"Remember how it goes:
You throw a rock, I throw a spear. You throw a spear, I fire a laser. You fire a laser, I personally beam onto the bridge and single handedly kill your crew.
Understood?"
Yes Dr. Ms.The Monarch
Something that I started wondering, when I watched that TNG episode where someone tries pointing lasers at the Enterprise, is if they could still be a viable weapon in the star trek universe if you put enough energy into one. Like, barely-space-capable species laser weapons might barely be noticable to the shields, but if you had like, a laser with a significant fraction of a star’s energy output pumped into it, or just a billion of those primitive laser-wielding ships, surely the shields have got to give eventually
I see we are going with the 40K “flashlight theory”
XKCD has the prototype
According to Memory Alpha, the borgs in TNG use lasers to cut through hulls of ships and even planet rocks
Theoretically you can put any amount of energy into a laser, as long as you can redirect and synchronise waves. And as several stars and black holes have gravities and stuff that can affect the starships, it seems evident you should be able to charge a laser enough to damage any USS starship.
And as the phase cannons seem to output 80-500 GJ, you should be able to match that fairly easily with 10 grams of matter annihilation or a second of about 10e-15 of the energy output of a sun type star.
Interestingly enough, phase modulation of a laser weapon makes more sense than of a particle beam (which the phaser weapons are), and also you don’t suffer from recoil like from phasers.
Polarize the hull plating!
Fun fact: all starfleet ship’s hulls are now constantly polarized, mostly to deflect random space dust, debris, etc. while traveling at sub-light. Not sure if it’s stated in canon when they started doing this, but in a few episodes, before walking on/working with the hull, it gets mentioned that they have to depolarize it first.
Edit: just because the guy below wants to launch an inquisition over the origin of this detail, it shouldn’t ruin everyone else’s fun here.
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I’m aware of when hull polarization began being used, but one can infer from more recent dialog that it’s now a “constantly-on” feature.
Also, the deflectors are typically for use at warp speed as they project forward from the deflector dish. A polarized hull is useful at sub-light.
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I did say “typically” used at warp, not “only”.
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Not every line of dialogue has a memory alpha citation, and I’m not going to go rewatch almost a thousand episodes and a dozen films to figure out where I heard it just to satisfy your curiosity.
I’m sorry if that’s not good enough for you, but I think I’ve been reasonably patient with your repeated demands for a citation. This isn’t a court of law. I’m here to have a fun, casual conversation, not to be interrogated.
Wouldn’t polarizing the hull basically mean magnetizing it? That always bothered me.
I would assume it’s an optical polarizer. Like on sunglasses or LCD screens.
They’re clearly forcing the shield to be split amongst two opposing ideals.
Out the window you go!
If a big magnet protects spaceship earth from cosmic rays, a smaller magnet should protect spaceship enterprise from death rays.
But seriously, my take was always that there was something like an inner and an outer hull, and by polarizing them with opposing charges you might reinforce them so explosions are less likely to blast the outer hull off. Kind of like a magnetic lock around the entire ship.
I wish we had a spin-off series of all the incorrectly reconstructed voyager tales from that future museum this would definitely be a scene LOL
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Smiling Spock in SNW channels the same energy.
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Lets beam some photon torpedoes into their crew quarters.
swap their coffee reserves for tri-cobalt devices
Widdle waser beams
Janeway really needs to moderate that coffee addiction. I don’t drink the stuff personally, but I don’t think it’s worth some of the stuff she did for a better cuppa
She only drinks tea now.
as long as it’s not Nescafé Gold Blend. that stuff makes me want to vomit from a sip.
been finding out every week that they own some random brand I’ve been using for a while >_>
Nescafé anything is shit. Literally the worst coffee.
Jacobs gives it a run for it’s money. And a runny stool for the poor sods unfortunate enough to drink it.
agreed. sadly in my area it dominates the store shelves so I rarely find bearable coffee brands :/
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It wasn’t even for better coffee, just coffee.
🤔 So like, what would stop some diplomat from just bringing a suitcase nuke with them when getting beamed on board, and setting it off?
The transporter detects and disables weapons mid beam. In at least one episode, they held a diplomat in the buffer to ask what to do about their weapon.
How the fuck is that even possible even by technobabble standards?
How would they differentiate a weapon from life-saving medical equipment, and why wouldn’t some evil villain capitalize on that fact?
Or just make the crew beam down on some planet for some meeting and nuke the meeting place?
Or just pack a ship full of antimatter and ram it into the Enterprise?
The whole way war is done in Star Trek is so fucking stupid 🤦
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See, that’s a logical and reasonable explanation and LastYearsPumpkin@feddit.ch ought to take lessons from you.
Nah, it is not “fucking stupid”
Ehh. I’m still not quite sold on that point, but I accept your explanations for the others.
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∆∆ Yeah, I figured they would react like that even with positive acknowledgement of anything logical they had to say, because surprise-surprise, they weren’t actually speaking in good faith, they were just angry someone pointed out plot holes in some dumb TV show that their own friend even acknowledged is just fiction and doesn’t matter.
You all are highly highly oversensitive and you need to grow up. If it’s just fiction don’t throw temper tantrums when people point out plot holes because you can’t tolerate any sort of criticism toward a TV show of all things.
Even crazier, they can filter out disease in the transporter. That’s how they don’t bring plagues back onto the ship after going on away missions.
How do they tell what’s a natural microbiome vs. crazy alien bacteria? Who knows, it’s a fantasy space show. Just sit back and relax.
That’s just a weak-ass cop-out and you and I know it.
Why even have plots if they have magic machines that can make any problem go away with arbitrary explanations of how they work that are neither consistent or logical within the rules of its universe?
It’s stupid. And I can bet you’re just going to respond “Well, I like it anyway so I don’t care” in which case why even bother responding?
