Weaponized red matter (ST XI spoilers)

[Samuel]

That brings up something I hadn't thought of- how hot was the beam from Nero's drill? It was hot enough to burn through Vulcan and presumably the Earth, but it didn't seem to have any other heat effects. Being hit by it killed the red shirt and a Romulan, but getting dangerous close didn't kill Sulu or Kirk (especially when it vented on the top of the platform).

Shouldn't clouds of vaporized rock be coming out of the drill site? Shoudln't people nearby be baked by the heat?

Anyone have any theories, because it seems to have acted more like a lightsaber than a mining laser. It took up space, vaporized what it came into contact with without displacing it and had really poor heat conductivity outside the beam.

Am I just underestimating the heat capacity of air?

[Havok]

Did it actually vaporize (I think vaporize is probably the incorrect term) the Redshirt or did he just get caught in the beam and get accelerated down into the planet? (Obviously he was at least cooked to death) Also, are we sure it was "vaporizing" the earth it was drilling through, or just displacing it, or possibly driving down into the hole itself?

It was obviously giving off heat as the platform seemed to be a venting system of some sort.

[Rochey]

While that venting system discharged something, it didn't look like heat. It looked more like a miniature version of the beam itself.

Regarding how the beam itself works, perhaps it's just a really large-scale version of a phaser on "vapourise" mode? The effects - making the target simply dissappear without any effects on the environment - seemed fairly similar.

[Bounty]

It was almost certainly unintentional, but the beam looked and behaved almost exactly like the Verteron Array from Enterprise.

[Darth Hoth]

I may be screwing up my mathematics, but considering the Death Star's hyperdense hypermatter fuel and reactants, which it by necessity must store in large volumes, it must have some exceptional gravity management technologies to handle that mass. Could it not use those same resources to contain a miniature black hole of this variety?

Hypermatter is said to be complex, ie- in the "imaginary numbers" regime, so it is unknown what kind of energy density or space-time curvature it would create. Stephen Hawking at one time proposed that a "baby universe" in imaginary space-time is where you would go if you fell into a black hole (not that you would be intact, mind you). So an amusing side-effect of the "complex mass" interpretation of hypermatter from the ICS may be that each starship with hypermatter fuel is connected to a little "baby universe".

Ah, I had missed that point. Much obliged for the education.

[Kythnos]

Not having read the book yet and going by only one watching of the film I have a question:

Is it safe to say that "Red Matter" after it has been ignited causes matter to collapse into a singularity. That Singularity only having the mass of what it has collapsed. (not that this would change its use much against planets)

[bilateralrope]

Why did future Spock's ship have so much Red Matter on board ?

It only took a small drop to destroy Vulcan, but the ship was carrying a large sphere of the stuff.

From memory the drop looked to have a 1cm diameter, while the sphere was about 1m diameter. So there was enough volume for about a million planet killing shots.

I can only think of one explanation for this: Small amounts of Red Matter aren't stable for long enough to be useful. So destroying planets as they fall to the Empire doesn't look like a viable strategy because the Red Matter will either destroy the planets prematurely or not work when it comes time to destroy the planet (if the red matter decays into something useless if not stored correctly).

[Rochey]

Perhaps they didn't know how much they needed, and so decided to dump a shitload of the stuff on the ship rather than risk running out?

[Darksider]

Perhaps they didn't know how much they needed, and so decided to dump a shitload of the stuff on the ship rather than risk running out?

If they didn't know how much red matter it took to create the black hole, wouldn't spock have dumped the whole quanitity into the Hobus supernova just to be sure?

[phred]

Perhaps they didn't know how much they needed, and so decided to dump a shitload of the stuff on the ship rather than risk running out?

If they didn't know how much red matter it took to create the black hole, wouldn't spock have dumped the whole quanitity into the Hobus supernova just to be sure?

That was my thought. He was trying to stop a supernova, which would probably require a bit more than destroying a planet.
It doesn't explain why they had those syringes in the first place though.

[Rochey]

If they didn't know how much red matter it took to create the black hole, wouldn't spock have dumped the whole quanitity into the Hobus supernova just to be sure?

Fair point. No idea, in that case. Perhaps they just took that much on the off chance that something went wrong with attempt #1? Bit excessive, though.

[Darmalus]

The red matter seemed to need some sort of shock or energy input to convert itself into a black hole. Maybe by keeping it in a huge ball, the amount of energy needed to cause it all to turn into a black hole was kept large enough that (like in the movie) the ship itself wouldn't survive any disaster that could initiate the big red matter ball in the first place, making it a safety precaution.

[dworkin]

Red matter is clearly chewing gum Being a considerate vulcan, Spock bought enough for everybody.

[Stark]

The movie clearly showed that it had to be broken into bits to do anything; the huge ball was given several lingering camera shots of the smaller drops that remained after the explosion, that were then drawn in to the forming singularity. Perhaps only a small portion of the red matter ended up in the right state to form a singularity and the others were simply consumed by it, as the ship was. Red matter is clearly not very massive and the singularities don't appear to be 'real' singularities.

Amusingly the thing Nero loaded the canister of red matter into had the same sixfold cylinders sticking out as the Enterprise crew were seen loading.

[Peptuck]

Did it actually vaporize (I think vaporize is probably the incorrect term) the Redshirt or did he just get caught in the beam and get accelerated down into the planet? (Obviously he was at least cooked to death) Also, are we sure it was "vaporizing" the earth it was drilling through, or just displacing it, or possibly driving down into the hole itself?

It didn't appear to be generating any steam when it was hitting the water outside San Fransisco, just pushing the water up into the air.

[Peptuck]

The technique of destroying planets that we see Nero use is an incredibly bad method of planet-busting, particularly against Wars.

Firstly, it seems to require that a hole be blasted through the crust of the planet, suggesting that the RM needs to hit the planet's interior directly. If he could have beamed it, then he'd hardly have been using this method, suggesting that it can't actualy be beamed.

Its also worth pointing out that he didn't simply fire a torpedo loaded with the stuff at the surface. If he could have created a singularity by detonating a speck of the stuff against the surface, he wouldn't have bothered with the drill in the first place.

That pretty much means the RM warheads are useless in a space battle unless they actually penetrate the shields and hull of an Imperial warship - which means they're useless, period.

Actually, I think the most effective weapon this movie has is the new long-range transporter Scotty developed, but it still apparently suffers from all the other limitations a transporter suffers, so its utility is still very limited.

[The Romulan Republic]

Actually, I think the most effective weapon this movie has is the new long-range transporter Scotty developed, but it still apparently suffers from all the other limitations a transporter suffers, so its utility is still very limited.

Of course, that's got to be largely an assumption based on old Trek. Other than the difficulty they had early on with beaming up moving (falling) targets, we don't know much about the transporter's capabilities in this timeline. Other than the aforementioned incidents, we never saw a transporter accident. We heard comparatively little about how they function. Though if the visuals are any indication, they seem to be somewhat... different. In other words, transporters are one of those things that are still largely up in the air. Like most of this new universe.

I would point out that the fact that they could beam onto Nero's ship suggests that they can now beam through shields, unless Nero's shields were down for some reason. Was it ever mentioned weather his shields were up during the attack on Earth?

[Stark]

Odds of the FTL teleport ever being used again are low.

[Ryan Thunder]

Odds of the FTL teleport ever being used again are low.

Wouldn't it be awesome if, rather than invent the gimmick and throw it away, they actually *did* use it again, though?

That'd just make my day.

[Formless]

Of course, that's got to be largely an assumption based on old Trek. Other than the difficulty they had early on with beaming up moving (falling) targets, we don't know much about the transporter's capabilities in this timeline. Other than the aforementioned incidents, we never saw a transporter accident.

You don't count Mr. Scot getting beamed into the Enterprise's water treatment system as a transporter accident?

[Bounty]

Of course, that's got to be largely an assumption based on old Trek. Other than the difficulty they had early on with beaming up moving (falling) targets, we don't know much about the transporter's capabilities in this timeline. Other than the aforementioned incidents, we never saw a transporter accident.

You don't count Mr. Scot getting beamed into the Enterprise's water treatment system as a transporter accident?

Considering that that was the first test of an entirely new principle of transportation, using broken equipment with near-zero setup time, which only can be considered an "accident" by virtue of Scott ending up three feet from where he was supposed to be after getting transported across light years onto a ship travelling at god knows how many times C... seriously, really? That's like saying powered flight has a shitty track record because Wilbur stubbed his toe on the first landing.

[Formless]

Hmmm... point taken.

[Darth Wong]

It remains to be seen how many Trek writing standbys (such as the aforementioned transporter accidents) will creep into the new continuity. Remember the Tim Burton Batman movie, which started in a whole new direction but the sequels began to look more and more like the old Adam West Batman? They eventually scrapped the whole thing and rebooted the franchise again, with Batman Begins.

[Vympel]

Yeah, I used to love Tim Burton's Batman series, but compared to Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, it's incredibly camp and cornball. Much more so Batman Returns than the superb Batman.

[Darwin]

It doesn't explain why they had those syringes in the first place though.

He probably didn't.

But late 24th century replicators are handy devices.