How do Ion Cannons work

[Ender]

We all know the theory behind turbolasers by now, are there any ideas out there on how ion cannons work?

[PainRack]

Electromagnetic induction?

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Electro-magnetic pulse?

Static discharge?

[Ted C]

I'd guess it's similar to an EMP. Hit your target with a bunch of charged particles; even if they don't penetrate the shields, they're going to change the charge around the ship, and that could potentially (no pun intended) interfere electrical systems. If the ship is surrounded by positively charged particles, won't they attract the ship's electrons, disrupting current flow?

It occurs to me that the weapon itself is going to have to do something to deal with the charge imbalance it creates when it fires. If it fires a bunch of protons (or other positively charged ions) at an enemy, it's suddenly going to have a negative charge that will attract the bolt right back to it. In the case of the Hoth ion cannon, it would also have to keep the ions from interacting with the atmosphere on the way to the target.

Is there a more sensible way for such a weapon to work?

[PainRack]

Now that I have the spare time, I seem to recall someone posting something along these lines before.


What happened was that he theorised that the Ion Cannon fires a bolt of plasma, that is somehow caused to spin/turn/whatever so that a continous net change in the magnetic field is present.

Assuming that the Ion cannon, blaster cannon and Turbolaser are all based on approximately the same technology, this serves to enhance the sparking effect seen when the AT-AT hit a snowspeeder in TESB, thus causing a massive electrical surge in the target. Since SW circuits are shielded against EMP as related in one of Han Solo adventures in the Corporate Sector(dig out the book later, its 1.00am now), well protected ships only suffer a temporary disabling shutdown as their safeties cut in.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

The "plasma in a container" line of thinking is false, as it has been demonstrated in the turbolaser "debate" with Marc Xavier that it is an impossibility.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Quite simple: Ion cannons fire projectiles which generate containment for a large blast of charged particles at relativistic velocities. The ion cannons themselves could have intrinsic shielding and opposite charges to counteract the effects of the ion cannon's charge.

Keep in mind it isn't charge alone: the combined radiative and kinetic energy of the Hoth ion cannon bolt burned right though the shields.

It is possible that the charges do not interact through SW shielding; it require burn-through before the different potential can disrupt energy inside the hull. This would also explain how ion cannons aren't fried by their own blasts: they are shielded themselves by virtue of the vessel, and the barrel itself is doubtlessly energized. Don't know where they dump the opposite charges needed to fullfill CoC. Perhaps they fire positive, then negative blasts?

[YT300000]

Now that I have the spare time, I seem to recall someone posting something along these lines before.


What happened was that he theorised that the Ion Cannon fires a bolt of plasma, that is somehow caused to spin/turn/whatever so that a continous net change in the magnetic field is present.

Assuming that the Ion cannon, blaster cannon and Turbolaser are all based on approximately the same technology, this serves to enhance the sparking effect seen when the AT-AT hit a snowspeeder in TESB, thus causing a massive electrical surge in the target. Since SW circuits are shielded against EMP as related in one of Han Solo adventures in the Corporate Sector(dig out the book later, its 1.00am now), well protected ships only suffer a temporary disabling shutdown as their safeties cut in.

"She'll run, now that Chewie's welded the hull," Han conceeded, "but some of the control circuitry that was shot up over Rampa was about ready to give up when we got here. Before we came out into the Badlands we had to lay in some new components, and about the only thing you can get here on Kamar is fluidic systems."
Sonniod's face turned sour. "Fluidics? Solo, dear fellow, I'd rather steer my ship with a blunt pole. Why couldn't you get some decent circuitry?"
*snip irrelevant bit*
[Kamarian weapons] -are at the missile-delivered, nuclear-explosive stage. So, of course, someone developed a charged-particle beam to mess up missile circuitry, and naturally everyone turned to fludics, because shielded circuitry was a little beyond them."

[PainRack]

The "plasma in a container" line of thinking is false, as it has been demonstrated in the turbolaser "debate" with Marc Xavier that it is an impossibility.

Can you direct me to this then? I was under the assumption that the directed plasma is still the most common model for turbolasers.

[Illuminatus Primus]

The "plasma in a container" line of thinking is false, as it has been demonstrated in the turbolaser "debate" with Marc Xavier that it is an impossibility.

Can you direct me to this then? I was under the assumption that the directed plasma is still the most common model for turbolasers.

Plasma would explode upon leaving the barrel. Do you have any ability to contain and project the blast into a bolt?

[PainRack]

Plasma would explode upon leaving the barrel. Do you have any ability to contain and project the blast into a bolt?

So, is the entire argument based upon this, thus overruling the EU material about turbolasers being plasma based?

[Ender]

I seem to recall a theory about a maser once...

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Plasma would explode upon leaving the barrel. Do you have any ability to contain and project the blast into a bolt?

So, is the entire argument based upon this, thus overruling the EU material about turbolasers being plasma based?

The ICS overrides the EU plasma base, numbskull.

[Illuminatus Primus]

*snip*

Do a search. There's been umpteen number debates on this, and I'm not doing your homework for you.

[PainRack]

*snip*

Do a search. There's been umpteen number debates on this, and I'm not doing your homework for you.

RIght. And here's the search results.

285 matches, ranging from topics like
shields,
Farraday Strikes Back -- JC Lit on Empire vs. Vong.

[ Poll ] Defeating a Death Star

and so on and forth.


Mind narrowing it down further?

[Illuminatus Primus]

Turbolaser, plasma, ICS, lightspeed are all keywords.

Try Lightsabre Operational Theory.

[Enola Straight]

Is it possible to engineer some sort of "lightning rod" to drain off the charge into hyperspace or subspace?

[phongn]

IIRC, Edam once proposed a theory where the rapidly deccelerating ions (upon hitting hull or shield) would produce an immense EMP.

[Illuminatus Primus]

IIRC, Edam once proposed a theory where the rapidly deccelerating ions (upon hitting hull or shield) would produce an immense EMP.

The EMP cannot penetrate shields--ICS implies this, as does the fact that ion cannons must bunch through shields before disabling stuff. Additionally, this helps explain why ion cannons having to produce equal charge quantities negative and positive, even though its lobbing one at the target one at a time due to CoC. You need an excuse why those residual charges in the cannon aren't disabling stuff, and the fact of shields blocking ion effects works fine.

As for ion cannon-like effects with blasters on Hoth, who says misfires or glancing hits or near misses can't cause EMP?

[omegaLancer]

Ion cannons may just be laser cannon that use a very powerful lasers that combine high intensities with ultra-short pulse lengths . Such Laser can create intense magnetic fields and induce a stream of electrons in any material they strike.

From Physics News 614, November 20, 2002


"MEGAGAUSS IN PICOSECONDS. The item above describes the creation of high fields; this item describes the rapid measurement of high fields. Physicists from the Tata Institute and the Institute for Plasma Research in India have recorded in detail, for the first time, the huge magnetic spike encountered by atoms in a sample bearing the brunt of an intense laser shot. Fields as great as 27 megagauss, roughly 50 million times the strength of Earth's magnetic field, come about very quickly in the following way: the 10^16-watt/cm^2 pump laser beam strikes an aluminum target, the surface layer of atoms is quickly ionized, and a stream of very fast electrons is released into the body of the target, inducing the huge field. "

Magnetic fields of gigagauss have also been produce by femtosecond laser when firing them at Plasma.

Dr Saxon make mention on his website that the SW lasers have been seen to short out electronic system ( Luke's snowspeeder at Hoth ).

[Illuminatus Primus]

Except ion cannons and SW "laser/blaster" technology are not at all real lasers.

Try again.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Except ion cannons and SW "laser/blaster" technology are not at all real lasers.

Try again.

Shh... Or he'll start babbling about soliton waves or whatever...

[omegaLancer]

Shh... Or he'll start babbling about soliton waves or whatever...

On that note check out http://www.mit.edu/~soljacic/QED.pdf

"Self-trapping of electromagnetic beams in vacuum supported by QED nonlinear effects
Marin Soljacˇic ´ and Mordechai Segev*
Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544
~Received 10 June 1999; revised manuscript received 10 April 2000; published 19 September 2000!
At very high radiation field intensities in vacuum, Maxwell equations need to be modified to account for the
QED photon-photon interaction. We show that such modified equations support nondiffracting spatial radiation
solitons that propagate for very long distances without changing their shapes. These solitons, and the under-lying
self-focusing and instability effects, should be observable in the near future."

which back up the creation of electromagnetic solitons in vacuum, it only a matter of power...

[Connor MacLeod]

The EMP cannot penetrate shields--ICS implies this, as does the fact that ion cannons must bunch through shields before disabling stuff. Additionally, this helps explain why ion cannons having to produce equal charge quantities negative and positive, even though its lobbing one at the target one at a time due to CoC. You need an excuse why those residual charges in the cannon aren't disabling stuff, and the fact of shields blocking ion effects works fine.

http://www.its.bldrdoc.gov/fs-1037/dir-013/_1938.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse

EMP like any form of radiation can penetrate shields if powerful enough. Obviosuly if it is focused (like a DEMP gun), it will be more effective than the EMP generated by a bomb.

[Connor MacLeod]

Shh... Or he'll start babbling about soliton waves or whatever...

On that note check out http://www.mit.edu/~soljacic/QED.pdf

"Self-trapping of electromagnetic beams in vacuum supported by QED nonlinear effects
Marin Soljacˇic ´ and Mordechai Segev*
Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544
~Received 10 June 1999; revised manuscript received 10 April 2000; published 19 September 2000!
At very high radiation field intensities in vacuum, Maxwell equations need to be modified to account for the
QED photon-photon interaction. We show that such modified equations support nondiffracting spatial radiation
solitons that propagate for very long distances without changing their shapes. These solitons, and the under-lying
self-focusing and instability effects, should be observable in the near future."

which back up the creation of electromagnetic solitons in vacuum, it only a matter of power...

We've been over the soliton crap before. It doesn't work out. Even Mike pointed this out to you at least once, even if we ignore all the times I did. Give it up.