How Do Star Trek’s Deflector Shields Work? (Because Science w/ Kyle Hill)
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- Опубликовано: 11 окт 2017
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Star Trek gave us the now sci-fi space standard of deflector shields, but how do they work? Kyle makes it so on this week's Because Science!
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• LORENTZ FORCE: bit.ly/2kLhG6n
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Развлечения
How powerful are photon torpedoes? NEW mini-ep over on my Insta: instagram.com/sci_phile/ -- KH
Nerdist i have a working theory on "Anti-Gravity". Theoretically using this method to propel myself. Question: Could you amplify a Magnetic Feild enough to repel Earth's MF??. Ther for moving away from earth as fast as it rotates around the Sun. Perhaps an Inf amount of energy would so it?
Nerdist In the Star Trek Enterprise technical manual I believe they say some shields are EM based like what you said the video and some are graviton based. I the main Deflector Shields are graviton based and act like a gravitational lens. Also that the ship itself moves ever so slightly when it is hit so it's being deflected as well... I read this stuff years ago so I think I am remembering it correctly. So basically it is a gravitational spacial distortion. Would something like that work?
Nerdist hey the beams in Star Trek don't deflect they just stop. Wouldn't that be absorption?
how about stoping phisical projectiles? that shield would stop it too?
Since you mentioned the earth not being perfectly round, maybe we could get video explaining the science backed idea that our 3d universe is beyond doubt flat. That was an interesting subject and i'm sure you can explain it well.
"Every sci-fi ship now has a version of these shields." Kyle, I should introduce you to the Battlestar Galactica. They lack deflector shields, and beam weapons. I'd actually love to see you do a because science on how their ftl drive might work, because it is unlike any other sci-fi I've seen. They appear to fold space to travel ftl.
Good point, Shannon 👍.
That's a perfect explanation for: "SHIELDS AT 50%"
All the plasma gets used up disintegrating projectiles or absorbing phaser radiation and your left with a bare bones magnetic field which would offer minimal protection
But shouldn't shields start at 0 and then take take to form? Why can't you regen shields just as fast as you brought them up?
@@petergerdes1094 I think there are stores of plasma so that the shields can be quickly turned on. Then, when they are turned off, remaining plasma goes back into the stores. They probably keep extra plasma to regenerate shields stored as gas. It takes time to convert it, and overall regens at a slower rate than the shields are degenerating under fire.
Kyle....Great video...however I think you need to make a slight correction...Star Trek makes a distinction in the deflector and shields. This goes back to Gene Rod. The deflector is a cone of energy which is shot out in a beam in the path of the ship to DEFLECT items out of the path of the ship so you don’t explode when colliding with space dust at 10 times the speed of light while SHIELDS function as you depicted in this video.
I understand how other shows refer to these shields as deflector shields I.e. the Star Wars empower in return of the Jedi “oh, i’m afraid that deflector shields will be quite operational when your friends arrive”
But Star Trek refers to the deflector differently
And just to be clear I am not hating on ST or SW they are both awesome, just different
so no big deal just trying to be as accurate as possible
that is a good point, deflector shields are to deflect dangerous particles while at warp speeds, the shields themselves are a different technology.
That'll teach you to wear a red shirt on a Star Trek episode!
It's just what happens... -- KH
Lol.... How much do you wanna bet that was meant as an easter egg?
Like the 4 lights? ^^
Scotty an Uhura wore red....
Rife Prime lol
I remember reading about a plasma based 'shield' that would look like a 'real' force-field, but ironically while it would interact with matter, it would barely interact with an energy weapon.
"The earth isn't perfectly round, look it up" lol
So funny. I laughed hard!
*Oblate-spheroid* is the correct term.
@@solarisone1082 This. Nerds unite. The fact that I even remember that term from high school...…. scares me.
R.I.P. Science Thor.
Time to unfreeze the next clone.
I have a couple lined up, all with different hairstyles -- KH
It's just like the show "Dinosaurs."
Time to get another Timmy!
Only a few weeks left of his 3 year assignment as well.
Krishnath Dragon HAHAHAHAHHA
"Science Thor" is perfect :D
There Are Four Lights!!
Arguably one of the best TNG episodes. Or at least one of the best Picard episodes.
One of the most powerful, by far! So good!
Temba his arms wide...
Shaka when the walls fell...
Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra...
@ Menaceblue3 ... ANOTHER great episode!!!
A great episode was when Picard had his own family as well
love the 4 light reference
HE DID NOT MAKE A 4-LIGHT REFERENCE. SAY IT.
Do tractor beam!!!
Thiago Villa they publish a technical manual you can read that explains it
Or better yet a combine harvester beam :)
Styropyro already did that...
In real life.
DO MEGA PARTICLE BEAM!
Ryan Vigus hope they will make deflector shields too
How the shields work: the more technobabble, the stronger they are. How do you think the federation wins so many space battles? Theyve perfected the art of technobabble
@Travis Thacker And don't forget adding "quantum" to almost every word!
Bob lazar said he interacted with shields in S4 ERIA 51 ..God I hope he's telling the truth
What would this type of shielding do to sensors? how would you be able to tell where you are going?
Ah ha, now you delve into the realm of navigation in space.
Currently our absolute best method, that would work everywhere in our galaxy, is something called GPS. No, I’m not talking about the GPS in your phone, that’s Global Positioning System. What I’m referring to is the Galactic Positioning System, or as I sometimes call it, the Pulsar Positioning system.
As I’m sure you know, and I’ve no desire to explain in this comment, pulsars are a type of neutron star that create what we observe as pulses that are more precise that even some atomic clocks. Using those pulses, from multiple pulsars, and a bit of math using known values for those pulsars, you can precisely calculate your exact position. Last I heard, our current systems are accurate to the foot.
That right there, gives you your position. Now, you just have to figure out a course. Which is fairly simple! Assuming you have FTL, all you need to do is point in the correct direction and go like hell. Of course, you need to take stellar drift into account, because even at galactic distances and superluminal speeds, you will have travel time and the stars do move, but we have a pretty good idea of how stars orbit the galaxy, so accounting for their drift is fairly simple.
Otherwise, you need to plot a trajectory in a similar manner as you would in our solar system, and be damn confident in your math because one wrong variable, a mis-rounded answer, or a missing significant digit, and you’ll wind up light years off course and that’s no bueno
@@MrStreaty122 i love how you wrote this like a sci-fi character explaining it to another character lol
This would also explain why they are able to put a percent value of remaining deflectors as they are not talking about the generator power, but the about of plasma partials that have been accumulated.
that's where the hull armor comes in. especially when it has a charged state to it
THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS!
I did not get that reference until I saw this comment.
Loved the reference, came to the comments to look for this :)
@@laretus RIGHT?! same hahaha Sooon as I saw that, I was like "omg, Ihope there are enough trekies watching this to catch that one" ;)
What's the difference between disruptors and phasers? I also remember that the deflector grid has a separate function than the shield grid.
IRL? No idea. Trek tech only really works with Trek technobabble. (Treknobabble?)
In the show, phasers are (like the dude said) particle beams - however, they use an unknown radiation/material/technobabble maguffin called 'nadions' to produce (or enhance? It isn't really clear) the beam.
Disruptors, on the other hand, work by breaking (or 'disrupting' as the name would suggest) atomic bonds, essentially splitting atoms into their component parts. Basically, nuclear fission in a gun. How this works is a mystery.
Then there's your Romulan plasma weaponry - basically just beams of plasma as was suggested.
Finally, there are the Dominion's polaron beams - presumably some kind of magnetically-confined antimatter beam that destroys everything it touches in an annihilation reaction. They can also pierce shields because plot.
Weren't the navigational deflectors primarily for diverting small matter such as space debris out of the path of the ship during high speed travel? I don't think that magneto-plasmic shields could accomplish this task.
I was just about to write that!
The deflector array uses, according to the Enterprise D tech manual, graviton fields to deflect incoming debris.
they are two different things.
the navigational deflector is always facing forward, to push debris out of the way.
the deflector shield is much stronger and it surrounds the whole ship.
it is not until late Voyager and the movies that they develop multi-vectral shields, which are individual shields facing in diferent directions around the ship rather than one single bubble.
in one episode of TNG a small ship threatens the Enterprise with laser weapons, and Riker points out "lasers? that won't even penetrate our _navigational_ deflector"
as in, we don't even need to bring _the shields_ up.
two different systems.
I love how you included Picards flute lol
Very interesting and enjoyably explained.
Why would trolls turn to stone in sunlight? What would they have to be made of?
Gargoyles too
"Set to educate"
Lol
As far as I remember, Star Trek never referred to "deflector shields". There were the deflector dishes, which allowed warp-speed travel through regions that might contain small, undetectable masses -- they would literally "deflect" away space debris -- and the shields, which might work some way or other.
Finally an explanation of this !!
I was always under the impression that there was a separation between the "shields" and the "deflector shields". And the deflector shield was there mostly for physical objects and the more generic shields dealt with more phaser based attacks.
you are correct, there is a difference between shields and deflectors.
shields are to protect against attacks, strong blasts of radiation, and stuff like that.
deflectors are to move stuff (spacedust etc.) out of the way so the ship doesn't get perforated while moving.
however, even the writers of episodes mess that up quite often.
Yeah. I also watched the video expecting some BECAUSE SCIENCE about the deflector.
Instead i got something about the shields...
suddenly Kyle has lost quite a few nerd points.
Writers of Nerdist, you have failed.
I had always thought deflector shields were strictly from the deflector dish, but apparently the ultimate Star Trek source, Memory Alpha states it's a matter of type: there's low power deflector shields coming from the dish (important during warp). The shields raised for defense can also be called deflector shields. memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Navigational_deflector . memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Deflector_shield
The writers were completely inconsistent, but the TNG Technical Manual has them named properly.
Archers enterprise "magnetize" their hull to protect it from Phaser blasts
I almost suffocated from laughter at 2:08
#WeloveyouKyle
Love the reference to the episode where Picard is being interrogated/tortured and repeatedly asked how many lights he sees.
This is one of your best episodes. This also means ships could use ramming as a last-ditch effort/suicide attack, where they would charge at another ship, and the two ships' energy shields would interact in a crazy lightshow
..........SURPRISE BORG ATTACK.
Ichsuka SURPRISE ROMULANS!
SURPRISE TRIBBLE!
Don't feed them after midnight, or ever. Just don't feed the tribbles.
RED ALERT!
I should have expected this. -_- Raise Shields!
At 1:48 at first I thought he was drawing a tree!!!
same
ionized
Worked for the Orville... ;)
" the Earth isn't perfectly round, look it up" epic, but true statement at 5:50
THERE, ARE, FOUR LIGHTS! (Loved that nod, well played.)
But those types of shields don't experience strain just because someone fires on it, it's energy draw is more or less constant and thus given enough power the shield is impenetrable for any and all energy weapons.
Kinetic weapons engage!
for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, so when the beam gets deflected the machine that produces the magnetic bubble gets pushed back equally, with enough firepower you could theoretically launch that device through the ship at near light speeds.
How does the shielded ship use their weapons?
by adjusting the frequency of the field and the beam, they can be made to essentially ignore each other. for a simple analogy, think of 2 sound waves. One wave is extremely uniform and the other a mash of combined frequencies, as the uniform wave passes through the unmodified mash it is canceled out by an opposite frequency in the mash. If you know what frequency the uniform wave is exactly you can remove the interfering frequency in the mash and the uniform wave will pass through unchanged. This would work for most beam weaponry and shielded objects.
Which is why each ship's Shield frequencey is a guarded secret....or the frequency needs to be modulated from the Borg
Sorry, that's not quite how it works. The magnetic field shield does not oscillate at a frequency, but is constant. Otherwise it would not deflect incoming ions but just wiggle them up and down a little until they hit the ship. If the field is constant, firing from the inside in the worst case could actually bend the beam around and make it hit the ship itself! If the phasers are more light-like, the problem would be that the plasma assembled to shield from the outside would just as well shield from the inside, firing would just light up the ship in auroras. :-)
So, all in all: The question is still very relevant. The only idea I could come up with is to switch off the field for a very short time while firing. But there has to be something more elegant.
How about the photon torpedos are set to the same frequency as the shield enabling it to pass through the shield, or the outer layer of the torpedoes being charged with a canceling frequency to "phase" through the shield
Florian Fahrenberger , that's the challenge I was imaging (though you phrased it far more eloquently than my thoughts had this morning). Could the ship phasers actually be physically extended through the shields? The large sphere we see in ST:tNG circling the ship is partially for storytelling and ease of CGI. If the shields were only a meter thick weapon systems could physically penetrate out and not worry about the multi-ball pinball effect inside the ship. It gives another reason why it's a common tactic to target the weapon systems.
Love the ending - short and simple :D
Phasers are more insane than you think, they fire Nadions, those directly attack the nuclei of the atoms, they're particle weapons, but they're quantum particle weapons.
Now imagine how tight those shields have to be to stop this, or photon torpedoes, that are basically antimatter warheads.
They're also multi-harmonic shields, which means that magnetic deflection, is just one of the many harmonics they protect the ship from different threats with.
Okay just watched this episode and I had an idea, however, how far-fetched the idea was I almost didn't post. In the future do you think if needed we could actually help the Ionosphere out by supplying some form charge and help reverse global warming in some form or another? Basically giving another layer or helping supply more density to the already formed Ionosphere. The energy necessary would be enormous but is it feasible?
Cody Sketch , I could imagine a satellite network generating a shield that could block solar radiation, though the energy needs would be very large. Which means we would probably have carbon emissions under control. An even simpler system might be having a shield at the L1 LaGrange point (always between us and the sun). This can also help magnetic field deficient Mars from losing its atmosphere.
wouldn't just a very large properly placed solar shield made of tin foil or the like provide enough shade without all energy requirements of any type of energy shield? plus playing games with the ionosphere doesn't sound like a good idea? better yet, very large solar electric power satellites used both to block out the sun's heat and make electricity at the same time and solve the energy problem once and for all?
Ok, so if plasma can be deflected by an electromagnetic field and dragon ball z ki attacks are just balls/beams of plasma and if magneto can create a neutron star level magnetic field then does that mean that magneto can deflect any dbz ki attack?
Fascinating 🖖thank you.
Wasn't expecting the Four Lights reference. Well played Mcduder, well played.
there wasn't enough lens flare for me in this episode :-)
Patrick Knowles we are not in a Micheal bay film
Matt Freg I think you mean JJ Abrams because that's his thing. Explosions are Bay's thing.
I don't think the Kelvin timeline was mentioned though...
@@patrickknowles8081 meh who cares
Can you do an episode about the weird electromagnetic thing the Angara do in Mass Effect
They can use them for shields but also to heal and to work their tech and instruments
Awesome videos mate!
great episode
How possible are the car stunts in Fast and Furious. Most notably the car breaking through the hotel window and landing in another hotel.
D_unexpected 1 not very, I'd imagine, how about how fast they'd have to go to pull it off?
Fast and Furious tank scenes are even more impractical, with a tank driving through concrete without bending it's entire barrel or getting stuck.
can these Deflectorshields block classic kinetic weapons? cause technically they are not charged and they can install a Railgun for sure in one of their ships, these things are basically flying citys
cue the halo super MAC
oh yeah macs... the one type of gun i actually saw in rl (in a military museum of our military and mainly about the gear and its development over time) and i still think it to be ridiculously powerful. i mean i rwad about rl railguns and they are designed to be intercontinental artillery cannons
yes, as long as the magneto-plasma is dense enough it would vaporize any unshielded kinetic projectile.
Magical Fungi
and thick enough, we're talking mach 6 speeds in normal air pressure. thats why today's railguns shoot their projectiles OUT OF THE ATMOSPHERE to reach long distance shots. the only reason why we dont use them is the fact that you need a new barrel every three shots and thats expensive and the capacitors we have aren't up for the task for even more powerful ones.
I would argue that density is more important than thickness. If you had something going fast enough with enough mass then it would fail, but given what it has shown to defeat before, i would say it would have to be a very large projectile.... like a schoolbus sized projectile... before it would actually penetrate the shields. Which would just be impractical.
I nearly spewed my coffee at the four lights comment / question!!!
OMG I love your videos!!! I've been binge watching 2 days in a row haha :P Keep up the awesomeness dude!!!!
Wrong! There are five lights 🤕 I gave in almost immediately 😊
Every scifi ship has some version of deflector shields? The Battlestar Galactica and Andromeda Ascendant jump to mind, I don't recall them existing in Firefly or the Expanse either.
Slavir Nabru Galactica didn't have shields, she had hull armour.
Those are shows where kinetic-kill weapons are the main armament, should have been more specific, sorry -- KH
Should have been way more specific. tie fighters don't have shields either.
nor do the ships in Babylon 5
You talking new Galactica or old Galactica? Because I swear the original TV series had some type of shielding... i'd swear I heard them say something like "charge the outer hull" or something similar.
Best Shows on RUclips. It knowledgeable and fun.
Good job. Real science.
How does the stun setting work?
In canon, most phasers work off a fictional nadion radiation. So.... who the fuck knows?
I'd ass-pull that it overloads and disrupts the neural system, which, on low levels causes things like disorientation, confusion, loss of muscle control.
Doing a Because Science segment on Star Trek almost feels like cheating, haha.
It's an ACTUAL sci-fi series compared to most pop-culture franchise. It's got to be one of the easiest material to do this show with. :)
aohige well except voyager maybe
It's very, *very* soft science fiction.
Excellent presentation. I like the graphics and effects. Your acting skills are pretty interesting also. All said, you do a great job of explaining a very technical subject so that most anyone can understand it.
Here is a question: can the shield strength be affected by interacting with the energy beam that struck it? In the TV or Movie, they always claim the shields are down by so much....etc. Can the effective strength of the shield be affected by the attack?
first time I have ever seen your stuff pretty damn cool!
"Deflector shields" refer to the shields they use, while moving, to prevent "the first grain if space dust" from "blowing a hole through this ship the size of your fist".
The shields you're talking about are not referred to as "deflector shields"; they're "energy shields", or just "shields".
Heres a fun question could a star trek shield stop a star wars turbolaser
HyugaBlood881 Yes
Star Treck tech would massacre Star Wars tech.
HyugaBlood881 I don't think it can. But they have to define a turbolaser first. Hint: its not actually a laser.
Hitting Warp 9 through a series of star systems pretty much guarantees you can tank a turboblaster. There's nothing you can throw at someone that the vast reaches of space can't throw harder. Which StarTrek has proven again and again space does.
bandrukesucks Laughable at best. Trek ships undergo great stresses. But they can't tank the damage output of turbolasers (which are not actually lasers fyi) for long. 2 or 3 hits and their shields are gone.
Also of note, in Trek NO SHIP travels at warp speeds THROUGH solid objects. That said.... Trek ships don't tank asteroids. It's too much for their shields to handle. And they have nearly no armor on their hull, save for a select few vessels.
Excellent!!!
Nice Picard Maneuver at 2:05
It looks like Star Trek may have pushed scientific advancement forward by almost a century, just the motivation of this may have changed humanity’s future
By design 👽👽👽
LUKES like your right 👽👽👽
If a phaser shot alpha or beta particles though it would only have a range of 1 metre or 10cm in an Earth-like atmostphere I swear?
Ed F but it's space tho.
Why do you think you never see them on earth (except for that episode where they went back in time, and in that episode, I'm pretty sure they didn't use phaser shots on earth, or if they did they didn't use it further than 10cm
To both of your replies, I said "Earth like". Any atmosphere will absorb the particles but an atmosphere with earth's pressure will do it at 10cm for alphas and 1m for betas. Do you seriously think that walking around on a planet with breathable air has nothing in common with earth?
If its in atmosphere it wouldnt change, the magnetosphere only protects against coming from the outside.
4 Tonnes of Fury yeah mate I'm talking about the handheld phasers which I'm assuming were what were being talked about because that was the graphic in the video. They would be used in an atmosphere.
I'm going to use the phrase "particle beams from space" in my daily life from now on. :P
My favorite part of that video was the "don't judge my drawing and get over yourself part" when he said the earth was not perfitcly round...so true..but still so funny because how he said it!!
so how do you stop a neutron bomb?
strap some school desks to you space ship?
With your fleshy body -- KH
With your Morty.
Use a Fleshlight saber.
I would imagine that the hull Armour is generations ahead of anything we have and can absorb the energy. In ST:TOS its stated somewhere that the hull of the 1701 can take a direct hit from a nuke. The hull and structural support material would have to be super strong just to handle impulse speed maneuvers.
6:00 Kyle is a flat earther
More of an egg-earther.
He forgot to add the 4 elephants and giant turtle to it.
The turtle moves!
The comment: "the earth isn't perfectly round, look it up!"
Cracked me up. :-D
Anarchy Antz and there is a distinct lack of Octarine colors.
Love this show.
Love these videos the personality and energy is great plus I always feel like I learned something new and the fact that he's extremely easy on the eyes don't hurt either 😏
Hey Kyle!
Could you do a video on Discoverys new spore drive? I just love the idea - and I actually like this updated, more adult Star Trek WAAAAY more then anything that came before :)
i like the style, dark and gritty... but the spore drive is complete bullshit.
Spore drive?
A Disfigurement Where My Head Is The Sun Do you watch the 'Star Trek: After Trek' show? They featured the real Stamets whose real fungi science is the basis for this in the stores. The website is www.fungi.com, if you'd like some more info
@A Disfigurement Where My Head Is The Sun:
What exactly is "more adult" about it?
@Magical Fungi:
There are plenty of dark, gritty sci-fi shows you could have watched then. That isn't what Star Trek was about. But for some reason the Grimdark Borg must assimilate everything.
Let's hope they don't have a normal gun.
in space projectile weapons are a joke, u have to get super close to even have a chance of hitting anything, otherwise they will just avoid all your fire with a 99% evade rate
Well normal gunfire isn't that good in Space, and the Hull of the Star Trek Ship is also a good Armor
a railgun that shoots projectiles at ultra high speeds ought to do some damage and be quite accurate no?
no matter how fast (cant be faster than light) the shear distances in space and room for maneuverability and motion just reduce that accuracy to near 0 after a certain distance, you have INFINITE directions to take, no matter how accurate the guns are unless your close and the target's speed and projectile speed is close then it wont hit anything.
thats why in shows they say "they are within our weapon's range" it just means the effective range were the chance to hit is at least there
Tarek Chamas That's why they should fire other smaller ships. With even tinier ships firing from them !
Try avoiding a shot gun blast of projectiles with the same manuverability as your own ship XD
Sure they would technically be drones and not ships and it's would be cost prohibitive yada yada yada but certainly more effective then firing anything that only goes in straight lines.
The nice thing about this theory, it even explains the shield charge that Star Trek ships have.
If multiple phaser hits on the same shield portion continuously knock away the magnetoplasma, the shield in that area loses large parts of it's protective potential.
Plus, some ship abilities like converting incoming phaser fire into actually REINFORCING the shields make sense now as well; collecting the particles from the beams in the shields magnetive field increases its protective potential.
because science and then muskwatch have gotta be my favorite series on this channel
4 people liked this upside down.
This is why Star Trek is superior to Star Wars.
Because science.
science just hasnt caught up to star wars yet, trek is just the off brand star wars
trek is a realistic imagining with technology we have or are very close to having, wars is a fantasy with nothing based in real technology.... big difference. They both have their place, neither is better than the other.
Saying Star trek is better then star wars is like saying star wars is better then blade runner. They aren't even the same genre.
Star wars is space fantasy and Star trek is science fiction. Just like blade runner is sci-fi noir.
Please stop comparing movies just because they have space ships and robots.
... but Star Trek is better...
+Abernathy Rah You are so wrong that is almost pointless to correct you.
Really enjoyed the aurora/active shield deflection comparison! It’s like a localized aurora :D
You always scratch my science itch. I was seriously buggin about this lol.
One thing I'd like to see in sci-fi:
the use of multiple weapon types. Lasers, kinetic cannons, missiles, and torpedoes just to name a few, that would be pretty cool.
I use a system along these same lines for the shields in my own books, interesting how we came to such similar conclusions.
To Shilds, there was a Episode on Enterprice ( Archer ) where they "created" Shields on a theory and some experiments from a Prio labratory.
Shilds are not only EM Based, "Shildparticals" form some kind of bond and build a net.
New Research shows that it is possible to form some kind of Matter out of Light Particels.
Photons are not much more as Magnatic Waves in Partical Like form.
So lets asume a Star Trek Shilds are a Sub Atomic net of Photons that s boundet together like a fishernet.
It would also explain a diffrent property of Shilds in Startrek. YOu can see Trou but high Energy is Defected / Absorbed.
Thank you for confirming my surmise about the use of a "shell" of plasma surrounding the ship and confined by its EM deflector field. I had the idea that the shield would be more powerful than just an EM field,and that gravimetric forces would aid in containment of the plasma shell.
I also surmised that the ship could only charge the shields in this manner once in a while (perhaps the ship needs to recharge the plasma reserves once they've been put into the shield), explaining the degradation of the shields' projection during a pitched battle ("Shields are holding, Captain ..." "Shields are weakening ..." "Shield strength now at 47% ... 39 ... 20 ... three percent ... shields have failed. Another hit like the last one, Captain, and we're toast!") - once one mass of the plasma has been discharged into the EM . gravimetric field, the tanks need to be refilled from the drives or something.
@7:14 Just be thankful they didn't use a Varon-T disruptor on you. Well done!
Genius! I love it
And at the same time, this just explained Magneto's force fields. Awesome.
I laughed waaaay too hard at: "The Earth isn't perfectly round. Look it up!"
I looked at the vid about photon torpedoes and I’d love if you made a vid about how the ships survive multiple hits and what they must be made of. Thanks. 👍🏼
Well, that was interesting, but the show already discussed this in various areas. If we go via Michael Okuda's description (he wrote the book on most of the TNG technology that ST used and developed on in DS9, voyager and the TNG films): In Star Trek TNG (and the other ST shows) the shield systems they use is based on warp field tech. Essentially, when a beam weapon or a photon torpedo impacts the field around the ship, in that specific section of the shield matrix, it is energised and to the beam or torpedoes POV (as beam weapons are sublight only) the ship "moves" out of the way of it due to the shield in that tiny area "warping" space so it cannot hit the hull. (Phasers are often modulated to penetrate a shield this way via scattering effects etc, but then shield tech improves to combat this.)
This localised area effect uses a GREAT deal of energy to generate the field against the high levels of energy being directed against it and so shields can be depleted rapidly the more energetic the weapon being used against them. As a shield absorbs fire and loses the energy it contains, the warping effect is lessened and fire can begin to "leak" through. Sufficently high energy weapons can "burn" out the generators creating the shields fields so rotating ships during combat to allow affected shields to replenish the defence fields and allow engineering to repair damaged shield generators is very important.
[NB: For an example of the power ST ships and shields have to cope with. A Ship based Phaser fired on a planet at full strength can destroy every living thing on the planet and, under continual fire, eventually destroy it.]
In Star Trek, this is why you do not use photon torpedoes if a ship has its shields up, as although torpedoes have penetration aids to try and get past this, they are vastly less capable than the phaser beam (or disruptor). So, in normal space, phaser weapons are usually used to deplete the shields of an enemy ship
However, during warp combat phasers are useless as the energy and particles are not FTL based and so are affected by the warping of space, massively dispersing them and rendering them useless. Only photon/Quantum torpedoes can be used as they are capable of travelling at warp and so can hit and discharge against the ships shields/hull. Romulans, as they do not use photon torpedoes, use the plasma torpedo as it can travel at warp speeds if required (however, although it is vastly more destructive than a photon torpedo it is FAR slower.)
So, ST shields for combat are Warp field based. They do have another set of shields that always remain on and those are used to protect the ship at warp travel: these are "technically" the deflector shields which, when coupled with the main deflector dish at the front of the ship, protect it from dangerous particles, micro asteroids and space debris.
But how we would create "shields" with our current knowledge base? Really fascinating. :)
There are four lights! Genius reference!
Hey Kyle, based on your theory of Star Trek shields, would the common trope of "reverse the shield polarity" have any effect on what kinds of things it would protect against?
Dude, you rock!
I might be crazy, but I'm sure I saw 5 lights. 4:21 KH I see your reference to Next Gen. It did not go unnoticed. Well done.
As seen in 0:52 the shields are not Deflecting anything, but Adsorbing the energy and dispersing the energy across the whole shield. Hence greatly lessening the impact/damage to the ship.
Energy weapons are one thing kenetic weapons are another..... Explain defense against kenetics
I like the light and flute references
I loved the "There are four lights" reference from TNG.
Because we already have nuclear reactors in everyday use, we also have ways to shield ourselves from neutron radiation. Those methods would probably be built into the hulls of starships.
Star Trek shields are also composed of matter. In an early technical manual, I read they used what was described as a combination of two technologies that are always on the show. The Replicator and Transporter beams. That is how they can concentrate the shield in any direction.
It is also a way to make a tractor beam. The beam emits a connected string of matter that connects the ships and they slowly reel it in.
In an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise, Trip was working on a prototype shield that suspended some sort of particles in a field. I immediately thought of an old product call Hill Plasmatronic speakers. This was a real product in the early 80s, that used a sheet of helium plasma suspended between two magnetic fields as the tweeter. By modulating the strength of the magnetic fields, the sheet of plasma acted as the speaker diaphragm. They actually included an RF cutoff, as those tweeters could be driven all the way to radio frequencies.
I love the flute scene. Was that a reference toward the Alien Covenant David scene?
Awesome video
Great Explanation....Oh Yeah..The Presenter....Is Fineeee!!
Brilliant analysis. No wonder you got 11.000 likes. Keep doing it.