Upper limit photon torpedoes...

[Isolder74]

Welcome to reality. It's utterly impossible to release any more than 9E16 J of energy from 1 kg of matter, through any process.

Ofcourse note the measurement, I believe it can be a measurement of volume too, not mass.

Plug a volume into E = mc^2 for m and see if you get joules as your output unit.

yes, its in Joules, KG*m^2/s^2 = Joules

any questions?

[Andras]

There is a small degree of support for Robert's claim that the torpedoes used by the Enterprise are enormously powerful. In "Q Who," the Enterprise is pursued by a Borg cube, but is incapable of firing torpedoes at it at one point because the ship would be destroyed by the blast, although the cube was some distance away. In "Nth Degree," the same was true, although the alien probe that was being targetted was much closer to the Enterprise. However, both of these examples rely on the exclusive availability of high-yield weapons, as opposed to a mixed yield of high-, medium-, and low-yield torpedoes.

Ok, here's a question

How could the Ent-D have been damaged by a torpedo explosion behind it, if it was travelling at warp speeds away from the explosion? Does the torpedo explosion somehow propagate at speeds greater then Warp 9?

[Durandal]

Ofcourse note the measurement, I believe it can be a measurement of volume too, not mass.

Plug a volume into E = mc^2 for m and see if you get joules as your output unit.

yes, its in Joules, KG*m^2/s^2 = Joules

any questions?

I said plug a volume value in for m, which is what HDS was suggesting. You'll get (m^3)(m^2/s^2), which is why the volume is irrelevant. Only mass matters.

[Isolder74]

Plug a volume into E = mc^2 for m and see if you get joules as your output unit.

yes, its in Joules, KG*m^2/s^2 = Joules

any questions?

I said plug a volume value in for m, which is what HDS was suggesting. You'll get (m^3)(m^2/s^2), which is why the volume is irrelevant. Only mass matters.

sorry, but for everyone's reference a Watt = Joules/Sec Watt = Kg*m^2/s^3

[Durandal]

Uh ... thanks.

[Marcus]

Ah... 'Complex Mass'.

That sounds interesting. Can someone more knowledgeable than me point me to some references? Either SW specific or real-world physics examples...

[Zoink]

Ok I the quote I was looking for regarding the 50 isoton torpedo.

In the Omega Directive, Kim and Tuvok are making a 50 isoton torpedo:

He holds the big bang ball in his hand. "This looks like enough for a 50-isoton explosion ("54," Tuvok corrects). What are we planning to do, blow up a small planet?"

Observation shows that the warhead could not have weighed any more than a few kilograms, based on how Harry handled the package.

[Durandal]

I'm more inclined to think that Harry is a moron who is engaging in hyperbole.

[Durandal]

I'm more inclined to think that Harry is a moron who is engaging in hyperbole.

[Durandal]

Sorry about the double post, but once again, the Delete and Edit buttons are not showing up.

[TheDarkling]

They dont work here and you can never insult a Voyager crew member too many times .

[SPOOFE]

I'm more inclined to think that Harry is a moron who is engaging in hyperbole.

Wouldn't have been the first time. Perhaps that's what kept Harry from being promoted for seven years.

Anyway, regarding "complex mass"... I'm guessing that Mr. Wong merely meant "It's not a simple matter of squeezing more mass into a smaller space." But I'm not going to speak for him. But keep in mind, as per the ICS, the reactant for SW ships is incredibly dense, many orders of magnitude more massive than the ship itself.

[omegaLancer]

Complex mass, well actually there is a thing called imaginary mass. Tachyons process it. An interesting by product is that Tachyon can easy process massive KE that actually cause it to go slow.

Tachyons traveling slighly faster than C would have near infinite energy and those that possess zero energy would be infinitly fast.

Tachyons traveling near the speed of light may even appear at first to be rapidly moving normal matter, it even throught that Neutrinos are actually Tachyons. And that the Solar Neutrino problem can be a result of Neutrino that radiated away energy allowing them to evade detection.

Another form of particle that would have more energy lock into is structure than mass it process would be vacuum field particles like instanton, axion, monopoles and other, who has large volumn of energy trap in the structure of space time. Since Mass is said to be a result of interaction with Higg fields these particles would weakly interact with Higgs Boson and have a relativitly low mass for the amount of energy they contain.

Look at the Photon, it pure energy and no rest mass, while it cousin the Axion ( who Electrical and magnetic fields are parallel to each other) actually possess rest mass. Supposely one can be converted to the other via interaction of magnetic fields. And there may be particles along this line that has low mass but massive energies.

Hyper matter would be Matter made of of heavier Quarks like the Charm and strange quark. So Hyperon that behavior like protons and neutrons are more massive but is still only composed by the same number of quarks.

Stranglets ( Hypermatter made of combination of strange quarks and it light weight cousins) are so massive that a mere dust like spect can weight tons. But in this case a Gram is still a gram, but it take up less volume.

[Marcus]

Reads Omegalancer's post.

Reads it again.

Goes and does something else.

Comes back, reads it again.

Okay, I obviously need to get back in school and take some more physics. Basically what you saying is that its possible for certain particles, at least hypothetically, to posess less Mass than other particles that would have similar annihilation energies? IE, the formula for Mass=Annihliation energy for Matter/Antimatter reactions only holds true if we assume 'normal' matter?

[omegaLancer]

In a simple one yes.

The formula e=MC^2 is for rest mass. Particles can have energy in fields (ie electrons have a cloud of virtual photons that surround them) even theNucleus of atoms ( which can be treated as a single particle) has energy trapped as binding energy.

Just look at periodic chart. Look at the atomic weight and then take the individual weight of the particles that make up the atom. There is a slight different. this different is energy that being used to keep the nucleus of the atom together. And a mere fraction of this energy is release in nuclear fission.

In the case of theorical vacuum particle ( particles that are actually due to energy of fields exciting the background vacuum). They can have massive energies and small rest mass. That is if mass is actually a property of Higg field interaction.

[Marcus]

Ah, thus fusion annihlates matter, fission releases binding energy, 'classic' or 'simple matter'-antimatter reactions are simply a more efficient annihilation than in the Deuterium Fusion of 'real-world' Fusion, and the aforementioned 'Complex Matter' involves unusal, and extremely high binding energies which are large enough to increase the energy yield of an annihiation reaction by a significant amount?

Could you get a significant yeild from reactions involving these particles (in a science-fiction sense) by just releasing their binding energies? IE, just splitting them, not annihilating them? Could this energy release be significantly greater than the annihilation of simple matter?

[His Divine Shadow]

I said plug a volume value in for m, which is what HDS was suggesting. You'll get (m^3)(m^2/s^2), which is why the volume is irrelevant. Only mass matters.

Yes it is, hence why it wouldn't violate any laws of physics by being extremely massive and compressed into a very small volume, which is what could have been the big deal in the episode, not the mass as as has been assumed, sure the mass is unknown, but atleast this way it's workable.

[omegaLancer]

Marcus, that kind of a funny question. I was remember back when I was a kid some physicist ( Can remember which ) was on a talk show and he was saying that if we only could get to actually channel the energy of quarks that we could release more power than an H bomb.

I never could figure this out to recently, when I was reading about the so called Strange matter run away effect.

Strange quarks being heavy than Up and down quark should decay into their lighter cousin, but due to the property of strangness they are fairly stable. Now if you add a strange quark to collection of proton and neutrons it will react ( via the strong force) and convert the some of the Up and down quarks to strange quarks, because it give the collection of the quarks a lower binding energy.

The lower binding energy is a result of the fact that different quarks mean that the particle does not have to fight the exclusion force that are generated by having 2 particles of the same type in such a small volumn.

So a U S D has a lower binding energy than a UUD or UDD..So you actually have energy being released that is used to transform either the U or D quarks to the heavier S quarks... The idea that a Proton or a neutron has a binding energy is mind boggling and that you can actually extract it is something else.

Monopole energy is literally lock up in space. It like a not of in the fabric of space time. Un knot it a Planck energy scale energy is released. The only power source strong enought to create these knot would have been the big bang.

Monopoles would have been created in pairs and the pairs would have been seperated by a region of excited space.. Pair monopole could actually store energy in this region.And it believe that monopole would actually be the end of cosmic strings. Bring the two end together and all the energy is release including the trap energy.

But why waste the monopoles, cause another property of monopoles is that they would cause protons to decay into positron. another potential energy source..

[Darth Wong]

I suppose one should note, however, that we are starting to get into phenomena whose existence is not verified.

Anyway, to return to Star Wars, the ICS explicitly describes complex mass. The idea of hyperdrive is that an ISD has complex mass (as in "mass described with imaginary numbers"), and manipulates its phase angle to control the amount of "real" mass it has, without altering the magnitude of its complex mass.

I'm not sure what the hell 5i kg of iron would look like, but there you have it; it is certainly no stranger than wormhole mathematics and negative energy.

[Marcus]

So, in effect, the Imperial Star Destroyer consists of matter whose 'Mass' Property can be varied (within some undefined bounds).

Thus allowing a 'Mass Reduction' effect for purposes of acceleration, et. al., and some kind of 'Mass Increase' effect to allow a greater output from its fuel than 'vanilla matter' annihilation. When combined with the tendancy of M/AM to fizzle, rather than completely mutually annihilate in an instant outside of controlled conditions, this serves to explain why Star Destroyers, like modern nuclear reactors and unlike HMS Hood, dont release their total energy potential when you punch them in just the right/wrong spot.

That does explain alot of things.

[SPOOFE]

I suppose one should note, however, that we are starting to get into phenomena whose existence is not verified.

Which is only fair, since we're talking about something that doesn't exist...

I mean, c'mon, everyone, does it really matter how this stuff works? They tried doing that with Star Trek back in TOS and wound up with what Trekkies call "Uber Anti-matter" (yeah, I roll my eyes at that, too). Let's just call it "Technology X", say it works, and leave it at that.

[omegaLancer]

problem is we have given the trekkie enought rope, first there is no umber antimatter or the writter of the serie would have mention it in their senseless techobabble, calling something like hyper charge antimatter ( or something like that)

The quantum torpedo was created to get around the limited yields of antimatter...

And as it stand that Waries have been very kind in giving it the yield in 65 megaton range. much too kind....

[Robert Walper]

problem is we have given the trekkie enought rope, first there is no umber antimatter or the writter of the serie would have mention it in their senseless techobabble, calling something like hyper charge antimatter ( or something like that)

The quantum torpedo was created to get around the limited yields of antimatter...

And as it stand that Waries have been very kind in giving it the yield in 65 megaton range. much too kind....

Such yields are based upon the Technical Manual, therefore irrelevent. We should try to extrapolate maximum yields by analysising scene like "The 9th Degree" amd "Q who?". In these scenes we know the size of the Borg cube, and the size of the Enterprise D, therefore we can calculate the distance between them(several kilometers apparently). Assuming no shields for the Enterprise, we calculate how much energy is required to destroy the Enterprise at that range. We would then get a lower limit of "maximum" yield torpedoes. Some have suggested that this calculation can be as high as several gigatons.

[Darth Servo]

Such yields are based upon the Technical Manual, therefore irrelevent. We should try to extrapolate maximum yields by analysising scene like "The 9th Degree" amd "Q who?". In these scenes we know the size of the Borg cube, and the size of the Enterprise D, therefore we can calculate the distance between them(several kilometers apparently). Assuming no shields for the Enterprise, we calculate how much energy is required to destroy the Enterprise at that range. We would then get a lower limit of "maximum" yield torpedoes. Some have suggested that this calculation can be as high as several gigatons.

And others have suggested that the crew are morons, or that destruction of the E-D is a worst case scenario.
And yet others have DEMONSTRATED that you do NOT need to completely vaporise the E-D to destroy it, merely set off the warp core.

[Durandal]

problem is we have given the trekkie enought rope, first there is no umber antimatter or the writter of the serie would have mention it in their senseless techobabble, calling something like hyper charge antimatter ( or something like that)

The quantum torpedo was created to get around the limited yields of antimatter...

And as it stand that Waries have been very kind in giving it the yield in 65 megaton range. much too kind....

Such yields are based upon the Technical Manual, therefore irrelevent. We should try to extrapolate maximum yields by analysising scene like "The 9th Degree" amd "Q who?". In these scenes we know the size of the Borg cube, and the size of the Enterprise D, therefore we can calculate the distance between them(several kilometers apparently). Assuming no shields for the Enterprise, we calculate how much energy is required to destroy the Enterprise at that range. We would then get a lower limit of "maximum" yield torpedoes. Some have suggested that this calculation can be as high as several gigatons.

"Night Terrors" indicates lower than a kiloton.