Sci-Fi Weapons: What are the possibilities?

[Edward]

After reading the si-fi sheilds thread i've begun wondering what types of wepons aside from projectile wepons are possible to exist. Like lasers and such or maby using an em feild to "crush"an opponent?

[c dawg]

i was thinking. the movies star wars weapons like the lightsaber it can cut through almost any substance. why wouldn't they just make a round short of ball to get in and it would be a shield to block and shots and it could be a weapon if you charged at people with it.

[Edward]

Yes thats a good idea but how do light sabers work?

[Gilded]

"Sci-Fi weapons" immediately brings to mind the gravity manipulator from HL2. First we just got to find ourselves a way to create artificial gravitons though (not to mention actually having proof of graviton existance).

 

Also, I find neutron weaponry quite fascinating. A powerful neutron beam cannon is the word of the future, as neutrons can't be deflected with magnetic fields.

[Edward]

how would a netruon cannon work how would you collect the netrons

[Rasori]

The problem with lightsabers is that I'm almost certain that we don't have a way to limit the length of a light beam. Now, if this beam can cut through anything, I don't think it's a good idea- face it up and poke a hole through the moon... not my idea of a smart move.

[Edward]

also i dot understand how they stop eachother when they come in contact

[[Tycho?]]

For weapons in space, you've got:

 

Lasers, or other focused EM radiation weaponry, masers, x-ray lasers, or whatever. move at c, effective at huge ranges, very high accuracy.

 

Projectiles: a big gun, probably magnetically fired. powerful if it hits, but only really effective at very close ranges as it would be easy to dodge at long ranges.

 

guided missiles: ...guided missiles. They seek their targets. Long range, but you'd probably be able to see them coming from radiation from their propulsion. Nuclear warheads would probably be used.

 

particle beam: fire a coherent beam of atomic nuclei or any other particles at a target.

 

Plasma: charged particles, but not in beam form, could be fired from engines if a fusion drive was being used. wide area of effect, but tricky to employ, and not a surgical weapon.

[Tesseract]

The only problem with missles is they have to hit the ship to destroy it. An explosion just outside the ship with a nuclear warhead would just create heat and radiation. That could be deflected.

 

The first thing I thought when i saw this thread was the zero-point field manipulator too.

[[Tycho?]]

Yeah. With a several megaton fusion bomb you could hit close to the ship, but yeah with no atmosphere its tricky to do damage in that way.

 

What is a zero-point manipulator?

[swansont]

Also, I find neutron weaponry quite fascinating. A powerful neutron beam cannon is the word of the future, as neutrons can't be deflected with magnetic fields.

 

Not easily deflected.

 

Neutron magnetic moment = 9.6623707e-27 ± 4.0e-33 J/T

 

It's not zero.

[swansont]

']For weapons in space' date=' you've got:

 

Lasers, or other focused EM radiation weaponry, masers, x-ray lasers, or whatever. move at c, [b']effective at huge ranges, very high accuracy[/b].

(emphasis added)

 

Two issues jump to mind:

 

1. Lasers don't give you a parallel beam - they do diverge.

 

2. How do you aim the weapon? The image you see is where the target was when the light left, not where it is now, and how do you figure out how to aim where the target will be, at large distances?

[[Tycho?]]

1)Yes, the beam does indeed diverge, but as lasers get more advanced they diverge by less and less. If we are at a point when we are using giant lasers to shoot at eachother across huge distances in space, laser technology will be a lot better. This is of course always a problem though, and does give the laser a maximum effective range, no matter how good it is (unless its possible for a perfectly parallel beam)

 

2)Well to aim you need good telescopes and good computers. You have to be able to see the direction the target is moving (including towards and away from you) and know his velocity/acceleration. The calculations could be hard to do in real time, especially in a gravity well, which is why good computers are needed for this.

 

This becomes a larger problem as laser accuracy increases. If you can only shoot a fairly short distance, you can just aim the beam right at your target and unless he's moving .1c or something it will hit him. For more accurate beams you will have to actually lead the target at long ranges. Presumably the target would not like getting shot at, and so he would vary his thrust, so you end up shooting in the wrong place. At this point it becomes a gussing game of shooting in the general area where the target will be, and hope you hit him. Bigger distances, the harder this gets.

[bloodhound]

a possible solution to no.2 would be to estimate the distance to the ship (object), then if you are in a war, you would be informed of the ships max velocity , and max accelaration. you know its current velocity and its current accelations. The max V and A will give you a bounded Domain in R^3 in which the object MUST lie by the time the beam reaches there. Subdivide the domain into intervals a bit less that the size of the object. Fire multiple beams simultaneously in the interval endpoints of the subdivided domain. A sure fire hit.

[Sayonara]

Yes thats a good idea but how do light sabers work?

The idea is that a laser in the handle is focused into an extremely tight arc by an array of crystals (imagine a line on a graph where the value pairs for X:Y are 1:1 - 2:10,000 - 3:1) and fed back into the handle.

 

also i dot understand how they stop eachother when they come in contact

Afaik nobody has ever attempted to explain that.

[ecoli]

My friend had an idea. A sword that contained, at it's tip, atoms with opposite charges. Somehow blowing all positivly charged and negative charged atoms apart.

[[Tycho?]]

a possible solution to no.2 would be to estimate the distance to the ship (object), then if you are in a war, you would be informed of the ships max velocity , and max accelaration. you know its current velocity and its current accelations. The max V and A will give you a bounded Domain in R^3 in which the object MUST lie by the time the beam reaches there. Subdivide the domain into intervals a bit less that the size of the object. Fire multiple beams simultaneously in the interval endpoints of the subdivided domain. A sure fire hit.

 

Yes, this of course assumes you have enough laser weapons to shoot at all possible places for the variables of that situation. At long distance, big v and potentially big a, there very well could be too many places to shoot at once with limited weapons.

 

Weather your hit would be guarunteed or not doesn't really matter, you would have to do this or something very similar if you wanted a chance at hitting your target.

[Aspirin]

I'm shocked that nobody mentioned INTELIGENCE.

 

INTELIGENCE is the real weapon of the future.

You don't need some plasma cannon to destroy a building.

You can hit it with a normal 155 mm Howitzer but only if you have the

required data on where the enemy is hidding and the correct shooting data

(speed of wing, Angle, speed of projectile.....and so on)

[bloodhound]

']Yes' date=' this of course assumes you have enough laser weapons to shoot at all possible places for the variables of that situation. At long distance, big v and potentially big a, there very well could be too many places to shoot at once with limited weapons.

 

Weather your hit would be guarunteed or not doesn't really matter, you would have to do this or something very similar if you wanted a chance at hitting your target.[/quote']

 

I am sure that if the "long distance" u are talking about was that "long" then we wouldnt have able to detect the object in the first place.. you dont need multiple laters. you just need a single laser, and multiple deflectors. so the beams diverge from each other.

 

Alternativly instead of firing beams at each end point. u fire beams originating from the same point with angle to each other such that in the bounded domian R^3 the distance between any two adjacent beams in less than the diamter (sup|x-y| for all x,y in object) of the object.

 

heres a quick diagram

 

 

Also if you dont have enough laser splitters. then the best next thing is just to create a cage along the boundary of the domain, so that the object is just stuck there, and fire a missile or something, powerful enough to destoy anything in the vicinity if it exploded inside the domain. ( if not powerful enough, then it will still do damage, and then put it down with lasers:))

[Gilded]

"Not easily deflected."

 

Argh, I'd make a fool of myself less often if there were no physicists around. ) (BTW, does neutron even have absolutely zero electrical charge?) Is there any particle that doesn't have neither electrical charge or magnetic moment that could possibly be used for similar beam weaponry uses as the neutron?

[YT2095]

(emphasis added)

 

2. How do you aim the weapon? The image you see is where the target was when the light left' date=' not where it is now, and how do you figure out how to aim where the target will be, at large distances?[/quote']

you of all people being .Mil will know about "Leading a target" )

[[Tycho?]]

I am sure that if the "long distance" u are talking about was that "long" then we wouldnt have able to detect the object in the first place.. you dont need multiple laters. you just need a single laser' date=' and multiple deflectors. so the beams diverge from each other.

 

Alternativly instead of firing beams at each end point. u fire beams originating from the same point with angle to each other such that in the bounded domian R^3 the distance between any two adjacent beams in less than the diamter (sup|x-y| for all x,y in object) of the object.

 

heres a quick diagram

 

**snip**

 

Also if you dont have enough laser splitters. then the best next thing is just to create a cage along the boundary of the domain, so that the object is just stuck there, and fire a missile or something, powerful enough to destoy anything in the vicinity if it exploded inside the domain. ( if not powerful enough, then it will still do damage, and then put it down with lasers:))[/quote']

 

Yes, but my original point still stands. You can only split a beam so many times before it no longer has enough energy or coherency to do any damage.

 

As for detecting targets at long ranges, this depends on how good telescopes get, and what sort of drive the target uses. If the target uses a fusion drive or a solar sail then the targets would be well lit and visible at longer ranges. If they dont use these propulsion methods, or if their drives are not on, then you would have to be closer.

[Sayonara]

A laser in space combat doesn't necessarily need to do "damage" in a conventional sense. For instance it could be used to confuse or overload sensors.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

you of all people being .Mil will know about "Leading a target" )

The target may have turned since you saw it.

[[Tycho?]]

A laser in space combat doesn't necessarily need to do "damage" in a conventional sense. For instance it could be used to confuse or overload sensors.

 

Oh certainly. Laser light on an enemy telescope would make it impossible for them to see anything out of that one. If you can bathe the whole ship in laser light, even if it may lack destructive power it could effectively blind them on that frequency. The counter would be to have sensors over a wide variety of EM frequencies, so you can see in regular light, infra red, microwave, x-rays etc. The counter to this counter would be to try to blind those sensors as well....