Thoughts on Treknology - Effect of Phaser energy on Matter

The upper limit drilling the shaft is very wrong.

You make the mistaken assumption that the changes would make the phasers more effective on the soil. As the shaft had to be drilled very carefully to avoid collapses and tectonic chain reactions and specifically stated the changes were to make a drill, and drill isn't a single moment voosh done, it is FAR FAR FAR more likely, more like 100% certain, the changes made the phaser LESS effective on the rock. Therefor, that event proves absolutely nothing.

Please explain how this proves your point. I'm puzzled. Expecting to bore into harder denser material has always required me to get a more powerful drill or in the case of a cutting device whether it is a plasma cutter or a simple torch something much stronger to overcome the greater resistance to work done on the denser metallic/stone material I was expecting after I cut into say the surface covering layer of a material like wood.

Frank

Actually while drilling a hole in the earth with a energuy weapon it makes sense that you do it slowly and with care so the sides of the hole become thick and harden so are capable of holding any pressure or issues ground movements create. Not only that but just smashing through the earth vaporising it at normal power would make the sides uneven as it cut through differant densities of material, that could cause the sides to later crumble.



Just blasting a hole in the ground would be easy.

I do not intend to really participate in that thread. It's enough to say, that it was mentioned at Starfleet Jedi Forum:

What do you think of the figures presented in this thread?





What do you think of the figures presented in this thread?


Terribly flawed, for a large number of reasons. It's basically a re-hash of the SDN party line on phaser drilling. I'll discuss "Inheritance."

"Inheritance:" First and foremost, his assumption that phasers were tuned for maximum destruction is incorrect and at odds with the episode, which emphasizes the delicacy of the operation:

JULIANA: I'm going to monitor the density of the rock layers and adjust the strength of the particle beam as we go. That should minimise the seismic stress that we generate while we're drilling.

Second, his volume is off severely. The depth of the hole is not eight kilometers. The script indicates two benchmarks, one that eight kilometers have already been drilled. Some time after that we have a boost in power, and then the drilling rate slows after they get to within two kilometers and start dialing back. That means if you were reading the script correctly, you'd be working with a larger depth, and treating it as a lower limit of the depth, not an upper limit.

As a prior reality-based estimate, we would expect a crust depth of at least 25 km over land based on Earth. There's actually an Okudagram that suggests the depth drilled is around 2800 km, however - far from having to rely on dialog, it's possible to analyze the incident on a strictly "videographic" basis using pictures.

He's clearly off (and too low) in assuming a depth of eight kilometers - inaccurate by his choice of method (script) and severely so by his claimed preferred method (visual analysis). Not only that, but the width is off. In order for the top of hole straight through the crust of a planet to be visible from below, it needs to be conical... and to have a diameter substantially larger than 28m at the top. This is also required for the hole to be stable, incidentally. For reference, 100m wide at the top of a 10 km hole would look about the size of the Moon.

If I'm not greatly mistaken, I recall Wong's bottom-end estimate of 2m diameter didn't even fit with the scenes down in the rock for the bottom of it, that it was more like 3-4m due to ceiling height, but it's the trig and brightness factors that make it completely absurd.

The end result of all of that is that the low end of Inheritance (a scarily thin 10 km crust) using his methodology corrected only for egregious errors is almost exactly a thousand times as high as he's claiming. 20% more depth, well over 800 times the average diameter. Using a strict documentarian "visuals" approach gives 22 billion times the volume (which serves only to point out the patent absurdity of relying on small details of visual effects, IMO).

The range of reasonable figures extends easily to >10,000 times his mass disintegration rates. He's also not quite understanding collateral damage (the waste heat problemin addition to disintegrating the column of rock, the phaser drilling heated surrounding rock by 300 degrees centigrade) or the removal problem (first you must disintegrate the rock; then you must make the debris disappear somehow).





I touched on that guy's methodological failings in this blog post, with a quick reference to the phaser bit especially.

Suffice it to say, his kung fu is weak.





What do you think of the figures presented in this thread?





Yes, Phasers were used to drill a mile into the surface of Turkana IV, but it took hours to modify the Phasers for this job. Modifications were NOT done to protect the lives of people below, however, these modifications were made in order to increase the Phaser’s effectiveness against the granite rock they were attempting to tunnel through.

Granite is not an incredibly dense material and the time constraints involved in adjusting Phasers to drill 1600 meters into sand, dirt, and granite rock speaks not to the effectiveness of Phasers but rather to their ineffectiveness and how a Phaser’s effect is closely based upon the material a Phaser will be used against.

...


That reminded me of something I wrote once upon a time ...



For example, in both, Inheritance and Legacy we know that not the maximum fire power was shown.



• In Inheritance they had to watch that they don't create to much seismic stress with the drilling. Their scans have indicated that the magma pockets where they have planned to set up the infusion units are somewhat unstable. That's why Julianna was going to monitor the density of the rock layers and adjust the strength of the particle beam as they have gone. Data has said, that his calculations have indicated that the first phaser blast will be approximately nineteen seconds in duration. In this time, they should have drilled to the magma pockets. Once the phaser beam was through the crust, they have boost its intensity by twelve percent till they were short before the magma pocket. Than - nearing the somewhat unstable magma pocket - they must have reduced the strength of the beam again because, after they have drilled through all the way to the magma pockets minus the remaining two kilometers in circa 14 seconds, they have needed for the last two kilometers suddenly five seconds. apparently Julianna, who has adjust the strength of the particle beam as they have gone, has reduced the strenght as they have got near to the magma pocket to prevent seismic stress. One could assume that this was pre-decided and already considered by Data in his calculations. But that would mean that they have needed only 14 seconds for the nearly 2'800 kilometers.
  
  
• In Legacy they didn't wanted to alert the Alliance of their doing. The drilling had have to be very unnoticeable.


In both events they had quasi to made a scalpel out of their battle axe - proverbial. Nevertheless - especially in Inheritance - they have shown great firepower. The question is how much firepower they would have if they wouldn't have reduced the battle axe to a scalpel.




[...] they have had to drill through the crust and a huge part of the mantle to a magma pocket that was shortly above the core, they wanted to "restart". An earthlike planet assuming, that would be round about 2'800 kilometers and accidentally that was what Geordi has shown in the briefing:




Even if they wouldn't have increased the power it would be still circa 2'800 kilometers in 19 seconds - minus the last 2 kilometers in 5 from these 19 seconds.




PICARD, GEORDI, and DATA look on as Atrean Scientist PRAN TAINER stands before an OKUDAGRAM depicting a cross-section of the Atrean planet. Also present is Pran's human wife, JULIANA TAINER, a fiftyish woman dressed in Atrean fashion. The Atreans are a humanoid species, only slightly different from us.


JULIANA:
Captain, our situation has worsened since my husband and I first contacted you. The molten core of our planet is not just cooling -- it's begun to solidify.


PRAN:
Our gravitational field has been affected -- seismic activity has increased by a factor of three.


JULIANA:
If the cooling continues at this rate -- Atrea will become uninhabitable within thirteen months.

Everyone takes in this grim news.


GEORDI:
We could minimize seismic activity by creating isobaric fissures and releasing some of the tectonic stress -- but that would just be a temporary fix.


DATA:
The only permanent solution would be to re-liquefy the core.

Geordi stands and moves to the Okudagram.


GEORDI:
These pockets in the magma layer -- how close are they to the molten region of the core?


JULIANA:
A few kilometers, why?

Geordi turns to Data.


GEORDI:
You think that's close enough to try ferro-plasmic infusion?

Data considers, then acknowledges the possibility.
Juliana and Pran share a look -- they're not sure what this means.
Data moves toward the monitor, gesturing.


DATA:
The procedure would involve using our ship's phasers to drill down through the planet's surface and into the pockets -- where we would set up a series of plasma infusion units.


GEORDI:
We'd trigger the units by firing a modulated energy burst down through the shafts.

Juliana addresses Data.


JULIANA:
I see... injecting sufficient plasma directly into the core should trigger a chain reaction... and that will reliquify the magma...


DATA:
It should be possible to stabilize the core temperature at ninety-three percent of normal.


PRAN:
If it works, the core would remain molten for centuries.

Picard lets Pran and Juliana consider for a beat.


PICARD:
If you give your permission, we'll begin immediately.


PRAN:
Very well. But before we proceed, I'd like to update our geological surveys.



We know now, that the pockets in the magma layer are few kilometers close to the molten region of the core.

Assuming an earthlike planet, they have to drill through the crust and most of the mantle to reach the pockets few kilometers from the core.



That are 2890 km according to Wikipedia - minus the few kilometers the pockets are away from the core.

I see no reason to doubt that they have to drill through nearly 3'000 kilometers.

(A further question would be, where the molten region of the core is? It could be that they even have to drill through parts of the already solidified core to reach the molten region of the core.)



It is funny how different interpretations of the same episode can result in different values. That's why it is important to be not only good in physics but also in other areas. The best calculations would have no worth, if the assumptions on which they are based, are wrong.




That is my interpretation of what happened at Atrea.

Everyone, who argues that they could have only drilled twenty kilometres, has to answer the question, how a pocket in the magma layer, that is supposed to be only a few kilometres away from the molten region of the core, can be only twenty kilometres deep at all.

If it is only a few kilometres away from the molten region of the core and if the core is surrounded by a circa 2.800 kilometres thick mantle, the pocket in the magma layer has to be circa 2.800 kilometres deep - unless someone understands » a few kilometres « different than I understand it in that context.





[...] IF episodes like A Piece of the Action, Encounter at Farpoint, Pt 2 and Galaxy's Child demonstrate that Federation Starships can adjust their weapon output levels with a press of a button - from a wide-range pulse able to stun a city's population, to a light shower of energy to aid a starving alien being, to functioning as a scalpel and use it to perform a c-section on an alien - why would they need to adjust their weapons to be even less powerful to drill through granite?

This isn't a matter of interpretation. This is a logical fallacy. You are advocating the idea that a Federation Starship's ability to adjust their Phaser output to a lower level cannot be done without hours of modification, despite clear evidence that you are wrong. You prescribe and advocate a theory that Phaser energy has to be reduced by a measure to dramatic to safely effect granite, while ignoring the fact that - with the press of a button - Federation crews were able to deliver fantastically reduced output levels to surgically cut through organic matter, stun humanoids from orbit, and provide safe nourishment to an alien being who lived on energy. [...]


What he does not understand is, that a phaser is a very complex weapons which can have many different effects on its target. That's why some are comparing it with a Swiss Army knife.

While it may be easy to simply reduce the energy and form of the beam with pushing a few buttons, as was done in the TNG episode »Galaxy's Child«, or to change between a few other settings, e.g. to a stun mode, as was done in the TOS episode »A Piece of the Action«, it may necessitate more work to change other properties of a phaser beam.

That's only to be expected. After all, the phasers of a ship are optimized for their role as a weapon. As such, only a few settings can be changed without bigger changes in their hardware-configuration.

Apart from that, it is a question of precision. To make a c-section on an alien with a weak phaser on a distance of less than a few kilometers should be a little bit easier than to hit a target through an atmosphere, that is a few hundred kilometers away, and to drill then - on a certain path with no margin for variance - into a planet for nearly 3.000 kilometers.



Besides, although it was said in the TNG episode »Encounter at Farpoint«, that the phasers are to be rigged to emit an energy beam, the Enterprise did not fire its phasers on the from the Bandi captured creature [O].



There is no phaser phalanx where that energy beam originates from. And it does not look like a phaser beam at all. Maybe the insofar possiblby wrong dialogue has to be treated as such or it simply means that energy from the phasers was used to energize the then used energy emitter.



It's interesting that, while a few pro Star Wars debaters were arguing, that a weapon, that has such a multifunctionality, has to be inefficient in its different tasks compared to a for each task dedicated tool, now there are Star Wars debaters, who think, that a phaser is such a versatile tool, that it can do all things and if it fails to do all things, it is proof for its deficiency.

Speaking of logical fallacy: That is a classic No-Limit-Fallacy. Only because a few changes in the phaser settings are possible with a few keystrokes does not mean that all imaginable changes are possible with a few keystrokes. There has to be a limit.

It's interesting that, while a few pro Star Wars debaters were arguing, that a weapon, that has such a multifunctionality, has to be inefficient in its different tasks compared to a for each task dedicated tool, now there are Star Wars debaters, who think, that a phaser is such a versatile tool, that it can do all things and if it fails to do all things, it is proof for its deficiency.

Speaking of logical fallacy: That is a classic No-Limit-Fallacy. Only because a few changes in the phaser settings are possible with a few keystrokes does not mean that all imaginable changes are possible with a few keystrokes. There has to be a limit.

I always thought that the difficulty in ST v SW discussions was that ST has 705 episodes (727 if you include TAS) and 10 movies (11 if you include the new movie) all working on different budgets for their special effects, with different directors, with many different writers quite happily adding dialog with what they consider are scientific quotes, scales, effects, measurements or comparisons and completly screwing it up beyond belief. And to cap it all off the entire thing is about exploring the unknown, so a lot of the storylines are about things that are intended to not be understood by even a ship of technologically advanced explorers whos job it is to do exactly that.

So lets face it we have a lot of stuff we can choose from that is totally inconsistant with itself and most sci-fi fans have watched a lot if not all of the movies and episodes so are familiar with most of the inconsistancies.

With only 6 movies, a very simplistic story line to follow and no real need to explain, investigate or justify their technology or its efffects let alone other species or anomolies made up by the writers SW got it easy by comparison.

Anyway, i would suggest getting all the info available on phasers from canon sources then pick the most powerful example out of the bunch if you wish to find a high end limit.

P.S.:

I have taken the liberty to link to another forum. Considering the fact, that StarfleetJedi.net does not compete with b5tech.org, neither as a forum nor as a site, I regarded Art. 1, Section 3 No. 3 of the B5Tech Constitution for not applicable.

Apart from that I interpreted TheTechMaster's links to StarDestroyer.net, which he has posted not in his role as owner of that board but as a participant in a thread, as an implied permission to do so as well. As users in a debate, we should all have the same rights, if the debate is to be considered fair.

I always thought that the difficulty in ST v SW discussions was that ST has 705 episodes (727 if you include TAS) and 10 movies (11 if you include the new movie) all working on different budgets for their special effects, with different directors, with many different writers quite happily adding dialog with what they consider are scientific quotes, scales, effects, measurements or comparisons and completly screwing it up beyond belief. And to cap it all off the entire thing is about exploring the unknown, so a lot of the storylines are about things that are intended to not be understood by even a ship of technologically advanced explorers whos job it is to do exactly that.

So lets face it we have a lot of stuff we can choose from that is totally inconsistant with itself and most sci-fi fans have watched a lot if not all of the movies and episodes so are familiar with most of the inconsistancies.

With only 6 movies, a very simplistic story line to follow and no real need to explain, investigate or justify their technology or its efffects let alone other species or anomolies made up by the writers SW got it easy by comparison.

Your objection, while not untrue, is, for that thread, irrelevant.

In that thread it has been analysed what was shown in only two episodes of The Next Generation. A few other episodes were mentioned but they were not really important. The problem in The TechMaster's analyse is, that he hasn't even really understood these two episodes and is basing his calculations on his flawed understanding of what has happened.

Furthermore, this was not a versus debate. It was a pure Star Trek debate.



Apart from that, I think that you should have said something to the forwarded arguments regarding the topic of that thread.
Do you agree?
Do you disagree?
Do you have any comments, objections or amendments?

Do you have any comments, objections or amendments?

I think its unreasonable to try and set a limit on phasers simply because of a personal opinion on the material they needed to drill through and the time required to set them to do so effectivly. We have seen them heat rock, vaporise rock and explode rock along with many other effects on a almost limitless amount of materials ships and shields over the years.

To suggest that the maximum power output is X because they needed modifying to drill a precision hole into a planet that is required to remain stable from top to bottom especially while the person doing so is using the term NDF (NDF being a theory coined by those who feel the requirement to remove the "fi" from "sci-fi") is inconsistant with other effects we have seen a high setting achieve.

Not least of all is the fact that we do not know how the "NDF" (if "NDF" is a corect theory) setting on phasers actually achieves its effect or how much power is required to disintigrate different materials or if it is related directly to just throwing in sheer power and not adjusting some other aspect as well (you know how fond they are of adjusting frequencies).


Anyway, i would suggest getting all the info available on phasers from canon sources then pick the most powerful example out of the bunch if you wish to find a high end limit anything else is interpretation of a effect that cannot be properly explained, even by those who claim to be all about scientific reality guiding their debates on sci-fi.

I think I'll let TM tear you apart and just watch the fun. Physics is physics, and apparently you need a lesson in it.

I think I'll let TM tear you apart and just watch the fun. Physics is physics, and apparently you need a lesson in it.

I can reliably say that i was discussing fiction not physics, although i suppose it could be argued that i was discussing fictional physics so in that regard im sure i will find his explanations as meaning full and educational as i did listening to data and his.

Do you have any comments, objections or amendments?

I think its unreasonable to try and set a limit on phasers simply because of a personal opinion on the material they needed to drill through and the time required to set them to do so effectivly. We have seen them heat rock, vaporise rock and explode rock along with many other effects on a almost limitless amount of materials ships and shields over the years.

To suggest that the maximum power output is X because they needed modifying to drill a precision hole into a planet that is required to remain stable from top to bottom especially while the person doing so is using the term NDF (NDF being a theory coined by those who feel the requirement to remove the "fi" from "sci-fi") is inconsistant with other effects we have seen a high setting achieve.

Not least of all is the fact that we do not know how the "NDF" (if "NDF" is a corect theory) setting on phasers actually achieves its effect or how much power is required to disintigrate different materials or if it is related directly to just throwing in sheer power and not adjusting some other aspect as well (you know how fond they are of adjusting frequencies).


Anyway, i would suggest getting all the info available on phasers from canon sources then pick the most powerful example out of the bunch if you wish to find a high end limit anything else is interpretation of a effect that cannot be properly explained, even by those who claim to be all about scientific reality guiding their debates on sci-fi.

I'm not sure, how I have to understand your comment. Do you agree or disagree? To me it sounds as if you think, you are disagreeing with me. It sounds as if you think, that I have tried to establish an upper limit of phaser power. But the conclusion of my post is not, that the TNG episodes Inheritance and Legacy are showing upper limits of phaser power. Quite the contrary.
That begs the questions, if you have read at all, what I had written.

Sorry dude when you said to have a opinion i figured you were refering to the issue in regards to the OP's theory. And in that regard i think it is naive to think that phasers can be easily adjusted to every possible setting available to them when they have clearly shown a big range of abilities and effects.


BORG

He even mentions when they first meet The Borg in Q-who although he disregards it rather poorly with a comment about it not being a tactical cube although we know for a fact that normal cubes are the main borg vessels and powerful enough to be used individually for assimilation of some times entire cultures who obviously must have fleets of combat ships.

So to dismiss their construction as "a wispy conjunction of vertical and horizontal pipes and support beams" is absurd. We clearly see 3 single shots from the D's phasers put 3 dirty great craters in the side of the borg cube, the sides were over 3 square kilometers so the craters were from 500-800 meters in diameter.

One hit was near the edge of the cube and we clearly see a lot of the phaser energy is lost as the edge is destroyed and the rest of beam heads off into space, however it does reveal that the cube is far from being even close to "a wispy conjunction of vertical and horizontal pipes and support beams" and is in fact has a lot of internal structure and mass that needed to be disintigrated.

I would say a conservative estimate of the crater by the edge is at least 500m in diameter and at least 200m deep at its deepest point (very conservative estimate) although it is on a corner, mass-space il guess at 50/50 so i do not offend either side.

Do not ask me to do the math im a moron.


The 2 other craters that were caused by individual shots are more towards the center of the cube and obviously took all the phaser power, as such we cannot come close to seeing just how deep the craters are into the cube or how much phaser damage was done internally but we know the 3 shots (well 2 and a slice off the side) caused damage to "20% of the enemy vessel".

We know that the cube measured 28 cubic kilometers in volume, so it depends on how you think worf did his calculations regarding his damage report and how much the cubes deep internal structure-empty space ratio was in regards to calculating the mass disintigrated by those 3 shots.


DRILLING

The crater effect shown against the borg clearly shows that unmodified phasers at high power are not particularly fussy about what they disintigrate and in what pattern.


He clearly points out that the drilling took around 48 seconds after hours of modifications.


So we know:

1. That phasers disintigrate matter at even a reasonably low-medium power settings effectivly let alone on a high power setting when it can disregard neatness and just wants to disintigrate large areas of matter.

2. That time was obviously not a issue as the OP clearly points out they "took hours to modify the Phasers for this job".

As such we can say that 1 + 2 = plenty of time and effectivness at low-medium let alone high phaser power to dig a dirty great crater to the 1600meter depth required let alone a narrow hole.

They were obviously using the time to modify the beam so it drilled a nice neat hole instead of just blasting a crater, it also reasonable to say that they would not want excess phaser power to disrupt, dislodge or even weaken and crack lumps of the tunnel wall for when ppl were in the hole.

That's exactly my opinion.

If you had read, what I have written, you would know that. You do not have to convince me.

I think I'll let TM tear you apart and just watch the fun. Physics is physics, and apparently you need a lesson in it.

Let's talk about physics in universe, where event horizons are physical (and can be teared), where weapon whos normally vanishing things can be used to transport biological weapons, where they have stable elements that are, by known physics, impossible to exists (and be stable), where guy that was turned into energy and is transported in this form to another place can freele move inside the beam while retaining it's own form, where at one epised whole ship weaponry cannot destroy asteroid, but in another it can destroy a moon, where...

Physics in sci-fi. Yeah, right.

But I also watch for the fun and lesson in aplying real world physics to bunch of special effects.

I was just thinking of something. Why is there no mention of the "All good things" Galaxy and the Phaser Lance? Its canon stuff afterall.
I am no expert with numbers so i just try to present some evidence. Maybe someone else can do the math on it.
We know that the Klingon ships have their shields up.

The phaser lance seems to disable the klingons shields with just "one" hit.


Because the next shot its raking right though the klingon ship with no apparent delay.




Same with other shots fired with the phaser lance.





The last two hits seems to be standart phaser hits since the beams seem somewhat less bright.


To me it looks that phasers can be pretty powerful and should not be underrated that much. Its not even clear if the phaser lance was fired at maximum settings,which i doubt.

Btw here a render i did with the future galaxy

Kor_Dahar_Master wrote:

Actually while drilling a hole in the earth with a energuy weapon it makes sense that you do it slowly and with care so the sides of the hole become thick and harden so are capable of holding any pressure or issues ground movements create. Not only that but just smashing through the earth vaporising it at normal power would make the sides uneven as it cut through differant densities of material, that could cause the sides to later crumble. Just blasting a hole in the ground would be easy.

It is 'solid granite' their drilling. Geordi said it. The "'make the sides uneven as it cut through differant densities of material, that could cause the sides to later crumble." is nonsense. They're using a beam not a drill bit.

There is talk about this drilling crap over on the SD.net forum.
ZOMG the E-D can drill a 3000km hole in 19 seconds!!!!!!!!!!
link
http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=143033

Lemon Wolf wrote:

I was just thinking of something. Why is there no mention of the "All good things" Galaxy and the Phaser Lance? Its canon stuff afterall.
I am no expert with numbers so i just try to present some evidence. Maybe someone else can do the math on it.
We know that the Klingon ships have their shields up.

The phaser lance seems to disable the klingons shields with just "one" hit.

(1) That was an alt/univ wasn't it? This does'nt happen in standard trekverse.
(2) Plus they were using a long fixed axis weapon instead of the standard omni-directional phaser strip so the beam would have more power kinetic energy wise.
(3) http://lemon-wolf.de/galaxy.jpg. Nice render. It has one of those same guns at the bottom I hope.

(1) That was an alt/univ wasn't it? This does'nt happen in standard trekverse.

Well yes it was an alternate timeline but look at star trek online (which is a game in canon) the refit galaxy is available there aswell. So i think it fits into the trekverse.

Nice render. It has one of those same guns at the bottom I hope.

Yes it does