Point singularity weapons

[SCVN 2812]

What exactly would it take to stop one energy or hull strength wise? Can it even be stopped by conventional (i.e. standard sci-fi defenses like shields and armor) measures?

[Renewed_Valour1]

What exactly would it take to stop one energy or hull strength wise? Can it even be stopped by conventional (i.e. standard sci-fi defenses like shields and armor) measures?

It would take something that can absorb the mass of planet the size of the Earth hitting at 50 PSL it in a few centimeter wide diameter area. Then it has to deal with the usual gravity issues you have with a blackhole.

I doubt any of the Star Wars, Star Trek, or Babylon 5 hulls and shields that we have much information on would stand up to even a single hit by a PSP. The best hope is that your structural integrity is strong enough that you survive having a hole punched right through the ship. Oh and that it doesn't hit anything volatile on the way through….

[paladin]

I think B5 hulls would not survive a hit from a PSP. I'm not sure about ST or SW hulls and shields.

[His Divine Shadow]

PSP weapons are about as likely as phasers, superlasers are more probable infact(just a matter of power).

But anyhow, it will suffice to say nothing can stop it, not even a Dahak planetoid could stop the near 1e40> joules of kinetic energy it would carry since it has the mass of a small planet.

It's also whats so fucking unrealistic about it, if we treat it like a true blackhole launcher or as a mass driver, every ounce of joule HAS to be imparted into the weapon from it's launching system.

Unless ofcourse they are not actual small black holes, but something more exotic that will have the same effect as a small blackholes gravitic effect on it's surroundings.

That said, they do extremely limited collateral damage so without a lucky strike the ship might not take much damage, however, shields would die, nothing stands in it's way.

[Patrick Ogaard]

Point singularities in Andromeda can be diverted by opening a slipstream portal in their vicinity, the slipstream portal apparently producing a gravity field that draws in the point singularities.

All things considered, about the only likely SF counter I could think of, aside from a ship opening a slipstream portal, would be something like a Galactic Empire Interdictor cruiser or the like projecting suitable gravitational effects to divert the singularities.

A Star Trek solution would be to launch a carefully configured quartet of high yield photon torpedoes to explode around the point singularity, producing a rip in spacetime that makes the point singularity go somewhere where it will be someone else's problem. (The quartet of antimatter explosions is one of the more harrowing ideas for a real world FTL drive.)

[Renewed_Valour1]

Unless of course they are not actual small black holes, but something more exotic that will have the same effect as a small blackholes gravitic effect on it's surroundings.

You got that right according to the Official Seamus Harper site that they put up for Andromeda. It's linked off the official site asa one of their sites so it should have the same canon status as All Systems.

http://66.113.187.121/interst_gadg2.html

"Point Singularity Projector (PSP)
As if the wall walking thing wasn't scary enough, this was downright terrifying. In the course of tangling with Jeger's ship, we got hit by a bullet from a Point Singularity Projector (PSP). What's a PSP, you ask? It's basically a gun that fires tiny black holes at its target. The point singularity has a tiny Swarzschild radius -- a few centimeters, at most -- but it goes through you with the mass of a small planet. Ouch!

The energy requirements to create an artificial singularity and then push it toward a target at a decent percentage of light speed are simply staggering. My working theory is that the PSP manages to "cheat" the energy requirements somehow -- maybe by folding space using some method we haven't seen yet. But it's all speculation at this point, because the closest we've come to an actual PSP is getting a point singularity drilled through our hull.

In any event, whoever gave this stuff to Jeger (we don¹t know, but I'll bet they're connected to the human lava lamp we saw in the Brandenberg Tor file) has access to technology that's centuries beyond what the Commonwealth had in its heyday. Which scares the hell out of me, but more to the point, makes me want some of my own."

[Renewed_Valour1]

All things considered, about the only likely SF counter I could think of, aside from a ship opening a slipstream portal, would be something like a Galactic Empire Interdictor cruiser or the like projecting suitable gravitational effects to divert the singularities.

Uhm slipstream portals have enough gravity that they nearly crack planets when opened near them. Even at several light seconds to light minutes away they can severely damage a planet causing massive upheavals. An Interdictor or most other things aren't going to even come close to that.

[Patrick Degan]

The point-singularity projector has to be about the most absurd and impractical SF weapon ever depicted. Consider: the sheer amount of energy required simply to generate a planet-massed black hole, then the amount of energy which would have to be invested in the shielding systems to protect the ship and crew from the radiation and tidal forces of the hypermass. Finally, there would be the energy required to launch the thing. Even to launch it at 11km/sec —nevermind .5c— would entail an energy input of 3.2E32 joules.

If you've got that much energy to burn up for a weapon system, why bother with kinetics when it would be simpler and certainly a lot more efficent just to build a beam weapon?

[Darth_Shinji]

Unless of course they are not actual small black holes, but something more exotic that will have the same effect as a small blackholes gravitic effect on it's surroundings.

You got that right according to the Official Seamus Harper site that they put up for Andromeda. It's linked off the official site asa one of their sites so it should have the same canon status as All Systems.

http://66.113.187.121/interst_gadg2.html

"Point Singularity Projector (PSP)
As if the wall walking thing wasn't scary enough, this was downright terrifying. In the course of tangling with Jeger's ship, we got hit by a bullet from a Point Singularity Projector (PSP). What's a PSP, you ask? It's basically a gun that fires tiny black holes at its target. The point singularity has a tiny Swarzschild radius -- a few centimeters, at most -- but it goes through you with the mass of a small planet. Ouch!

The energy requirements to create an artificial singularity and then push it toward a target at a decent percentage of light speed are simply staggering. My working theory is that the PSP manages to "cheat" the energy requirements somehow -- maybe by folding space using some method we haven't seen yet. But it's all speculation at this point, because the closest we've come to an actual PSP is getting a point singularity drilled through our hull.

In any event, whoever gave this stuff to Jeger (we don¹t know, but I'll bet they're connected to the human lava lamp we saw in the Brandenberg Tor file) has access to technology that's centuries beyond what the Commonwealth had in its heyday. Which scares the hell out of me, but more to the point, makes me want some of my own."

Sounds like the smaller (i.e weaker) brother of the BHB.

BHB: black hole bomb, from gunbuster. It is jupter turn into a blackhole and used to destroy the center of the milky way.

[HRogge]

PSP weapons are about as likely as phasers, superlasers are more probable infact(just a matter of power).

But anyhow, it will suffice to say nothing can stop it, not even a Dahak planetoid could stop the near 1e40> joules of kinetic energy it would carry since it has the mass of a small planet.

Two ways for Dahak to defend against PSPs...

1.) dodge them ( they are slower than Dahak ! )
2.) fire a hyper beam into them... ( ups, gone... )

BHB: black hole bomb, from gunbuster. It is jupter turn into a blackhole and used to destroy the center of the milky way.

The center of the milky way IS a black hole... ( called Sagitarius A* )
It would not even notice a jupiter sized mass.

[Darth Wong]

A point singularity can actually be quite small. It takes a lot of mass to create one in the first place, but once it's made, it can shrink over billions of years to become much smaller than its original size.

It is theorized that primordial black holes (ie- formed shortly after the Big Bang) could still exist, and be so small that they might have passed through our solar system without us even noticing. I don't recall what the minimum size of a singularity is where it would spontaneously evapourate in a burst of gamma radiation, but I do recall that the limit is smaller than one would think. Nevertheless, it is undoubtedly much larger than is feasible for a weapon mounted on a small starship.

Let us theorize that some futuristic society has the ability to produce and briefly stabilize (say, via some kind of stasis field) a singularity of low mass (say, a few tons, which is reasonable for a starship to launch out of a weapon). Would this be extremely destructive? Yes, but not for the reasons you might expect. Its gravity would be wholly unremarkable; you could pass your hand within inches of the thing and not notice. If it struck massless particle deflector shields capable of deflecting a rock of equivalent mass, it would simply bounce off. But when it evapourated, you would have a gamma ray burst equivalent to several tons of M/AM.

[HRogge]

A black hole with an event horizon of "a few centimeters" would have a mass similar to the mass of Earth.

Escape velocity formula: v^2 = 2*G*M/r

"upper limit":
v = 3E8 m/s
G = 6.67E-11 m³/(s²·kg)
r = 0.1 m

=> mass = 6.75E25 kg ( ~ 10 times the mass of Earth )

"lower limit" ( not really a lower limit because we don't know if Harper is right with his 'a few cm' ):

r = 0.01 m
=> mass = 6.75E24 kg ( slightly heavier than Earth )

A mass of this ammount would create a huge gravity within a huge distance...
( a = G * m/r² => ~ 5E7 g - 5E8 g within a distance of 1 km )

The high speed of the BH might be the fact that will rescue the ship/person. It will be through the ship within microseconds... maybe too less time to damage ship and persons.

[Darth_Shinji]

BHB: black hole bomb, from gunbuster. It is jupter turn into a blackhole and used to destroy the center of the milky way.

The center of the milky way IS a black hole... ( called Sagitarius A* )
It would not even notice a jupiter sized mass.

Well, I'm not sure what tech they used but it got very very big when it was activated. I think the jupiter was mainly the reaction mass of the whole process. The black hole bomb swallowed the galatic center, and all that was left was a thin mass of star and such orbiting the black hole.

[Renewed_Valour1]

A black hole with an event horizon of
The high speed of the BH might be the fact that will rescue the ship/person. It will be through the ship within microseconds... maybe too less time to damage ship and persons.

That's what essentially saved the Andromeda along with her AG fields. The real value of PSBs would be the fact that they could drop nearly any shield in one hit.

[HRogge]

Well, I'm not sure what tech they used but it got very very big when it was activated. I think the jupiter was mainly the reaction mass of the whole process. The black hole bomb swallowed the galatic center, and all that was left was a thin mass of star and such orbiting the black hole.

Maybe you will find this facts interesting:

Sagitarius A*:
Mass: ~ 3E6 solar masses
Radius: < 0.01 parcec

[Darth_Shinji]

Well, I'm not sure what tech they used but it got very very big when it was activated. I think the jupiter was mainly the reaction mass of the whole process. The black hole bomb swallowed the galatic center, and all that was left was a thin mass of star and such orbiting the black hole.

Maybe you will find this facts interesting:

Sagitarius A*:
Mass: ~ 3E6 solar masses
Radius: < 0.01 parcec

okay. yeah?
The BHB still did it. The also used a couple of hundred of there engines called degeneration engines to help it. Not sure how it works thou. The still used jupter as apart of this device though to make a black hole large enought to swallow most of a galaxy.

[NecronLord]

The necrons (40k)could be on the other side of the galaxy by the time it arrived. Or with some experimenting just kill it's inertia and laugh at whoever fired it. At that amount of compression it would take some time for a gauss whip to disintegrate the projectile. In the case of Darth wongs idea thoug they could easily destroy it instantly.

[Eleas]

(Renewed)
"Uhm slipstream portals have enough gravity that they nearly crack planets when opened near them. Even at several light seconds to light minutes away they can severely damage a planet causing massive upheavals. An Interdictor or most other things aren't going to even come close to that."

Proof? This sounds like BS to me.

[Renewed_Valour1]

Proof? This sounds like BS to me.

"Mathematics of Tears" : The Pax a Glorious Heritage Cruiser destroyed a planet by ejecting her slipstream core at a planet then detonating. The result was a slipstream portal that displaced a good portion of the planet into it and blew the rest of it apart.

"All Too Human": The Basilk launched several PSBs at Mobius in an attempt to destroy the planet. The Andromeda opened a slipstream portal some distance from the planet, which sucked the PSBs into it. PSBs have a mass of a small planet and travel at 40 PSL but they portals still visibly changed their course. The portal also caused global seismic upheavals and volcanic eruptions on Mobius.

"Bunker Hill": The Drago Kasov fleet ejected slipstream cores into the formation of the Renewed Commonwealth Defense Pact Fleet. The portals then hauled in the fleet.

[Eleas]

(Renewed_Valour1)
"Mathematics of Tears" : <snip>
"All Too Human": <snip>
"Bunker Hill": <snip>

Cripes, I'm an idiot. I thought you meant Star Trek, not Andromeda. Sorry.

[Crossover_Maniac]

(Renewed_Valour1)
"Mathematics of Tears" : <snip>
"All Too Human": <snip>
"Bunker Hill": <snip>

Cripes, I'm an idiot. I thought you meant Star Trek, not Andromeda. Sorry.

Well, both were written by the same man. Originally, the Andromeda was suppose to have been a Federation starship frozen in time 300 years to discover the Federation was destroyed from within by geneticly engineering descendents of Khan and what was left was invaded by the Klingons.

[Renewed_Valour1]

Well, both were written by the same man. Originally, the Andromeda was suppose to have been a Federation starship frozen in time 300 years to discover the Federation was destroyed from within by geneticly engineering descendents of Khan and what was left was invaded by the Klingons.

Well created would be a more correct term. Most of the details of Andromeda were fleshed out by Robert Hewitt Wolfe.

[SPOOFE]

A black hole with an event horizon of "a few centimeters" would have a mass similar to the mass of Earth.

An event horizon of only a few centimeters would indicate that the rest of its gravity effects diminish just as quickly (the whole thing about gravity getting exponentially weaker with distance, and all that).

What would such a point singularity do when it hits an unshielded starship? Go right through, like a bowling ball going through a cloud. Sure, it'd absorb a good chunk of hull plating as it went, but this increase in matter would be insignificant. And there'd be two hull breaches. If you knew where the critical systems on a starship were, you could take out the reactor in a single blast (assuming the reactor were that fragile). But it wouldn't suck in the entire ship, or even a significant portion of it.

In fact, if the PSP didn't hit any critical systems, the damage would be almost nil on a large starship.

[Crossover_Maniac]

A black hole with an event horizon of "a few centimeters" would have a mass similar to the mass of Earth.

An event horizon of only a few centimeters would indicate that the rest of its gravity effects diminish just as quickly (the whole thing about gravity getting exponentially weaker with distance, and all that).

Not really, if you were standing a distance of 6,378 km (the radius of the earth), you would experience 1 g of gravity from a black hole the mass of earth. If you within a hundred meters of one, you would experience more than 4 billion g's.

acceleration from gravity=G*m/r^2

G=gravitational constant=6.67E-11
m=mass=5.96E24 kg
r=distance from the center of mass of the object.

[Renewed_Valour1]

If you within a hundred meters of one, you would experience more than 4 billion g's.

That can't be a good thing for your hull to experience.