Question about Fiction Über weapon.

[Crossroads Inc.]

In one of my Sci-fi stories, I have a rather advanced Über race from a slightly different reality from ours.

Supposidly, for my story, they have the ablity to fire a beam that will compress any matter (spaceship, asteroid, Planet) to the point that it would collapse into a singularity. But then at the last moment, the mass is realised and converted directly into energy.

I created the Weapon of doom with the idea that, while compressing it's target, the incresed gravity would damage any targets around it. And then, picoseconds before it fully colapses into a blackhole, coverting the mass back into direct energy would produce a rather sizeable "Bang"

My question is such a thing possible, IE collpasing mass, then exploding it, and also what actual effects would this cause?

[Surlethe]

In one of my Sci-fi stories, I have a rather advanced Über race from a slightly different reality from ours.

Supposidly, for my story, they have the ablity to fire a beam that will compress any matter (spaceship, asteroid, Planet) to the point that it would collapse into a singularity. But then at the last moment, the mass is realised and converted directly into energy.

If you're asking if this is physically possible, you have to hit it with antimatter to convert it directly into energy, AFAIK.

I created the Weapon of doom with the idea that, while compressing it's target, the incresed gravity would damage any targets around it.

Compressing it won't increase its mass, and, thus, won't increase gravity. If the sun suddenly turned into a black hole, by divine fiat[/], the Earth would still orbit in its current orbit.

And then, picoseconds before it fully colapses into a blackhole, coverting the mass back into direct energy would produce a rather sizeable "Bang"

My question is such a thing possible, IE collpasing mass, then exploding it, and also what actual effects would this cause?

Collapsing mass and converting to energy? I don't think so. Collapsing mass and then having it explode, though, is quite possible: it's what supernovae do, on a very large scale.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Collapsing mass and converting to energy? I don't think so. Collapsing mass and then having it explode, though, is quite possible: it's what supernovae do, on a very large scale.

Ah, you shall have to expise my pore termnoligy here, that is what I had in mind. Not "converting" but just making it go boom.

I thank you for correcting me on the gravity issue. I think it is a common idea that when a Black hole forms it magicaly becomes some Über gravity vortex. ( kinda already knew that, but I thought that collapsing it would cause some sort of 'sheering' in the gravity around it.)

Wish I could flesh out the idea a bit more. I'm good on ideas, bad on science

[Ford Prefect]

It sounds like you're making an implosion weapon; I would think you'd have to be fucking around with the weak nuclear force to do that. It's an interesting idea, and one I've put into use as a type of grenade in my own stories.

[Ariphaos]

If you could supress the electromagnetic force, you'd have the strong nuclear force gobbling up things around it to make superatoms, only decaying via the weak nuclear force. Once the supression was finished, you'd have a bit of a mess, much of which would probably go boom, as you have temporarily turned a piece of the target into a kind of dark matter as well.

[Tasoth]

If I understand the Big Rip properly, using a phantom force weapon might work better. The way it's described, the Phantom Force will eventually achieve such an acceleration in around 20 billion years that every atom and atomic force (gravity, EM, strong and weak nuclear forces) will be over come and space-time as well as all matter and energy will be over come.

Stay with me, this is where the technowankery/fiction comes from. If nature abhors a vaccuum and you've just created the ultimate vaccuum, say that an ensuing mini 'big-bang' occurs and unleashes a metric fuckton of gamma rays, UV rays and highly excited matter.

[Kuroneko]

I created the Weapon of doom with the idea that, while compressing it's target, the incresed gravity would damage any targets around it. And then, picoseconds before it fully colapses into a blackhole, coverting the mass back into direct energy would produce a rather sizeable "Bang"

Why bother inventing a mechanism, even implicitly, to stop the collapse at the last picosecond? If the object collapses to a black hole instead, Hawking radiation will convert into a blaze of random particles. Assuming, of course, you can get it to collapse in the first place.

Collapsing mass and converting to energy? I don't think so. Collapsing mass and then having it explode, though, is quite possible: it's what supernovae do, on a very large scale.

I thank you for correcting me on the gravity issue. I think it is a common idea that when a Black hole forms it magicaly becomes some Über gravity vortex. ( kinda already knew that, but I thought that collapsing it would cause some sort of 'sheering' in the gravity around it.)

Well, the static force in the immediate vicinity of the black hole diverges, which may be an issue if your über-weapon can make singularities while on a planet on the scale of thousands of tons or so. The resulting black hole may actually start absorbing more mass-energy from the planet than it gives out, which would be a problem.

If you could supress the electromagnetic force, you'd have the strong nuclear force gobbling up things around it to make superatoms, only decaying via the weak nuclear force. Once the supression was finished, you'd have a bit of a mess, much of which would probably go boom, as you have temporarily turned a piece of the target into a kind of dark matter as well.

That's not true. Strong force between nucleons occurs by pion exchange. Pions are rather massive, which is why the strong force beats electromagnetism by several orders of magnitude on the short range, and also why virtual pions have such a short range. Turning off the electromagnetic force is not going to be quite that dramatic, although it would have some unsavory effects.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

In one of my Sci-fi stories, I have a rather advanced Über race from a slightly different reality from ours.

Supposidly, for my story, they have the ablity to fire a beam that will compress any matter (spaceship, asteroid, Planet) to the point that it would collapse into a singularity. But then at the last moment, the mass is realised and converted directly into energy.

I created the Weapon of doom with the idea that, while compressing it's target, the incresed gravity would damage any targets around it.

Wrong. A teaspoon-full of neutron-star matter with the mass of Mount Everest will still exert the same gravitational force on its surroundings as Mount Everest comprised of regular matter. It does not magically become an all-consuming magical gravity vacuum just because it has fantastically high density.

And then, picoseconds before it fully colapses into a blackhole, coverting the mass back into direct energy would produce a rather sizeable "Bang"

My question is such a thing possible, IE collpasing mass, then exploding it, and also what actual effects would this cause?

It's pure handwavium. The only way you could convert the target mass to energy would be by shooting a fantastically dense pellet of antimatter with the same mass at your target while it's compressed into a fantastically dense lump. You could get partial conversion on the order of fractions of a percent by smashing it to the point where its constituent atoms undergo fusion. However, as most sci-fi targets tend to be largely comprised of nuclei heavier than iron, you need to stuff more energy into most of the nuclei to get them to fuse than you'd get out of the resulting fusion.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Thank you Thank you for the feed back!!! Especially Kuroneko.

After a bit of Googily the topic I did discover that even if a Black hole forms... if it is very very small, it will "explode" due to the loss of Hawking Radiation.

The main reason why I added the "exploding" bit originally was because I wanted something that crushed targets like a blackhole, but I didn't want it creating lots of blackholes.

This kills two birds with one stone as it gives me a plausable explanation for having the collpased mass 'explode' (without using antimater or wandwavium) and also getting rid of the ugly Black hole. (which would be a problem if you created a stable one each time the wepon was used)

As for the Über gun taking in other matter from a target. I got the idea from the "Doctor Device" from Enders game. A sort of chain reactions device.

If you fired it at a tree on a planet, the tree would collapse, nd then siuck in matter around it, and collapse it so on and so forth. So if you fired it at a planet, it would continue to collapse till the planet intself was crushed into the singularity ( areally evil weapon yes no?)

I'm currently reading up on just how the strong and weak forces would work for such a thing ( a bit complicated but VERY interesting!) And getting even more ideas.

Really amazing how much info I have recieved! Thank you all!

[nasor]

I believe that even if you compress it all the way to a singularity, it will very quickly evaporate - basically a big explosion. Assuming whatever you aimed it at wasn't too massive.

[LordShaithis]

Does your uber race really need to have silly technobabble weapons? Can't they just have powerful, robust weapons that make some kind of scientific sense, combined with sound tactics and a bad attitude?

[Setesh]

I believe that even if you compress it all the way to a singularity, it will very quickly evaporate - basically a big explosion. Assuming whatever you aimed it at wasn't too massive.

Quite true, the uberrace would have to expend energy to maintain the blackhole on objects of substellar mass, now if you compressed an entire solar system...

LordShaithis has a point however, its a very impracticle weapon, any race that could pull it off could use the energy to reduce the planet to subatomic particles without compressing it..

[Ford Prefect]

Does your uber race really need to have silly technobabble weapons? Can't they just have powerful, robust weapons that make some kind of scientific sense, combined with sound tactics and a bad attitude?

Because coverting your opponent into a ball of glowing negative manner is more fun?

[LaCroix]

Just one thing.

I think it would need more energy to compress the matter than to just heat it via DET.

And it would take a longer time to do so, too.

Well, If they just shrank them and kept them as Souvenir, that would be fun!

[Crossroads Inc.]

Does your uber race really need to have silly technobabble weapons? Can't they just have powerful, robust weapons that make some kind of scientific sense, combined with sound tactics and a bad attitude?

Because its Cool!
Seriously you make good points... At the time I was writting it, I simply wanted to try and come up with the most evil type of weapon imaginable, something that would show off how advanced they are.

I mean look at the Cultrue, do they NEED Gridfire? Maybe not.. Is it totally wicked cool? Hell yes!

[Beowulf]

Well, the static force in the immediate vicinity of the black hole diverges, which may be an issue if your über-weapon can make singularities while on a planet on the scale of thousands of tons or so. The resulting black hole may actually start absorbing more mass-energy from the planet than it gives out, which would be a problem.

Wouldn't the event horizon of the black hole have to be larger than a atom or so? (googles up a black hole even horizon calculator)

A 100,000 kg black hole would have a radius on the order of 10^-22 meters, while a hydrogen atom has a radius on the order of 10^-12 m. This would make it rather difficult to actually swallow anything before evaporation.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Sounds like wank. If you can apply the force to crush an object accordingly? Why bother with even crushing it that far; a good shove anywhere in that magnitude would obliterate any realistic structure.