By: Paul Habib Jr.

December 5, 2002

hackerx@physicsforums.com

 

Probably the most well-known particle weapons are those on the TV series Star Trek.  Today’s technology, however, cannot support these sophisticated weapons.  On the show, the particles used to produce the beam are accelerated form zero to near c, near light speed, in a very short distance and have a ‘targeting’ range of close to 180° from the point of firing.  The beam can also be fired for a few seconds at a time.

Most of today’s particle accelerators accelerate charged particles linearly; these accelerators are called linacs, or linear accelerators.  Linacs are extremely long ‘tubes’ that accelerate charged particles by pushing and/or pulling them with electrostatic or magnetic fields.  The particles are gradually accelerated within the tube by speeding up the electrostatic or magnetic fields.  Many of these accelerators are over a kilometer long and a few meters wide, much larger the Voyager’s or Enterprise’s phasers.

It is also very hard to deflect, or aim, a particle beam since the particles are moving at such a high velocity.  With Voyager’s and Enterprise’s phasers, it’s a lot easier since the particles are being accelerated at a point instead of a line, the particles can be directed before being accelerated.

Finally last, but certainly not least, the lengths of the particle pulses.  Today’s particle beam weapons, or PBWs, are being designed to use highly sophisticated power supplies that can deliver extremely high powered current in an extremely short time period, a few nanoseconds.  This means you probably wouldn’t even be able to see the beam since it only lasts a few billionths of a second, engineers, physicists, and scientists are still trying to develop these power supplies.  However, since Voyager and Enterprise have warp cores, matter-antimatter reactors, they can produce an infinitely large amount of power to create high-powered beams for long periods of time.