Why Plasma Makes A Bad Weapon
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- Опубликовано: 17 сен 2024
- Can plasma be used as a weapon? If so how effective would it be as a weapon when compared to conventional arms. (yes this is a reupload)
Terraformer - Rimworld
Death Odyssey Aftermath - Ultrakill
Shadow Work - Rimworld
Space Dub Town - Everhood
I am more or less new to youtube so expect a lot of mistakes, constructive criticism is very welcome. (don't be mean about it though)
Recorder: OBS
Editor: Flow Blade
Patreon: patreon.com/AlchemicalRaven
Thumbnail - Me
Editor - Me
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#engineering #doom #techorfantasy
![[Doom Eternal] Bad Weapon Academy: Unmakyr](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/s6IjSYLTX94/mqdefault.jpg)
![[Doom Eternal] Bad Weapon Academy - Mobile Turret](/img/1.gif)
Yeah so had to reupload. this was due to my renderer not completing and it did some intresting things like leave half the video black. so yeah thats fixed now. so enjoy the better version
how the fuck does the ultrakill rocket launcher works? WHY DOES IT FREEZE ITS BULLETS?? WHY DOES ITS VARIANTS SHOOT BLACK HOLE ROCKS??
you could also do, how would tf2 widowmaker work?
Bruh, doom released in 1993 not 1998... your take was dumb
@@xedrickOG it's a minor mistake
@@verizonextron the ultrakill rocket launcher works via a chemical reaction, it only explodes when blood is able to connect with the rocket's propellant and charge. The time-freeze is likely using exotic material generated within the rocket, as there is ample prescient for material generation within ultrakill. The SRS cannon launcher shoots rocks, I feel like this shouldn't be that big of a surprise. it's a pneumatic launcher. V1 just put a rock in it.
Ngl its kinda funny how in Warhammer 40k its dangerous both to the user and to their enemies.
I remember an image of someone making a miniature where its a space marine shooting a plasma gun one-handed and they're looking away with a hand covering their face while doing so, and that mini lives in my head rent free
Space Marines will do anything but wear a helmet.
@@VoxAstra-qk4jzthe drip is more important than protection
@@HuneeBruh space marines look better with helmets 100% of the time, change my mind
@@VoxAstra-qk4jz Funnily enough that marine WAS wearing a helmet.
@@fenrirsrage4609 Would he still be wearing it afterwards, though?
The original Doom was from 1993 btw not 1998
🤓
@@Wallrunninglooter when your mother born you, her doctor said: 🤓
@@DARK_DEEPgrammar is overrated anyway
Fact. Half-Life was from 1998.
@@DARK_DEEP Doctors tend to be 🤓, themselves, so he probably went on to say, "Welcome to the club."
Thinking about the practical applications of Plasma Weaponry, imagine bullets that use Plasma to boost them instead of gunpowder, or big clunky bullet-lile projectiles that store plasma in them and on making contact and breaking release an explosion of Plasma like a Plasma Grenade. Maybe we've been thinking about Plasma weaponry all wrong and metaphorically trying to use gunpowder as projectiles.
This is my thought exactly.
Plasma being used as the weapon itself. It does not make sense until you realize it is a stand in for a wizard's fireball.
Plasma for weapons make sense in other areas.
Plasma railgun, using plasma as a medium to reduce rail destruction and increase projectile velocity (Expanse railguns)
Using plasma as an explosive (similar to HALO plasma grenades)
Using plasma to help accelerate projectiles (Kinda like IRL, but the IRL plasma assisted projectiles are used as a means to increase accuracy).
Using plasma as a means of propulsion.
@@johnsmithfakename8422Right, and isn't plasma extremely hot?
Extreme heat = Extreme molecular speeds/vibrations, plus the fact that plasma can act as a fluid and can generate electro magnetic forces due to the charged particles...
@@revron9683 plasma is not neccesarily hot, you can make cold plasma, you just need to ionize gas
you should look up Electro-thermochemical weapons. the best use of plasma in weapons is as a source of ignition. the volume increase generally isn't rapid enough to be good as a propellant, but the thermal energy is high enough that it is excellent at igniting higher energy fuels, allowing for more bang per shell. This, combined with sabot technology, would make for just about the best conventional large-bore guns that we have the level of technology to understand.
the thing is, in all use cases of charged plasma as a weapon, simpler things like fire or KE pens would do better. you can spray fuel for a fire, where as that isn't really how plasma works. plasma is an extremely high energy state, which is not easy to maintain in a non halogen atmosphere. in a swamp? thats a lot of nice, damp air to provide the plasma a short to ground. in space? space is cold as shit, and as close to a vacuum as possible. not even mentioning the fact that you may need to take into account stellar + planetary magnetic fields if you're using it on a large enough scale for it to make a whole lot of sense. even if you were fighting in the best conditions possible, it would probably just make sense to use chemical potential bombs, incendiary weapons and guns.
That being said, my warhammer brain says plasma go zoop very cool.
Sorta like an ETC gun on a tank
I theorize the "pulsar" attachment for weapons in Reverse Collapse/Codename Bakery is like such
The weird thing about any "plasma" weapon in all of the Doom games that you missed (especially in 1993 Doom) is that it *splashes* onto it's targets like a very angry water balloon, same with all the demonic projectiles, which were retconned to be "argent plasma" instead of anything magical in 2016
It's almost like the plasma itself is contained in an outer shell of _something else_ that contains the plasma until it makes physical contact with the target, at which point it disperses and all the plasma inside is suddenly released, the "splash".
Doom 2016 calls the projectiles "Plasmoids" and says they deliver both impact and thermal damage, as if the outer shell was somehow dense and solid before dispersing. A plasmoid being plasma contained within a magnetic field while being cohesive.
Some kind of weightless high-velocity magnet matter that bursts on impact. The more it tries to justify itself the more it becomes witchcraft
In Halo's lore, the plasma is contained with some kind Electromagnetic Field?
I mean. could work if electromagnetic fields arnt kind of short ranged
I remember reading that it's some kind of superheated gas launched by electromagnets or gravity field or something inside the covenant weapon.
Don’t forget they are also using forerunner technology as well
Yeah, I think the shots are essentially electromagnetic bubbles that has plasma inside that cause damage when they pop. The energy sword uses magnetism to shape plasma into a thin blade.
@@DuskyPredator
Yeah, in the OG sound for it from H2 to Reach it sounds like a gas being shot out
So, EVE online had a spin-off shooter called 'Dust 514', in that game there were plasma rifles, and the only 'shotguns' in the game also shot plasma. Yes they used magnets to contain the plasma they shot, but they were also atrociously short-range weapons. But what was interesting was that they were good at shredding both shields and armor. The lore justification was that, due to the plasma 'round' being encased inside of the same kind of electromagnetic bubble that made up people's overshields, the bubble would simply attach to the overshield and dump the payload directly onto the person's armor. Which I thought was pretty hardcore.
This was the same game that had a tungsten rod payload system as a heavy weapon option.
"Here, hold this."
I miss Dust 514
“the Power of the Sun…. in the palm of my hands….!”
and we didn’t even need to graft mechanical arms to our spines!
your right. we need to make more mechanical parts. the flesh is weak after all
@@Tech_or_Fantasywe crave the strength and certainty of steel
That has to be the BFG
LOWLY TARNISHED... THOU ART UNFIT, EVEN TO GRAFT....
ANCESTORS ONE AND ALL, BEEARRR WITNESSSS
@@jmanbenoit3812and aspired to the purity of the blessed machine
Since the Doom guns have ammo, what if this weapon is shooting a physical projectile that generates plasma and contains the energy, similar to the video on the Ultrakill shotgun?
i mean probably not. its definitly plasma inside of the ammo we pick up
@@Tech_or_Fantasynot plasma, it’s more likely a collection of gas and electricity from a battery that expends itself to ionize said gas
The plasma rifle needs to be more powerful in the modern games, it used to be a great weapon, now its not nearly as useful
yeah kind of dont use it as much as balista
@@Tech_or_Fantasy well of course, the ballista is one of those weapons that is so useful, it does a lot of damage, and can be used to quickly destroy target areas, such as manc cannons, arachnotron guns, and the heads of those drone thingies. The only downside to the plasma rifle in classic doom was the fact that the Bfg also used cells, beyond that, it's able to output a lot of damage, killing a cyberdemon in like only 300 cells, and unlike the Tyrants in the modern game, it was not as weak. I looked at some of the scaling, and the Tyrant takes half as many shots of the Super shotgun, granted I'm pretty sure the SSG is buffed in the modern games, so it might be similar. Either way, the plasma rifle was a valueable weapon for fighting "bosses", the bfg also was a great weapon, but you don't always have the bfg in classic doom.
@@Tech_or_Fantasy Plasma shouldn’t be a projectile but it would be a lot better if was a flamethrower like a plasma flamethrower.
The guns in the new Doom games suck in general, the enemies are spongy and you're supposed to manually kill them. 😒
@@georgeoldsterd8994 no, the super shotgun is stronger than it was in classic doom
Huh, so Fallout's industrial green goo launcher was mire realistic not hitting a barn 😂
why it geen?
@@Tech_or_Fantasydesign choices. Same how nuclear waste is often shown constrained in metal barrels
You’re completely wrong, but trying to actually prove it would put me on a government watchlist, so you win this time.
say this has already put you on said watchlist
this is what we call a lie kids
You work at the UAC
@@Tech_or_Fantasy project marauder would like to have a word.....
infact that was so effective they literally classified it and they solved the problem of the plasma dispersing...
How effective is firing the whole bullet (65% more bullet per bullet)?
Caseless ammo! (More bullet per bullet!)
depends if you go full gyrojet, or BB gun but for the full cartridge (projectile and case)
how about we just make life take the lemons back!
yeah starfield and a few other games have those. also uranium ammo
Plasma needs to be encased to carry on its energy even through air.
So it's either plasma in a bubble (think of a heat projectile but plasma) or plasma as a propellant.
na this thing shoots plasma.
So basically it's a kind of napalm-like weapon, except air would cool it down too quickly.
It might not have penetration but what you describe is something that still makes a great weapon if it can be delivered into an enemy without killing the user first.
Stupid hot, viscous, potentially fusion. You just described what napalm wishes it could be. It doesn't need to penetrate if it sticks to the enemy and melts/fuses them. Wrap that in a casing so it can go the distance and then shatter on contact (grenade launcher like you said) and even Canada is starting call for Geneva to nix this
yeah if it even makes it to the target. thats the real issue is it doesnt like moving
Is it viscous? That would make it a thick liquid correct? Wouldn’t it be thinner than gas?
This video will be proven wrong in the future, i bet
probably. but fr plasma makes a bad projectile
@@Tech_or_Fantasy That also work in Team Fortress 2 every plasma weapons
@@boo1boot261 i have no idea what that comment says im confused
@@angrygamer1822 The TF2 "laser" weapons that launch glowing projectiles (Pomson and Righteous Bison, based off of the Dr. Gordbort thing, a retrofuturistic fantasy tech modeling project from the looks of it, I'm admittedly not very familiar) are notoriously bad, having slow moving, slow damaging projectiles, with slow rate of fire.
@@boo1boot261 The Pomson sure is the best weapon in the game
So, you would fire a high powered laser first, likely the same laser that converts the material into a plasma, then you use a coilgun to accelerate the magnetically responsive plasma down the evacuated air channel. You may have to use a microwave emitter at the same time in order to help "push" the plasma and stabilize the channel (which is also magnetically charged).
It could work with enough engineering, but would require at least one if not more order of magnitude of energy than to just accelerate a sabot round using the same coilgun.
Also, it would be fairly easy to defend against using vacuum gaps in armor (already a thing) or superconducting wires to a heat sink.
What I'm hearing is that plasma weapons make an epic flame thrower in an atmosphere and a heat drill in a vacuum.
What if plasma in the Plasma Rifle, isn;t the projectile, but the payload?
What if the Purple boxes contain both Plasma as fusion fuel, and magnetize pellets?
The gun puts the plasma inside the pellets and shoots them out. It's a tiny steel slug with so much magnetic and thermal energy stored inside that it ionized air around it, causing it to for a small ball lighting around the projectile.
And on impact all this electricity is discharged into the target, causing thermal shock which deals structural damage to the target
i though of some kind of chemical thing that when heated up or thrown at a target might just fuse with the target and make plasma
I could easily see some kind of bomb use plasma, though. Or something like other people have said where there’s plasma in the bullet itself.
really I could see it downscaled to autocannon sizes(14.5mm, maybe .50cal), using the plasma as an explosive, imagine an Abrams shooting a HEAT shell, but it's plasma, really hot HEAT (HEAT stands for High Explosive Anti Tank, shaped charge, look it up if you like explosions)
Like the plasma grenade from Halo
honestly the most realistic use of plasma as a weapon
That’s just a hydrogen bomb lol
if you're interested in it, you should do a video about clash's shield from tom clancy's rainbow six siege!
it just shouldn't physically work, but you have a fun presentation style and i think it'd be fun to hear you talk about it
great video! i hope you continue to blow up
I like to stick to weapons for now. but maybe in the future
"Like so much sci-fi it uses magnets."
I'm a lamen writer and game designer, but have attempted to do research on how weapons of the types could work. Magnets aren't the go too because laziness, but because that's currently understood most feasible way they could work as a propulsion. Be it rail guns, coil guns, or plamsa which all do interact with magnetism. Plus Magnetism is a very versatile and powerful force in real life, along with being one of the four fundamental forces/interactions of our physical universe. Succesfully containing and propelling Plasma without it disapating in an earthlike atmosphere is a challenge.
That said you said Plasma wouldn't make a good projectile because of penetration like conventional ballistics. I strongly disagree. A plasma projectile may not penetrate, but it could actually do far worse damage if it exploded on the surface area of a target (especially an organic, living being). The sheer heat and potential radiation could have all sorts of nasty effects that would make someone wish they got by a bullet or even sabot or flechette.
Just my understanding and 2 cents.
I love this topic! The main useful thing about plasma is that it's strongly affected by magnetic fields, so you can confine it and move it around using electromagnets. BUT... that's not good for shooting like bullets. If there was some way to project a tunnel of magnetic field towards the target, then plasma balls could be very effectively launched down the tunnel at the target. But... that's just not really how magnetic fields work. You can't really project them forwards. They're always strong around the magnet itself, and then rapidly get weaker. For this reason, plasma projections are always very short in length, and can't be used for ranged weapons.
They'd also behave totally differently in air and in vacuum.
for a while I've been thinking plasma weapons that acted more like grenades or flamethrowers are an underused sci-fi concept. it'd be a little more plausible and interesting to me, even if still not realistic if you look hard enough
You mentioned a plasma flash bang and that got me thinking if plasma is bright as heck could you not use it to pump a laser? Just have plasma in a nice little vacuum chamber and direct the emitted light to your lasing material.
I love that the diagrams are back :D
I read a story where instead of storing plasma it's ammunition when fired creates an expanding ball of plasma. To get around air resistance it uses warp to essentially have it go off right next to a target.
“Plasma makes a bad weapon” mfs when I blast them with the power of the sun using the palm of my hand:
Star Fleet battles talks about a Plasma torpedoes as a projectile that uses a magnetic field to contain the plasma, the core of the torpedo has the drive engine that moves the torpedo and has tracking system built into it, however, the warhead itself is consumed by the drive engine for energy. Meaning that the torpedo will lose it's strength as it moves. Short range it hits real hard, but at long range the torpedo will be much weaker and you can also run the torpedo down to near nothing or burn it out.
This was a completely different video than I thought it would be. Honestly this is way better than my assumption.
so the idea is to talk about it and why it do or dont work and how it might be modified to be better
1:22 a sandwich
you shall do as apitizer
Your choice of background music gives me flashbacks :D
I’d strongly recommend adding subtitles to your videos - they both make the video more accessible and make it a more pleasant experience for a lot of viewers. There’s a reason why 50% of people use them nowadays (and no the auto captions aren’t good enough lmao)
The Covenant simply adore their plasma weapons. There was a part in one of the Halo novels where Cortana, having been uploaded to a Covenant cruiser, realizes that their magnetic containment (there, I used magnets!) was far more crude than it needed to be. When she adjusted the weapon it fired a lance of plasma at a percentage of c. She took a weapon, repurposed it into a giant construction tool and turned it back into a weapon!
Plasma is an ionized gas that can be controlled using magnetic fields. Magnetic confinement could be used to contain and direct the plasma within the weapon without it touching the weapon's internal structure, thereby preventing melting. Instead of a traditional barrel, the weapon could use electromagnetic coils to accelerate plasma projectiles. ... but hey that's just an approach. A theoretical approach.
Ideas:
The gun in standard fire mode shoots magnetic "bullets" relatively slowly to keep the plasma hot and around the projectile and the containers that you collect contain the magnets and helium3 that then as you fire gets turned into plasma and maybe fuses.
The ballista uses the same magnets but shoots them faster and hotter to deal more damage both heat and kinetic.
The microwave i'd say that uses the plasma to create radiation that gets funneld thanks to magnets.
The wave i'd say that uses a cooling gas, that heats up as you shoot so the gun doesn't, and than you "throw" the gas at the enemies.
If I where to use plasma as a weapon i would use it either for a stronger termite or as a bomb.
The main issue that I see is that a ball of plasma floating freely in air or even a vacuum would rapidly expand. Being plasma, it is incredibly hot, and hot substances want to expand unless something contains them. In stars, the outward thermal pressure is countered by the inward gravitational pressure of the star's mass.
A couple of milligrams of plasma have an infinitesimal gravitational force to pull them together, while still having huge thermal pressure to make them expand. As soon as plasma is leaving the muzzle of a gun and is no longer contained by anything, it's going to turn into a spray. Even when its fired out the gun into a vacuum where there are no air molecules in its way.
The principle in most fiction is magnetic containment, and creation of plasma just before firing, not storing it for any real length of time. Even then, there are examples, like of Warhammer 40k's melta gun (very high-power microwave gun that creates superheated plasma bursts) where it really is just spraying a cone of extraordinarily hot unpleasantness and has minimal effect at range. The energy output at short range, however, is tank-meltingly absurd. Plasma weapons are also commonly depicted as having notable overheating problems, to varying degrees. 40k's 'conventional' plasma guns are... far from safe for the user.
Well, the game suggests, that the weapon encapsulates the plasma in spherical force fields, like bubbles; and then shoot them. Those force filds filled with plasma pop when they have contact with a target, exploding it.
If you can imagine it, you can build it!!
there are physical limits. plasma wouldnt do what we see in game. just too large of a projectile
Maybe plasma weapons would be more of a crazy flamethrower. Using a strong magnetic field to project it over a short distance. Or a close-range weapon for cutting apart targets. So a plasma caster and plasma lance.
Fucking rimworld music in the background had me thinking I developed the schizoid trait
There's a webcomic called Sequential Art where one character invents a plasma rifle that looks and feels exactly like a sci-fi game weapon... but the plasma is subject to realistic limits of hydrogen plasma, so the gun's range is best measured in millimeters. After learning this, the main characters instead use the "rifles" as plasma cutters to cut a door off its hinges
You could also hypothetically have the gun shoot the plasma containment cell, then use a forward-mounted rangefinder to automatically detonate said containment, causing an airburst effect.
Hear me out: plasma coated bullets.
Think of the energy sword from Halo, it's a solid device that emits a blade of plasma. now if we cheapen & simplify that down, we could have magnetic slugs with a plasma coating, getting launched out by whatever means (gunpowder, coilgun, idgaf). They'd have increased penetrative power by burning through everything, while still having the kinetic energy of a solid mass slug.
I think RimWorld's charged weapons are implied or directly stated to use plasma-coated ammunition.
Well, when I think of that, there is plasma type that could work in theory, plasmid that is like micro donut that shortly after creation self compresses to produce jets of protons and electrons on opposite sides
Add some space magic and it devours little bit of the object on impact and showers it with neutrons
The UAC’s legal department approves of this video.
Thank you for the video. I made a robot oc that I based around various sci fi concepts and your channel is a gold mine of ideas!
Plasma needs to be an element in Borderlands 4, and it should function like a cross between Borderlands 2's E-Tech weapons and 'The Pre-Sequel's laser weapons.
So... 3's alien weapons? the Lob comes to mind.
i mean any element past 90 is really radioactive. so unlikely but that just an observation. best you can do is hydrogen
@@JeffHikari Yeah, those too.
To weaponize plasma, you'd want to fire a projectile that creates plasma after it hits the target.
I love that you changed the thumbnail like 2-3 times.
The key to plasma projectiles is to make it fold into a flow cycle onto itself so that it retains itself as much as possible in the travel time
Additionally plasma doesn’t need to be pre made, you can just heat up the air in the gun with high voltage
Lastly to propel the elipsoid you just need to push it out while forming the plasma stream and let momentum take care of it
Plasma weapons in general might have a short range without extensive hardware but they don’t rely on impact forces to deal damage, instead they rely on heat and electricity
The heat part is obvious, melt the armor
But the free floating electrons will basically jump like lightning into the nearest conductor, like say the enemy armor
This can fry electronics but also can detonate reactive armor, cause explosions with reactive materials like gas or gunpowder and so on
Look into lightning shock and plasma ring research
Plasma weapons already exist, and have for about 100 years. The HEAT tank shell is a munition that generates a plasma reaction, which then punches through armour with plasmacised copper. Simply put: it's unknown if magnetic seals will ever allow an entriely plasma munition to be fired, but we do know that munitions that generate plasma reactions.
The Soviets studied ball lightning and tried to weaponize it. The range and duration was too short and it was hard to guide the ball lightning to the target so they abandoned it.
I could see the plasma being used as the propellent in a weapon, like you said it has aincredibly low density, maybe a charge of dry ice gets pumped full of heat to the point that it becomes a plasma, rapidly expanding in size and pushing a projectile forward, there could even be a secondary stage that accelerates the plasma with a magnetic field.
So, realistically, a “plasma” weapon would function more like blow torch or a short range flame thrower. There is no feasible way of making plasma into a projectile, particularly in atmosphere.
Rimworld music?
A man of taste
There is a youtuber who makes plasma weapons; Carlos Gaines.
In the original doom it was energy cell ammo. So I always thought of it as giant battery packs of some sort that create enough charge to produce plasma or something?
Maybe we can't contain plasma to shoot it, but what if a Plasma Gun created plasma on the spot when shooting? And then you stored liquid or gas instead
Yeah, I cannot comprehend how that obvious idea never made it into the video. Why contain it long-term in the first place when that is unnecessary? All you need is a high-grade power cell/capacitor system of some kind, fancy magnetic systems to contain the plasma, something to turn into plasma (more density is probably better), competent engineering, and you've got something that creates one heck of a semi-contained burst of energy. Not necessarily something practical or long-range, but something. Definitely gonna need to handle the waste heat, though.
good way to start the day ngl
Personally, I have a design I'm still somewhat working on thats essebtially a shrapnel shooter that vacuums and shoots rabdom bits at things at extremely high speed. It's like a vaccuum and a shirt gun fused together.
Personally, I would simply lean in the plasma cannon firing of a huge blast direction and treat it as a heat based weapon if I was going to weaponise it. Making it as fearsome as a flamethorwer would work.
Probably gonna get buried in comments but love your content and the idea of trying to justify (or debunk) the existance of videogame weapons with science, i love that the tone isn't too dismissive either (many a channel i bump into that tried this idea almost sound like they were persecuting anyone who thought the weapons were cool in the visual or gameplay aspect).
Am happily waiting to see more vids in the future! You got yourself a new subscriber!
My take away is plasma is a bad projectile in an atmosphere. But as a weapon to be used in the vacuum of space, it sounds like it could be an interesting application (if we are strictly thinking of it in a martial sense)
I was literally going to comment that the answer to all of your complaints was magnets, semi-sarcastically, and then you went and beat me to the punch. Well done.
In my game ip plasma weapons have an activation range from the weapon. The plasma lasts for a short burst, hard-hitting but not for close quarters.
Good video; you just got yourself a new subscriber, congradulations!👍
Counter argument, what if you put plasma in a projectile that is not plasma? Solves the problem of the fact it is plasma and depending if you want a rocket/missile that has in layman's terms infinite range, it is possible. Or you can make that projectile weak enough that it breaks and whatever the projectile breaks at, it would drop the plasma substance and kill the entity or destroy said armour or hull, etc.
I mean, the heat of plasma means it doesn’t need to penetrate armor, or even remain ionized. All it needs to do is transfer that heat into the target, at which point the target would get boiled alive in their own fluid, or their tech will melt and overheat. Though, Really, some sort of heat projection lens would be a much more effective “energy” weapon than plasma at that point.
I wish people stopped limiting themselves to making Generic Laser and Plasma weapons for Sci-Fi Future Weapons
The enemies are flashing but he isnt executing them.
After giving consideration to the difficulties of containing plasma in a projectile, I had actually bounced the idea of using plasma as a shotgun rather than a rifle, something I've not seen before in sci-fi. Why contain the spread when you can use the spread?
There are other problems, however. Like you pointed out, there is a tremendous amount of energy, and that energy is not just dissipated in heat, but also light and sound. If you want an example of what this would look like, nature actually has a common source of plasma: lightning. That bright flash and boom? Plasma. So, basically any plasma weapon would be giving its user the mother of all flashbangs every time it is fired.
40k's melta guns do this, and are most often described as a very high-energy microwave gun that creates plasma bursts. Short-range, but high-energy enough to be an anti-armor weapon. This creating the mother of all flashbangs on firing is not well-addressed, though. Nor is the potential of the violently vaporized target showering the user in superheated bits and pieces... while exploding.
Plasma weapons IRL as opposed to fiction, are most likely going to take on the form of standard KE projectiles but at hypervelocity. There is a point where your bullet is so fast that is has enough energy to literally vaporize on impact. That's my perspective on it.
Yeah, containing plasma and then flinging it through electromagnetic forces would not be a thing. Simply containing the plasma, keeping it hot while keeping the rest of the weapon from overheating would, even if possible, be way more trouble than it's worth.
I could see it working if instead, the projectile was a bunch of cold matter that the weapon instead would instantly heat it up and propel. Perhaps propel the projectile like a regular kinetic one through either chemical propellant or magnetic propulsion. Then heat it up by blasting it with radiation while traveling through the barrel, timed in such a way that it turns to plasma just as it exits it.
Seems like if you were to use plasma like a weapon it would probably be projected out of a flamethrower-like contraption.
Basically being a version of the hacksmith lightsaber. Which i could see used for antimateriel or defoliation purposes.
The only way plasma could ever be used as practical weaponry is if there’s a way to let the plasma maintain its shape. Maybe a specialized type of gas that has certain magnetic properties in its composition and is directed by a laser.
i mean the way plasma weapons work in doom is actually pretty accurate. they dont have as much impact as projectiles but they just transfer so much energy into the enymy it cooks them from inside out,causing them to explode.
...the problem is how those projectiles happen...
So, basically plasma would make as a great weapon to be used in the vacum of space or a moon or planet with no atmosphere or almost no atmosphere, but in most places where we are it's just not good
the marauder project hmmmmmmmmmmmmm? i think i know a guy who has that name.
my dumb comment aside this is pretty cool found you randomly and you remind me of Roanoke a bit with your expertise and teaching us with material from games and such and reality definetly gonna be watching you moving forward thank you for making this vid
I was gunna make a joke. but forgot last second
Captions: "dooma Turtle"
If you wanted damage drop off with range you could communicate that with a change in color/brightness.
What if it's shoots some kind of ball lighting? Still this phenomenon haven't studied well, but there were succesfull experiments with creation of something similar to it.
And it's actually not a plasma - it's somehow heated particles of dirt that get into ball lighting.
Reminded me of Halo and the covenant carriers I feel like they are a really good version as it's a beam rather then a projectile
My main question with plasma weaponry always is: what are you exactly ionizing? I understand using some sort of high tech energy cell to power the process, but what is exactly being used to generate the projectile itself? The air just outside the muzzle or within the rile tube? That seems an awfully small amount of material for the kind of projectiles usually being shot, specially since atmospheric air is not dense at all. That's why I believe that plasma guns instead of using some thingamagyk energy source to generate the stuff should instead use some sort of unobtanium gas mix that's easily fissionale, shot out of the weapon like a strobing flamethrower.
why i though it was made in some facility and packaged into some kind of ammo
Some sort of high-density material being heated into plasma would do the trick, the question is of how you do this safely, and then safely and effectively accelerate the projectile to do something more than be a very unpleasant burst of heat at the muzzle. Would need some very, very fancy magnetic containment and accelerators. And a high-efficiency system with extensive cooling so it doesn't toast the user as well as the target. No easy task even if it does work and the tech is there, the thing would likely cost a fortune to miniaturize and manufacture compared to other options.
“Plasma is a bad projectile”
Oh yeah? Ever hear of BALL LIGHTNING?! Your argument is invalid
The solution to cointaining plasma in ammo problem is not to contain at all. Just produce new plasma the moment you fire it.
And actually we have devices shooting ionized gas at high speeds like this. They are called plasma propulsion engines or ion thrusters and NASA uses it since 1960s.
Still plasma makes a terrible projectile, but I think very low density is the main problem.
I feel like 40k did the thing with plasma guns the best. It has almost absolutely no penetrating power and almost always is a melting force for armor. At long range it sucks ass but at close range it does a better job. And if you or the Mechanicus don't take care of the gun then it just fucking explodes.
"It's good at cutting."
Me: plasma sword! And doomguy can convert his crucible that he used to defeat the icon of sin into one! The R and D division of ARC(if they're still alive) could do something about it. And also make it like a rechargeable weapon in the same manner as the sentinel hammer.
I wanna talk about the monosword from rimworld
In the end plasma weapons are a bit like glorified flamethrowers that are a little hotter
I think that the 'Plasma' in Plasma Rifle isn't the whole story... Maybe the ammo is some kind of exotic material, which just happens to involve using plasma to weaponize it
Maybe the plasma isn't the main projectile itself, but how it is delivered or propelled
The biggest mystery is simply how do you make those cool sci fi blue blobs move in a straight line at a fixed velocity....
1:24
That's not what begging the question means.
I've been tossing around a concept for advanced alien plasma guns that basically perform nuclear fission with dark matter to produce and propel superheated plasma at high speeds (using magnetism to focus and funnel the explosive reaction into a small but powerful pulse). Effectively firing one of these would look like a very straight bolt of lightning coming out of a gun that causes its target to explode between immense kinetic force and temperatures upwards of 100,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
metamaterial super magnetic liquid metal core that forms a magnetic bottle for plasma to be injected into and then the core is flung down a magnetic accelerated barrel. You get kinetic energy and thermal energy. call it... magnetohydrodynamic weaponry
Oh I thought I had seen this video before, I didn't know it was made yesterday.
would a plasma torch be a good weapon?
absolutely love this channel!
The plasma from the Plasma Rifel is a ball lightning projectile its essentially a tesla gun except the arcs are a self suataining electrical plasma while yes it is very hot realistically youd just want a tesla gun and pray your target isnt grounded
It becomes a quark-gluon plasma over 100k°C? What? Not even gonna get in on the stuff about fusion.
Also kinda missing the biggest problem with plasma: For it to stay plasma (i.e. ionised), it needs to remain hot. Plasma has very low heat capacity and will quickly cool off and recombine in contact with, well, anything. The other biggest issue is that plasma is ionised, so the ions will repel each other, and any plasma ejected out of a weapon will just very quickly dissipate. However, as plasma is ionised, it is also electrically conductive. That means it can be manipulated by electromagnetic fields. What's more, it can also have a current, which will induce its own magnetic field, so there are ways to produce a plasma that creates its own magnetic field, containing itself and keeping itself stable. It would look a bit like a smoke ring, just made of incredibly hot gas. You could make such a "smoke ring", and accelerate it with what's basically a railgun. The projectile wouldn't keep stable long, just a few microseconds or maybe milliseconds, but since it could also move very, VERY fast, it's enough to reach the target. This plasma projectile doesn't contain a lot of mass, but a lot of charge, and moves fast, so it still carries significant energy, and would fry electronic components in a target. It's what's called a coaxial plasma railgun, something used in fusion and plasma research, but also in at least one weapons project, called MARAUDER. Not much has been published about the results of that.
So, plasma is like napalm or a flamethrowers: not good for rifling/conventional solid ammo, but great at delivering heat.
Can you make a video on one of the orbital lasers from edf 4.1
probably would be on NV orbital laser. but i can do a video on that idea
Not if it shot plasma torroids with the power of a stick of TNT each shot