Transporters and Shields

[Timo]

The gravity nets would seem to explain the not-falling-through-floors thing. And the ship never moved in "The Next Phase"...

Even had she moved, the famed inertia dampening fields are probably gravitic devices, too. So they would have the same effect on the phased people as the floor nets would; apparently, gravity can reach phased people and objects just fine, even if EM interaction is much diluted. So nobody would be left behind when the ship accelerated.

What doesn't quite fit this picture is "Time's Arrow", where the terminology of "phasing" is used but our heroes still interact electromagnetically - that is, planetary gravity doesn't pull them through the rock beneath their feet. But this episode also establishes that there are varying degrees of phasing. Probably the EM interaction would only be completely lost in the more extreme cases, while milder phasing would just result in the observed invisibility or near-invisibility.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[CuttingEdge100]

Timo,

I'm pretty sure they didn't think clearly the effects of gravity on a phased object. A phased object would not in anyway interact with anything non phased. Gravity included.

Their feet couldn't push off the floor if they were phased...

 

[Timo]

A phased object would not in anyway interact with anything non phased. Gravity included.

Why not? Phasing is an imaginary phenomenon, with made-up rules. A rule that says that gravitic interaction between phased and non-phased phenomena is possible is a good rule: it explains how shields block transporters, and how phased people walk through walls but not through floors. A rule that says that gravity doesn't affect phased objects is a poor rule, because it doesn't explain anything and is at odds with what we see.

Indeed, from Trek we seem to learn that gravity travels faster than light: changes in the gravity of a star in ST:GEN are swiftly observed lightyears away. If phasing is a phenomenon where the target is nudged slightly forward or back in time (as "Time's Arrow" would have it), then interactions that are limited to lightspeed (such as electromagnetism or the strong and weak nuclear force) would not be able to "catch up" with phased objects, but interactions that move faster than light would still stand a chance.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[CuttingEdge100]

Timo,

Why not? Phasing is an imaginary phenomenon, with made-up rules.

The whole idea of "phasing" would be like "ghosting". They could pass through anything. I don't think they really gave much thought about the gravity issue, nor did they factor in the fact that if indeed they were phased, they couldn't breathe in any of the "non-phased" air...

 

[CuttingEdge100]

What process would require the transporter to reasonably well explain the transporter process and would have difficulty penetrate increasingly dense layers of matter or energy?

 

[Myasishchev]

A phased object would not in anyway interact with anything non phased. Gravity included.

Why not? Phasing is an imaginary phenomenon, with made-up rules. A rule that says that gravitic interaction between phased and non-phased phenomena is possible is a good rule: it explains how shields block transporters, and how phased people walk through walls but not through floors. A rule that says that gravity doesn't affect phased objects is a poor rule, because it doesn't explain anything and is at odds with what we see.

Indeed, from Trek we seem to learn that gravity travels faster than light: changes in the gravity of a star in ST:GEN are swiftly observed lightyears away. If phasing is a phenomenon where the target is nudged slightly forward or back in time (as "Time's Arrow" would have it), then interactions that are limited to lightspeed (such as electromagnetism or the strong and weak nuclear force) would not be able to "catch up" with phased objects, but interactions that move faster than light would still stand a chance.

Timo Saloniemi

Fwiw, Timo, in Generations the shockwave resulting from the collapse of the star also travels faster-than-light, so GEN is more a case study in Brannon Braga and Ronald Moore failing physics class...

 

[STR]

Fwiw, Timo, in Generations the shockwave resulting from the collapse of the star also travels faster-than-light, so GEN is more a case study in Brannon Braga and Ronald Moore failing physics class...

BB & RM do indeed fail, but not in this case. Picard ordered Warp 1 to escape, W1.0 is generally considered equal to the speed of light, therefore the shock wave was necessarily subluminal.

 

[Myasishchev]

Fwiw, Timo, in Generations the shockwave resulting from the collapse of the star also travels faster-than-light, so GEN is more a case study in Brannon Braga and Ronald Moore failing physics class...

BB & RM do indeed fail, but not in this case. Picard ordered Warp 1 to escape, W1.0 is generally considered equal to the speed of light, therefore the shock wave was necessarily subluminal.

At Veridian the sun "goes out" as seen from roughly an AU away within seconds, meaning that light from that star is in the unique position of moving faster than itself. The exploded shell of the star may not move superluminally (it could be more or less than eight minutes) but it certainly moves faster than a supernova's would.

Likewise, the Amargosa observatory is to all appearances destoryed by expelled stellar material (not an invisible high-frequency burst of light) that must be traveling at a huge percentage of c.

 

[Timo]

It's up to debate how much idle time was cut from between the missile launch and the arrival of the "darkness wave". Since we're looking at two badly winded senior citizens, one at the top of a mountain and of his career and with no intention to move, and another at the bottom of a mountain and of his career and with nothing to gain by moving (except perhaps another comeuppance from the top dog), it wouldn't be that implausible to cut out five minutes of them catching their breaths.

As for the Amargosa star blowing up, a high percentage of c is possible, but there's no indication of superluminal effects there in that exact scene. One may argue about why Worf didn't tell anybody that the FTL sensors had just shown the star blowing up, but instead chose to wait until the truth reached the starship's windows... However, there's no requirement for the Amargosa observatory to lie several lightminutes away from the star, like there is for Veridian. So perhaps the star really was just a couple of dozen seconds away, and Worf was slow to react to the beep-beep of his console (or was busy reacting to the gunfight at the observatory!), whereas the debris wave that obliterated the station moved at a relatively slow speed.

The part where one is prompted to believe in FTL effects is in the Stellar Cartography scene, where Data tells that starships were forced to alter their courses. Unless those ships sailed mere lighthours away from Amargosa (and the overall plot would suggest that none did), the gravitic effects of the explosion must have propagated at FTL speeds.

This makes good overall sense, really. To allow for the rest of the movie to make sense, we should probably argue that warp drives and subspace phenomena are quite sensitive to changes in gravity, even to minimal and distant ones such as the slight, slow redistribution of a star's mass in a supernova-like explosion. After all, we know that subspace fields can be used to alter mass, so there's already a known physical connection between subspace and gravity. Now, if the Nexus is a subspace phenomenon, it could be especially sensitive - explaining how it travels at high warp for most of the time, but readily slows to a crawl near stars and planets, and is hugely affected by minor changes in gravity.

If gravity really has a "subspace component", it makes sense that starships and other "subspace devices" would feel gravitic effects even across great distances, at "subspace speeds", and be majorly affected by them...

Timo Saloniemi