Phaser Momentum

[Ted C]

The blaster recoil thread in the SW forum got me thinking about this.

Phaser stopping power seems to be inconsistent. I'm talking primarily about the dustbusters from TNG here. Phasers really don't ever show any recoil, but the can knock a Klingon (ST3) or human (Geordi in "Samaritan Snare") through the air or across a room. We see those effects from phasers on "stun", but we generally don't see any stopping power from phasers on "kill". Victims of a "kill" shoot typically just fall down (with a little glowy spot on them where the phaser hit); "Heart of Glory" has some nice examples. Shots that "vaporize" a target generally don't transfer any momentum, either.

How does this behavior fit in with chain reaction phaser theories?

[Robert Walper]

Federation technology seems to have the capability to "displace" mass, making a ship's "effective" mass less(mass lightening).

Could hand phasers possibly be employing a technology that displaces recoil from a phaser shot, thus making them more accurate(perhaps one aspect of the design meant to overcome the already bad design for aiming purposes?)

Just my two cents...

[The Dark]

I haven't seen these, but if they appear to be jumping backwards, it's possible the phaser is causing paralysis through nervous stimulation. If the nerves fired, tensing all the muscles to cause paralysis, it would likely cause the person to jump spastically. The relatively stronger Klingon would "fly" further than Geordi LaForge. As I've said, I don't recall the incidents, so I'm spouting off completely as a shot in the dark.

[Isolder74]

I haven't seen these, but if they appear to be jumping backwards, it's possible the phaser is causing paralysis through nervous stimulation. If the nerves fired, tensing all the muscles to cause paralysis, it would likely cause the person to jump spastically. The relatively stronger Klingon would "fly" further than Geordi LaForge. As I've said, I don't recall the incidents, so I'm spouting off completely as a shot in the dark.

You had better be carful firing shots in the dark, you might hit yourself . You do have a good idea but since we don't have a clue exactally how a phaser on stun works it hard to tell but your idea has merit.

[Ender]

The blaster recoil thread in the SW forum got me thinking about this.

Phaser stopping power seems to be inconsistent. I'm talking primarily about the dustbusters from TNG here. Phasers really don't ever show any recoil, but the can knock a Klingon (ST3) or human (Geordi in "Samaritan Snare") through the air or across a room. We see those effects from phasers on "stun", but we generally don't see any stopping power from phasers on "kill". Victims of a "kill" shoot typically just fall down (with a little glowy spot on them where the phaser hit); "Heart of Glory" has some nice examples. Shots that "vaporize" a target generally don't transfer any momentum, either.

How does this behavior fit in with chain reaction phaser theories?

The neutrinos released impart momentum as they speed away I believe.

A more interesting question would be how ships firing phasers or distruptors, the when it hist the shields of the opposing ship, that one shakes like crazy from the momentum.

[Uraniun235]

The neutrinos released impart momentum as they speed away I believe.

A more interesting question would be how ships firing phasers or distruptors, the when it hist the shields of the opposing ship, that one shakes like crazy from the momentum.

Obviously, it's the Almighty Feedback Loop.

[Ted C]

The neutrinos released impart momentum as they speed away I believe.

That's Mike's initial hypothesis, yes, but does it really make sense that when you increase the phaser power (tuning it up from "stun" to "kill" or "disintegrate") the momentum created actually drops? The "stun" setting seems to have a lot more stopping power than the deadly settings.

A more interesting question would be how ships firing phasers or distruptors, the when it hist the shields of the opposing ship, that one shakes like crazy from the momentum.

The traditional explanation is that feedback from the shields affects the ships stabilization system.

[ClaysGhost]

The neutrinos released impart momentum as they speed away I believe.

Wow, that's a lot of fast neutrinos.


In BOBW, there were a lot of ships floating around with big holes in them. Am I right in recalling that the edges of the holes were glowing in some cases?

[Chris OFarrell]

Also note the episode 'First Contact', an alien figured out how to fire a phaser and showed it to Riker to let him know that he knew who he was. The phaser appeared to be set on stun and while the alien knew how to press the trigger, I dobut he knew how to adjust the power settings. And Riker would have no dobut had his phaser set on stun.

The guy fired it at a hat stand or something similar and the beam quickly pushed it over. And its a non organic target so its not like a stun beam caused its musscles to missfire. It appeared to move as if the beam was directly pushing on it.

Phasers are partical weapons, this we know from First Contact and various ST episodes. Its possible that they fired different particals with different masses and thus different effects. The lower level stun particls may have significant punch to them and so push things around. The medium level 'thermal effects' settings that heat things might have a little less and the higher end 'NDF' settings may carry very little mass and so impart much less momentum.

Note also in VOY 'Prey' when they modified phasers to throw nanoprobes down the partical beam, when the bolts hit an 8472 in zero G in midair, each hit clearly pushed it back.

[Ted C]

The guy fired it at a hat stand or something similar and the beam quickly pushed it over. And its a non organic target so its not like a stun beam caused its musscles to missfire. It appeared to move as if the beam was directly pushing on it.

Phasers are partical weapons, this we know from First Contact and various ST episodes. Its possible that they fired different particals with different masses and thus different effects. The lower level stun particls may have significant punch to them and so push things around.

Conservation of Momentum, Chris. If the momentum came from the phaser beam itself, then we'd see a pretty stiff kick from a hand-phaser set for stun; we don't, even though the impact can pick someone up off the floor ("Samaritan Snare"). Particle momentum won't explain phaser behavior.

[Chris OFarrell]

Unless they have some kind of mechanisim that dampens the recoil. I'm not saying they DO, but given that we know phasers have been described as partical beams at least twice I can recall and thus are throwing out particals one way, its somewhat of a conundrum. There might be something that could explain it though.

Unless I am mistaken, in 'Return to Grace' when Kira is going over the specifics of a Type 3 phaser rifle, she mentions its 'gyrostablised' or some such. Further, inertial dampening technology has been shown many times in Trek. Its not beyond possibility to hypothisise that this has been used in this case. It would also fit in with the complexitivity problem Kirk was talking about with the Federation Rifle, that it didn't make a very good field weapon compared to the Cardasian rifle.

There is another possibility I'm wondering that might actualy explain it even better, but I'm going to have to check up soem sources before I post it.

[Durandal]

I haven't seen these, but if they appear to be jumping backwards, it's possible the phaser is causing paralysis through nervous stimulation. If the nerves fired, tensing all the muscles to cause paralysis, it would likely cause the person to jump spastically. The relatively stronger Klingon would "fly" further than Geordi LaForge. As I've said, I don't recall the incidents, so I'm spouting off completely as a shot in the dark.

The Klingon in STIII was literally lifted off his feet. He clearly did not jump backward through his own motion. This theory works for just about every other incident of phaser momentum though, where people seem to convulse and jump back a bit.

The problem with the neutrino theory is that is assumes that all neutrinos will be emitted in one direction, rather than randomly emitting from the decay induced by the phaser. The momentum from the emitted neutrinos would largely cancel out simply because you'd have roughly the same number of them going backward and forward (if we're going to extremely simplify the process).

[Robert Walper]

The specific episode escapes me, but in DS9 we see Quark hit by an energy weapon at close range. The shooter shot from the hip and his hand didn't even recoil the slightest(that I recall anyhow). Quark on the other hand was hurled across his entire bar, knocking aside chairs and stuff.

Being extremely limited in physics knowledge, I'm going out on a limb here. But isn't it unlikely that neutrino's, even large quantities of them, can impart that much momentem? Including the Klingon example from Star Trek III?

[Uraniun235]

Also, wouldn't it do a lot of damage to someone to have that much force imparted on the area that the relatively narrow beam struck?

[Durandal]

The specific episode escapes me, but in DS9 we see Quark hit by an energy weapon at close range. The shooter shot from the hip and his hand didn't even recoil the slightest(that I recall anyhow). Quark on the other hand was hurled across his entire bar, knocking aside chairs and stuff.

Being extremely limited in physics knowledge, I'm going out on a limb here. But isn't it unlikely that neutrino's, even large quantities of them, can impart that much momentem? Including the Klingon example from Star Trek III?

It doesn't matter. They won't all emit from whatever decay is induced in the same direction. They'll cancel each other out.

[Robert Walper]

Also, wouldn't it do a lot of damage to someone to have that much force imparted on the area that the relatively narrow beam struck?

Well, Quark did almost die. He was out of action in the entire episode, recovering only at the end, much to Rom's disgust who wanted his bar. It was an attempt on Quark's life, therefore I doubt the weapon was set to stun. However, we cannot rule out the possibility the weapon was set to stun, since in Star Trek 6 we learn a weapon set on heavy stun and close range with a head shot can kill. Perhaps a gut shot with heavu stun at extremely close range is also typically lethal. This would add consistency to Ted C's observation stun setting seem to impart momentum to targets.

[Robert Walper]

The specific episode escapes me, but in DS9 we see Quark hit by an energy weapon at close range. The shooter shot from the hip and his hand didn't even recoil the slightest(that I recall anyhow). Quark on the other hand was hurled across his entire bar, knocking aside chairs and stuff.

Being extremely limited in physics knowledge, I'm going out on a limb here. But isn't it unlikely that neutrino's, even large quantities of them, can impart that much momentem? Including the Klingon example from Star Trek III?

It doesn't matter. They won't all emit from whatever decay is induced in the same direction. They'll cancel each other out.

Does this mean we can reasonably rule out the neutrino effect as a cause of observed imparted momentum?

If so, what theory would we propose to explain examples of imparted momentum? Clearly, there is multiple examples that would rule out Trek energy weapons merely causing living targets to recoil from impact. Non living targets, as seen in TNG "First Contact", also have acted as if being hit by force.

[Durandal]

Does this mean we can reasonably rule out the neutrino effect as a cause of observed imparted momentum?

I think so. It was a rather large stretch to begin with.

If so, what theory would we propose to explain examples of imparted momentum? Clearly, there is multiple examples that would rule out Trek energy weapons merely causing living targets to recoil from impact. Non living targets, as seen in TNG "First Contact", also have acted as if being hit by force.

You have to take into consideration that objects which are "vaporized" do not exhibit this recoil, like when Valeris melted the pot in the mess hall in Star Trek VI.

[Robert Walper]

Does this mean we can reasonably rule out the neutrino effect as a cause of observed imparted momentum?

I think so. It was a rather large stretch to begin with.

We'll start on that basis then.

If so, what theory would we propose to explain examples of imparted momentum? Clearly, there is multiple examples that would rule out Trek energy weapons merely causing living targets to recoil from impact. Non living targets, as seen in TNG "First Contact", also have acted as if being hit by force.

You have to take into consideration that objects which are "vaporized" do not exhibit this recoil, like when Valeris melted the pot in the mess hall in Star Trek VI.

Irrelevent. I proposed the creation of a new theory to explain what appears to be imparted momentum from phaser impacts from noted examples. Mentioning the fact that there are examples of phaser impacts not appearing to impart momentum is a red herring.

[Ted C]

Mentioning the fact that there are examples of phaser impacts not appearing to impart momentum is a red herring.

Why?

We've seen a pattern of phasers applying force to their targets when they're on a particular setting (stun) and not on others (kill / destroy). This observation would be an important part of any new theory.

[Darth Wong]

Unless they have some kind of mechanisim that dampens the recoil. I'm not saying they DO, but given that we know phasers have been described as partical beams at least twice I can recall and thus are throwing out particals one way, its somewhat of a conundrum. There might be something that could explain it though.

Unless I am mistaken, in 'Return to Grace' when Kira is going over the specifics of a Type 3 phaser rifle, she mentions its 'gyrostablised' or some such. Further, inertial dampening technology has been shown many times in Trek. Its not beyond possibility to hypothisise that this has been used in this case. It would also fit in with the complexitivity problem Kirk was talking about with the Federation Rifle, that it didn't make a very good field weapon compared to the Cardasian rifle.

There is another possibility I'm wondering that might actualy explain it even better, but I'm going to have to check up soem sources before I post it.

Ummmm, you do know that gyro stabilisation is a real concept, right? And has nothing to do with magically dissipating recoil?

[Durandal]

Irrelevent. I proposed the creation of a new theory to explain what appears to be imparted momentum from phaser impacts from noted examples. Mentioning the fact that there are examples of phaser impacts not appearing to impart momentum is a red herring.

It's an observation that must be taken into account when forming any new theory.

[Robert Walper]

Irrelevent. I proposed the creation of a new theory to explain what appears to be imparted momentum from phaser impacts from noted examples. Mentioning the fact that there are examples of phaser impacts not appearing to impart momentum is a red herring.

It's an observation that must be taken into account when forming any new theory.

Alright, conceeded. My guess is that phasers have multiple settings, and only some of them perform the "imparting momentum while apparently violating the conservation of momentum" trick.

[Durandal]

Alright, conceeded. My guess is that phasers have multiple settings, and only some of them perform the "imparting momentum while apparently violating the conservation of momentum" trick.

The other possibility is that phasers include some sort of inertial damper. The plain fact is that they're just ridiculously inconsistent in their behavior. I don't think you can form a theory that can fit all the observations.

[Robert Walper]

Alright, conceeded. My guess is that phasers have multiple settings, and only some of them perform the "imparting momentum while apparently violating the conservation of momentum" trick.

The other possibility is that phasers include some sort of inertial damper.

This is theory I myself actually favor. It would somewhat explain imparted momemtum examples, and other settings might not have this effect.

The plain fact is that they're just ridiculously inconsistent in their behavior. I don't think you can form a theory that can fit all the observations.

Then the best solution is to find a theory that fits as many observations as possible.