Sci-fi's most ineffectively used technologies...

[Nephtys]

Unlikely. Most of the injury caused by being hit with a bulletproof vest on is backface deformation, not momentum transfer. With zero backface deformation (in the case of our hypothetical force field), a baseline human with the generator secured fairly well would be able to laugh at modern heavy machine gun rounds without significant issues. Hell the impacts wouldn't even knock the guy over, let alone hit hard enough to break bones.

Newton is unhappy with you. For a force field generator to stop a bullet, it, as the name would imply, apply a force on the bullet to stop it. That's fine and dandy, except that the bullet is applying an equal and opposite for on it. That's what Ryan is talking about. It stops the bullet, but the generator gets knocked back with the force of the bullet. Depending on the circumstances, this would be damaging to the drone, even if you were clever and angled your forcefield so that the bullet impacts on it from an extremely shallow angle.

At a certain point, it becomes alot more effective to just start making body armor for your drones. Conceivably, it's not out of the realm of possibility to armor something like a Borg drone to be effectively bullet proof to anything man portable, especially since mobility and comfort isn't a high priority for the Borg Drone on the Go.

Or the forcefield absorbs the KE and turns it into heat, or light, or whatnot. That's you know, a reasonable explanation for when you see a kinetic object in any show/game/movie hitting a shield then the target just shrugging it off. You're otherwise making far too many assumptions that don't at all fit the given information.

[Teleros]

The other possibility is that the shield generator can convert kinetic energy into something more easily dealt with. Granted, a sheet of piezoelectric crystals is... unlikely... to stop your hypothetical bullet, but if its possible to do something like it on a larger scale it might explain things better. You could even have it so that the impacts recharge the shield generator's power cell. Just don't ask me how you're supposed to build something like this .

[Ender]

Unlikely. Most of the injury caused by being hit with a bulletproof vest on is backface deformation, not momentum transfer. With zero backface deformation (in the case of our hypothetical force field), a baseline human with the generator secured fairly well would be able to laugh at modern heavy machine gun rounds without significant issues. Hell the impacts wouldn't even knock the guy over, let alone hit hard enough to break bones.

Newton is unhappy with you. For a force field generator to stop a bullet, it, as the name would imply, apply a force on the bullet to stop it. That's fine and dandy, except that the bullet is applying an equal and opposite for on it. That's what Ryan is talking about. It stops the bullet, but the generator gets knocked back with the force of the bullet. Depending on the circumstances, this would be damaging to the drone, even if you were clever and angled your forcefield so that the bullet impacts on it from an extremely shallow angle.

At a certain point, it becomes alot more effective to just start making body armor for your drones. Conceivably, it's not out of the realm of possibility to armor something like a Borg drone to be effectively bullet proof to anything man portable, especially since mobility and comfort isn't a high priority for the Borg Drone on the Go.

Or the forcefield absorbs the KE and turns it into heat, or light, or whatnot. That's you know, a reasonable explanation for when you see a kinetic object in any show/game/movie hitting a shield then the target just shrugging it off. You're otherwise making far too many assumptions that don't at all fit the given information.

Momentum is not the same as kinetic energy and must be conserved. You can't magically transform it into energy, energy is a different concept entirely. This is the central point that we have all been hammering at and that the shields page on the main site covers extensibely. You are also a fucking moron. It is nice to see we are accumulating a collection of them in this thread.

[Ender]

That is momentum transfer you fucking moron. The momentum of the bullet is transfered to the plate which is in turn transferred to you flesh, which in turn transfers it to the ground by way of your feet. Since these are inelastic collisions the amount of KE varies through the transfers as the less durable things deform.

Get fucked Ender. If you can't understand the difference between the force been spread out evenly across the whole plate in the shield situation and a bullet hitting conventional armor which DOES NOT spread out the impact evenly, then you should shut the fuck up.

Firstly conventional armor does spread out the impact. That is why they are plates. Secondly, spreading out the impact in no way alters the fact that momentum transfer is still taking place, it just changes the local pressure while conserving momentum overall. Thirdly, your magic shield doesn't spread it out evenly across the entire shield. Momentum is conserved and the force applied to the shield is still transfered in to the shield generator itself.

You really are just too stupid to live aren't you? You get corrected about being fucked up, and then get pissy while demonstrating you are been more fucked up.

[Neko_Oni]

Momentum is not the same as kinetic energy and must be conserved. You can't magically transform it into energy, energy is a different concept entirely. This is the central point that we have all been hammering at and that the shields page on the main site covers extensibely. You are also a fucking moron. It is nice to see we are accumulating a collection of them in this thread.

It's funny because I agree with you entirely (except for me being a fucking moron). I just don't feel that the momentum of a bullet will be enough to do any real damage if it's spread out. In any case does it really matter? Borg Drones have never shown ANY ability to deflect kinetic energy attacks that I'm aware of.

[Ender]

Dear Stupid Fucks

Read this. Realize that it deals not with shields as presented within Star Wars or Star Trek, but the physical limitations any theoretical shield must operate under. Understand why you are being flamed. Hang your heads in shame.

Toodle-pip

- Ender

[Ender]

Momentum is not the same as kinetic energy and must be conserved. You can't magically transform it into energy, energy is a different concept entirely. This is the central point that we have all been hammering at and that the shields page on the main site covers extensibely. You are also a fucking moron. It is nice to see we are accumulating a collection of them in this thread.

It's funny because I agree with you entirely (except for me being a fucking moron). I just don't feel that the momentum of a bullet will be enough to do any real damage if it's spread out. In any case does it really matter? Borg Drones have never shown ANY ability to deflect kinetic energy attacks that I'm aware of.

It won't be spread out, it will still be concentrated at the shield generator and its mountings. This is why you are a fucking moron.

[Samuel]

Protip; Star Trek is not 'sci fi'. It's a tiny, stupid little corner of science fiction.

Okay, you can either create new universe or erase your own. Unless you have ones where you can do a third option, it is pretty useless.

'temporal manipulation technology != time travel'. SW uses this technology itself.

Your example implied time travel. You mean the Wars ships... relativity nullifiers? How can they be used for something different?

ST even has LOGIC NULLIFYING SHIELDS

What episode was this? I only saw them break the rules of math, the laws of biology, the laws of topology and the laws of physics.

I'm not seeing alternative uses outside of pockets like in Magic the Gathering. But that only works if you have really good machines.

[Neko_Oni]

Okay Ender.

I KNOW that momentum will be conserved. I concede that this momentum (depending on how the generator is attached) can cause injuries in a similar manner to backface deformation in conventional armour. Maybe I just had a more idealised image in my head of how the shield system worked.

Calm down a bit yeah, I largely agree with you.

[Stark]

Protip; Star Trek is not 'sci fi'. It's a tiny, stupid little corner of science fiction.

Okay, you can either create new universe or erase your own. Unless you have ones where you can do a third option, it is pretty useless.

Uh... what? Even ST has different kinds of time travel. PS, ST-only is not relevant to a discussion of sci-fi in general, learn to read. I'm not even sure how this is a response to what you quoted.

Your example implied time travel. You mean the Wars ships... relativity nullifiers? How can they be used for something different?

LOL! I said 'temporal manipulation technology' in my post and mastery of temporal manipulation is very powerful and used ineffectively in scifi. It's not my fault you don't know that. I dig the appeal to ignorance which suggests that if you can't think of something it's not ineffective. Even the Time Lords don't really follow through on the implications of their near-total mastery of temporal mechanics (largely due to cultural stagnation, but still). Thus, it qualifies as 'ineffectively used technology' even if you're laughably poorly informed about it in the scifi genre and don't understand how it could influence every aspect of industry and culture.

What episode was this? I only saw them break the rules of math, the laws of biology, the laws of topology and the laws of physics.

I'm not seeing alternative uses outside of pockets like in Magic the Gathering. But that only works if you have really good machines.

Man, I love you so much. They have 'temporal shields' which protect them from the 'consequences' of logic. Year of Hell? Whoops. And ... 'machines'? What are you talking about? You seem to have an extraordinarily narrow (or ignorant) view of temporal manipulation!

[Samuel]

Protip; Star Trek is not 'sci fi'. It's a tiny, stupid little corner of science fiction.

Okay, you can either create new universe or erase your own. Unless you have ones where you can do a third option, it is pretty useless.

Uh... what? Even ST has different kinds of time travel. PS, ST-only is not relevant to a discussion of sci-fi in general, learn to read. I'm not even sure how this is a response to what you quoted.

Your example implied time travel. You mean the Wars ships... relativity nullifiers? How can they be used for something different?

LOL! I said 'temporal manipulation technology' in my post and mastery of temporal manipulation is very powerful and used ineffectively in scifi. It's not my fault you don't know that. I dig the appeal to ignorance which suggests that if you can't think of something it's not ineffective. Even the Time Lords don't really follow through on the implications of their near-total mastery of temporal mechanics (largely due to cultural stagnation, but still). Thus, it qualifies as 'ineffectively used technology' even if you're laughably poorly informed about it in the scifi genre and don't understand how it could influence every aspect of industry and culture.

What episode was this? I only saw them break the rules of math, the laws of biology, the laws of topology and the laws of physics.

I'm not seeing alternative uses outside of pockets like in Magic the Gathering. But that only works if you have really good machines.

Man, I love you so much. They have 'temporal shields' which protect them from the 'consequences' of logic. Year of Hell? Whoops. And ... 'machines'? What are you talking about? You seem to have an extraordinarily narrow (or ignorant) view of temporal manipulation!

I'm not really familiar with the backround for Dr. Who. Sorry.

I forgot about that. Yah, you are right Stark- the Year in Hell shows how they can massively abuse Time Travel- and that is just the tip of the iceburg.

For machines, I was talking about how in Magic, they have the bad guys get trapped in a fast time bubble... at which point they use it as an opportunity to perfect an army. They were machines, so they could reconfigure themselves to their hearts content.

[Stark]

From certain (non-ST anyway) directions many-worlds allows you to steal shit from a future/past that might not exist/exist anymore, as well, and simply being able to alter the flow of time or predict/constrain the results of actions, experiments or decisions could revolutionise a culture, instead of it being 'lol magic box goes to the wild west'.

[MJ12 Commando]

Why the fuck do you think a hypothetical force field should be assumed to have infinite rigidity? The universe is full of various kinds of force fields, and none of them possess this quality.

It doesn't need to be infinitely rigid, it just needs to not impinge significantly on the subject's flesh upon impact (a few mm is fine, ~44mm is technically capable of killing even without penetration, the EU uses ~22mm or so as their acceptable standard). As long as the backface deformation isn't significant and the field holds there will be essentially no worry of injury on the subject from man-portable firearms, assuming the field is secured fairly well.

FYI a .50 caliber round has a whopping 45 N/s of momentum. Most rounds have significantly less, the .45 ACP round has a whopping 4.5 N/s of momentum, about as good as a hard poke. The damage from backface deformation is entirely due to the vest resting on the skin and being flexible enough that the bullet still can go a ways into the body before being stopped.

Punching someone in the chest is significantly more likely to cause injury via momentum transfer than being shot with a bullet against a fairly solid set of ballistic armor, and as anecdotal evidence from the number of people dying from being punched in the chest show, that doesn't happen too often.

You are entirely overrating the power of momentum transfer to inflict any sort of wound, as anecdotes about soldiers in Iraq who don't even realize they get shot on the plates (which are hard and thus have minimal backface deformation against even rifle rounds). A generator that is competently secured, whether by harness or internal implantation, will make it far easier to kick the user to death than shoot him to death, if you're trying to kill via momentum transfer.

[Rye]

If I were borg, I would get around this forcefield stuff by sticking a couple of emergency replicators on drones that replicate custom armour over vital areas when a "bullet alarm" goes off in the local area. It might slow them down with the extra weight, but it's a pretty easy application of the technology already in existence.

[Darth Wong]

Why the fuck do you think a hypothetical force field should be assumed to have infinite rigidity? The universe is full of various kinds of force fields, and none of them possess this quality.

It doesn't need to be infinitely rigid, it just needs to not impinge significantly on the subject's flesh upon impact (a few mm is fine, ~44mm is technically capable of killing even without penetration, the EU uses ~22mm or so as their acceptable standard).

Then perhaps you should not have made some stupid comment about how a forcefield would act like a rigid plate with zero deflection.

You are entirely overrating the power of momentum transfer to inflict any sort of wound, as anecdotes about soldiers in Iraq who don't even realize they get shot on the plates (which are hard and thus have minimal backface deformation against even rifle rounds).

And you are apparently illiterate, since I never said any such thing. What I did say was that your bizarre deductive logic of "forcefield therefore no deflection" makes no sense and does not even conform to the very concept of a forcefield, which is not at all like a rigid plate.

It is true that small-arms fire has very little momentum; I never said anything to the contrary. However, since we know from "Raven" that the shields are generated by internal implants, we are talking about very small devices which are mounted to soft internal organs of the human body. Not at all analogous to a wide metal plate covering a significant fraction of a man's torso.

[MJ12 Commando]

Internal implants doesn't mean they aren't well-secured or floating around in the internal organs, if they were bolted onto bone or the like they'd be fairly secure without much difficulty. In any case jabbing someone in the ribs very hard with a finger has significantly more momentum than rifle rounds, so unless they did something entirely retarded like nestling the generator in the spleen without any significant reinforcement, the human body won't be the weak link unless the weapons being used against it are massively high-velocity.

The forcefield's rigidity is irrelevant as long as it won't impinge on the body significantly after the impact (as said), so calling me out on that one comment when it does nothing to invalidate the argument is a bit pedantic, don't you think? From what I've seen of Star Trek forcefields don't seem to deform very much when struck, but then again I don't think we see much in the way of fields being hit by kinetic weaponry either, save the combadge shield, so it's really a moot point. I said "zero backface deformation" not "an infinitely rigid forcefield", as well. I should have said "negligible backface deformation" to be more accurate, however.

[Gil Hamilton]

Or the forcefield absorbs the KE and turns it into heat, or light, or whatnot. That's you know, a reasonable explanation for when you see a kinetic object in any show/game/movie hitting a shield then the target just shrugging it off. You're otherwise making far too many assumptions that don't at all fit the given information.

Ahh, no. It can't do that. A force field applies a (dun dun dun!) force on an object to repel it. That means somewhere in there is an equal and opposite force. Because a field isn't really a "thing", the force must be on the generator. The rest follows. What assumptions am I making there?

[Darth Wong]

Internal implants doesn't mean they aren't well-secured or floating around in the internal organs, if they were bolted onto bone or the like they'd be fairly secure without much difficulty. In any case jabbing someone in the ribs very hard with a finger has significantly more momentum than rifle rounds, so unless they did something entirely retarded like nestling the generator in the spleen without any significant reinforcement, the human body won't be the weak link unless the weapons being used against it are massively high-velocity.

The forcefield's rigidity is irrelevant as long as it won't impinge on the body significantly after the impact (as said), so calling me out on that one comment when it does nothing to invalidate the argument is a bit pedantic, don't you think? From what I've seen of Star Trek forcefields don't seem to deform very much when struck, but then again I don't think we see much in the way of fields being hit by kinetic weaponry either, save the combadge shield, so it's really a moot point. I said "zero backface deformation" not "an infinitely rigid forcefield", as well. I should have said "negligible backface deformation" to be more accurate, however.

Jesus Fucking Christ, you're actually going to force me to spell this out for you, aren't you? It's not about whether you say there is "zero" or "negligible" backface deformation. THERE IS NO BACKFACE. A forcefield is not at all like a plate. What part of this do you not understand?

And since when are Borg implants "bolted" onto anything? They grow out of nanoprobes which are injected into the bloodstream, and 7 of 9's shield generator grew back even after most of her hardware was supposedly removed.

[MJ12 Commando]

The term "backface deformation" is just a term for the bullet penetrating into the flesh before it's stopped. The fact that a forcefield does not act like a plate or a kevlar vest is entirely irrelevant to the point I was trying to make. It's not entirely accurate when talking about forcefields, no, but the concept is essentially the same. The argument is essentially that:

1. Barring incomplete penetration, most small arms transfer an amount of momentum that is extremely miniscule, and

2. Given that a fist has higher momentum, it isn't terribly likely that it'll injure someone significantly.

Bolted is also a figure of speech. As long as the equipment is attached to or embedded in something that isn't vital (embedded in muscle or around/inside the bone), which I don't think is stated or not either way, it's not going to be likely to damage vital organs from being pushed around by bullets. Growing the generator into solid pieces of skeleton is good enough to not need to worry significantly about momentum transfer.

[Darth Wong]

The term "backface deformation" is just a term for the bullet penetrating into the flesh before it's stopped.

No it isn't. But if it would please your ego to pretend you made no error, then fine. Go ahead and pretend that's the case.

The fact that a forcefield does not act like a plate or a kevlar vest is entirely irrelevant to the point I was trying to make. It's not entirely accurate when talking about forcefields, no, but the concept is essentially the same. The argument is essentially that:

1. Barring incomplete penetration, most small arms transfer an amount of momentum that is extremely miniscule, and

2. Given that a fist has higher momentum, it isn't terribly likely that it'll injure someone significantly.

1) You are assuming that someone who deployed a projectile weapon against the Borg would use the same kind of weapon that we would use today, ie- a small-calibre rifle. Why? If the Borg started to make whatever trade-offs are necessary in order to produce forcefields that can push away bullets, why wouldn't they use shotguns firing large-calibre slugs?

2) If you could punch someone directly in his internal organs, you would injure him significantly.

Bolted is also a figure of speech. As long as the equipment is attached to or embedded in something that isn't vital (embedded in muscle or around/inside the bone), which I don't think is stated or not either way, it's not going to be likely to damage vital organs from being pushed around by bullets. Growing the generator into solid pieces of skeleton is good enough to not need to worry significantly about momentum transfer.

You're still committing the common sci-fi mistake of assuming that your pet idea will not be met by any adaptation from the other side. When the only thing they need do is switch to heavier ammo, it's hardly a complicated problem to solve. And every new system you add onto something must involve some kind of trade-off, even if that "something" is a Borg drone.

[Samuel]

Or they could fire the rounds faster- I'm sure the federation could find a way to do that. Or they could teleport them through the shields...

[Darth Ruinus]

Teleportation doesn't work through shields, so that wouldn't work.

Anyways, why would putting the shield emitter whatevers inside muscle or bone be a good idea?

[NecronLord]

I strongly doubt that it is just replicated into existence. But if you want to talk small guns, why not equip Atlantis with Asgard defense guns (in a similar manner they used the rail guns in season 1), or Earth for that matter?

Do we even know if they have a practical range of greater than a couple of kilometers? I don't recall them being used for orbital bombardment yet.

The problem with that scene is we really have no idea how much time it took them to get it up and running, though certainly it doesn't seem like they built anything new. Either way, I'm not suggesting they can build ready-made O'Neills, though they should be considering a new class, 305, soon for a more seamless incorporation of the new Asgard knowledge and technology.

Why mess with what works? When they designed the 304, they had living, sapient asgard around to help them. The next one will have to be designed on their own...

You're kidding, right? The Tollans were one of the most arrogant allies Earth had, secure in the knowledge their Ion cannons couldn't be bested (not once, but twice). I can definitely see the Tollans being so arrogant as to disregard a theory, even if it might have practical applications in fields other than the one they were referring to with Carter.

Science does not work that way. Tactical stuff (they're writing down the locations of our guns!) is one thing, but if your theories about quantumn physics are dead-wrong, you're not going to be inventing anything like an FTL drive. Or making funk-tastic personal phase shifters.

I can't recall any cloaks besides the Odyssey's cloak being used in Ark of Truth. Can you remind me of what you speak? Though, off the top of my head, I'd guess they were probably the Sodan cloaking device, not exactly "in production", but rather borrowed/loaned/given to them by the Sodan.

On looking back, it's actually not explicit. It's 'The Prior seemed to know we were there' I'd always assumed this was because they weren't meant to be visable. But one might just as well be reffering to the Prior knowing what planet they were on. (Though that's not nearly as impressive; it's called 'informants.')

Given how many times we've been through this, yes...yes you are.
[...]
Only now, at the end, are your true motives revealed.

Spoiler

C'mon, don't you pity the poor life suckers? The poor sods have been humiliated and starving for four years. Oh, and starvation hurts them more than us, apparently.

On that, we agree. But some advancement should be made along the way, if for no other reason than to justify the program's expense (the stargate, not the show).

Their primary mission was to defend the planet. They did that by bringing about the fall of the goa'uld, the hostile power determined to invade it. Everything else is just gravy.

If I were borg, I would get around this forcefield stuff by sticking a couple of emergency replicators on drones that replicate custom armour over vital areas when a "bullet alarm" goes off in the local area. It might slow them down with the extra weight, but it's a pretty easy application of the technology already in existence.

So, the batmobile armour then? Somehow, I'd think the rest of the borg might shout you down on that one. Imagine ten thousand voices in your head screaming 'The Cost. The Insane Cost!'

[Patrick Degan]

As long as the equipment is attached to or embedded in something that isn't vital (embedded in muscle or around/inside the bone), which I don't think is stated or not either way, it's not going to be likely to damage vital organs from being pushed around by bullets. Growing the generator into solid pieces of skeleton is good enough to not need to worry significantly about momentum transfer.

Really? Unless the Borg drone's skeletal structure is going to mass several hundred pounds or up to a ton, it would prove only little better support than muscle when a sufficiently forceful impactor hits the shield. There are other problems with this idea which should be rather obvious.

[dragon]

For those that keep going on about bullet proof armor heres a good article for you. The thick material provides a place for all the energy to go a shield doesn't have that. And having been shot when wearing a vest I can tell you that it nocked me flat on my ass. And that was with me at 100kg plus carrying 30 kilos worth of gear.

One interesting thing was as I laying on my back and felt where I got shot the vest was hot which makes since as the energy was dumped into the material.

In point of fact, a bullet-proof vest is not actually bullet-proof. Rather, the material of which the vest is made resists penetration by bullets below a certain kinetic energy threshold; once the structure and/or the velocity of the bullet is changed so that the energy profile of the bullet exceeds the threshold, penetration will certainly occur. Thus we can have bullets fired from a gun that can be stopped by a vest, and bullets fired from exactly the same gun that can not be stopped by the vest.

What is of interest is how the vest stops the bullet; what process occurs inside the vest to neutralize the energy of a bullet?

A bullet fired from a gun has kinetic energy and momentum due to its mass and the velocity at which it travels. That bullet carries out its function by delivering its load of kinetic energy completely to its target. When it strikes the target transfer of energy is achieved as the bullet stops moving; the more quickly the bullet stops, the more rapidly the energy is transferred. This is the principle behind the "knock down power" of any bullet-cartridge combination.

A bullet-proof vest accepts the energy from the bullet and dissipates it so that only a small portion is passed on to the actual target, the person who is wearing the vest. That small portion of energy will probably still be enough to knock the wearer flat on his or her backside, it still hurts a lot, and will almost certainly leave a very unpleasant bruise at the point of impact. But if the vest has done its job, the bullet has not penetrated, and the person wearing it gets to walk away essentially unharmed.

The secret to this is in the material used inside the vest. Believe it or not, a bullet-proof vest is filled with nothing more than several loose layers of a light plastic fabric. But not just any plastic will do the job. This application calls for plastic fibers of exceptionally high tensile strength, fibers that it takes a great deal of energy to stretch even the tiniest amount (not fibers that will stretch a lot before they break...). In this case, those fibers are made of a polyarylamide plastic known familiarly as "Kevlar". Kevlar is the proprietary name for the material; it is becoming more common to refer to the material generally as polyarylamide.

Fibers of Kevlar don't stretch very readily when put under tension. In fact, this material is even harder to stretch than steel! But it weighs a great deal less than an equivalent value of steel fibers would weigh.

Here's how it works: remember how those little coil springs resisted being pulled apart because they were so tangled up in each other? The molecular structure of Kevlar works much the same way. The various segments of the polymer molecules are restricted to a rigid orientation such that each molecule of Kevlar has the form of a long, twisting coil. During polymerization, when many of these form at the same time, they also get twisted around and intertwined with each other, making the resulting material very hard to stretch.

When a bullet strikes the vest, it hits the layers of Kevlar fabric. The momentum of the bullet tries to carry it through the fibers, but to do this it must force them apart. But the fibers are woven and hold their positions very well so the lateral movement of the bullet is translated into a stretching force on the individual fibers. While some of the fibers will break under the strain, most will absorb the energy by stretching a small amount. This serves to dissipate the energy and momentum of the bullet. The bullet then stops very quickly before it actually gets to the intended target, and because it has given up its energy to the nest instead of to the person inside the vest, there is usually a much happier ending to the tale

link