Why Not "Phasers to narrow beam" more often?

[Samuel]

Ships phasers set to "narrow beam" means the twin beams converse and hit a single spot. presumably concentrating their destructive power.
We say it in an attempt to break apart the asteroid in "The Paradise Syndrome" and to break through the planetary shields in "Whom Gods Destroy". Note that both times they failed to accomplish their purpose.

Now, I won't get in to the issue of how two phaser beams can be seen diverging when leaving the ship but then converging near their target as I fully understand the need to save money by using stock footage.
Also, I assume that narrow beam would only be used when the precise distance to their target was certain so their convergent point could be accurately calculated.

But what about other instances in original series episodes. In "The Apple" and "Who Mourns for Adonis" the ship was firing on single points on the planet surface. In neither case was narrow beam phasers used though presumably quick destruction was kind of important.

And in "The Doomsday Machine" Enterprise was at extremely close range to the planet killer, Decker already knew the machines hull was pure neutronium and that the Constellations phasers had earlier been ineffective against it. Decker noting "we were too far away". Yet Decker didn't order a narrow beam phaser attack.

And in these three episodes mentioned you can't make the "stock footage" argument because the effects scenes of the phasers striking Apollo's temple, Vaal, and the Planet Killer were all custom made effects for those episodes only.

Thoughts? Other than I have way too much time on my hands. I suppose you could argue that "narrow beam phasers" were not developed until the 3rd season.....


"

 

[C.E. Evans]

I've always looked at it as being the longer or repeated contact a phaser has with a target, the more effective it is. It could be argued that phasers are usually already at narrow beam and have to be specifically set to wide-beam though...

 

[Timo]

The views of phasers hitting Apollo or Vaal's lairs were pretty damn "narrow" in every sense. The two beams hit the target closer to each other than the originating emitters were; the beams themselves were consiredably narrower, too.

In contrast, the beams hitting the asteroid in "Paradise Syndrome" might have impacted kilometers apart and been hundreds of meters wide, for all the visuals show. That is, we could barely tell two impact points from one even if their distance were 100 kilometers, which would only be about five percent of the diameter of the rock at best.

So we're basically left free to argue whether the specific command "narrow beam" actually represents an exceptional mode of phaser use, or merely tells the gunner not to use any exceptional mode (even though the situation might seem to warrant one).

It would make excellent sense for Scotty in "Whom Gods Destroy" to specifically say "No, we won't try the gentle touch even though the Captain is down there - we punch through hard", or alternately "No, we won't try and overload the shields with a wide beam that will hurt nobody once the shield goes down - we punch through hard".

Whether Spock really needs to say that wide beams won't work against a Moon-sized asteroid is less clear. If they can melt continents, and Spock has two months to do the melting, then perhaps wide beams would be the intuitively correct choice (perhaps with the venting of melted surface matter steering the rock off its destructive course)? And perhaps it takes a Vulcan to (wrongly?) conclude that an Armageddon-style splitting with standard, i.e. narrow phasers would be preferable in this specific case where the rock comes with this convenient prefracturing?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tenacity]

How about, over 99.9% of the beams were "narrow," a few millimeters in diameter, and a small fraction of the energy was wider and this was inherent to phaser beams and unavoidable.

 

[Timo]

This would help explain why a hand phaser beam that looks to have about the thickness of a character's finger can be used to precision-cut holes and grooves apparently quite a bit narrower.

Perhaps the thick beams fired by starships get physically stripped of much of their halo when traveling through an atmosphere, explaining why they hit the Temple of Apollo at much reduced thickness?

Might equally well be that it's all an optical illusion, though: the human eye always sees the basically infinitely narrow and only slightly less than infinitely bright beam as exactly, say, one second of arc thick, regardless of distance to the viewer.

Or that it's weird physics, and the beam always seems the same thickness at all distances because that's how phaser beams work - much like they always take the same time to travel from gun to target, regardless of distance (meters or lightminutes).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tenacity]

it's weird physics

Go with that.

 

[Samuel]

I guess this all completely ignores that in a vacuum and under most atmospheric conditions phasers, if they function remotely like lasers wouldn't be visible anyway.

 

[Tenacity]

According to Riker, lasers wouldn't even penitate a starship's lowest level shields/deflectors.

So not lasers. They being visible might have to do with phaser beams being energize particle streams

 

[Samuel]

Some noncanon publications have suggested that there is a tachyon component (tachyons are theoretical faster than light particles) to phasers which would explain their ability to be used in targeting vessels moving at warp speed. It is possible that the visible component of phaser beams is a side effect of the tachyons in the beam if true.

Note, in ST:TMP the phasers draw power from the warp engines which would seem to reinforce the idea of their being faster than light particles in the streams. Also in "The Paradise Syndrome" IIRC it is shown that the phasers are drawing power from the warp drive (which results in the stardrive of the ship being disabled).

And I never said that phasers were lasers Tenacity. I said if they "function remotely like" lasers. Which stands to reason as in Roddenberry's original outline for Star Trek the phasers were in fact "lasers".

 

[Tenacity]

And I never said that phasers were lasers Tenacity

I understood that.

 

[Timo]

In ENT, all sorts of adversaries consistently identify the hero guns as "particle beams", and the heroes in turn return the favor as regards alien death rays glowing in vacuum.

We might argue phasers are fundamentally different from those old phase guns, but I don't really see the need.

Now, there have been death rays explicated as "lasers" in Trek, too. But amusingly enough, the most recent episode of DSC is our only offender in showing a laser beam glowing in vacuum. All the other lasers were shown firing inside an atmosphere, or not firing at all!

(Or was that red beam a mere simulation, part of the VR system helping Tyler complete his job? It would be hellishly difficult to precision-cut if one couldn't see where the beam was going.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[MAGolding]

The views of phasers hitting Apollo or Vaal's lairs were pretty damn "narrow" in every sense. The two beams hit the target closer to each other than the originating emitters were; the beams themselves were consiredably narrower, too.

In contrast, the beams hitting the asteroid in "Paradise Syndrome" might have impacted kilometers apart and been hundreds of meters wide, for all the visuals show. That is, we could barely tell two impact points from one even if their distance were 100 kilometers, which would only be about five percent of the diameter of the rock at best...
Timo Saloniemi

If the two impact points being 100 kilometers away would be about five percent of the diameter of the asteroid or less, the asteroid would be least 2,000 kilometers (1242.742 miles) in diameter.

Spock says:

SPOCK: Doctor, that asteroid is almost as large as your Earth's moon. Far enough away, the angle necessary to divert it enough to avoid destruction is minute, but as the asteroid approaches this planet, the angle becomes so great that even the power of a starship

Spock may mean that the asteroid has almost:

1) the mass of Earth's moon.

2) the volume of Earth's moon, its mass depending on its relative density.

3) the dimensions of Earth's moon. Since the volume varies with the cube of the dimensions, an asteroid with 0.90 the diameter of Earth's moon would have only 0.729 the volume of Earth's moon.

For the sake of being able to divert the asteroid we may hope Spock doesn't mean almost the mass of Earth's moon.

Earth's moon Luna has a mass of 7.432 times 10 to the 22nd power kilograms, which is 0.012300 of Earth's mass. It has a volume of 2.1958 times 10 to the 10th power cubic kilometers, giving it a density of 3.344 grams per cubic centimeter, about 0.606 of Earth's average density. It has a average radius of 1,737.1 kilometers (1,079.3839 miles), 0.273 of Earth's, giving it an average diameter of 3,474.2 kilometers (2,158.7678 miles).

If Spock meant that the asteroid had a diameter "almost as large as your Earth's moon", he might have meant that it was 0.75 the diameter of the moon, or 2,605.65 kilometers (1,619.075 miles). That would give it a volume 0.4218 that of the moon, and thus a mass 0.4218 of the moon if they had the same density. If the asteroid had a lower density it might have about 0.33 of the mass of the moon or something. That's a mighty big asteroid.

Astronomical bodies above a certain mass will have a gravity intense enough to overcome the resistance of their materials and pull themselves into spheroidal shapes like planets and achieve hydrostatic equilibrium.

Rhea, a moon of Saturn, was said to be the smallest body in our solar system carefully measured and probably in hydrostatic equilibrium, with a radius of 763.8 kilometers (457.82 miles) and a diameter of 1,527.6 kilometers (949.20 miles). But the asteroid Ceres, with a a radius of 473 kilometers (293.909 miles) and a diameter of 946 kilometers (587.8 miles) is said to be in hydrostatic equilibrium and considered a dwarf planet.

Vesta, the second largest asteroid, has a slightly irregular shape. It has dimensions of 572.6 kilometers (355.79 miles) by 557.2 kilometers (343.23 miles) by 446.4 kilometers (277.38 miles).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Solar_System_objects_by_size

Here you can see an image of the asteroid from the original version of "The Paradise Syndrome".

http://www.theviewscreen.com/the-paradise-syndrome/

Here you can see the less colorful but more realistic version of the asteroid from the remastered version of the episode.

http://www.startrek.com/database_article/paradise-syndrome-the

You can see that the asteroid seems more irregular than Vesta and thus probably a lot smaller than Vesta.

How can the asteroid be almost as large as Earth's moon and yet have such an irregular shape?

Possibly it is part of the nickel-iron core of some larger body that was struck by another body and shattered. If that was recent enough, the solar system in the episode would be full of dangerous fragments threatening the planets, and the asteroid might not yet have pulled itself into a spherical shape. I don't know how to calculate how long it would take for an irregular nickel-iron core fragment to pull itself into a spherical shape.

SPOCK: To destroy it. A narrow beam concentrated on a single spot will split that mass.

SPOCK: Co-ordinates, Mister Chekov.
CHEKOV: Tau eight point seven. Beta point zero four one.
SPOCK: That is our target. The asteroid's weakest point.
CHEKOV: Almost dead centre, sir.
SPOCK: Lock all phasers on that mark. Maximum intensity, narrow beam. I want to split that fissure wide open.
MCCOY: You sound like you're cutting a diamond.

Many stony - not nickel-iron - asteroids are made of two or more smaller pieces loosely joined together, and rotate fast enough that their centrifugal force is almost enough to overcome their gravity and fling them apart. Thus they have weak spots where their pieces are joined together and cutting them at the junction will cause them to fly apart, possibly with enough speed to drift far enough to avoid the planet after 2 months.

So Spock's strategy would make a lot of sense with a more normal sized asteroid that is weakly held together.

Maybe Earth's entire solar system is a member of the Federation, but is subdivided into several subdivisions that are not subject to each. like the Martian colonies, the United Earth, and the moon government. Thus Earth's physical moon is not under Earth's jurisdiction, only that of its own government, the United Solar System, and the Federation. But maybe an asteroid, a little larger than the asteroid in "The paradise Syndrome" has been moved into Earth orbit to be mined. Maybe that asteroid is under the political jurisdiction of the United Earth Government, and is owned by the United Earth, and thus by the citizens of Earth.

There is reason to believe that during the Cardassian occupation of Bajor several asteroids were moved into orbit around Bajor and mined until they were totally destroyed, thus making the number of Bajoran moons fluctuate.

In the DS9 first season episode "The Nagus" Nog reads a text (date of composition uncertain):

JAKE: That was pretty good. Want to try some more?
NOG: The lar, largest planet is Bajor. It has three moons?
JAKE: You got it. Keep going, keep going.
NOG: The third moon, it has

And in another first season episode, "Progress" Sisko makes a log entry:

Station log. Stardate 46844.3. With the help of the Federation, Bajor is about to commence its first large-scale energy transfer, the tapping of the molten core of its fifth moon, Jeraddo.

Maybe Spock was thinking of that hypothetical asteroid moved into Earth orbit as being a similar temporary second moon of Earth when he said:

SPOCK: Doctor, that asteroid is almost as large as your Earth's moon...

That would make "The Paradise Syndrome" seem much more plausible.