Alderbranch wrote:
What says that beam weapons have to be laserbased? I mean it could be supercharged electrons which indeed there is a uncertainty too (Heisenberg's uncertainty principle) and hence can dissipate.

I don't know what you mean with "supercharged", since electrons always have the same charge, but anyways: For charged particles the problem is that they carry, in this case at least, the same charge. They repel each other. If you accelerate and collimate them well enough, they'll stay together for quite a distance, but nonetheless the bunch will disperse.

If you take particles of different charges, you may get better results. But by mixing particles and antiparticles, you'll just gain an explosion. Probably not so good an idea to do that anywhere but on the enemy ship hull. (Therefore fire at least some positrons at them, it'll get you better results at dissolving their armor at lower energies. :P )



On the other hand it is normally very hard to accelerate neutral particles, since you have no "grip" to accelerate them at all. That's why people use lasers. Photons carry no electric charge, so the dispersion is only optical in nature. That can be handled with methods differing for different wavelengths and those include e.g. x ray mirrors.

Nosferatiel wrote:
I don't know what you mean with "supercharged", since electrons always have the same charge, but anyways: For charged particles the problem is that they carry, in this case at least, the same charge. They repel each other. If you accelerate and collimate them well enough, they'll stay together for quite a distance, but nonetheless the bunch will disperse.

If you take particles of different charges, you may get better results. But by mixing particles and antiparticles, you'll just gain an explosion. Probably not so good an idea to do that anywhere but on the enemy ship hull. (Therefore fire at least some positrons at them, it'll get you better results at dissolving their armor at lower energies. :P )



On the other hand it is normally very hard to accelerate neutral particles, since you have no "grip" to accelerate them at all. That's why people use lasers. Photons carry no electric charge, so the dispersion is only optical in nature. That can be handled with methods differing for different wavelengths and those include e.g. x ray mirrors.

Meh... You really have to ask annoying scientific questions in order to ruin a good description eh?... Of course I know you can't change the charge of an electron (yet mind you, they might just start playing with quarks) but they can be excited which is the scientific term of supercharging them cause supercharging sounds so much cooler.



A electron-beam-based gun I expect to be two nearly parallel beams... one with positrons... one with electrons. Their point of convergence (hence nearly paralell) is where you'll get your explosion of course. And this should be fairly easy to manage with some proper use of math for calculating the forces involved between the beams. This also would explain what force-shields do to deflect them... aka change the trajectories of the beams which essentially disperse most of the beam. The loss of the electrons excited state is what causes the often seen "beam" of light as what's emitted is photons.



Nerdy enough for ya?...

Jesus, just use the good ol' lazors

Raptor wrote:
Jesus, just use the good ol' lazors

Pft, thats soo lame. Not to mention they often have quite long range.



And they might result in unexpected results... Just look at the Space Balls effect.

Alderbranch wrote:
Meh... You really have to ask annoying scientific questions in order to ruin a good description eh?... Of course I know you can't change the charge of an electron (yet mind you, they might just start playing with quarks) but they can be excited which is the scientific term of supercharging them cause supercharging sounds so much cooler.



A electron-beam-based gun I expect to be two nearly parallel beams... one with positrons... one with electrons. Their point of convergence (hence nearly paralell) is where you'll get your explosion of course. And this should be fairly easy to manage with some proper use of math for calculating the forces involved between the beams. This also would explain what force-shields do to deflect them... aka change the trajectories of the beams which essentially disperse most of the beam. The loss of the electrons excited state is what causes the often seen "beam" of light as what's emitted is photons.



Nerdy enough for ya?...

Almost. I'll just object to using leptons when a perfectly good photon with sufficient energy will produce electron positron pairs on its own. Also there will be electrons in the armor of the enemy ship already. Why fire them in a second beam? All the positrons will do is annihilate either with an electron from the beam or one from the armor. The leftover electrons from the beam will emit photons due to bremsstrahlung and those will make pair production, again.



The idea of putting two beams close together is also flawed, because the distance of the electrons among themselves, r, is far smaller than the distance of the beams, R, and the coulomb potential goes ~1/r², so the dispersion force will be far greater than the attractive force and in some cases go along the same direction, so you'll get some electron-positron-annihilations from start to finish, lowering the power of your beams.

Nosferatiel wrote:
Almost. I'll just object to using leptons when a perfectly good photon with sufficient energy will produce electron positron pairs on its own. Also there will be electrons in the armor of the enemy ship already. Why fire them in a second beam? All the positrons will do is annihilate either with an electron from the beam or one from the armor. The leftover electrons from the beam will emit photons due to bremsstrahlung and those will make pair production, again.



The idea of putting two beams close together is also flawed, because the distance of the electrons among themselves, r, is far smaller than the distance of the beams, R, and the coulomb potential goes ~1/r², so the dispersion force will be far greater than the attractive force and in some cases go along the same direction, so you'll get some electron-positron-annihilations from start to finish, lowering the power of your beams.

*sigh* You really have to take this to the extreme levels don't ya? Science major or what?

For one simple reason. Always bring your own explosives. You don't get a guarantee that they have electrons available for you to target. If you supply all ingredients for a big bada-boooom. Then its bound to happen. If you however rely on your opponent bringing their own doomsday with them... well then that plan could really backfire...





And I never said they would be close together... I said they would be nearly parallel which says nothing about the distance between them. That way the interactions occur when close to the target which is what you want anyway.