Starfleet Jedi

http://forums.spacebattles.com/showthre ... 489&page=3 post sixty two
I was lurking at SpaceBattles.com as i often do, and Leo brought up Survivors as a low showing. I decided to try to find out what the heck particle energy was, ignoring the fact there was no ship shooting anything at the E-D.

http://www.answers.com/topic/particle-energy

Particle Energy
(′pärd·ə·kəl ′en·ər·jē)
(mechanics) For a particle in a potential, the sum of the particle's kinetic energy and potential energy.
(relativity) For a relativistic particle the sum of the particle's potential energy, kinetic energy, and rest energy; the last is equal to the product of the particle's rest mass and the square of the speed of light.

In Survivors Worf says the E-D is being hit with gigawatts of particle energy, but wouldn't that mean that each particle that hit the E-D was transferring gigawatts of energy to the E-D?

How much energy was was the Enterprise really being hit with?

Is it even possible to know how man joules per second was being applied

Huh. What if the power of the beam itself wasn't the most destructive aspect of the weapon. What if the power of the beam was what was necessary to maintain the stream of particles and anti-particles, so as they'd crash upon the shield, they'd be compressed, react, and liberate far more energy?
In other words, this is a mattter/antimatter hose, and 400 GW is just the power of the containment tube for the stream.

Or it was a funky weapon, since the shield s weren't brought down by the power of the beam, but were "dissasembled", as Worf wasn't trying to bring them up, as they usually do, but to "re-assemble" them...

Praeothmin wrote:Or it was a funky weapon, since the shield s weren't brought down by the power of the beam, but were "dissasembled", as Worf wasn't trying to bring them up, as they usually do, but to "re-assemble" them...

Well it was a weapon that was made by essentially a god type being for the sole intent of dropping the E-D shields without harming anybody and scaing them off.

Under the circumstances i do not think the numbers mentioned mean a thing or should be considered worth anything.


Im sure its mentioned that the warp core produces 12+ billion gigawatts while it was idling and not at warp in one episode, so why would only 400 gw be a problem for a ship that regularly assigns full or at least a higher warp power to shields and weapons as a boost?.

As Darkstar put it: "Dog's pee can bring down shields, as long as some God-like being wants it to happen". However, I'm not sure that is good explanation - Worf looked very surprised at 400 GW value, but didn't say it is impossible. Then again, he might have been surprised just beacouse of that, but noone else said that such feat was impossible.

On other hand, if each particle carried 400 GW, "only" 31 875 000 would be required to overpower GCS shields, presuming shields used same amount of energy that warp core produced during normal operations. Or maybe particles were something that removed gravitons and/or any other particles making up shield, so Worf had to reassemble them. Personally, I would go for last explanation.

Take your pick of explanations, but the fact remains that this incident runs almost completely contrary to the rest of Trek. Voyager would not have been able to fly between two close binary pulsars in "Scientific Method" . The E-D in "Relics" would not have been able to keep it's underpowered shields up while orbiting close to a G-type star for more than a fraction of a second. Other, weaker ships, like Kurn and Worf's BoP in "Redemption, Part 2", or Worf and Martok's in "Shadows and Symbols" would not have fared as well when they skimmed the surface of G-type stars. When the E-D slammed into a stellar matter stream in "Evolution", the shields would have popped instantly the ship would have been severely damaged or destroy given they appeared to hit the stream at a decent fraction of c. Voyager flies up to the event horizon of a black hole in "Parallels" and so on.

The list goes on, but I think this makes the point. "Survivors" is a big statistical outlier, not the rule.
-Mike

Well that it runs contrary to the rest of Trek doesn't provide a defense against the usual claim that the crew wasn't surprised as they should have been when learning that sub terawatt weapons were dismantling their shields.
My explanation is that since they knew matter and antimatter were present in the stream, the crew had all reasons not to be surprised by the danger posed by such a weapon, regardless of its made up nature by some godlike entity.

Picard wrote:As Darkstar put it: "Dog's pee can bring down shields, as long as some God-like being wants it to happen".

Or you're in the Sirius constellation.

Mr. Oragahn wrote:Well that it runs contrary to the rest of Trek doesn't provide a defense against the usual claim that the crew wasn't surprised as they should have been when learning that sub terawatt weapons were dismantling their shields.
My explanation is that since they knew matter and antimatter were present in the stream, the crew had all reasons not to be surprised by the danger posed by such a weapon, regardless of its made up nature by some godlike entity.

That is exactly what Leo was claiming. This instance is trotted out as a low showing, but if you actually look at it, Survivors is a mid-range to high showing.

___________

Worf: "Shields are down. Captain, they hit us with four hundred gigawatts of particle energy!"
Now if I'me reading the defination of particle energy correctly then Worf was saying that each subatomic particle was releasing 400 gigawatts on impact. That seems like it would add up to a very large number of Watts fast. Just three particles, and you are in the terawatt range. We know there had to be an extremely large number of particles in the beam.

A mere three particles should total 1.2 terawatts

Three hundred particles should total 120 terawatts

Worf: "Shields down. There is thermal damage to the hull."

At any other time have we seen a Federation ship taking thermal damage?We know the Enterprise-D's hull does not even begin to take thermal damage until well after 12,000 degrees C.

Lucky wrote:

Mr. Oragahn wrote:Well that it runs contrary to the rest of Trek doesn't provide a defense against the usual claim that the crew wasn't surprised as they should have been when learning that sub terawatt weapons were dismantling their shields.
My explanation is that since they knew matter and antimatter were present in the stream, the crew had all reasons not to be surprised by the danger posed by such a weapon, regardless of its made up nature by some godlike entity.

That is exactly what Leo was claiming. This instance is trotted out as a low showing, but if you actually look at it, Survivors is a mid-range to high showing.

___________

Worf: "Shields are down. Captain, they hit us with four hundred gigawatts of particle energy!"
Now if I'me reading the defination of particle energy correctly then Worf was saying that each subatomic particle was releasing 400 gigawatts on impact. That seems like it would add up to a very large number of Watts fast. Just three particles, and you are in the terawatt range. We know there had to be an extremely large number of particles in the beam.

A mere three particles should total 1.2 terawatts

Three hundred particles should total 120 terawatts

It certainly would add up very quickly.

Lucky wrote:Worf: "Shields down. There is thermal damage to the hull."

At any other time have we seen a Federation ship taking thermal damage?We know the Enterprise-D's hull does not even begin to take thermal damage until well after 12,000 degrees C.

It was firing antiprotons (antimatter) so if they hit the hull (matter) they would annihilate each other.

Now this would actually support your theory above as a single 400gw hit would only be like 0.01 of a kiloton (my science sucks balls so i maybe wrong) per particle even with a perfect reaction.

So it is very likely that they fired a lot of particles each with 400gw per particle in the bursts we see.

A milligram of antimatter, when reacting perfectly with the same amount of matter would yield an explosion of just 42.857 tons, or less than 418 MJ of energy. Assuming the explosion reasleased it's energy in 1/100th of second, you would get just 41.8 GW. Still about 9.56 times less power than needed.
-Mike

Lucky wrote:

Mr. Oragahn wrote:Well that it runs contrary to the rest of Trek doesn't provide a defense against the usual claim that the crew wasn't surprised as they should have been when learning that sub terawatt weapons were dismantling their shields.
My explanation is that since they knew matter and antimatter were present in the stream, the crew had all reasons not to be surprised by the danger posed by such a weapon, regardless of its made up nature by some godlike entity.

That is exactly what Leo was claiming. This instance is trotted out as a low showing, but if you actually look at it, Survivors is a mid-range to high showing.

___________

Worf: "Shields are down. Captain, they hit us with four hundred gigawatts of particle energy!"
Now if I'me reading the defination of particle energy correctly then Worf was saying that each subatomic particle was releasing 400 gigawatts on impact. That seems like it would add up to a very large number of Watts fast. Just three particles, and you are in the terawatt range. We know there had to be an extremely large number of particles in the beam.

A mere three particles should total 1.2 terawatts

Three hundred particles should total 120 terawatts

Worf: "Shields down. There is thermal damage to the hull."

At any other time have we seen a Federation ship taking thermal damage?We know the Enterprise-D's hull does not even begin to take thermal damage until well after 12,000 degrees C.

That, on the other hand, is totally reaching. No one will intuitively understand such a sentence the way you do.
"particle energy" is about the whole thing. How... dumb (no offense) would it be to say the equivalent of "sir! we've been hit by a beam of particle energy, each particle having a power of 400 gigawatts!" ??
The next thing the captain would ask is "and?".

By the way, do you think it's even remotely possible for a single particle to inflict about 400 GW of damage? :)
How could even a particle provide more energy than E=mc² dictates... especially when the alien ship wasn't firing anything better than protons and antiprotons actually?

Mike DiCenso wrote:A milligram of antimatter, when reacting perfectly with the same amount of matter would yield an explosion of just 42.857 tons, or less than 418 MJ of energy. Assuming the explosion reasleased it's energy in 1/100th of second, you would get just 41.8 GW. Still about 9.56 times less power than needed.
-Mike

Worf: "Shields down. There is thermal damage to the hull."

Yes anti-matter would react violently with normal matter, but Worf clearly states the damage was caused by the hull being heated, and you need stupidly large amounts of heat/thermal energy to damage the E-D's hull. Far more then 400 gigawatts.

Mr. Oragahn wrote:

Lucky wrote:

Mr. Oragahn wrote:Well that it runs contrary to the rest of Trek doesn't provide a defense against the usual claim that the crew wasn't surprised as they should have been when learning that sub terawatt weapons were dismantling their shields.
My explanation is that since they knew matter and antimatter were present in the stream, the crew had all reasons not to be surprised by the danger posed by such a weapon, regardless of its made up nature by some godlike entity.

That is exactly what Leo was claiming. This instance is trotted out as a low showing, but if you actually look at it, Survivors is a mid-range to high showing.

___________

Worf: "Shields are down. Captain, they hit us with four hundred gigawatts of particle energy!"
Now if I'me reading the defination of particle energy correctly then Worf was saying that each subatomic particle was releasing 400 gigawatts on impact. That seems like it would add up to a very large number of Watts fast. Just three particles, and you are in the terawatt range. We know there had to be an extremely large number of particles in the beam.

A mere three particles should total 1.2 terawatts

Three hundred particles should total 120 terawatts

Worf: "Shields down. There is thermal damage to the hull."

At any other time have we seen a Federation ship taking thermal damage?We know the Enterprise-D's hull does not even begin to take thermal damage until well after 12,000 degrees C.

That, on the other hand, is totally reaching. No one will intuitively understand such a sentence the way you do.
"particle energy" is about the whole thing. How... dumb (no offense) would it be to say the equivalent of "sir! we've been hit by a beam of particle energy, each particle having a power of 400 gigawatts!" ??
The next thing the captain would ask is "and?".

By the way, do you think it's even remotely possible for a single particle to inflict about 400 GW of damage? :)
How could even a particle provide more energy than E=mc² dictates... especially when the alien ship wasn't firing anything better than protons and antiprotons actually?

My interpretation is hardly reaching given the NX-1's phase cannons had an out put of 500 gigawatts. Those phase cannons could barely scratch the paint of ships of it's time, and we know shield and weapons tech has only improved in every way since the NX-1 was in service.

Worf: "Shields are down. Captain, they hit us with four hundred gigawatts of particle energy!"
Worf specifically states "particle energy", and particle energy refers to the energy a single particle has. The only way your interpretation works is if the Husnock ship was shooting an anti-neutron, but that would have to be one big anti-neutron

http://www.answers.com/topic/particle-e ... u]Particle Energy[/u][/b]
(′pärd·ə·kəl ′en·ər·jē)

(mechanics) For a particle in a potential, the sum of the particle's kinetic energy and potential energy.

(relativity) For a relativistic particle the sum of the particle's potential energy, kinetic energy, and rest energy; the last is equal to the product of the particle's rest mass and the square of the speed of light. [/quote]

Why the computer gave the information in such a way we don't know, but the E-D's computer did.

Lucky wrote:

Mr. Oragahn wrote:

Lucky wrote: That is exactly what Leo was claiming. This instance is trotted out as a low showing, but if you actually look at it, Survivors is a mid-range to high showing.

___________

Worf: "Shields are down. Captain, they hit us with four hundred gigawatts of particle energy!"
Now if I'me reading the defination of particle energy correctly then Worf was saying that each subatomic particle was releasing 400 gigawatts on impact. That seems like it would add up to a very large number of Watts fast. Just three particles, and you are in the terawatt range. We know there had to be an extremely large number of particles in the beam.

A mere three particles should total 1.2 terawatts

Three hundred particles should total 120 terawatts

Worf: "Shields down. There is thermal damage to the hull."

At any other time have we seen a Federation ship taking thermal damage?We know the Enterprise-D's hull does not even begin to take thermal damage until well after 12,000 degrees C.

That, on the other hand, is totally reaching. No one will intuitively understand such a sentence the way you do.
"particle energy" is about the whole thing. How... dumb (no offense) would it be to say the equivalent of "sir! we've been hit by a beam of particle energy, each particle having a power of 400 gigawatts!" ??
The next thing the captain would ask is "and?".

By the way, do you think it's even remotely possible for a single particle to inflict about 400 GW of damage? :)
How could even a particle provide more energy than E=mc² dictates... especially when the alien ship wasn't firing anything better than protons and antiprotons actually?

My interpretation is hardly reaching given the NX-1's phase cannons had an out put of 500 gigawatts. Those phase cannons could barely scratch the paint of ships of it's time, and we know shield and weapons tech has only improved in every way since the NX-1 was in service.

Worf: "Shields are down. Captain, they hit us with four hundred gigawatts of particle energy!"
Worf specifically states "particle energy", and particle energy refers to the energy a single particle has. The only way your interpretation works is if the Husnock ship was shooting an anti-neutron, but that would have to be one big anti-neutron

http://www.answers.com/topic/particle-e ... u]Particle Energy[/u][/b]
(′pärd·ə·kəl ′en·ər·jē)

(mechanics) For a particle in a potential, the sum of the particle's kinetic energy and potential energy.

(relativity) For a relativistic particle the sum of the particle's potential energy, kinetic energy, and rest energy; the last is equal to the product of the particle's rest mass and the square of the speed of light.

Why the computer gave the information in such a way we don't know, but the E-D's computer did.[/quote]

With the little problem that associating a power figure to a particle makes much less sense than associating a power figure to a stream of particles, a beam, because even if we know that the beam has a given energy, the power tells us how much the ship gets hit with per second.

Not to say that if the luminosity and thickness of the beam is related to its concentration of particles, you'd most likely be looking at concentration largely surpassing even the concentration found in one cubic meter in the photosphere of a red star for example.