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*wishes he had the TM, so he could see exactly what it says* I'm gonna have to go get me one of those, eh? :-)
------------------ "The Earl of Sandwich invented the sandwich. Samuel Morse invented the Morse Code. Plato invented the plate." -Holly, Red Dwarf: "Parallel Universe"
posted
"As for what happens to the plasma, it probably cools back down into a gas and either recycled or, if the plasma/coil interaction somehow makes it unusable, vented invisibly out of the nacelles. The few times we have actually seen plasma being vented, it could either be the fact that it is plasma, thus hot, thus glowing, making it visible, or it might be that it would normally be invisible, but they show it to us on TV so we get a better effect (kinds like sound in space; we know it isn't there, but we accept it as something added in for effect)."
Agree on all counts exdcept recycling. 1) When the vessel is producing a lot of plasma (which as I understand it is a gas which has been so thermally-excited that electrons are stripped from their nuclei - thus ionizing it), the vessel is travelling at multiples of c. Thus, the amount of used-exhaust plasma being vented at any particular POV in space would be infinitesimal - but would in fact exist.
2) Vessels travelling at warp leave an ion trail which can be detected and tracked later. This could be the residual plasma, which although cooled back down to ambient temperature (2-3 degrees Kelvin?), would still be ionized, as the stripped electrons would not always re-affix to all nuclei. Could it be this ion trail which, repeated by vessel after vessel, causes the degradation of the subspace continuum mentioned in various episodes? And that said problem has been counteracted/alleviated by better de-ionizing or less transatating of plasma in newer vessels such as the Sovereign and Intrepid classes?
3) As I recall from phaser discussions, over-stimulated matter "dematerializes" - which is to say it 'transtates' from normal space into subspace (it does not convert to energy, or everytime a red-shirt was dematerialized, there would be an earth-shattering kaboom). It might be reasonable to postulate that, in the extreme conditions involved in the creation of a subspace field in the nacelles, some or most of the plasma is transtated into subspace as well.
4 I doubt that the leftover plasma could be recycled. Although it is ionized deuterium (highly-energized bonded proton pairs with one or no electrons), handling same prior to cooling would be almost as hazardous a task as handling antimatter plasma. [Although, since it is ionized, a magnetic field could manipulate it). It is much more likely that the used plasma is somehow made to proceed laterally to the glowing blue grids, and passes through them into space. This might be facilitated by the gap between the upper and lower coil halves.
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On the issue of the glowing nacelle grilles . . .
(possible spoiler for VGR "The Void")
$ $ $ $ $
When Voyager's warp engines were completely off line, after trying to escape the void, the core powered down, the nacelle grilles were still lit. It's clear as day that the core is defunct. No swirling blue patterns. But for some reason, the nacelles still had power.
On a side note: How in the world did we end up with this thread again? This thing is over a year old...
------------------ Terry: "Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, ...." Max: "And?" Terry: "I forgot." Max: "Come on, Clinton was the fun one, then came the boring one." Terry: "They're all boring."
I'm new to the BBS, and just replying for the fun of it whenever I see something interesting. Unfortunately, as my wife says, I'm interested in EVERYTHING.
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