This is topic Hand Phasers and Heat in forum Starships & Technology at Flare Sci-Fi Forums.


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Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
 
Can't let the new guy post ALL the new threads.

You know, a phaser has the ability to vaporize rocks. Why doesn't the inevitable heat bleedoff from a hand phaser emission burn off the user's hand, not to mention everything else in the area?

Mark (playing with my laser pointer today, and even IT gets warm from the battery after a long time)
 

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Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
 
Probably has to do with the same physics that allow us to see (& at times, dodge) the beam.
 

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Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
 
Probably for the same reasonm that people are able to "safely" use flame-throwers. The heat's going that way. And besides, we don't know how much heat, if any, is actually produced by phaser vapourisation. Theoretically (in terms of realistic physics) a lot, yes, but on-screen evidence has people climbing through tunnels newly-phasered through solid rock within minutes.
 

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Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
 
Or, to quote Sternbach in the TNG TM, at high settings there's very little actual vaporization going on, and most of the disappearing act is due to that good old subspace magic.

That also helps with how we see objects disappear. It seems like the phaser plants a "seed" of disappearance to an object, and this then spreads until it meets a boundary (like skin-to-air or clothes-to-air). Instead of just heat-induced disassociation of matter, this would be a "dephasing" effect that does not willingly jump from one type of material to another. If it does, the second material will also disappear in its entirety, right until the next boundary (or at least until the oomph of the effect runs out); if it doesn't, the second material is not harmed at all. So no burn mark beneath Ensign X'Pired.

It seems a phaser can be used to simply pump energy to a rock, causing it to glow red-hot. Or it can be used to induce the dephasing effect, causing parts of the rock to disappear to another realm (and sometimes sending other parts flying about).

Timo Saloniemi
 

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Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
 
The one bugger about it though, is the fact that people who've been stunned (post-TNG) often display phaser burns.
 

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Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
 
Yeah... I'd like to keep the stun, burn and dephase functions quite separate, even if they are integrated into the same physical casing.

Indeed, regarding the prop that with minimal modifications serves as laser in "The Cage", then behaves like phaser in early TOS, I'd like to think that its three rotatable barrels in fact housed completely different mechanisms. If there is a door to cut through, choose the laser barrel. If there is a Starfleet officer playing god or trying to take away your favorite salt vampire, choose the stun phaser barrel. And if all is lost and Starfleet is closing in on you and your android loved one, choose the disintegrate phaser barrel, hug him, and press the trigger.

TOS phasers would then ditch the laser barrel and make the stun and disrupt ones concentric rather than parallel.

Timo Saloniemi
 

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Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
 
That's a common theory, but I like the way you've put it. I may have to steal it (in a giving-you-full-credit kind of way). Should I ever be motivated to update my site ever again!
 

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Posted by Lurker Emeritus (Member # 1888) on :
 
Damn! You broke my run! I'll have to start all over again, now! But never fear, I will achieve my goal of total New Topic dominance one day!

MWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!

And so, to the topic at hand:

A link to an article which may be of interest (although most of you have probably read it already)
http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tech/Beam/Beam1.html

and for another related article from the same website (which cannot be directly linked to ) select the following link, go to 'Technology' in the left hand menu, select 'Ground Combat' and then choose the Star Trek section of the 'small arms' category (scroll down for TOS era phasers)
http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/
 

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Posted by Saltah'na (Member # 33) on :
 
It's sort of like Lightsabers. They don't inherently generate heat, but the energy they emit has properties that cause the atoms of the contact object to get "excited" and as a result react as if it is getting hot or vapourized. There may be some heat feedback, mostly due to the power cell discharging. But it is not "anything hot" that is coming out of the phaser. It's just a beam, the beam is making things heat up.

That's my guess though.
 

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Posted by Ritten (Member # 417) on :
 
Maybe they do generate all the heat one would think, and that is shunted as subspace radiation? This would give good reason that weapons fire is easily picked up on subspace scans.
 

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Posted by Da_bang80 (Member # 528) on :
 
I'm not real big on the technobabble stuff, but doesn't a phaser work much like a laser? In that the beam is aligned so that all the energy is traveling in one direction, that would mean that there isn't enough energy dissipated into the surounding atmosphere or back into the phaser itself to cause it to get hot.

That's just my 2 cents.
 

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Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
 
A rock wall being vaporized just five meters away should still subject the phaser-holder to enough heat to boil him as well, though...

So classic vaporization is probably still out of the question, even if the beam itself is "cold".

Timo Saloniemi
 

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Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
 
No. You're basically just asking the same question that Mark did when starting this thread. And many of the answers - mine, Tahna's and Ritten's especially - make it plain that just because we would "expect" a large section of rock being vapourised to emit a hella lotta heat according to our own physical rules (or contemporary notions thereof) doesn't mean that it's what happens when someone in Trek decides to start zapping. We know that objects aren't being vapourised according to the proper definition, it's a term used to describe a similar process which actually involves matter (and energy) phasing out of our continuum (and imperfectly at that, given, say, residue is left behind like in "Gambit").

A question that's just occurred to me: has the word 'vapourisation' even been used onscreen to describe the effect of a phaser set on Kill?
 

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Posted by Lurker Emeritus (Member # 1888) on :
 
Yes. Picard says it to that woman who escapes from Sick Bay, ambushes him in an empty corridor and grabs his phaser. When he retrieves the phaser and examines the setting, he tells her that if she'd fired it, she would have vapourised him.

EDIT: this occurs in the film First Contact
 

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Posted by Ritten (Member # 417) on :
 
Lilly would be her name.

I would think the 'kill' setting could be far less powerful than the 'vapourize' setting. Flesh being weaker than rock and all.
 

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Posted by Bernd (Member # 6) on :
 

quote:

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http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/

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And you probably look up information on the State of Israel in the Hezbollah database...
 

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Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
 
D'Oh! First Contact, I remember now. But then again, he was speaking to sonmeon from the past, perhaps he remembered in time that saying she would have interphasetransmogrified him would have got little more than a blank look.

(and then there's the novelisation, that changes the phaser setting to level 1, which would have ghiven him a "nasty rash". . .)
 

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Posted by Ritten (Member # 417) on :
 
Bernd, no, the official site of the Iranian gov't.

Or they just use a broader definition for vapourisation. It isn't like words don't get diluted and polluted every day.
 

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Posted by Lurker Emeritus (Member # 1888) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Lee:
D'Oh! First Contact, I remember now. But then again, he was speaking to sonmeon from the past, perhaps he remembered in time that saying she would have interphasetransmogrified him would have got little more than a blank look.

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Without wishing to sound smug (yet succeeding all the same) I actually saw that one coming

I'd suggest that such an explanation is taking things too far even for a sci fi analysis forum! If it was the case that the true term would be meaningless to her and that the process involved has nothing to do with vapourisation of any kind, then why would it even occur to Picard to use the word vapourised? This would imply that he would become a cloud of red mist, rather than just wink out of existence. Under such circumstances he would simply have said "kill" and given her a meaningful look.

So nyah
 

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Posted by Ritten (Member # 417) on :
 
Because Picard is the CO of the Fed's flagship, making him uber smart? Or, being an archeologist and all he has a decent grasp on what would have been understood way back when, especailly with as often as E-? as gone back there is could have been part of his E-? command training.
 

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Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
 
OK then, so we'll just blame the Universal Translator. Picard was actually speaking French, and Lily was speaking, er, um, Gaelic!
 

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Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
 
Negronic. Or Jive.
 

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Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
 
If Picard is speaking French, why on earth does the translator give him a damned English accent? Oi, that's my favorite little pet peeve from TNG. The Earl-Grey drinking, Proper-English speaking FRENCHMAN.

EDIT: As well as when Beverly pronounced 'croissant' with a French accent. You're speaking ENGLISH, you don't use the *loanword* like it was in the original language.
 

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Posted by Ritten (Member # 417) on :
 
The points you made also show the 'culturalisation' that the future has undergone, with travel made easy. Plus, with Picard having 'run off' from the farm he could very well have wanted to change enough not to be a frenchy, so he changed as much as possible.
 

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Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
 

"EDIT: As well as when Beverly pronounced 'croissant' with a French accent. You're speaking ENGLISH, you don't use the *loanword* like it was in the original language."

Some people would.
 

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Posted by HerbShrump (Member # 1230) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Ritten:
The points you made also show the 'culturalisation' that the future has undergone, with travel made easy. Plus, with Picard having 'run off' from the farm he could very well have wanted to change enough not to be a frenchy, so he changed as much as possible.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Lee:
Waitaminute, how should one pronouce the word without sounding French? Croy-SANT? I say Croah-son. Whicb is how the French pronounce it. I don't remember the scene in question; did Bev put an overly fake French overpronounciation on it?

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