What happens if you dephase cloak inside something?

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-01-12 12:59am

Well? Thatd be funny if a phasecloaked enterprise ended up welded to a big rock or something. LOL

But what would happen to the object itself if there was all the sudden double the density of matter?

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2003-01-12 01:01am

That one episode with the phase cloak showed things welded together. Or I'm not entirely sure. One thing that could happen is that the original mass (the asteroid) gets eliminate somehow (Trek throws COE out the window so who cares) and the dephased mass replaces it.

But I think the most likely thing is that the two undergo chemical reaction and form a new substance.

jaeger115 · Post by **jaeger115** » 2003-01-12 01:04am

Well, I think the subatomic substance of the Enterprise E would be interpresed with the rock at the tertiary subspace level with unusual harmonic flux... aww dammit I can't make good technobabble like Data can...

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-01-12 01:11am

if two atoms are suddenly made to occupy nearly the same exact position, wouldnt the atoms fuse? or would the nucleus of one be forced off but the electrons remain as ionising electrons?

thatd be really cool if we could test this for real .. >D

jaeger115 · Post by **jaeger115** » 2003-01-12 01:21am

if two atoms are suddenly made to occupy nearly the same exact position, wouldnt the atoms fuse? or would the nucleus of one be forced off but the electrons remain as ionising electrons?

imagine BILLIONS of pairs of atoms sharing the same space! If you're right, we'd see a lot of electricity in the newly fused material!

jaeger115 · Post by **jaeger115** » 2003-01-12 01:22am

And the crew might be fried by the MIGHTY ROCK-LIGHTNING OF DEATH!!!!

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-01-12 01:25am

Actually we'd probably get a highly unstable atom. I think there may be a limit to how many electrons an atom can hold. At some point the density at the core would block all quanta holding electrons in orbit around the nucleus.

But thats only if the core remains the same number. If the atoms fuses entirely the atom might be incredibly unstable and just break apart release lots of neutrons and such. Or it might be stable through some bizzare overlap of strong nuclear fields. The nucleus might become one giant uberparticle made of hundreds of quarks :p

beyond hope · Post by **beyond hope** » 2003-01-12 01:50am

Most of a solid object is actually empty space... there may not be that many atoms that would dephase right on top of each other. I'm going on hazy high-school level memories of chemistry here, but any atoms that fused together would most likely have such a high atomic weight that they'd immediately start decaying. That's assuming they even *could* fuse together that way instead of the nucleus exploding and showering the area with loose neutrons. Some of the resulting nucleii would probably have half-lives of minutes or seconds. Whatever the result is, there's no way the crew is surviving it. The bright side is, having your head suddenly become one with an asteroid would sever the neural connections so fast you'd never realize anything had happened.

jaeger115 · Post by **jaeger115** » 2003-01-12 01:50am

Yes, there is a limit to how many electrons an atom can hold.

And this "uberparticle" will make good armor as long as it's not radioactive.

jaeger115 · Post by **jaeger115** » 2003-01-12 01:51am

Most of a solid object is actually empty space... there may not be that many atoms that would dephase right on top of each other. I'm going on hazy high-school level memories of chemistry here, but any atoms that fused together would most likely have such a high atomic weight that they'd immediately start decaying. That's assuming they even *could* fuse together that way instead of the nucleus exploding and showering the area with loose neutrons. Some of the resulting nucleii would probably have half-lives of minutes or seconds. Whatever the result is, there's no way the crew is surviving it. The bright side is, having your head suddenly become one with an asteroid would sever the neural connections so fast you'd never realize anything had happened.

Are you saying the resultant material will glow in the dark due to extreme radioactivity?

beyond hope · Post by **beyond hope** » 2003-01-12 02:10am

glow in the dark might be overstating it, but to my knowledge any element over 86 (radon) on the periodic table is unstable. I believe Plutonium is the highest naturally occuring one you'll find... anything higher on the periodic table has a half-life measured in hours or even seconds. I'm not sure whether two nuclei suddenly forced to share the same spot would fuse or whether they'd annihilate each other in reality, but apparently in the Treknoverse they can merge without the violent explosion I'd expect. The merged material would have to be at least somewhat radioactive though if any of the atoms composing it either merge into trans-uranic elements or else split. In composition i'd think it would be more like a wierd ore of whatever the asteroid was combined with the ship (and, of course, the crew.)

Patrick Degan · Post by **Patrick Degan** » 2003-01-12 03:31am

There is plenty of empty space between atoms, and no conditions which would cause atoms to superimpose upon one another or fuse together. The materialised starship would end up becoming molecularly fused to the object it was intersecting. Of course, it would not be possible afterward to seperate the two objects, and there would be a very large degree of molecular displacement which would tear up those parts of the ship's structure wherever the interface zones are.

Raxmei · Post by **Raxmei** » 2003-01-12 04:33am

Decloaking should force the atoms into otherwise impossible proximity. from there, the electromagnetic repulsion between atoms should violently force them apart. I think that would produce an explosion.

What actually happens is seen in the episode "Pegasus." the two objects merge together uneventfully, with no explanation as to what happens to the excess material.

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-01-12 12:15pm

When I say unstable I didn't mean radioactive, I mean the atom wouldn't be able to hold the massive negative charge. And whats more, the sudden appearance of a SECOND nucleus might result in said nucleus being shunted faster then you can blink. :

:

Lord Pounder · Post by **Lord Pounder** » 2003-01-12 01:31pm

Did that not happen once, I seem to remember something about Rikers 1st captain testing a phase cloak on his ship and causing a mutiny. The mutiny ended up with the ship trapped inside an asteroid.

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2003-01-12 01:36pm

beyond hope wrote:glow in the dark might be overstating it, but to my knowledge any element over 86 (radon) on the periodic table is unstable. I believe Plutonium is the highest naturally occuring one you'll find...

Actually, Uranium is the highest naturally occuring element. Plutonium is artificial.

beyond hope · Post by **beyond hope** » 2003-01-12 05:36pm

Thanks, Stormbringer.

Something else I didn't think about when I posted before: the power source of Federation ships uses antimatter. So, if the warp core, antimatter fuel pods, or the systems maintaining containment on either materialize within something solid... boom.

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-01-12 09:56pm

hope: that would be BAD.. especially since the mixture would be 1:1 and wouldnt suffer from explosive seperation of the AM fuel from the rest of the matter. youd get 100% efficiency..