Survivors Particle Energy

[Lucky]

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.

Why assume the writer didn't mean Particle Energy. Particle Energy isn't a term you just pull out of thin air like you do watts. Watts just seems to be the writers catch all term. Need I remind of the watts per second line they wrote for Data?

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

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.

Why assume the writer didn't mean Particle Energy. Particle Energy isn't a term you just pull out of thin air like you do watts. Watts just seems to be the writers catch all term. Need I remind of the watts per second line they wrote for Data?

I always thought it say watts per.......

He could have been going to say "watts per.......cubic cm of ultra-dense deuterium/antiduterium" (or cubic cm of fuel for short).

It has a density of 140 kg/cm3 and would explain how they go without refueling for so long and the reason they do not refer to the m/am as ultra-dense deuterium/antiduterium and just deuterium/antiduterium is for the same reason we do not refer to fuel for our cars as "low sulphur fuel" ect...

[Mr. Oragahn]

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.

Why assume the writer didn't mean Particle Energy.

Why assumme they didn't go for the most intuitive and logical meaning?

[uote]Particle Energy isn't a term you just pull out of thin air like you do watts. Watts just seems to be the writers catch all term. Need I remind of the watts per second line they wrote for Data?[/quote]

So why argue that they can write nonsense and then argue that when typing particle energy, they knew what they were saying?

Point is, particle energy is perfectly fine within the context of a beam of a given power.
What Worf essentially does is cite that they're hit with particle energy. Basically, he's saying that they're hit with a stream of particles, which a phaser basically is.
Then, having established what the whole thing is, he describes the components of the beam, and finally provides a power figure for the whole thing.

What you're saying is that Worf becomes totally incompetent to the point of giving people on the bridge the energetic value of one particle - and again I stress one how stupid this power value is per particle - and counts on Picard, Riker and else to make the multiplication to get the overall power value, while they don't even know how many particles hit the shield per second. Worf goes to the length of telling them all sorts of things, but doesn't even provide the whole info so his captain could begin making an educated guess, in the middle of a tense moment when his whole ship is under attack - because the captain obviously has plenty of time for such games? And we'd have to assume that the computer is dumb as hell as well, since it cannot provide that figure for the crew either...
What a completely counterlogical, ridiculous and useless way of doing things.

We have to find a way to explain why the characters weren't dumbfounded by what happened. A beam that cheated physics would have surprised them. They'd have been shocked and largely worried (like in what happened against Breen weapons).

That's why there's no other solution that assume that 400 GW was the power of the beam as probed by sensors, before the beam would hit the shields, and the particles and antimatter piled up against the shields and made a continuous annihilation reaction at the point of impact, more powerful than the beam's own power.


@Mike

"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."

418 gigajoules.

[Lucky]

So why argue that they can write nonsense and then argue that when typing particle energy, they knew what they were saying?

Point is, particle energy is perfectly fine within the context of a beam of a given power.
What Worf essentially does is cite that they're hit with particle energy. Basically, he's saying that they're hit with a stream of particles, which a phaser basically is.
Then, having established what the whole thing is, he describes the components of the beam, and finally provides a power figure for the whole thing.

What you're saying is that Worf becomes totally incompetent to the point of giving people on the bridge the energetic value of one particle - and again I stress one how stupid this power value is per particle - and counts on Picard, Riker and else to make the multiplication to get the overall power value, while they don't even know how many particles hit the shield per second. Worf goes to the length of telling them all sorts of things, but doesn't even provide the whole info so his captain could begin making an educated guess, in the middle of a tense moment when his whole ship is under attack - because the captain obviously has plenty of time for such games? And we'd have to assume that the computer is dumb as hell as well, since it cannot provide that figure for the crew either...
What a completely counterlogical, ridiculous and useless way of doing things.

We have to find a way to explain why the characters weren't dumbfounded by what happened. A beam that cheated physics would have surprised them. They'd have been shocked and largely worried (like in what happened against Breen weapons).

That's why there's no other solution that assume that 400 GW was the power of the beam as probed by sensors, before the beam would hit the shields, and the particles and antimatter piled up against the shields and made a continuous annihilation reaction at the point of impact, more powerful than the beam's own power.

Because Survivors is trotted out as a low showing by guys like Leo who should know better, and it is fun to try and turn someone's own evidence against them.

I don't mind if you want to argue that the dialog is unquantifiable, but to assume they did not mean particle energy is just silly when they have a track record for improper, or at least odd uses of watts, but never before or after use the term particle energy that I recall.

The beam was arcing over the shields for perhaps a second or few after hitting the shields so that might explain the use of watts if just barely.

[Lucky]

Star Trek TNG - 51 - The Survivors Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rXjaPn8nk4&

The Husnock made a real mess of that planet.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Because Survivors is trotted out as a low showing by guys like Leo who should know better, and it is fun to try and turn someone's own evidence against them.

I don't mind if you want to argue that the dialog is unquantifiable, but to assume they did not mean particle energy is just silly when they have a track record for improper, or at least odd uses of watts, but never before or after use the term particle energy that I recall.

The beam was arcing over the shields for perhaps a second or few after hitting the shields so that might explain the use of watts if just barely.

The problem is not accepting that they meant particle energy. The problem is to assume that 400 GW is the energy of one particle. I say it's a broad statement, that's all, that defines the type of energy that's in that beam.
The fact that there are antiprotons itself also makes it more complicated because any expected annihilation isn't exactly the same particle energy.
And you can't have 400 GW per particle.

[Lucky]

Because Survivors is trotted out as a low showing by guys like Leo who should know better, and it is fun to try and turn someone's own evidence against them.

I don't mind if you want to argue that the dialog is unquantifiable, but to assume they did not mean particle energy is just silly when they have a track record for improper, or at least odd uses of watts, but never before or after use the term particle energy that I recall.

The beam was arcing over the shields for perhaps a second or few after hitting the shields so that might explain the use of watts if just barely.

The problem is not accepting that they meant particle energy. The problem is to assume that 400 GW is the energy of one particle. I say it's a broad statement, that's all, that defines the type of energy that's in that beam.
The fact that there are antiprotons itself also makes it more complicated because any expected annihilation isn't exactly the same particle energy.
And you can't have 400 GW per particle.

Of corse the beam was jacketed, and who are we to argue with people who have a much better understanding of physics.

After the first shot
Worf : "The vessel is firing jacketed streams of streams of positrons
and anti-protons. Equivalent firepower: forty megawatts. Shields are
holding."

After the second shot
Worf : "Shields are down. Captain, they hit us with four hundred
gigawatts of particle energy!"

Notice the difference between the readouts?

[Mr. Oragahn]

No, there's no fundamental difference, aside from the greater power of the beam's overall particle energy.

[Lucky]

No, there's no fundamental difference, aside from the greater power of the beam's overall particle energy.

Reread the quotes very careful Mr.O.

The first quote about the 40 gigawatt is what you are theorizing is actually meant in the 400 gigawatt quote. If Worf meant the Equivalent firepower: of 400 gigawatts he would have said it like he did in the 40 gigawatt quote.

With your interpretation we need to assume Worf did not say what he meant, and we are left with numbers that make no sense. If Worf meant the Equivalent firepower: of 400 gigawatts he would have said so like he did the first time with the 40 gigawatts. I think you are letting your fetish for low numbers get the better of you in this case.

[Mr. Oragahn]

No, there's no fundamental difference, aside from the greater power of the beam's overall particle energy.

Reread the quotes very careful Mr.O.

The first quote about the 40 gigawatt is what you are theorizing is actually meant in the 400 gigawatt quote. If Worf meant the Equivalent firepower: of 400 gigawatts he would have said it like he did in the 40 gigawatt quote.

With your interpretation we need to assume Worf did not say what he meant, and we are left with numbers that make no sense. If Worf meant the Equivalent firepower: of 400 gigawatts he would have said so like he did the first time with the 40 gigawatts. I think you are letting your fetish for low numbers get the better of you in this case.

Why should we assume that the first beam didn't contain particle energy?
I see nothing save that Worf pointed out the greater power.
Ultimately, it doesn't even make much sense to go from calmly sipping my tea to total panic just because a beam was ten times more powerful. The crew's calm is best imagined under a situation where an enemy vessel isn't even capable of removing a full percentage of the shield gauge.

I have no fetish for low numbers. But you seem to go for large numbers in an unwise way, considering the far fetched claim you made about the energy of one particle. It goes without saying that a civilization mastering particles containing 400 GJ of energy per particle would have obviously moved beyond the primitive use of antielectrons and antiprotons. It's also good to point out that there would be chances the E-D wouldn't begin to know how to read those, and the crew would certainly be completely baffled by the existence of such particles.
Then, again, how many of such magical particles would there be per beam?
Think about the quantity of particles in one cubic meter of a corona, and notice that you don't even see the corona.
Your proposition is simply untenable, for all the points I also made about how saying 400 GW per particle would be the most absurd way of attempting to deliver an information about a weapon to your captain. I'd have Worf shot on sight for daring spoiling decibels and my ears with such a waste of words.

That said, 400 GW fits with Geordi's terawatt production range statement, and somehow with Riker's low terawatt going through the dish and being more than what the ship can generate. It seems that at some point, some TNG writers saw those ships as having power production and shielding capabilities in the terawatt/joule range, regardless of what torpedoes could do. That would also fit with shields failing to such levels of power and energy close to stars (thinking of the Borg ship incident, not Relics).
Perhaps they imagined that shields were charged: petajoule shields with terawatt power production would work. And perhaps they assumed that phasers fired antimatter particles as well as nadions when having a warp core to tap.

[Mike DiCenso]

Yet those few early examples are more than overriden by everything from "True Q" onward. Star Trek: Voyager is filled with them not only for the Voyager's power production, which was at least millions of gigawatts (at least 10 terawatts for a sensor array alone) but for other ships (9 million terawatts power production for a Ba'neth outpost) which the little starship is an even match for as well as spatial phenomena that has tens of millions of terajoules of energy that the ship is exposed to with her shields.

Even ST:ENT has similar references with 10 TJ of power from the impulse engines alone to provide excess power to the ship's phase cannons, while we learn that normally the phase cannons can manage up to 1 TJ for the forward main batteries.

This all has been gone over before.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

Yet those few early examples are more than overriden by everything from "True Q" onward.

It's not so easy. The newer material could easily be disputed as solid if it also had the tendency to come with silly figures. For example, we've seen that Voyager had the Delta Flyer threaten Voyager over a stupidly huge range because its warpcore was overloading, and that probably was Trek writers keeping with the tradition of silly huge "things" to make everything impressive, since the days of TOS. That's what hard with Trek, because you really need to work on the details and go through all facts and observations and get an average.

I may look at your examples.

Star Trek: Voyager is filled with them not only for the Voyager's power production, which was at least millions of gigawatts (at least 10 terawatts for a sensor array alone) but for other ships (9 million terawatts power production for a Ba'neth outpost) which the little starship is an even match for as well as spatial phenomena that has tens of millions of terajoules of energy that the ship is exposed to with her shields.

I believe the Ba'neth station wasn't particularly small.

KIM: Here we go, Captain. A nine million terawatt cloaking field in grid two one six.
CHAKOTAY: Nine million terawatt. Whatever they're hiding, it's huge.

According to EAS, a Ba'neth ship is 150 meters long.
As we can see, the station easily dwarfs such ships. The station easily was more than one kilometer high, at least (that's using the ship that shows up from behind one of the arms, on the right).
I don't know the level of advancement of the Ba'neth. I'll leave to speculation.

Even ST:ENT has similar references with 10 TJ of power from the impulse engines alone to provide excess power to the ship's phase cannons, while we learn that normally the phase cannons can manage up to 1 TJ for the forward main batteries.

It is said that they can achieve 1 TJ for the main phase cannons in the last years of the show?
Then, without wanting to be turbulent, I remember it's the same show that argues a thousand ship could destroy a planet, perhaps even crack it. Coming from Archer I think, but I'm not sure.
It's also one where Archer says a test for a new update on the phase cannons destroyed a mount of the size of McKinley, despite visually not being that big, and obviously with a firepower which could not achieve such a thing in reality (they were achieving something like several hundreds of gigawatt there, iirc).

[Lucky]

Why should we assume that the first beam didn't contain particle energy?

Are you even reading this thread before making posts? Read the bleeping OP, and you will have your answer. I posted the definition of Particle energy.

I see nothing save that Worf pointed out the greater power.
Ultimately, it doesn't even make much sense to go from calmly sipping my tea to total panic just because a beam was ten times more powerful. The crew's calm is best imagined under a situation where an enemy vessel isn't even capable of removing a full percentage of the shield gauge.

The first shot was 40 gigawatts total.

The Second shot was 400 gigawatt per-particle, and the Enterprise-D's shields were being hit with more then one particle, and the output of the particle weapon was increasing.

I have no fetish for low numbers. But you seem to go for large numbers in an unwise way, considering the far fetched claim you made about the energy of one particle. It goes without saying that a civilization mastering particles containing 400 GJ of energy per particle would have obviously moved beyond the primitive use of antielectrons and antiprotons. It's also good to point out that there would be chances the E-D wouldn't begin to know how to read those, and the crew would certainly be completely baffled by the existence of such particles.
Then, again, how many of such magical particles would there be per beam?
Think about the quantity of particles in one cubic meter of a corona, and notice that you don't even see the corona.
Your proposition is simply untenable, for all the points I also made about how saying 400 GW per particle would be the most absurd way of attempting to deliver an information about a weapon to your captain. I'd have Worf shot on sight for daring spoiling decibels and my ears with such a waste of words.

Says the guy who is claiming 0.095602294455067 Mt will bring down the shields, and damage the hull of the E-D when the Federation and company have been throwing around double digit megaton weapons since before the NX-1 was a twinkle in it's designer's eye.
A photonic torpedo could make 3 km craters.
Phase cannons were rated at 500 gigawatts, and only good for scratching the other guys paint job.

A Constitution class was more then capable of a Saxtonite DBZ by it's self.

Please stop and think about what you are saying because you just look silly. You aren't even bothering to read the quotes provided.

That said, 400 GW fits with Geordi's terawatt production range statement, and somehow with Riker's low terawatt going through the dish and being more than what the ship can generate. It seems that at some point, some TNG writers saw those ships as having power production and shielding capabilities in the terawatt/joule range, regardless of what torpedoes could do. That would also fit with shields failing to such levels of power and energy close to stars (thinking of the Borg ship incident, not Relics).
Perhaps they imagined that shields were charged: petajoule shields with terawatt power production would work. And perhaps they assumed that phasers fired antimatter particles as well as nadions when having a warp core to tap.

(Jedi mind trick)You will provide those quotes. You do not want to look sillier then you already do.(/Jedi Mind Trick)

As I recall Geordi was talking about what the Enterprise normal puts out rather then what she puts out during combat and such. Q who would support this.

Given the out put of a the NX-1's phase cannons was at least 500 gigawatts your argument kind of fails. Just admit you have been misreading the quotes post.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Why should we assume that the first beam didn't contain particle energy?

Are you even reading this thread before making posts? Read the bleeping OP, and you will have your answer. I posted the definition of Particle energy.

Particle energy is nothing fancy. It's just KE and PE, and eventually anything related to rest mass in quantum physics.
The fact that Worf mentions positrons and antiprotons in his first statement does not collide with the concept of particle energy.
There will be particle energy from those particles, no matter what, just as there will be from the shower of particles released by annihilation.

All is full of particle energy.

I see nothing save that Worf pointed out the greater power.
Ultimately, it doesn't even make much sense to go from calmly sipping my tea to total panic just because a beam was ten times more powerful. The crew's calm is best imagined under a situation where an enemy vessel isn't even capable of removing a full percentage of the shield gauge.

The first shot was 40 gigawatts total.

Oh wait, my bad. It was 40 MW, not 40 GW.
And the beam was not 40 MW "total". There's nothing such as a total with a power figure. You need at least an indication of time. Eventually in modern parlance you'll hear about cities having consumed x watts of power, but it will be said to have occured over x days, x weeks, x months or x years.

The Second shot was 400 gigawatt per-particle, and the Enterprise-D's shields were being hit with more then one particle, and the output of the particle weapon was increasing.

If you read the quote you provided, nowhere it says 400 GW per particle.

And how do you know how many particles hit the shield? :)

I have no fetish for low numbers. But you seem to go for large numbers in an unwise way, considering the far fetched claim you made about the energy of one particle. It goes without saying that a civilization mastering particles containing 400 GJ of energy per particle would have obviously moved beyond the primitive use of antielectrons and antiprotons. It's also good to point out that there would be chances the E-D wouldn't begin to know how to read those, and the crew would certainly be completely baffled by the existence of such particles.
Then, again, how many of such magical particles would there be per beam?
Think about the quantity of particles in one cubic meter of a corona, and notice that you don't even see the corona.
Your proposition is simply untenable, for all the points I also made about how saying 400 GW per particle would be the most absurd way of attempting to deliver an information about a weapon to your captain. I'd have Worf shot on sight for daring spoiling decibels and my ears with such a waste of words.

Says the guy who is claiming 0.095602294455067 Mt will bring down the shields, and damage the hull of the E-D...

Where? I believe you didn't read my posts properly from the beginning.

... when the Federation and company have been throwing around double digit megaton weapons since before the NX-1 was a twinkle in it's designer's eye.

A photonic torpedo could make 3 km craters.

I don't think the NX ever had that kind of firepower. Reed's statement, assuming it's taken literally, says a photonic torpedo will put a 3 km crater in an asteroid, which often are "glued" globes of rubble, sometimes loosely held by gravity, and that in space, which is a zero gravity environment.
It's completely different than trying to make a crater in the ground of a planet.

Phase cannons were rated at 500 gigawatts, and only good for scratching the other guys paint job.

They're the weapons that's most used. Check most of ENT battles for that. Only few superior civilizations, like the Klingons at that time, had ships which could cope with phasers, and even a torpedo with shields at full.

A Constitution class was more then capable of a Saxtonite DBZ by it's self.

BDZ. And could be threatened in atmosphere by a megaton range nuke. Please, don't pull the inane yields of TOS.
And don't try to claim a literal understanding of Kirk's description of GO24 when trying to threaten someone.


Please stop and think about what you are saying because you just look silly. You aren't even bothering to read the quotes provided.

That said, 400 GW fits with Geordi's terawatt production range statement, and somehow with Riker's low terawatt going through the dish and being more than what the ship can generate. It seems that at some point, some TNG writers saw those ships as having power production and shielding capabilities in the terawatt/joule range, regardless of what torpedoes could do. That would also fit with shields failing to such levels of power and energy close to stars (thinking of the Borg ship incident, not Relics).
Perhaps they imagined that shields were charged: petajoule shields with terawatt power production would work. And perhaps they assumed that phasers fired antimatter particles as well as nadions when having a warp core to tap.

(Jedi mind trick)You will provide those quotes. You do not want to look sillier then you already do.(/Jedi Mind Trick)

What are you trying with your Jedi tricks? Those don't work on me.

As I recall Geordi was talking about what the Enterprise normal puts out rather then what she puts out during combat and such. Q who would support this.

Perhaps. Perhaps not. What's so special about Q Who?

Given the out put of a the NX-1's phase cannons was at least 500 gigawatts your argument kind of fails. Just admit you have been misreading the quotes post.

You're wrong. My former posts in this thread were meant to explain why those 400 GW weren't the cause of the real damage, but the antimatter fired at the ship.
However, in my last two or three posts, I wondered if it could be possible to make ships with terawatt-range power production fit with the "facts" of Trek. Mind you, this hypothesis goes by the idea that the ship can stockpile "shield points" up in the petajoule range. See, we don't even need to get there. Even having shields charged to cope with hundreds of terajoules would laugh at the 400 GW beam so it doesn't matter, because even with this late hypothesis I'm exploring, I still need to explain the issue relative to the 400 GW threatening a ship which I believe could charge shields.

[Lucky]

Particle energy is nothing fancy. It's just KE and PE, and eventually anything related to rest mass in quantum physics.
The fact that Worf mentions positrons and antiprotons in his first statement does not collide with the concept of particle energy.
There will be particle energy from those particles, no matter what, just as there will be from the shower of particles released by annihilation.

All is full of particle energy.

Why ask: "Why should we assume that the first beam didn't contain particle energy"?

Worf gives the second measurement in particle energy, but not the first, and that is why it matters.

Oh wait, my bad. It was 40 MW, not 40 GW.
And the beam was not 40 MW "total". There's nothing such as a total with a power figure. You need at least an indication of time. Eventually in modern parlance you'll hear about cities having consumed x watts of power, but it will be said to have occured over x days, x weeks, x months or x years.

The stream is stated to be the equivalent of 40MW. That certainly makes it sound like a weapon that would do damage equal to 40 MW.

If you read the quote you provided, nowhere it says 400 GW per particle.

The definition of Particle energy is the energy a single particle has. Any measurement given in particle energy would be for a single particle.

And how do you know how many particles hit the shield?

We can't know how many particles were fired, but we know there were enough to be seen with the naked eye. Unless you want to argue they are abnormally large particles the total number of particles would be rather large. ^_^

Where? I believe you didn't read my posts properly from the beginning.

You are the one arguing that a 400GW DET weapon is powerful enough to bring down the Enterprise-D's shields, and melt the hull

0.095602294455067 Megaton is equal to 400 giga-joulse

I don't think the NX ever had that kind of firepower. Reed's statement, assuming it's taken literally, says a photonic torpedo will put a 3 km crater in an asteroid, which often are "glued" globes of rubble, sometimes loosely held by gravity, and that in space, which is a zero gravity environment.
It's completely different than trying to make a crater in the ground of a planet.

When have we ever seen an asteroid like you describe in Star Trek? ^_^

As I understand it the lack of an atmosphere means the bomb/missle/torpedo need to be more powerful to make the same sized craters.

They're the weapons that's most used. Check most of ENT battles for that. Only few superior civilizations, like the Klingons at that time, had ships which could cope with phasers, and even a torpedo with shields at full.

Yes, and those superior civilizations aren't superior by the time of TOS, and I seem to recall a TNG episode where a TOS era Klingon ship was not powerful enough to be a threat to the E-D.

BDZ. And could be threatened in atmosphere by a megaton range nuke. Please, don't pull the inane yields of TOS.
And don't try to claim a literal understanding of Kirk's description of GO24 when trying to threaten someone.


Please stop and think about what you are saying because you just look silly. You aren't even bothering to read the quotes provided.

Canon is canon. Kirk clearly states what General Order 24 is, and his crew reads to carry it out. We have no reason to believe the order is anything but what it is portrayed as, or that they could not do it.

What are you trying with your Jedi tricks? Those don't work on me.

Seriously, I want to see the quote, and I want you to be more specific about what episodes you are talking about. "The Borg ship incident, not Relics" is kind of vague.

Perhaps. Perhaps not. What's so special about Q Who?

If I'm not mixing up episode with Q in them it is the episode that has Data saying the warp is increasing it's output by something like 3 gigaton a second, and then the warp core explodes a few seconds later giving us an idea of the E-D's power generation capabilities..

You're wrong. My former posts in this thread were meant to explain why those 400 GW weren't the cause of the real damage, but the antimatter fired at the ship.
However, in my last two or three posts, I wondered if it could be possible to make ships with terawatt-range power production fit with the "facts" of Trek. Mind you, this hypothesis goes by the idea that the ship can stockpile "shield points" up in the petajoule range. See, we don't even need to get there. Even having shields charged to cope with hundreds of terajoules would laugh at the 400 GW beam so it doesn't matter, because even with this late hypothesis I'm exploring, I still need to explain the issue relative to the 400 GW threatening a ship which I believe could charge shields.

If simply shooting a 400 GW anti-matter particle beam at shields would bring them down then all the trek powers would do, and shields would be nigh useless for combat.

If 400 GW was enough to bring down shields easily then the NX-1 would have been a beast in combat.