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Physics Students Devise Concept For Star Wars-Style Deflector Shields
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."
The concept of shields was first introduced in Star Trek: Voyager.
this is bullshit
Larry Niven will be glad to know that since he used opaque shields in "The Mote in God's Eye"
Non bene pro toto libertas venditur auro
Forget that, I want a Wookie... Most of the fights you get into are close combat and wookies rule in that range.
Anyway, you speak of the wrong fictional universe, I speak for all Anonymous Cowards when I say that the Star Trek universe is far more interesting... Who wants to deal with the Empire (aka your average over-bloated government) when you could be like beam me up Scottie and shit like that in a commie world of tomorrow, with replicators and off world exploration for fun... I mean, which one is more realistic given our trajectory if we ever get past the lame phase of 3D printers?
AC Ruler #2
Journalists have long imagined themselves piloting X-wing fighters to free the Universe of the Evil Empire. Today, journalists have collectively decided to just fucking give up altogether. Journalists have agreed to basically denounce, forsake, and abandon every last thin thread of reality that they may or may not have been holding onto in order to retain some sort of reason, professionalism, or sanity.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I didn't think X-Wings had individual deflector shields, just the bigger ships. Definitely this is more of a Star Trek thing.
JJ prolly paid them to do the research as publicity for the new movie :-)
in order to retain some sort of reason, professionalism, or sanity.
They aren't trying as hard as you think they are.
The shield should be able to pulse on and off to allow sensors/eyes to see what's coming and turn on before predicted contact.
You wouldn't know it from how often ships would suffer a direct hit. I think Star Trek: The Next Generation was the first time a deflector shield was seen to actually be doing anything.
Switch all power to front deflector screens...
R2-D2 says "Star Wars Prequels". Not really applicable.
I look forward to angling them while you make the calculations for the jump to light speed.
Posting to undo weird mismoderation.
Ah, yes. The Ionisphere. Been using some of the layers for decades. Also, you might want to check out what Maximum Useable Frequency or MUF means.
This is hardly new, scientists have been playing around with plasma windows & fields for quite some time. They're currently only a few inches in size but could be scaled up to larger dimensions, the problem is power and the pretty powerful magnetic & electrical fields needed to create them.
Have been talking about this for years, I understand they're working with Howard on a prototype but it's a secret so don't tell anyone.
So the Disney hype has already started, uh?
Why not just use them in a proximity configuration? That would solve the "can't see shit" situation and reduce the power to run them to a minimum.
Would be easier just to "polarize the hull plating"
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
I know that's international format (I still use it from my time in the military), but it doesn't work in this case. 4 the may with you? Why celebrate star wars on 4 May? The line doesn't work that way unless it's coupled with talk like Yoda day.
Pnp game that had flickering shields if I'm not mistaken.
For any long distance space trip, some sort of shield like this will be necessary for larger spaceships just to protect them from dust that is flying through space at 40,000 km/h. The kind of stuff that embeds itself into the windows and tiles of the space station and space shuttle.
And they're just the little things.
Sure, space is really empty and the chances are low that you'll get hit by something but you wouldn't want to meet Murphy when you're in orbit around Titan!
And after deflecting all Death Star's arsenal a taliban with an AK47 shots down assault team
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 ?
One more thought before I go off to sleep ...
The spacecraft is the source of the magnetic field so that means the field lines have to terminate on it. Which means hot plasma is continuously blasting into you.
"Would somebody else like to estimate how much power you need to dump into the plasma ?"
Is... is it over 9000?
shields, such as those seen protecting spaceships in the Star Wars film series
won't be able to see a thing outside of your starfighter.
These two statements are incompatible.
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Angle the deflector shields while I make the calculations for the jump to hyperspace!
Star Wars didn't even remotely do this first... in fact, it wasn't even the first in major media, seeing as how this was the whole point of the "deflector dish" in Star Trek.
Also, they've "proven" or "demonstrated" precisely nothing, as they have tested - and derived results from - precisely nothing.
Finally, the feasibility of this was demonstrated long ago by an "odd" occurrence in a 3M plant making polypropylene film, not to mention the high-strength electro-magnetic fields (or "bottles") currently in use in experimental fusion reactors.
Just because I noticed that birds and other creatures can fly and write about it in a paper, does not mean that constitutes demonstration or proof of an assertion that human-powered flight is feasible, nor does it demonstrate the actual principle in any useful way.
"Inveniemus Viam Aut Faciemus" 'We will find a way... Or we will make one!' --Hannibal of Carthage
I know you don't do anything so twentietch-century as "reading novels", but certainly Doc Smith had force fields in the Skylark of Space, published 1928.
mark
How about dangling a miniature black hole from a stick in front of your ship? Light can't escape it!! (disclaimer: Don't let the rope break while flying)