Hey guys, here's the second half of tis post. Apologies it wasn't out sooner, I wrote it and then Blogger lost/deleted it, So I had to finish it again from an old copy!
Laser Guns
In nearly all sci-fi, the guns of the future are no longer metal projectiles, but rather some form of laser or ray gun. Let’s break these down to basic types.
Some Guns show a shot of bright laser shooting off from the gun to the target. Since lasers travel at light speed, this is clearly inaccurate. The only way to produce such a weapon would be sort of luminescent projectile weapon, like a gun that fires miniature torches. The projectiles/bullets themselves would be more like mini missiles or torpedoes, a bit like laser bombs. The technology for such projectiles is probably not far off, but the bigger question is, why would you bother? There are other cheaper, simpler weapons, which are just as effective.
A laser weapon in the most accurate sense, would fire a continuous beam, like a very confined line of torchlight. The Star Trek phaser is probably the most similar weapon in this regard. Lasers already exist today, (laser is an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) but even with the phaser model there are several limits. Firstly, comes the issue of beam confinement. Obviously a precision laser is too narrow, unless you want to burn a 1mm hole in your enemy. What's needed instead is a large bore weapon, which is more difficult to produce. Interestingly enough, Microwave beams may hold the answer, Masers instead of Lasers
Secondly, comes the problem of power. A laser can cut through incredibly dense materials, as hard even as diamond, but this cutting takes a long time, which is a bit useless in a weapon. The solution is a much more powerful laser, which runs at a much higher temperature. The beam would only fire for a fraction of a second, before automatically turning off, but in that time, the energy would already have cut some way into the material: you could do some serious damage. The beam would have to turn off, otherwise you'd always run the risk of shooting behind your target. It would be like firing a gun with bullets that never stop. There are currently limits to what power we can produce but also the size of this power source. Giant batteries and lasers needing a mains power socket are obviously impractical.
Lastly, the Geneva Conventions ban laser and microwave weaponry, so production has effectively stalled. Verdict: very much within humanity's grasp
In nearly all sci-fi, the guns of the future are no longer metal projectiles, but rather some form of laser or ray gun. Let’s break these down to basic types.
Some Guns show a shot of bright laser shooting off from the gun to the target. Since lasers travel at light speed, this is clearly inaccurate. The only way to produce such a weapon would be sort of luminescent projectile weapon, like a gun that fires miniature torches. The projectiles/bullets themselves would be more like mini missiles or torpedoes, a bit like laser bombs. The technology for such projectiles is probably not far off, but the bigger question is, why would you bother? There are other cheaper, simpler weapons, which are just as effective.
A laser weapon in the most accurate sense, would fire a continuous beam, like a very confined line of torchlight. The Star Trek phaser is probably the most similar weapon in this regard. Lasers already exist today, (laser is an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) but even with the phaser model there are several limits. Firstly, comes the issue of beam confinement. Obviously a precision laser is too narrow, unless you want to burn a 1mm hole in your enemy. What's needed instead is a large bore weapon, which is more difficult to produce. Interestingly enough, Microwave beams may hold the answer, Masers instead of Lasers
Secondly, comes the problem of power. A laser can cut through incredibly dense materials, as hard even as diamond, but this cutting takes a long time, which is a bit useless in a weapon. The solution is a much more powerful laser, which runs at a much higher temperature. The beam would only fire for a fraction of a second, before automatically turning off, but in that time, the energy would already have cut some way into the material: you could do some serious damage. The beam would have to turn off, otherwise you'd always run the risk of shooting behind your target. It would be like firing a gun with bullets that never stop. There are currently limits to what power we can produce but also the size of this power source. Giant batteries and lasers needing a mains power socket are obviously impractical.
Lastly, the Geneva Conventions ban laser and microwave weaponry, so production has effectively stalled. Verdict: very much within humanity's grasp
Artificial Intelligence
This is used both regards to both robots and androids, as well as with modes of transport. We all remember KITT from Knight Rider, and most sci-fi ships have some form of intelligent operating system. Even in the real world, there have been leaps and bounds in this area, with huge investment in various projects. MIT even hosts its own yearly competitions. The older thinking was to structure the computer code like you would most machine code, analysing inputs, checking against databases, and producing appropriate responses. This could certainly mimic human responses, but it wasn’t truly intelligent. The newer methods employ bots: code that behaves like a robot. Programmers have taken a leaf out of nature's book, and decided that rather than building a fully formed system, it’s better to build a simple bot, which actively learns. Verdict: Plausible, but true AI is still a long long way off
Force Fields
Force fields are basically invisible energy barriers, which are effectively impenetrable. They are used as prison doors in Buck Rogers, plasma containment fields in Star Trek, and spaceship shields in pretty much everything.
How they work is only ever been explained vaguely, as a layer of electrons, or some other mumbo jumbo. The reality? Far more complicated.
When one object touches another, the two layers of atoms at the surface are repelled by electrostatic forces. Its these forces which prevent one object from passing right through another, and incidentally its these same forces which must be overcome to cause nuclear fusion. So how do we artificially reproduce this effect?
There are 2 main schools of thought on the subject. Both are cheat methods, but the first is slightly less so. This method uses electrostatic forces and involves creating a very thin film made of fabric threads, which are essential a long line of tiny electromagnets. The collective field generated by the mesh produces a constant electromagnetic charge. The US military looked into this idea as an anti-espionage system, but the truth is a proper force field is just not plausible. Given the architecture and the energy requirements, the field could never be powerful enough to repel a person, and at that high a power level, secondary ionising and ferromagnetic effects would occur. Also it’s not a proper force field, because once you turn it off, you still can’t walk through it.
The second option is not to think of it as a shield, or a wall, or a layer. Instead, visualise it as a shape or space, which cannot to breached. Then, if an object tries to fly into the area, an opposing force or neutralising effect can be initiated. It’s a bit like throwing golf balls at a building with an excellent sniper. Each time you throw one, if it reaches a set distance from the house, no matter what the angle, it gets shot out of the sky and blown away. From the outside, it would appear as if nothing can pass a certain 'invisible wall' around the house.
This doesn’t work in the context of containment shields like jail doors or those functioning as solid matter, but it does have applications as a feasible equivalent of a spaceship shield. The big problem is the number of repellent beams/turrets. If you fire ten shots at a ship at once, you expect all ten to be blocked, but any system like this, will have to have a maximum limit Verdict: Highly unlikely, maybe even impossible
FTL travel and Time Machines
I’m not going to go into much detail in this, because pointlesstown has already covered a lot of this topic HERE. Essentially any FTL journey involves an element of causality violation. While there are theoretical solutions to the problems inherent in time travel, the only way such equations can be solved involves employing some very complex theories, which currently don’t hold anywhere near conclusive evidence. Even if these ideas worked, the generation of super intense, localised gravity fields and energy levels high enough to cause objects to approach light speed, are well beyond our grasp Verdict: near enough impossible
You mean part 2
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