universe, they are always associated with things happening with subspace.

Verterons are emitted from wormholes, and maybe from singularities?

Gravitons are the hypothetical particles associated with the gravitational force (and forcefields?). They cause spatial warping. They powered Reg Barkley's super warp jump in the Nth degree. Antigravitons typically do the opposite - flattening out curved space, or collapsing spatial (topological) anomalies.

Neutrinos come up in all sorts of star trek science. Commonly considered weakly interacting particles, they can usually penetrate interference or atmospheres that nothing else can. They can be used for detecting things, and they also 'tunnel' in the quantum sense, which is the science equivalent of magic. Vague association with cloaking fields, and involved in their detection. In real science they are produced in nuclear reactions.

Theta radiation is star trek's most common radiation caused by antimatter reactions, so from warp reactor. It is damaging to life, machines and makes subspace unstable.

Omicron radiation has associations with antimatter creation, so in some ways the opposite of theta radiation.

Omegas we know are dangerous and rip holes in subspace.

Others include anyons, which are used to destroy chronitons. Thalaron radiation, which is electromagnetic radiation higher energy than gamma radiation, so is the same as cosmic rays, but not produced by cosmic processes.

Can't think of anymore. :)
 
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I voted for neutrinos, because they're the one particle in the list that definitively exists. Gravitons probably exist but are unproven, and tachyons are often theorized about but, in my view, unlikely to exist. The rest are pure technobabble, except that "chronitons" are a misrendering of "chronons," which are hypothetical quanta of time, but are units of duration (i.e. the smallest time interval that can exist in the universe) rather than actual particles.

Tetryons are well defined in real physics as being 4 quark structures. (Mesons=2, Baryons=3)

No, they aren't. You're thinking of tetrons. Stick that y in there and it becomes totally fictitious, as well as an illegitimately formed word. (The prefix is tetr- and the suffix is -on. Whoever coined the term for TNG was probably basing it on "tachyon," which is tachy- plus -on; the y goes with the prefix in that case, but there's no tetry- prefix.)

Neutrinos come up in all sorts of star trek science. Commonly considered weakly interacting particles, they can usually penetrate interference or atmospheres that nothing else can. They can be used for detecting things, and they also 'tunnel' in the quantum sense, which is the science equivalent of magic.

Nothing magical about it, unless you're referring to stage magic, in which there can be observational uncertainty about the actual position of an object, and in which that position can change in improbable ways.

The problem with neutrinos' use in Trek is that they're shown to be too easy to detect, and are too often used in ways that would require them to interact significantly with other bodies (for instance, isolating the "ghost" aliens from "Power Play").

Vague association with cloaking fields, and involved in their detection.

I think the idea is that they're the one thing that penetrates a cloaking field, because nothing can stop them.
 
...but there's no tetry- prefix.

Until one is invented, of course.

Words like "neutrino" or "positron" weren't formed by observing some sort of rigorous grammatic rules, either. It's not all Greek even when it sounds like it...

Also, anyon might or might not refer to the real-world concept of a particle that does not strictly observe either Fermi-Dirac or Bose-Einstein statistics. The name appears to be a humorous construct based on the English words "any" and "anyone", bringing forth the ambiguous basic nature of the particle.

I think the idea is that [neutrinos]'re the one thing that penetrates a cloaking field, because nothing can stop them.

That is less logical than it first sounds, because a cloak would just love to be transparent to all sorts of things, and it would have to do less work than usual to be transparent to neutrinos...

Not completely illogical, of course: the powerplant of a starship might produce all sorts of radiation that would have to be prevented from leaking to the outside, and a neutrino leak would be the one that could not be stopped.

Timo Saloniemi
 
I think the idea is that [neutrinos]'re the one thing that penetrates a cloaking field, because nothing can stop them.

That is less logical than it first sounds, because a cloak would just love to be transparent to all sorts of things, and it would have to do less work than usual to be transparent to neutrinos...

No, a cloak need to be opaque to anything emitted from inside it. A cloak can't be genuinely transparent; it functions by bending light and other radiation around the ship and back onto its original path so that it appears there's nothing there, but it can't just passively let things through or it would give away the ship's emissions. (Never mind that that's a thermodynamic impossibility, and that even if a cloak could contain all energy emitted by a spaceship, that ship would therefore overheat and cook its occupants.)
 
and that even if a cloak could contain all energy emitted by a spaceship, that ship would therefore overheat and cook its occupants.)

Surely that can be explained away by using the trusty subspace route i.e. all the radiation the ship leaks is diverted into subspace by the cloak field. The manner in which it's diverted would suggest a serious delay between the action and the eventual detection of the radiation by whatever subspace scanner the other ship has. Or it's below the noise threshold of subspace.
 
Do remember this is all pretend science, so we shouldn't over-analyze it or try too hard to contradict it with real science. It the context of the programme, it works how we see it work.
 
^^There's no reason why people who are interested in real science can't use fictional science as a launching point for discussing something more genuine. And so there's no reason to criticize other people who choose to do so.

Besides, even pretend science should be logically worked out and self-consistent. Fiction is not an excuse for conceptual sloppiness.
 
Thalaron radiation, which is electromagnetic radiation higher energy than gamma radiation, so is the same as cosmic rays, but not produced by cosmic processes.

And these are particles, how? (As an aside, cosmic rays are not really rays at all, but rather charged particles accelerated to about half the speed of light by supernovae and the like; thus, they don't even belong on the electromagnetic spectrum)
 
and that even if a cloak could contain all energy emitted by a spaceship, that ship would therefore overheat and cook its occupants.)

Surely that can be explained away by using the trusty subspace route i.e. all the radiation the ship leaks is diverted into subspace by the cloak field. The manner in which it's diverted would suggest a serious delay between the action and the eventual detection of the radiation by whatever subspace scanner the other ship has. Or it's below the noise threshold of subspace.

Perhaps this is why the Romulans chose to use forced quantum singularities as their power source despite the inherent dangers? A balancing act to say the least, but what isn't when dealing with little pet black holes. ;) If their emissions get to be an issue, they might choose to redirect them down into the quantum singularity, maybe even as a regularly timed event. I don't pretend to know the full extent of those physics, but it might serve as a measure to prevent easy-bake-oven Romulans.

Klingons on the other hand don't use this method and it might be why their cloaking systems are less effective.
 
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