Phaser energy loss at range

Howedar · Post by **Howedar** » 2003-03-01 07:40pm

How accurately can the loss from phaser glowing be determined? Obviously, a phaser beam has a set amount of energy, and a glowing beam will detract from this. Now, I'm not expert at analyzing video footage and such. Would anyone be interested in calculating a rough energy loss from a phaser for a given distance? This would allow a fairly accurate limit on effective range to be estimated.

Howedar · Post by **Howedar** » 2003-03-02 08:27pm

So nobody is interested?

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2003-03-02 08:32pm

Howedar wrote:So nobody is interested?

I don't think there's any way to tell for certain. The power loss from visible light tends to be pretty minimal, but to tell for sure you would have to do some surprisingly complicated observations including but not limited to attempts to determine the wavelength of the light given off, as well as just the intensity. Frankly I find that far too complicated and expensive, given its fairly small potential value.

Sr.mal · Post by **Sr.mal** » 2003-03-02 08:34pm

Any energy weapon that is luminecent, like a phaser beam or TL bolt, does not have infinite range because it does lose energy in the form of light. However, I do not know the rate at which the energy is lost so I'm sorry, but I cannot help you.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2003-03-02 09:05pm

Sr.mal wrote:Any energy weapon that is luminecent, like a phaser beam or TL bolt, does not have infinite range because it does lose energy in the form of light. However, I do not know the rate at which the energy is lost so I'm sorry, but I cannot help you.

A lot of evidence suggest that turbolasers are invisible with a tracer. Many times in the movies we see explosions before the visible pulse reaches the target.

Howedar · Post by **Howedar** » 2003-03-02 11:30pm

Master of Ossus wrote:
Howedar wrote:So nobody is interested?
I don't think there's any way to tell for certain. The power loss from visible light tends to be pretty minimal, but to tell for sure you would have to do some surprisingly complicated observations including but not limited to attempts to determine the wavelength of the light given off, as well as just the intensity. Frankly I find that far too complicated and expensive, given its fairly small potential value.

I was afraid of that. Oh well.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-03-03 12:08am

Any radiation not in the visible spectrum would be unaccounted for.

Howedar · Post by **Howedar** » 2003-03-03 04:41pm

True. It would be a low-end estimate for energy lost.