Physics Students Devise Concept For Star Wars-Style Deflector Shields 179
mpicpp (3454017) writes in with good news for everyone worrying about the strength of their shields. "If you have often imagined yourself piloting your X-Wing fighter on an attack run on the Death Star, you'll be reassured that University of Leicester students have demonstrated that your shields could take whatever the Imperial fleet can throw at you. The only drawback is that you won't be able to see a thing outside of your starfighter. In anticipation of Star Wars Day on 4 May, three fourth-year Physics students at the University have proven that shields, such as those seen protecting spaceships in the Star Wars film series, would not only be scientifically feasible, they have also shown that the science behind the principle is already used here on Earth."
Good to know (Score:5, Informative)
Larry Niven will be glad to know that since he used opaque shields in "The Mote in God's Eye"
Re:Good to know (Score:5, Informative)
E.E. Doc Smith had a similar concept as well in his Skylark series published back in the 1930s. Known as a "Zone of Force". If you turned it on you were basically invulnerable but you couldn't see aything until you dropped it.
Re:You mean Star Trek? (Score:2, Informative)
The concept of shields was first introduced in Star Trek: Voyager.
The concept of shields was idealized permanently into mainstream SF culture in "Star Trek: The Original Series".
Re:Good to know (Score:3, Informative)
"The Langston Field is a fictional device featured in the CoDominium series of science-fiction novels, initiated by SF writer Jerry Pournelle."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langston_Field
Re:Lore (Score:5, Informative)
No, "deflectors" are definately mentioned in A New Hope.
"red leader" specifically-- "bring your rear deflectors on; double front"
source:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re:Too much work, here is why (Score:4, Informative)
Sadly, considering where that originates from, it's true.
Channeling a magnetic field through a ferromagnetic metallic "skin" (hull plating) will deflect or scatter charged particle weapons or hazards.
Similarly, one could "paint" one of the various forms of materials whose optical properties can be altered by passing electrical current through it. It could be made to be 100% optically absorbent (the same as using two polarized optical filters set at a 90 degree rotation with respect to each other) in order to prevent you being spotted when you're in space. If someone sees you (since you just passed in-between a light source and them), and they shoot lasers at you, you change the polarization to make the material 100% optically reflective, thereby bouncing the laser off your ship.
Any laser much higher or lower in frequency than the visible spectrum (as in beyond IR and UV, which could also be affected by a very small subset of the materials which handles the visible light frequencies) is fairly difficult and inefficient to produce, therefore making it extraordinarily unlikely to be used as a weapon.
Re:Lore (Score:4, Informative)
Considering Obi Wan gives props to the precision of Stormtrooper marksmanship, one has to assume they actually had damn good aim.
Re:Sorry but (Score:5, Informative)
Lasers? What lasers?
Those things on SW aren't lasers. One, they travel too slow (you can actually see the gaps in the pulses) and, following on from that, you can see them when they're not travelling right towards your remaining eye.
Also, lasers don't go "pyew pyew!" and even if they did you wouldn't be able to hear them through a vacuum.
Finally, parsecs.
Some more plasma physics is needed in their model (Score:4, Informative)
The paper is a one pager of introductory plasma physics. It isn't a serious calculation and it wasn't meant to be. Anyway ...
Their model is as follows. A plasma will reflect all electromagnetic radiation below a certain frequency, determined by its density. The plasma exerts a pressure like a gas and they then assume confinement of the plasma with a magnetic field, balancing the plasma pressure with the 'pressure' that a magnetic field exerts on charged particles. They then say that we can make magnetic fields in the range up to 100 T and working back, estimate the plasma frequency, which turns out to be in the UV. So great, you can deflect lasers into the UV with a modest confining field.
You need to look at some of the other numbers though. .... The other problem is that at such a high density, the collision frequency is very high so that a magnetic field is not very effective at producing confinement. Probably useless in fact.
First, what sort of plasma density do you need to reflect UV ? The answer is something like 10^28 per cubic m. This is enormous - fusion plasmas are about a million times less dense). It's getting close to solid state density eg if a solid has atoms 0.2 nm apart this is 10^29 atoms per cubic m. That is not going to be easy
The other thing to look at is the required plasma temperature. They assume a temperature of 1000 K, Unfortunately, the density of a plasma at 1000 K at thermal equilibrium is extremely low unless the background pressure is huge. So it has to be a lot hotter, in particular, comparable with the ionization energy which is roughly 100 000 K. And really, we need a fully ionized plasma because the magnetic field is not going to confine the neutral gas that we are using to make the plasma so that means we need a 100 000 K plasma. This means that the required magnetic field goes up by a factor of 10.
Would somebody else like to estimate how much power you need to dump into the plasma ?
Re:Lore (Score:4, Informative)
Nerd hat on...
Photon torpedoes are from Star Trek, they are matter/anti-matter missile weapons fired from the ship in a torpedo casing. They have guidance and a warp sustainer engine so if fired at warp they can maintain warp speed for a short period of time. (Phasers are directed energy weapons and thus can't be used at warp)
Proton torpedoes are from Star Wars, they also are a cased missile weapon, much smaller than photon torpedoes, the X-Wing carries 6 of them, 3 per launcher. They are anti-capital ship weapons, unable to target most fighters, they are designed to penetrate thick durasteel hulls and explode inside the ship.
Re:Sorry but (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Lore (Score:4, Informative)
Those are long-service regulars. Later on in the movie they've had to resort to conscription.
Shit, I can't believe I'm trying to make sense out of star Wars.
If you really want to make sense of the movie, just realize that the scenes where they can't hit anything is where they are actively trying to let the rebel princess escape so they can get onto a ship with a tracking beacon to lead them to the rest base which they really want. That plan couldn't work if the stormtroopers actually hit and killed everybody. Even Leia said the escape had been too easy. face it, all those stormtroopers had orders to miss.