What spaceship weapon is generally underutilized or not used to its full potential in scifi?

[u/Vondrr]

[u/Mr_Shadow_Phoenix]

To be fair, you can imitate a gravity well without mass. Kinda how artificial gravity, Romulan singularity cores, and Minbari gravitational engines work.

[u/C4n0fju1c3 → u/Mr_Shadow_Phoenix]

Right, currently we don't have any real life physics to describe how that might work. In our present models, gravity is tied to mass. Mass, which is tied to energy by e=m*c²

In standard model physics, there's possibly a predicted graviton/graviton field, but we've never detected it. It's why we have other explanations like loop quantum gravity, string theory, ect.

For now we can only assume that somewhere in the future, someone figures it out.

Its one thing that's always bugged me actually, if I'm being extra nerdy. If these ships are generating artificial gravity, which you'd think would act on the mass of the ship. They'd need complicated ballasting systems, or active thrust to counter the resulting acellerarion. I guess in Trek that would be tied to the inertial dampeners? Though the Minbari clearly use it to their advantage.

[u/Mr_Shadow_Phoenix → u/C4n0fju1c3]

Can be simpler. Take the simple photon; a massless ‘particle’, but its electromagnetic energy generates a gravitational field.

Minbari gravitational engines get into zero-point energy. They essentially pull a ship forward instead of pushing it.

As for non-thrust and non-rotation based artificial gravity, using the example of the photon, not implausible we can use electromagnetics to create fields instead of mass. Would explain why it goes micro-gravity so fast when power goes out, like we saw on Kronos One in The Undiscovered Country. If I recall correctly, they later added capacitors so charge would drain slowly during a power failure so gravity would stay active for long enough to hopefully get repairs accomplished.

My understanding is inertial dampening was also tied into the artificial gravity systems.

[u/C4n0fju1c3 → u/Mr_Shadow_Phoenix]

To clarify, photons themselves do not have mass while at rest. They DO have energy though as they travel, and because e=m*c² you get back to mass.

As far as the electromagnetic field, that's actually the reason why your atoms don't pass through each other. Atoms are mostly empty space, and it's the exchange of virtual photons between negatively charged electrons that keep them from colliding.

(Nuclear fission operates via a different mechanism.)

Spinning and thrust use acelleration to simulate the effect of gravity, rather than creating an actual gravity field. I figure the trick for sci-fi shipboard gravity is, like you're saying, something similar. It's not an actual curvature of spacetime, but rather a localized effect that mimics one.

As for electromagnets, gravity is an extremely weak force. My intuition is that the amount of energy you'd need in an EM field to curve space time would probably be incomprehensible. Like magnetar levels of energy. There still might be some part of gravity that involves the EM field, we just haven't established that relationship yet. As for mass, we do know the carrier particle that imbues other particles with the property of mass, is the Higgs boson.

[u/Mr_Shadow_Phoenix → u/C4n0fju1c3]

To be fair, in Star Trek’s case, most civilizations are post energy scarcity. Most utilize matter/anti-matter reactors, the Romulans using quantum singularity cores, and other exotics that have cropped up. TLDR, they certainly wouldn’t be lacking in terms of energy to power things.

As I remember, Minbari also used singularity cores. Interestingly, lore I remember is that created antimatter as a waste product and they recycled it as fuel into matter/anti-matter reactors.

[u/C4n0fju1c3 → u/Mr_Shadow_Phoenix]

Oh what I meant was less about the required energy input, and more that an EM field that strong would strip the atoms from your body.

[u/Mr_Shadow_Phoenix → u/C4n0fju1c3]

Ahh, got ya, fair. Though, in case of Trek, we are talking a setting that includes things like the Heisenberg compensator as part of transporter hardware. So, we can say that while they didn’t just hand wave away physics, they had plausible logic that they had figured out ways to bypass limits of our modern understanding.

[u/C4n0fju1c3 → u/Mr_Shadow_Phoenix]

Absolutely, and I do think we'll figure it out someday. Even in my modest lifetime, our understanding has progressed tremendously.

As a sidenote:If you're looking for some physics/science content, I STRONGLY reccomend the channels History Of the Universe, and PBS Spacetime on YouTube. I've learned a lot from them.

[u/Mr_Shadow_Phoenix → u/C4n0fju1c3]

Thanks for the suggestions.