Debating against "The Die is Cast"

[bz249]

Sorry very far away from equilibrium.

[Connor MacLeod]

Absurd though it sounds, if all of the antimatter on the Constellation was somehow rendered inert, then it really does boil down to whatever they could get out of the remaining fuel for the impulse engines.

As for firing torpedoes into the DDM, if whatever goes on inside that thing is capable of "deactivating" antimatter, torpedoes might simply do nothing, since their payload would be inert. The same would presumably apply to a shuttle-based weapon: an anti-matter based charge would be unreliable. They already know that the existing impulse engine payload of a shuttle isn't enough, and I don't think they even carry any king of genuine fusion warhead, so the impulse engine of the Constellation was really the only thing they had that looked like a viable weapon.

As for just following along outside its firing arc, that could presumably be done for a while. It's top speed was better than theirs after Decker's stupidity, but it seemed to try to get them in front of it whenever they were within a certain distance, and with their superior maneuverability it shouldn't really be a problem to lurk along its tail somewhere and stay out of danger. That would presumably leave them running around in circles, which would be fine for a while, but they would still need to find a way to affect it sooner or later, since communications were blocked and they'd eventually run out of supplies.

There's still the phasers though. Those aren't linked to the wapr engines or antimatter powerplant in TOS - that was a rather major plot point in The Motion Picture was it not? So there's very little reason they couldn't have just blasted away at the mouth of the thing with phasers.

[Kythnos]

There's still the phasers though. Those aren't linked to the wapr engines or antimatter powerplant in TOS - that was a rather major plot point in The Motion Picture was it not? So there's very little reason they couldn't have just blasted away at the mouth of the thing with phasers.

The Antimatter reactor I think so, the impuse drive are powered separately if memory serves.

[Ted C]

There's still the phasers though. Those aren't linked to the wapr engines or antimatter powerplant in TOS - that was a rather major plot point in The Motion Picture was it not? So there's very little reason they couldn't have just blasted away at the mouth of the thing with phasers.

I'm pretty sure that you can get warp power to the phasers, it just isn't as directly linked as they were in the refit version, and you can certainly run them on impulse power.

I'm not sure why no one tried firing phasers right down the opening. There's no obvious reason they wouldn't have done some damage in there. Of course, by the time they decided that putting some kind of bomb down its throat would be a good idea, the Enterprise itself was down to just impulse power, and presumably it couldn't apply a large percentage of its remaining power supply to weapons. Not enough to keep it from being blown to pieces by the DDM's anti-proton ray if they tried, at any rate.

[Junghalli]

If it would have been similar to the matter in a neutron star it would blow up like a firecracker since the Pauli-principle does not allow two particles to be in the same quantum state... well the consequence is quite simple: the matter of a neutron star is something very far away non-equilibrium, stabilized only by the huge gravity. Thus whatever it was it was certainly not the matter of the neutron stars.

Using a powerful artificial gravity field to simulate a neutron star's gravity without actually needing its mass is actually in principle a fairly straightforward extrapolation from technology we know exists in Star Trek. They can make 1 G artificial gravity on the Enterprise, if you want neutronium it's in principle a straightforward matter of cranking that up to gravity similar to what you find on a neutron star. Mind you, I'm not saying it would necessarily be that easy, but technology that could theoretically do it exists in-universe. It'd mean the Doomsday Machine would be reliant on artificial gravity fields to keep its armor from exploding, but Trek artificial gravity seems reliable enough - I can't recall it ever failing outside ST VI offhand.

That would beg the question of why the Doomsday Machine didn't explode when they blew up its interior though. Emergency back-up generator?

[Simon_Jester]

I'm wondering if they could land a small vessel on it, and try to deploy something to cut through its hull. I know they said it's "solid neutronium", but as has been pointed out many times, if "neutronium" means "neutron star stuff", then the very term "solid neutronium" is a contradiction in terms. If it's like the material the Dyson Sphere was made of, that stuff could be damaged. The shuttle scraped its hull up nicely when it crash-landed after all.

My impression is that Star Trekkers rely heavily on continuous-beam energy weapons for cutting and drilling applications. I'm not entirely sure what the properties of neutron degenerate matter would be, but I could easily imagine it having a hellishly high thermal conductivity and specific heat capacity. In which case drilling it with an energy weapon would be damn near impossible. They might honestly not have any tools onboard capable of putting a hole in a thick layer of neutronium, regardless of whether neutronium is strictly a solid or not. As long as it doesn't just splash like water, they're still not going to be able to cut through.

If it would have been similar to the matter in a neutron star it would blow up like a firecracker since the Pauli-principle does not allow two particles to be in the same quantum state... well the consequence is quite simple: the matter of a neutron star is something very far away non-equilibrium, stabilized only by the huge gravity. Thus whatever it was it was certainly not the matter of the neutron stars.

So any argument based on real life neutron stars is misleading.

Generated gravity? Yes, you'd need an insane amount of it...

[Darth Wong]

Look, it's really obvious that it's not neutron star material, for so many reasons. Perhaps neutronium is just a really heavy element. As elements increase in atomic number, the ratio between neutrons and protons also increases. Let's say there's an imaginary "island of stability" for elements with very high atomic number in Star Trek, despite the fact that transuranic elements are known to be increasingly unstable. Maybe this island of stability only encompasses one element, with a very high atomic number and a very large ratio of neutrons to protons. Because of its extremely high ratio of neutrons to protons, it was given the name "neutronium". It would be a very dense material, but still normal matter rather than degenerate matter like you would find in a neutron star. It would block most forms of radiation, phasers would be useless against it, etc. It would fit pretty much all of the characteristics of Star Trek neutronium.

[Bakustra]

Look, it's really obvious that it's not neutron star material, for so many reasons. Perhaps neutronium is just a really heavy element. As elements increase in atomic number, the ratio between neutrons and protons also increases. Let's say there's an imaginary "island of stability" for elements with very high atomic number in Star Trek, despite the fact that transuranic elements are known to be increasingly unstable. Maybe this island of stability only encompasses one element, with a very high atomic number and a very large ratio of neutrons to protons. Because of its extremely high ratio of neutrons to protons, it was given the name "neutronium". It would be a very dense material, but still normal matter rather than degenerate matter like you would find in a neutron star. It would block most forms of radiation, phasers would be useless against it, etc. It would fit pretty much all of the characteristics of Star Trek neutronium.

For that matter, this "island of stability" theory can be extended to explain other highly phaser-resistant materials that are unknown to current science. Naturally occurring rocks, ores and suchlike that block sensors, transporters, etc. could contain one or more of these materials. The materials themselves could easily be highly brittle and/or difficult to work with, explaining why only groups like the Iconians and the builders of the Doomsday Machine make use of neutronium industrially (apart from the likelihood of it interfering with their own sensory equipment and weapons.