Shield Technology - A possible hard science explination.

[Robert Graham]

Non-RP note: There are some who keep going on about shielding and blah.. there is actually if you look at the physics a hard science method to explain a lot of how the shielding system works. Sorry if this is the wrong section but it seems like the right place to put it there isn't exactly a forum area labeled "Technical Discussion of In-universe technology and how it functions"


In setting/Dumbed down science explanation:


First the shield itself would be composed of at least 3 layers, an outer EM field, a Plasma medium 'core' and an inner EM field. The strength of your shield would be governed by the amount of Plasma that is currently being stored within the EM 'skin' around your ship.

When projectiles hit, they bypass the EM field itself, but the magnetic charge they should hold (simply from being fired) would cause a disruption, that coupled with the plasma field having to burn them away would result in leaking of the plasma strength thus the reduction in field strength from projectile weapons.

With Laser / Energy based weapons you have a mix occurring, the EM field disruption caused by the High Energy discharge as it attempts to bend the field itself and 'ablate' the charge resulting in loss of plasma due to leakage int he field, followed by the plasma which acts as dissipater scattering the beams cohesion and likely having a bleed on effect of loosing some of it's original strength as well.

The result of course is that over time as your shield takes hits you loose field strength and eventually the system collapses, it does not restore until your lovely shield generator has accumulated enough excess plasma from the fusion reactor to re-eject the plasma into the EM field itself.


How does this work when 'bumping' into objects? well the fields themselves with the plasma act as a buffer.. think of it like having an air-cushion around you, the inner field is constantly pushing the plasma 'away' from your ship while hte outter field is holding it in.. when you hit something the plasma absorbs most of the force but takes a 'hit' because it's gonna leak your compressing it massively.. at times you hit something that hard that the fields simply can not compensate hard enough or fast enough to prevent the ship from physically 'hitting' the object due to the large area etc that is being hit.
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What this does is also explains why we see no 'tractor' technology etc like people keep screaming should be occurring if we have 'shields' for a start tractor technology is Gravity based, not electro-magnetic/plasma in most cases (well technically you can make a magnetic tractor but it would only work on ferrous objects).

Secondly it remains in the realm of hard science, you actually don't need to 'black box' any of the technology to explain it, it simply requires large amounts of power, something which is ready available in the Elite setting.

 

[Eros]

Sooooo, To put a science spin on it, plasma containment in the way described I don't think is possible, at least not producing a completely covered ship. It would require field emitters to be orbiting around the ship to provide the outer skin i think.

This said, lets assume that you can generate and store the plasma, the density required would be extremely high, projectiles don't have to be magnetized at least not strongly, and such repelling would probably actually just turn into melting. Which would produce a nice spray of molten metal flying at the hull.

Also photons are not at all affected by the presence of a strong EM field, at least not what science has been able to measure at all in the lab. Thus a laser would actually just pass straight through the EM fields no problem, it would probably change polarization but little else, it would likely interact with the plasma, but it making it through or not depends upon the intensity of the laser and the wavelength.

So in the end, a plasma barrier from the realms of real science, i don't think could work like this.

Suggestions from myself of how it can be done... well unfortunately I don't really have one. The only thing that might work, though doesn't really fit in with the fluff is that the shield is some kind of negative energy density gravitational warping system, that given enough power is able to simply deflect objects. but even that I don't think sounds right

 

[Robert Graham]

you can create a dual layer magnetic bottle with out needing something orbiting, it's doable already actually we see it even in nature as evidenced by our own magnetic field.. you'd need to have more than one emitter yes but you do not need to have something 'outside' the ship to emit.

At certain points (the poles) you will find a weaker field area, maybe in a thousand years we've come up with a way around that who knows.

with the photons, the 'Light' aspect of the laser yeah could not be 'stopped' by a magnetic field, but if the laser is strictly coherent light than technically with out gravity lensing, it can not be hitting with the energy density that it is simply because the lens sizes would be far larger then the sizes we see in the images. That suggests that they are a mixed laser combining more than one form of wavelength, several of those wavelengths can be stopped by Magnetic Fields, including Gamma and Microwave lengths.

In addition if it's a Coherent stream of light, then any medium that has density will begin to attenuate and dissipate the beam itself, it's one of the largest problems we have today with creating a laser that is economic and functional across long distance. Atmospheric Density causes the beam to attenuate heck something as simple as dust can do it.

The other thing is every one presumes 'plasma' has to be 'hot' and 'thin' but plasma can actually be quite thick and you can keep it quiet cold it all depends on the base element, density etc.

Even if the magnetic field caused by launching an object at more then 500m/s was not enough to impart some magnetic strength onto the ferros item (which it is required to be to actually you know be launched by a gauss cannon of any sort) the field can certainly be tuned to interact with it just on the substance itself, if it punched into the plasma it does not actually need to spray in as 'hot molten metal' it could actually be converted into plasma itself though that would kind of make it diminishing field strength a little pointless.

The big one is that we are already in the real world looking at using Plasma based shielding and window technology, it's not pesudo science:

The current work being done on Plasma Windowing could actually account for the fields on the front of the Stations, as it's already been proven at the Brookhaven National Laboratory that it CAN hold atmosphere in place.

The Shield method is already being looked into for laser technology ablation:

http://www.biblioteca.uma.es/bbldoc/articulos/1669014x.pdf

And just do a google search will show you that University of Leicester have in concept designed a fully operational deflector shield similar to those seen in Star Wars, with one small issue.. they blind the user because they block all wave lengths.. I'm figuring as I said 1,000 years of science on they can refine the work we have Today into something a little more useable.

 

[Eros]

Reading and understanding those papers, the first is talking about attenuation of a laser as you blast metal from a surface with it. This is not exactly a shield, more over just as you stated, if you have a thick plasma you can attenuate it. Which is what I already said would happen.

On the University of Leicester the concept and reality are quire different. Once more it just speaks of plasma confinement. As you already said, and as i pointed out, any capture and hold of plasma would produce holes dotted throughout, unless we can produce an exotic way of getting around that, I think it will always be there. Monopoles maybe?

Also, plasma as a state of matter can be cooled yes, but to generate it, things are generally heated. You need to strip all electrons, a substance like that will tend to be hot at first, and you can cool it. Space would require magnetic confinement as its cooling, This said any electrons would LOVE the amount of positive charge you have in that confined space. If its cold plasma, it cannot be neutral. If its hot plasma, It can be.

Point really is that the plasma idea is the best shot thus far, but i don't think it can quite meet all aspects of what is presented.

Projectiles do not be delivered via a gauss cannon, coil gun or rail. Chemical propellants can be made to work perfectly fine in space Yes velocities might be different, thats for sure. I do just tend to think that if you have a dense plasma contained in a 100 T field... it would tend to melt more than deflect. Not to mention the problems of being around a 100T field

 

[madassa648]

re the magnetic bottle idea wouldn't that also be integral to the ship to protect you from solar radiation/cosmic rays? A ship would have to have that or have an absurdly thick hull to slow down the nasty stuff.

 

[Mad Pete Trollo]

My favourite explanation of how a shield would work was-

'You put up an enormously thick steel barrier and then just remove the atoms from it'.

Wish I could remember who said that.

 

[Villany]

Well, it possibly works, but how you fire OUT of it? I mean, it should block both ways, shouldn't it?

 

[littleminxundr]

Well, it possibly works, but how you fire OUT of it? I mean, it should block both ways, shouldn't it?

That's why you need to briefly drop shields if those shields were a reality. In Sci-Fi they talk their way from under it by introducing concepts like 'Frequency harmonizing'.

 

[Villany]

Well, giving some thought to it...
There are some issues with the plasma shielding, mainly that things need to get out of it, like cannon projectiles and engine exhaust. With the magnetic containment, if the magnetic field is an eqally strong "bubble" around the ship, nothing would get out. turning the shields off to let the exhaust out... Not a good idea in combat.

One thing around it is making "holes" on the shield, creating a magnetic field for the guns and the thrusters so that it "connects" the two EM layers, containing the inner plasma, and letting the exhaust and projectiles out (a non-plasma, non-EM hole). However this would mean that if you hit the ship on the right spot, you hit a no-shield zone, and you have a rather high chance of critting either the thrusters or the weapons. Not quite how it works in-game.

Also, if the visible spectrum of light goes through the shield, LASER weapons constricted to this spetrum would pierce the shield. Again - not how it is in-game.

Do not get me wrong, I really like the idea of this plasma shielding, I only sound my thoughts. I am no scientist however, just started the University in fact, so there is a ... chance that I am wrong and missing the point, so please enlighten me if this is the case


Edit: the holes for the exhaust and weapons... If you leave a tiny gap between the two EM layers, some of the plasma would leak out, having a little sealing effect (maybe), but in the meantime, giving way to exhaust which provides additional strength to the shielding on that spot. This may also account for the maximal strength of a shield - sooner or later the amount the shield leaks reaches the amount the plasma genetartor can regenerate, so you can not just increase the thichness of the plasma layer, having the same density and EM strength.
to be honest though, I dont quite like this idea of leaking plasma.

Edit2: @Eros
The EM field containment... first you eject hot plasma out (with all the electrons), then if the inner layer is pushing cold plasma away and the outer one pushes it towards the ship, then the EM layers pull the electrons. This results in having the inner EM with electrons at its center, then cold plasma, then EM with electrons at its center again. Because the EM layers push the plasma, there would be some distance between the plasma and the electrons maintained by the EM layers. This however might make the recharge of a not depleted shied problematic. But also this explains the shield strength loss if the shield is hit by a Gauss projectile (or similar), it disturbs the EM layers so electrons can get to their beloved plasma. (because if any electrons are in the plasma layer when it is cold plasma, the plasma may simply get neutralized, so EM layers will have no effect on it any more => plasma leak)

One way around the shield recharge problem is to have the electrons separated before ejecting the plasma, then somehow getting rid of them.

In short, the EM field would also be responsible for keeping the cold plasma layer being plasma.

And this also might explain shield disruptors: electron beams, they pierce the outer EM layer, neutralize the cold plasma so the EM layers have no effect on it any more thus it leaks out resulting in shield strength loss

(the theory behind is that given a fast enough electron, it will surly pierce the outer EM layer, as it pulls that electron, and when it passes the center of the layer, the EM wont be strong enough to stop them from reaching the plasma layer, resulting in the neutralization of plasma)

 

[Robert Graham]

yeah biggest thing stopping us testing a lot of stuff 'today' is power.. we know that anything like this uses a LOT of power.. until we get the carefree power levels we see in elite then yeah .. but hey ITER is working on it