If I remember correctly, transporters also struggle when presented with too much EM interference, and it's likely that an additional level of defence used by starships is to produce an extra layer of EM interference when on a higher alert level to help prevent someone transporting through the shields even if they have the frequency.
Even if matching the frequency perfectly, let's say a phaser passing through would loose 1% of energy...if that hapens during a transport that will be bad. And i would even guess a small hole could open in the shield (or a guidance tunnel) to let a torpedo pass through in the moment of firing just to prevent damage to the torpedo.
I’ve always imagined a shield being multiple fields mixed to protect from different weapons. Like a gravitational field that can block or deflect physical rounds while energy weapons could be held off by the plasma and magnetic fields
Basically, you cannot just make the energy disappear, and they’re not reflecting it. That means they have to negate it. It would work on multiple frequencies and wavelengths. Opposing waves of energy will have to be calibrated and utilized. As they advance and gather data, subsets and basic systems will be created. An adaptive program/system will have to adjust on the fly and gather information for new modulations as different types of damage and energy are intercept by the shield barrier. Eventually we will discover a method that can encompass large amounts of different types, a certain type of modulation that will protect as needed while allowing freedom of movement and sight.
My understanding of the metaphasic shield was that it partially placed whatever it was shielding in subspace itself. Meaning that whatever might make it through the standard shields, even if it isn’t sufficiently deflected away, just has less ability to interact/damage the ship inside.
Yes, I think that's how the Krenim (in certain timelines, anyway) defend their ships. Same net effect as metaphasic shields, if via a different technological principle.
I think the real Question on everyone's mind is "Can metaphasic shielding protect against metaphasic weapons, when Fired by a metaphasic species, at a metaphasic space slug while we have our shield extended around the slug?"
I was rather surprised when I learned that the NX-01 Enterprise had Transporters, but not shields. Compared to the Warp Drive, shields should be a fairly simple technology. Credit is again due to the writers of Enterprise, who elaborated on this technology when they showed it in it's infant form. Essentially, you have a thin sheet of particles (one assumes charged particles, i.e. plasma) suspended between a pair of fields. This part is simple enough. As far back as 1980, I remember seeing a loudspeaker that worked by suspending helium plasma between two magnetic fields. Modulating the fields caused the plasma sheet to vibrate, thus moving the air and creating the sound. The fiction part of all this is finding a particle that's a perfect energy conductor. What you definitely don't want, is a shield that absorbs energy. Such a shield would be overwhelmed in nanoseconds. Just as the space shuttle heat shield is made up of heat conductors that re-radiate the heat almost instantly, the shields in Star Trek would have to dump the energy directed at them very quickly. You would also need a particle that works across a wide range of frequencies, or a blend of particles to achieve the same result. In order to break through a shield, an enemy is forced to pump in energy at a high enough density that it destroys the particles, and does so at a faster rate than the target is capable of replacing them. By the way, I think there's room within physics for an entirely different shield technology, and not that multiphasic crap they came up with on TNG. I've named this new type a spawning shield, and the theory goes something like this: Hadrons (protons, neutrons, etc.) are subatomic particles made up out of quarks. (true science) Scientists can't produce isolated quarks, because the energy required to smash hadrons apart winds up as new quarks, which combine with the originals so that you just wind up with extra hadrons. (also true science) Now, IF you found a hadron that absorbed energy across a wide spectrum, they would make a very interesting shield. As energy is pumped in, the particles would break apart and spawn additional particles. Enemy fire would strengthen a shield, rather than weaken it. Indeed, the problem might very well become one of how to shed surplus particles fast enough.
What is strange that photon torpedos are physical projectiles with antimatter warheads and whenever we see them hit shields, they just serm to sort of disappear, not really detonating like when hitting a hull
Star trek’s *navigational deflectors* are also capable of deflecting matter; these are constantly kept active, to abate small particulate matter in space that might otherwise wear down or damage the external hull. These were low-expenditure of energy and highly effective, but could not protect the ship from high-damage attacks.
A thought on transporters vs. shields...possibly, transporting requires too wide a set of frequencies to 'fit' through the gaps in the shielding without degrading to a hazardous degree. Like putting your people through a strainer...
Interference in a transporter beam causing corruption to the data I imagine would be terrible for the thing being transported. Interference with an phaser may reduce the effectiveness but mostly that doesn't matter so much. So the SieveStrainer metaphor works well.
I'll just paste the comment I just made in here because now I'm curious what you think. Actually it kinda makes sense that we see beaming through shields less. Because with the whole refresh rate frequency idea, when it comes to energy weapons it doesn't really matter if 1% of the energy doesn't make it through due to slight inaccuracies in one's knowledge in what that frequency is and/or the accuracy of whatever is controlling/generating/regulating the frequency reference (like how a radio needs to have the oscillating frequency generator for reference to process the incoming information normally via the use of a crystal oscillator; I might be screwing that up slightly or oversimplifying). However with a transporter.... that 1% may very well be the difference between life and death for the person beaming through.
@@ericzaiz8358 no he was engineer of the uss rutlidge. Maxwell previous command. She was a new Orleans class ship . ( mini galaxy destroyer type) . This is a nebula class . But I believe he knows the class shied type. ( specs )
The problem with the “matching shield frequency to fire through” idea is it creates the plot hole in Star Trek Generations that when the Riker ordered Worf to return fire on the Duras sisters’ Bird of Prey the Enterprise’s phasers should’ve passed through its shields as easily as the BoP’s disruptor fire passed through the Enterprise’s…
you didnt get the point, in order for the BoP to fire through the Enterprises Shield they need their own shields modulated the same way... which would have also allowed the enterprise to ignore their shield@@darthdragonborn1076
@@darthdragonborn1076i believe in the battle dialogue, it suggests that la forge attempts a new frequency, but the klingons were able to require it . ( the gunner said he had it again. ) frequency.
I'm glad you posted this video now because recently I've been thinking about how stupid and impractical (impossible?) the shielding is... Yes you should have shields (if that's even possible) but there should be a backup system of armor for all these ships... -Armor plating -Expanding blast resistant fireproof expanding foam -I mean you could even use water that would freeze in contact with space One of the problems I have with Star Trek (I know it's all for drama) but the ships blow up too easy. Also since all the room/cabins are on the outside of the ship, before the ship blows up it could eject each room as an escape pod with a cloaking device so most of the people could get away, of course the crew in the bridge,etc would go boom.
Most ships do have armor. At least in Starfleet and given video evidence so do the Klingons. Star Trek weapons are just insane. The basic torpedo is an antimatter explosive more destructive than a nuke. As for cloaking devices in escape pods, that is an international incident.
1:31 Yes, let’s test this prototype forcefield generator with energy weapons while standing between two spatial torpedoes! Brilliant idea! It’s a wonder the NX-01 crew even made it out of dry dock without killing themselves and/or blowing up the ship.
How about something more serious, lol! I have a theory for artificial gravity on space ships. We already know of the Alcubierre formula, and it’s few iterations of the formula as described by the 3D model image. If the warp field is tuned for travel, the deep dip in front, and high apex in the rear of a ship, with the ship supposedly within the “ring” that describes the field. The second iteration that was put out had the inner section inside the warp “ring” at an angle that would have been more than adequate to be the “artificial gravity.” Follow me, it’s easy and hard all at once…. So, maintaining the lesser inertial forces inside the field was automatic. A ship at rest, or “full stop,” would have no warp ring, yet still be producing a gravity field for the crew. Smaller fields could be used within that field, as we have seen where lifters can move heavy items. So, your artificial gravity and inertial dampers are basically one and the same. As a side note, being tossed around in a ship would simply be a reaction to the system’s inability to compensate for some of the larger, or more intense, energy weapons that would drain the system for brief periods. In that case, floating down a corridor or being smashed to a wall or floor would not be that uncommon in a heavy battle. This all assumes we have no real source to generate gravitons. Or do we?? By placing a standing wave of multiple “warp rings” around a ship, and energizing each ring with its own frequency of ionizing energy within, these “force fields” would be a fairly easy task to create. My own theory is, we will be capable of producing a field that is able to surround a ship, but never be able to get one to hug a surface. Electromagnetic and gravitic forces are very happy to follow rings and ellipses, but following a surface may well be too much to ask, even with a theoretical unlimited energy supply. If anyone wishes to expand on this, especially in the theory of the standing wave and flux field requirements, I could use the input. Don’t bother trying to tear it apart, I want to make it POSSIBLE. BTW, if this works, especially without monstrous rings of fluid metal traveling in a ring at incredible speeds…. Think “old school,” where the things we know are not just simple, but doable with what we have! PUT ON THE INNOVATION HAT!
i really wondered that the term "synchronization gear" was ever dropped by Tom Paris or Tripp as Mr. Exposition to describe how Shields and "Lasers" work. *note: Laser as Stand-in term for all Energyweapons* And i guess that nobody want's to beam through raised shields might be because the shield would introduce noise in the Data Stream and the Signal becomes disorted, something you don't want to happen while beaming Living things
What make it even all the harder is the constant changing over what's spoken over time in different shows and movies. At one points they even mention screens and deflectors as separate things, not so different to what Star Wars does, with the former blocking energy and the latter solid matter. Of course, by the 1980's it was all rolled into one. Good vid BTW!
Early on, Roddenberry had meetings with writers to explain the difference between deflectors and shields because they were conflating the two and using the term 'deflector shields' in their scripts. Deflectors are not shields.
Bit of headcanon here, but I think that polarized hull plating never really left. It got incorporated into the ships structural integrity system. Thats why unshielded hits dont just tear the ship apart in a single blow. The yield of a photon torpedo is in the megaton range, which should have blown the Enterprise Ds drive section to pieces with the first shot. Something had to be resisting all of that energy throughout the entire structure of the ship.
Tasha Yar in Yesterday’s Enterprise refers to increased heat dissipation as an improvement in shield tech and being able to stay in a firefight twice as long as the C’s tech would allow. So maybe ‘deflection/energy dissipation’ is an issue too
Its known as feedback in lore, the energy that impacts the shields has to go somewhere. So what would happen is that the energy goes to the emitter and results in waste heat. This heat needs to be dissipated to keep the emitter operating optimally.
Rick, thanks for another great video. I'd like to see something on the medical tech of the 23-25 century. What advancements were there? Why do people only seem to live around 100 or so despite all that tech? Does everyone in the Federation get access to that stuff, or is there a hierarchy? You did a video on biobeds, but why don't we see the robotic "fix everything" beds like in Prometheus, Travellers, and Elysium?
It has to do with senescence. Each time a cell duplicates, it's telomeres shrink. And once those are gone a cell isn't allowed to replicate itself anymore. Fixing that 'damage' would involve genetic fuckery, which the Federation outlawed because of very good reasons.
This reminds me of something of a joke I came up with ages ago. Basically the idea that Star Trek shields were some massive, muti-spectrum affair designed to effect a broad spectrum of tangibles, but would then contract and narrow down it's effect when under fire. The joke was how the Enterprise's shield percentages were always nocked down rapidly, but usual held once they got to 20%. I know that was just the drama, but it kind of stuck with me. Maybe a good shield officer could prepare the shielding for specific threats instead of just reacting. Or the Galaxy just had the fancy "automatic" shielding upgrade package.
Something I've always wondered is why they never thought to weaponize shield emmitters. Just imagine what they could do with a shield energy field that has been shaped into something akin a phaser lance attack.
They did try that against the Borg in _The Best of Both Worlds,_ feeding warp power through the main deflector dish, turning it into a sort of _Wave Motion Gun._ But the Borg were ready for it. *Riker:* Mr Worf.... Fire. *Locutus of Borg:* The knowledge and experience of the human Picard is part of us now. It has prepared us for all possible courses of action. Your resistance is hopeless... Number One. It did also have the disadvantage that it burnt out the main deflector, which had to be repaired before the ship could do FTL again.
@@M33f3r The Defiant's cannons were basically just phaser bolts made using the nadion particles in a magnetic envelope similar to disruptor or plasma cannons. They were more of an upgrade/variant of existing technology than anything new. They essentially were more destructive and has a higher rate of fire than previous versions of the tech but the basic technology had been around since the 22nd century.
Don't forget we've seen phasers rapidly cycle through frequencies, for example when the enterprise first encounters the Borg. So I imagine the shields can rapidly change their frequencies following a specific algorithm. Whenever we see a ship ignore shields of another ship, they've actually figured out that algorithm, rather than simply the shield frequency
@@gabrieldarcy1744 i would even guess there are more component. A phaser is a charged particle beam. So you got the particles (for example they can detect if damage was done by disruptors, so may use different type of particles). The charge of the paricles (kill or stun), how much electrons you can pack into your particle beam. The field that keeps the beam together (longer range, less damage, as the field loses power and the beam just desintigrates). I would guess that the frequency is that field, as we can see in one episode were they were shooting with different charges against the Borg and the phaser changed its color. I would say the Borg adapt First to the field frequency and are able to disperse the energy, then they actual manage do adapt to the particle it's self, we're changing the frequency wouldn't bring any affect and they may then even be capable to use the free electrons to power the forcefield it self
@gabrieldarcy1744 Something like what you commented is mentioned in various episodes of TNG & Voyager, where it's SOP to rotate frequencies at certain intervals. Basically the algorithm you mentioned.
Exactly. In the tech manual of the enterprise d, they say that due to this very reason phaser frequency changes automatically after each shot. Strange since they had to do it specifically for the Borg.
I had always just assumed that projectile weapons in Star Trek weren't really used in ship combat because of their speed limitations. The distances involved in space combat combined with the travel time of projectiles would make actually hitting a target with them quite difficult, and distant ships could detect the incoming fire and just move out of the way, something that light-speed energy weapons compensated for. Not having to compensate for projectile travel time and relative velocities of two moving ships using randomized evasive patterns is a big plus. On top of that, the electromagnetic and gravitic distortions of a ship's shields would in theory make guided projectiles like missiles either not be able to lock on to an enemy, but also probably detonate against the shields if they DID hit, and do little if any damage to the target ship's hull. Better to not bother with that and just use energy weapons. Just blast your enemy's shields with visually-targeted energy until they drop or the generating mechanisms burn out, then finish off the helpless enemy.
When it comes to transporters, part of the reason why no one beams over if they know the shield frequency could be incase they change the frequency mid beaming or even afterwards stranding them on the other ship.
I have always felt that in its simplest form, deflector shields work by distorting space so the beam simply misses the ship. Of course it has to stop proximity explosions too, so an area of distortion preventing you from drawing a straight line from outside the shield to inside the shield will work too. The graviton is necessary for this technology, though, bevause the graviton is the only form of energy that can distort space. Which links it intimately with both Warp Drive and artificial gravity.
Good way how they can solve shield issue is with idea of gravity shielding. What to be honest align with how warp drive operate. It basically could be a warp in space time, what basically extend space between ship and the enemy. So energy weapons would be basically dispersed over time (especially if shield also include temporal effects speeding it up). This in fact would explain why ships may receive micro damages, as small portions of energy still could hit the ship.
Funny, I always thought that the deflector & shields are antigraviton based. The whole point of the shields (just like the deflector) is to prevent (push away, repell) energy or physical objects trying to affect the hull of the ship. It would make sense for the SIF system use graviton fields to reinforce the hull... But the shields? .
I think warp field technology is involved with shield/deflector technology and the development of both technologies run in parallel. The stronger your warp engines the stronger your shields are as well, in general and would explain the gradual increase in shield toughness over time. Gravitons are the quanta of a gravitational field in the same way that photons are the quanta of an EM field. I conjecture that a shield bubble in the Star Trek universe is boundary of a warp field bubble/volume which has been enhanced and reinforced by graviton emitters(similar to the tractor beam but vastly stronger). They may even have coherent graviton emitters (analogous to the same principles as a laser in EM tech) for vastly increased power. At this warp bubble boundary the gravitational gradient maybe enhanced to millions of G's which warps the spacetime in that boundary and can refract any incoming matter and energy. It also makes sense because in TNG they've mentioned more than once that the warp engines can be tied into the shield emitters to bolster the shield strength. The durability of the shield depends on both the durability of the emitter and the amount of power available to power it since the emitters drain much more energy than even the warp core can produce at full strength. I think the navigational deflector is simply the graviton shield emitters turned on at very low strength.
Ok, Stay with me, I am thinking hypothetically here: So to fire through their own shields, they have to match the phaser and shield frequencies. They can fire through a targets shield if the know the frequency which means when they fire, both ships would have the same shield and weapon frequencies. Seems a bit risky considering you would effectively have no shields as the enemy fire would would be at the same frequency to penetrate your shields. Its fine if you're firing a "Shot" but phasers tend to be a continuous stream for a second or two so once they realise you fired through their shields, if they're quick enough they can so the same knowing the frequency snd with automation it could literally blow up in their faces (and hsve concrete falling from the ceiling for some reason 😂)
As an 8 year old avidly watching ToS, my mom once asked me how the shields worked and I told her; Kirk says 'Shields Up' and that's all that mattered at the time :)
In my Space Opera the defensive shielding is actually a hard light for defense in addition the ship also has Point Defense Turrets to obliterate oncoming warheads, where as the ship's anti grav engines would deflect oncoming micro meteors. Which makes me wonder... if Star Fleet ships have Phaser Belts why don't they just use it as a point defense system and destroy oncoming enemy torpedoes?
Hard to calculate or hit (it is a good question thought as it should be possible) the "half a Galaxy" class ship with the module utily on top is seen in games to have an option to have a torpedo point defence module that can take out all incoming torpedos for a short time when activated (as well making a ship immune torpedoes would make it pretty powerful in a game) Funny thing is you see the phase cannon based taking out most of neos mining torpedos in the alternate time line
I've had the notion that a warp bubble, even at low power, could act to deflect anything around it, thus combining two functions in the one technology.
The real physics would support this; pretty much all warp drive solutions to Einstein’s field equations have an extremely large gravitational shear at their edges - essentially tearing stuff apart if it tried to cross the threshold of the bubble.
One possible explanation for the deflector shield is the "positive curvature bubble". As we all know, the conventional spacetime curvature is "negative curvature" from a simplified flat perspective. Therefore, the straight line vector from the flat spacetime perspective will be deflected to the inside of this negative curvature depression. Then, if we create a positive curvature spacetime bulge in reverse, we can form a repulsion and deflection effect. And it just so happens that this is exactly the structure of the warp bubble. An important difference between Star Trek's warp engine and the Alcubierre engine is that it first forms a sub-spacetime bubble to wrap the starship, and then warps the spacetime outside the "warp bubble" for propulsion. Considering Star Trek's in-depth development of gravitons, subspaces, and spacetime phases, this technical principle is feasible.
What’s never made sense to me is that they decrease in effectiveness as they are struck. It seems as long as the emitter was projecting the shield and undamaged that their strength would remain constant. Especially since they can be raised immediately and don’t take time to build up strength.
One thing that Rik skips is that there's an absorbtion/redirection/energy-sinking component involved. They can only sink a certain amount of incoming energy during a period of time without overloading.
In regard to a vessel matching their shield frequency so they could fire through their own shields, I always felt this was a plot hole in Star Trek: Generations. When the Klingon Bird of Prey matched their weapon's frequency to the Enterprise-D's shield frequency, they would have had to match their own shields to the same frequency to be able to fire through them. Therefore when the Enterprise-D returned fire, they would have fired straight through the Bird of Prey's shields as the frequency of the Enterprise-D's weapons would have matched the Bird of Prey's shield frequency, and they could have destroyed the Bird of Prey in swift order without needing to find a weakness in the cloaking device's plasma could they could exploit.
The early films showed the shields represented as an outline around the ship. This was brought back to the Enterprise E. The Enterprise D’s shields were a big bubble around the ship.
Great topic. Are you wrong about the navigational deflector though? Doesn't it take huge amounts of warp power to push particles out of the way, especially at high warp? Perhaps it's still just less than shields which take an even huger amount?
The Deflector is a low power long acting thing. The idea in general is that it pushes things out of the way gently millions of kilometers ahead of the ship under warp, that way they're not knocking things away at near luminal velocities. It's more closely related to tractor beam technology in a lot of ways.
I know this is for laughs and intrigue, however if something we're to be effective for shields then it would stand to reason that shields would be black or something similar to polarized sunglasses, there is no way the shields would be clear. Because energy weapons are similar to light and in order to block light you need a filter.
Actually polarizing the hull plating simply increased its overall density by multiple orders of magnitude, thus improving the durability and essentially making it an early form of armor.
Roddenberry hated it whenever a writer slipped the word "deflectors" near the word shields. He said that those 2 systems were completely separate, for different purposes, and different technologies.
Actually it kinda makes sense that we see beaming through shields less. Because with the whole refresh rate frequency idea, when it comes to energy weapons it doesn't really matter if 1% of the energy doesn't make it through due to slight inaccuracies in one's knowledge in what that frequency is and/or the accuracy of whatever is controlling/generating/regulating the frequency reference (like how a radio needs to have the oscillating frequency generator for reference to process the incoming information normally via the use of a crystal oscillator; I might be screwing that up slightly or oversimplifying). However with a transporter.... that 1% may very well be the difference between life and death for the person beaming through.
That's part of the 'holes' in the shielding...they're designed *not* to stop non-damaging levels of energy from passing through, like most visible light,
Here is how they work. Much technobabble. But based in current day Science. Forcefields/shields work by projecting a dense Sigma Baryon field between the emitters. When interacted with the Sigma Baryons decay into Lambda Baryons, or something close to Neutrons. Due to the Inverse-square law the small amount of Neutron like emissions radiated by the Sigma Baryons decaying into Lambda Baryons is negligible. This keeps Neutron like radiation at a level safe set by Federation standards. However, when Sigma Baryons decay there is also a secondary effect called the Pi-Zero weak interaction. This effect emits electron positrons and thus the annihilation of nearby electrons are ensured. So any incoming weapons fire that has electrons is annihilated. This annihilation causes matter to be converted in to energy (E = mc^2). This is why there is a visible 'light effect' that happens as the field is interacted with. The 'harder' the field is under pressure the more visible light effect there is. Therefore, more matter being converted into energy can also cause heat radiation and burns. This is also why you can see a forcefield being 'put up'. As the forcefield is put up it has to move the air out of the way of Sigma Baryon field. That is why brig force fields also 'sparkle' when turned on. Because a small amount of matter is converted into energy as the forcefield engages, thus the light effect when activated in an atmosphere. When a forcefield/shield engages in space, which is basically a vacuum, you don't see this energy effect as much as space is basically empty. The power requirements that are used to make a Sigma Baryon field are immense. That's why forcefields/shields can weaken overtime, as they are being energized/matterized(?) by gigantic capacitors that must be recharged by the Warp Core. That's why star ship shields can take several minutes to be brought back online.
Firing through shields by matching a frequency makes sense. Having this work for transporters not working as well could be because the teleportation takes a longer duration to complete. So the likelihood that the frequency could change during the process could be why it is not often done.
Shield strengths seemed to vary, making an exact calculation of how much damage they could take impossible. However, there were some examples: •A Constitution-class starship's shields could take the equivalent of ninety photon torpedoes t once. They could do so a total of five times before shattering completely. •A Sydney-class starship could be destroyed by two photon torpedoes from a Galaxy-class starship with weaken shields. •According to Malcolm Reed, the shields of the 22nd century Nausicaan ships won't hold against a torpedo from the Enterprise NX-01.
I'd be curious to see a future shield design which uses modern day asteroid shielding as a basis. You have a bunch of angles built into the layered plating, which diverts the impacting material by "normalizing" its trajectory with the plate. This could be used in shielding to not just defeat an incoming energy beam, but actually turn it around to a point. Let's say that under light fire, the shields could bounce the beams back fairly accurately, but under heavy duress, they kind of just glance off, saving as much energy as possible for the next impact. The downside is that this would have an absolutely catastrophic effect on any solid matter impacting the shielding at relative speed. Like a giant cheese grater.
I wish they would just do a complete reboot of star trek and all of it's technology. For instance, deflector shields working only against energy weapons, requiring point defense guns to shoot down incoming torpedoes, coilguns or some other weapons that fire physical rounds and of course physical defenses like reactive armor, NERA armor, and electric reactive armor to mitigate against such weapons, and of course, replacing idiotic "cloaking" with systems that make detection more difficult at longer range and when "running silent" and make exact weapon targeting more difficult even at closer range instead of the "magical" nature of post ST-VI "perfect" cloaks.
As with any technology based on magnetism, it can either attract or repel metallic objects... This means the object must be either magnetic itself or attract magnetic force, obviously meaning that the shield and the object have opposite polarities. For non-magnetic objects and matter, extra layer must be added to generate gravity field that for example repels or slows down any matter, like ozone in Earth's atmosphere.
The reason why torpedoes hit the shields is due to the speeds involved. Torpedoes are fired at relativistic velocities and use warp sustainers if fired at warp speed. Any object like that striking a charged plasma field, like a ship's plasma shield, would go through a rapid change in speed. This shock would prematurely detonate the warhead at the shield's perimeter unless the warp sustainer could be configured to match the shield's frequency, effectively passing through it with no shock.
The shields in the first movie used multiple emitters that each had a piece of a very strong and resilient plate of metal then energy is run through it making a copy appear outside the hull. As described in Mr. Scott's guide to the Enterprise.
5:20 another stand in for how it works is the Air layer created by some Ice Breakers and Merchant vessels plodding the northern routes of trade and exploration
In gravitons part, when he is talking about the layer of distortion. The little image he shows reminds me of a cellular membrane made up of phospholipids bilayer.
Speculation: If you try to shoot through shields and it doesn't work, you just hit the shields. Perhaps if you beam through shields and it doesn't work there might be more serious repercussions. Like death of the away team, or accidentally setting off an explosive on your end rather than theirs.
If the deflector shields disrupt any incoming matter or particles, how is it possible to see the ship inside the shield? Or how can the ship inside the shield see outside of it? Wouldn’t ships just end up being opaque bubbles in space with shields up?
I actually had a thought on this recently. If the shield is an energy field that can be disrupted then *any* particle - such as a photon - hitting it would result in some tiny change to the field. If you could detect these changes and feed them into a powerful enough computer, you could form a rough picture of what's on the other side of the shield, and we already have the tech today to generate imagery of all the things we see in Trek. If you get something that vaguely suggests the outline of a Bird of Prey with the generalized EM signature of a bird of prey you can guess it's a Bird of Prey and adjust whatever image is shown accordingly - and we know that sensor ghosts can show up on a ship's display as the actual ship, since Worf has used that trick once. As for seeing outside of the ship, it may be that the field is somewhat directionally selective in how it disrupts output and it's only for some things which are too high energy or which require some level of high-fidelity bi-directional communication that you might have some sort of issue. With that said, Starfleet shields do apparently have a 'refresh' cycle which largely would solve this issue, as it means there's non-continuous gaps in the shield and a sufficiently high refresh speed is basically invisible to the human eye (you probably don't notice that the display you're reading this on is rapidly refreshing the screen, for example)
My biggest gripe with shielding is how random its effect is. Like in one scene it is blocking all kinetic energy making it dangwrous to impact even with another ship and in the next a random astroid(even though bigger or a way smaller jem harda craft just passes through ramming the ship in the process. And then there is the thing that ships under fire have exploding consoles and celling rocks fly everywhere only for tactical to say "shields holding at 70%". Second heavily implies that impacted energy still somehow gets imparted into the ship by some kind of reverse energy flow or kinetic momentum
Seems like starfleet vessels use the hull plating polarization still, the shield that hugs the hull and the area shield was a new development that was premiered in ST: motion picture. Hence the line, "the new shields held."
"Shields" are an odd concept the more you think about them. We're so used to them that they're just accepted in any old Sci-Fi thing. But, consider the vast differences between Star Trek, Star Wars and Dune's various shield techno-babble.
I have often speculated which Master of Orion 2 technologies a given starship or station in science fiction would have. For Starfleet shield systems, I have thought Class V or Class VII shields with the Hard Shields augmentation. This doesn't quite fit, however. While Hard Shields protect against some things which Star Trek Deflector Shields protect against, they also protect against more which Deflector Shields do not.
if I'm remembering correctly, the only species we see beam through Federation shields are: the Borg, the Dominion, and the Voth. I think I'm forgetting one, but it's late and I'm tired so I can't think of 'em at this moment. Also, I keep thinking about Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis.
The is a STNG episode where Riker says that lasers wouldn't get through their shields. If lasers can't get through than light couldn't, and couldn't get out.. so shields up, lights out.
Thank you for another dive into some Trek tech! I enjoy seeing a synthesized presentation of all the various techno-babble into one coherent picture of how the tech works. God be with you out there everybody. ✝️ :)
I always thought that one of the shield "layers" was from very short ranged repulsor beams. They have the technology to tractor/repulse objects, so why not physical weapons too?
If no matter or energy can pass through the shield, how does the ship move while shields are up without exploding? I feel like there would be a lot of energy building up inside the shield while it was moving.
adding layers of technobabble fixes everything. I don't mean that in a mean way, I genuinely think it's great we can come up with pseudo-physics explanations for everything.
I always figured that forcefields weren't just energy but a form of manipulated matter as well, and that's how they can stop both energy and physical objects while still being more "realistic".
Smart move opening a certifiably ingame episode on shields with a Defiant-Class. We got armour too. Nerds. Edit: sorry you covered the shields transporter thing. The transporter is a death machine so it doesn't really matter. Nerds going to Nerd out.
All that keeps you from falling through the floor is the electromagnetic repulsion of atoms on the tiniest distance scales. Therefore, in principle, you can create a solid barrier with nothing but electromagnetism, that is how shields work in Star Trek.
I am almost certain that I read that the shields were literally a shield of projected transparent aluminum surrounding the ship, creating an eggshell of protection.
The real question is why no one uses visible light lasers. Sure, they're less efficient, but shields let visible light through unimpeded as evidenced by the fact we can see the ships.
Another great video! But I must add, that any minutia details about the operation of shields or ingredients thereof that nobody seems to be able to fully answer or explain, I would just chalk it up to being an extremely guarded technical secret by Star Fleet. In other words, it's "CLASSIFIED" military information. ;)
It's a shame you got it fundamentally wrong. But then again, they frequently get it wrong on the show too, so at least you're in good company. A "deflector" is not a defensive force shield. It's supposed to be shorthand for "navigational deflector" and it's supposed to be a field that is projected out in front of the ship to deflect dust, micro-meteorites and other smaller-sized space debris out of the ship's path. The faster the ship is going, the more dangerous such collisions would be,
If I remember correctly, transporters also struggle when presented with too much EM interference, and it's likely that an additional level of defence used by starships is to produce an extra layer of EM interference when on a higher alert level to help prevent someone transporting through the shields even if they have the frequency.
Even if matching the frequency perfectly, let's say a phaser passing through would loose 1% of energy...if that hapens during a transport that will be bad. And i would even guess a small hole could open in the shield (or a guidance tunnel) to let a torpedo pass through in the moment of firing just to prevent damage to the torpedo.
I’ve always imagined a shield being multiple fields mixed to protect from different weapons.
Like a gravitational field that can block or deflect physical rounds while energy weapons could be held off by the plasma and magnetic fields
I would think gravity based shield could just deflect everything else except charged particles that would be dealt with by magnetic fields
@@coolsenjoyer Well since it's basically shaping the time-space continuum it's more that everything is flowing along the shape.
Basically, you cannot just make the energy disappear, and they’re not reflecting it. That means they have to negate it. It would work on multiple frequencies and wavelengths. Opposing waves of energy will have to be calibrated and utilized. As they advance and gather data, subsets and basic systems will be created. An adaptive program/system will have to adjust on the fly and gather information for new modulations as different types of damage and energy are intercept by the shield barrier. Eventually we will discover a method that can encompass large amounts of different types, a certain type of modulation that will protect as needed while allowing freedom of movement and sight.
There was that one TNG episode that implied that there were navigational deflectors separate from the combat shields.
@@cheutho Oh yeah, the main deflector is separate from shield generators. No doubt about that.
My understanding of the metaphasic shield was that it partially placed whatever it was shielding in subspace itself. Meaning that whatever might make it through the standard shields, even if it isn’t sufficiently deflected away, just has less ability to interact/damage the ship inside.
Time manipulation could put a ship slightly out of sync with the universe. Incoming fire wouldn't have that benefit.
Yes, I think that's how the Krenim (in certain timelines, anyway) defend their ships. Same net effect as metaphasic shields, if via a different technological principle.
I think the real Question on everyone's mind is "Can metaphasic shielding protect against metaphasic weapons, when Fired by a metaphasic species, at a metaphasic space slug while we have our shield extended around the slug?"
I was rather surprised when I learned that the NX-01 Enterprise had Transporters, but not shields. Compared to the Warp Drive, shields should be a fairly simple technology. Credit is again due to the writers of Enterprise, who elaborated on this technology when they showed it in it's infant form. Essentially, you have a thin sheet of particles (one assumes charged particles, i.e. plasma) suspended between a pair of fields. This part is simple enough. As far back as 1980, I remember seeing a loudspeaker that worked by suspending helium plasma between two magnetic fields. Modulating the fields caused the plasma sheet to vibrate, thus moving the air and creating the sound.
The fiction part of all this is finding a particle that's a perfect energy conductor. What you definitely don't want, is a shield that absorbs energy. Such a shield would be overwhelmed in nanoseconds. Just as the space shuttle heat shield is made up of heat conductors that re-radiate the heat almost instantly, the shields in Star Trek would have to dump the energy directed at them very quickly. You would also need a particle that works across a wide range of frequencies, or a blend of particles to achieve the same result. In order to break through a shield, an enemy is forced to pump in energy at a high enough density that it destroys the particles, and does so at a faster rate than the target is capable of replacing them.
By the way, I think there's room within physics for an entirely different shield technology, and not that multiphasic crap they came up with on TNG. I've named this new type a spawning shield, and the theory goes something like this: Hadrons (protons, neutrons, etc.) are subatomic particles made up out of quarks. (true science) Scientists can't produce isolated quarks, because the energy required to smash hadrons apart winds up as new quarks, which combine with the originals so that you just wind up with extra hadrons. (also true science) Now, IF you found a hadron that absorbed energy across a wide spectrum, they would make a very interesting shield. As energy is pumped in, the particles would break apart and spawn additional particles. Enemy fire would strengthen a shield, rather than weaken it. Indeed, the problem might very well become one of how to shed surplus particles fast enough.
Excellent idea.
Starfleet shields are able to deflect physical matter as well as energy weapons. In TNG's The Hunted, an escape pod bounced off the Shields.
Good eye
What is strange that photon torpedos are physical projectiles with antimatter warheads and whenever we see them hit shields, they just serm to sort of disappear, not really detonating like when hitting a hull
Star trek’s *navigational deflectors* are also capable of deflecting matter; these are constantly kept active, to abate small particulate matter in space that might otherwise wear down or damage the external hull.
These were low-expenditure of energy and highly effective, but could not protect the ship from high-damage attacks.
A thought on transporters vs. shields...possibly, transporting requires too wide a set of frequencies to 'fit' through the gaps in the shielding without degrading to a hazardous degree. Like putting your people through a strainer...
also risky - get your timing wrong and that person reappears as swiss cheese
Interference in a transporter beam causing corruption to the data I imagine would be terrible for the thing being transported. Interference with an phaser may reduce the effectiveness but mostly that doesn't matter so much. So the SieveStrainer metaphor works well.
I'll just paste the comment I just made in here because now I'm curious what you think.
Actually it kinda makes sense that we see beaming through shields less. Because with the whole refresh rate frequency idea, when it comes to energy weapons it doesn't really matter if 1% of the energy doesn't make it through due to slight inaccuracies in one's knowledge in what that frequency is and/or the accuracy of whatever is controlling/generating/regulating the frequency reference (like how a radio needs to have the oscillating frequency generator for reference to process the incoming information normally via the use of a crystal oscillator; I might be screwing that up slightly or oversimplifying). However with a transporter.... that 1% may very well be the difference between life and death for the person beaming through.
Spot on @@materialdialectics
Like a balloon and something bad happens.
I think O'brien was able to beam through the shield because he knew the refresh rate . Of the class. ( the wounded)
Thought it was cause he knew the refresh rate of that particular ship since he was an engineer on it before transferring to the E-D
@@ericzaiz8358 no he was engineer of the uss rutlidge. Maxwell previous command. She was a new Orleans class ship . ( mini galaxy destroyer type) . This is a nebula class . But I believe he knows the class shied type. ( specs )
.5 of a second was all he needed because the Phoenix shields cycled every 5 and a half minutes.
I think it was due to a tiny hole forming in the shields every 30 minutes or so which is a pretty big design flaw if you ask me.
@@shanenolan5625Tactical officer if you want to get really pedantic.
The problem with the “matching shield frequency to fire through” idea is it creates the plot hole in Star Trek Generations that when the Riker ordered Worf to return fire on the Duras sisters’ Bird of Prey the Enterprise’s phasers should’ve passed through its shields as easily as the BoP’s disruptor fire passed through the Enterprise’s…
The enterprise should have been able to destroy her in a single barrage. Really ( shield or not )
Wouldnt of mattered, la forges vizer was comprimsed so no matter what frequency they change to the duras sisters would be able to match
you didnt get the point, in order for the BoP to fire through the Enterprises Shield they need their own shields modulated the same way... which would have also allowed the enterprise to ignore their shield@@darthdragonborn1076
@@darthdragonborn1076i believe in the battle dialogue, it suggests that la forge attempts a new frequency, but the klingons were able to require it . ( the gunner said he had it again. ) frequency.
@@shanenolan5625litterally what i just said
I'm glad you posted this video now because recently I've been thinking about how stupid and impractical (impossible?) the shielding is... Yes you should have shields (if that's even possible) but there should be a backup system of armor for all these ships...
-Armor plating
-Expanding blast resistant fireproof expanding foam
-I mean you could even use water that would freeze in contact with space
One of the problems I have with Star Trek (I know it's all for drama) but the ships blow up too easy.
Also since all the room/cabins are on the outside of the ship, before the ship blows up it could eject each room as an escape pod with a cloaking device so most of the people could get away, of course the crew in the bridge,etc would go boom.
They do use blast _resistant_ fireproof expanding foam.
It looks like rocks......
Most ships do have armor. At least in Starfleet and given video evidence so do the Klingons. Star Trek weapons are just insane. The basic torpedo is an antimatter explosive more destructive than a nuke.
As for cloaking devices in escape pods, that is an international incident.
1:31 Yes, let’s test this prototype forcefield generator with energy weapons while standing between two spatial torpedoes! Brilliant idea! It’s a wonder the NX-01 crew even made it out of dry dock without killing themselves and/or blowing up the ship.
There wasn't enough room in Engineering to test dangerous tech right next to the warp core like later crews would do, so Reed made do.
@@kevinkeeney9418 * remembers Data and Geordi testing a phaser rifle next to the warp core * Fair point! I guess the cargo bays were full…
@@mb2000NX bays were 100% full, you really think no replicators or the size of the ship suggest otherwise?
How do they work? They work very well, as do the Heisenberg compensators in the transporters.
Wasn't Heisenberg on Breaking Bad
Look up the Heisenberg uncertainty principe
How about something more serious, lol!
I have a theory for artificial gravity on space ships.
We already know of the Alcubierre formula, and it’s few iterations of the formula as described by the 3D model image.
If the warp field is tuned for travel, the deep dip in front, and high apex in the rear of a ship, with the ship supposedly within the “ring” that describes the field.
The second iteration that was put out had the inner section inside the warp “ring” at an angle that would have been more than adequate to be the “artificial gravity.”
Follow me, it’s easy and hard all at once….
So, maintaining the lesser inertial forces inside the field was automatic.
A ship at rest, or “full stop,” would have no warp ring, yet still be producing a gravity field for the crew.
Smaller fields could be used within that field, as we have seen where lifters can move heavy items.
So, your artificial gravity and inertial dampers are basically one and the same.
As a side note, being tossed around in a ship would simply be a reaction to the system’s inability to compensate for some of the larger, or more intense, energy weapons that would drain the system for brief periods.
In that case, floating down a corridor or being smashed to a wall or floor would not be that uncommon in a heavy battle.
This all assumes we have no real source to generate gravitons.
Or do we??
By placing a standing wave of multiple “warp rings” around a ship, and energizing each ring with its own frequency of ionizing energy within, these “force fields” would be a fairly easy task to create.
My own theory is, we will be capable of producing a field that is able to surround a ship, but never be able to get one to hug a surface.
Electromagnetic and gravitic forces are very happy to follow rings and ellipses, but following a surface may well be too much to ask, even with a theoretical unlimited energy supply.
If anyone wishes to expand on this, especially in the theory of the standing wave and flux field requirements, I could use the input.
Don’t bother trying to tear it apart, I want to make it POSSIBLE.
BTW, if this works, especially without monstrous rings of fluid metal traveling in a ring at incredible speeds….
Think “old school,” where the things we know are not just simple, but doable with what we have!
PUT ON THE INNOVATION HAT!
i really wondered that the term "synchronization gear" was ever dropped by Tom Paris or Tripp as Mr. Exposition to describe how Shields and "Lasers" work. *note: Laser as Stand-in term for all Energyweapons*
And i guess that nobody want's to beam through raised shields might be because the shield would introduce noise in the Data Stream and the Signal becomes disorted, something you don't want to happen while beaming Living things
Lasers aren't an an energy weapon. They emit photons not energy.
@@IRMacGuyver i think you should look that up again
What make it even all the harder is the constant changing over what's spoken over time in different shows and movies. At one points they even mention screens and deflectors as separate things, not so different to what Star Wars does, with the former blocking energy and the latter solid matter. Of course, by the 1980's it was all rolled into one. Good vid BTW!
Early on, Roddenberry had meetings with writers to explain the difference between deflectors and shields because they were conflating the two and using the term 'deflector shields' in their scripts.
Deflectors are not shields.
Bit of headcanon here, but I think that polarized hull plating never really left. It got incorporated into the ships structural integrity system. Thats why unshielded hits dont just tear the ship apart in a single blow. The yield of a photon torpedo is in the megaton range, which should have blown the Enterprise Ds drive section to pieces with the first shot. Something had to be resisting all of that energy throughout the entire structure of the ship.
How do the shields work? Quite well, thank you very much.
Tasha Yar in Yesterday’s Enterprise refers to increased heat dissipation as an improvement in shield tech and being able to stay in a firefight twice as long as the C’s tech would allow. So maybe ‘deflection/energy dissipation’ is an issue too
Its known as feedback in lore, the energy that impacts the shields has to go somewhere. So what would happen is that the energy goes to the emitter and results in waste heat. This heat needs to be dissipated to keep the emitter operating optimally.
Rick, thanks for another great video. I'd like to see something on the medical tech of the 23-25 century. What advancements were there? Why do people only seem to live around 100 or so despite all that tech? Does everyone in the Federation get access to that stuff, or is there a hierarchy? You did a video on biobeds, but why don't we see the robotic "fix everything" beds like in Prometheus, Travellers, and Elysium?
It has to do with senescence. Each time a cell duplicates, it's telomeres shrink. And once those are gone a cell isn't allowed to replicate itself anymore. Fixing that 'damage' would involve genetic fuckery, which the Federation outlawed because of very good reasons.
This reminds me of something of a joke I came up with ages ago. Basically the idea that Star Trek shields were some massive, muti-spectrum affair designed to effect a broad spectrum of tangibles, but would then contract and narrow down it's effect when under fire. The joke was how the Enterprise's shield percentages were always nocked down rapidly, but usual held once they got to 20%. I know that was just the drama, but it kind of stuck with me. Maybe a good shield officer could prepare the shielding for specific threats instead of just reacting. Or the Galaxy just had the fancy "automatic" shielding upgrade package.
Something I've always wondered is why they never thought to weaponize shield emmitters. Just imagine what they could do with a shield energy field that has been shaped into something akin a phaser lance attack.
They did try that against the Borg in _The Best of Both Worlds,_ feeding warp power through the main deflector dish, turning it into a sort of _Wave Motion Gun._
But the Borg were ready for it.
*Riker:* Mr Worf.... Fire.
*Locutus of Borg:* The knowledge and experience of the human Picard is part of us now. It has prepared us for all possible courses of action. Your resistance is hopeless... Number One.
It did also have the disadvantage that it burnt out the main deflector, which had to be repaired before the ship could do FTL again.
The phaser bolts from the phasor cannons on the defiant had something like that involved
@@M33f3r The Defiant's cannons were basically just phaser bolts made using the nadion particles in a magnetic envelope similar to disruptor or plasma cannons.
They were more of an upgrade/variant of existing technology than anything new.
They essentially were more destructive and has a higher rate of fire than previous versions of the tech but the basic technology had been around since the 22nd century.
I'm kind of surprised enemies didn't take the frequency of the incoming fire to figure out the attacking ships shield frequency with math.
I guess the Borg did it
Don't forget we've seen phasers rapidly cycle through frequencies, for example when the enterprise first encounters the Borg. So I imagine the shields can rapidly change their frequencies following a specific algorithm. Whenever we see a ship ignore shields of another ship, they've actually figured out that algorithm, rather than simply the shield frequency
@@gabrieldarcy1744 i would even guess there are more component. A phaser is a charged particle beam.
So you got the particles (for example they can detect if damage was done by disruptors, so may use different type of particles).
The charge of the paricles (kill or stun), how much electrons you can pack into your particle beam.
The field that keeps the beam together (longer range, less damage, as the field loses power and the beam just desintigrates).
I would guess that the frequency is that field, as we can see in one episode were they were shooting with different charges against the Borg and the phaser changed its color.
I would say the Borg adapt First to the field frequency and are able to disperse the energy, then they actual manage do adapt to the particle it's self, we're changing the frequency wouldn't bring any affect and they may then even be capable to use the free electrons to power the forcefield it self
@gabrieldarcy1744 Something like what you commented is mentioned in various episodes of TNG & Voyager, where it's SOP to rotate frequencies at certain intervals. Basically the algorithm you mentioned.
Exactly. In the tech manual of the enterprise d, they say that due to this very reason phaser frequency changes automatically after each shot. Strange since they had to do it specifically for the Borg.
I had always just assumed that projectile weapons in Star Trek weren't really used in ship combat because of their speed limitations. The distances involved in space combat combined with the travel time of projectiles would make actually hitting a target with them quite difficult, and distant ships could detect the incoming fire and just move out of the way, something that light-speed energy weapons compensated for. Not having to compensate for projectile travel time and relative velocities of two moving ships using randomized evasive patterns is a big plus. On top of that, the electromagnetic and gravitic distortions of a ship's shields would in theory make guided projectiles like missiles either not be able to lock on to an enemy, but also probably detonate against the shields if they DID hit, and do little if any damage to the target ship's hull. Better to not bother with that and just use energy weapons. Just blast your enemy's shields with visually-targeted energy until they drop or the generating mechanisms burn out, then finish off the helpless enemy.
When it comes to transporters, part of the reason why no one beams over if they know the shield frequency could be incase they change the frequency mid beaming or even afterwards stranding them on the other ship.
I have always felt that in its simplest form, deflector shields work by distorting space so the beam simply misses the ship. Of course it has to stop proximity explosions too, so an area of distortion preventing you from drawing a straight line from outside the shield to inside the shield will work too.
The graviton is necessary for this technology, though, bevause the graviton is the only form of energy that can distort space. Which links it intimately with both Warp Drive and artificial gravity.
Good way how they can solve shield issue is with idea of gravity shielding. What to be honest align with how warp drive operate. It basically could be a warp in space time, what basically extend space between ship and the enemy. So energy weapons would be basically dispersed over time (especially if shield also include temporal effects speeding it up). This in fact would explain why ships may receive micro damages, as small portions of energy still could hit the ship.
Funny, I always thought that the deflector & shields are antigraviton based. The whole point of the shields (just like the deflector) is to prevent (push away, repell) energy or physical objects trying to affect the hull of the ship. It would make sense for the SIF system use graviton fields to reinforce the hull... But the shields? .
Yep.
You forgot to mention that Shields could be shaped for aerodynamics.
I think warp field technology is involved with shield/deflector technology and the development of both technologies run in parallel.
The stronger your warp engines the stronger your shields are as well, in general and would explain the gradual increase in shield toughness over time.
Gravitons are the quanta of a gravitational field in the same way that photons are the quanta of an EM field.
I conjecture that a shield bubble in the Star Trek universe is boundary of a warp field bubble/volume which has been enhanced and reinforced by graviton emitters(similar to the tractor beam but vastly stronger). They may even have coherent graviton emitters (analogous to the same principles as a laser in EM tech) for vastly increased power.
At this warp bubble boundary the gravitational gradient maybe enhanced to millions of G's which warps the spacetime in that boundary and can refract any incoming matter and energy.
It also makes sense because in TNG they've mentioned more than once that the warp engines can be tied into the shield emitters to bolster the shield strength.
The durability of the shield depends on both the durability of the emitter and the amount of power available to power it since the emitters drain much more energy than even the warp core can produce at full strength.
I think the navigational deflector is simply the graviton shield emitters turned on at very low strength.
This theory has some interesting ramifications with with TNG's shaped shields.
It makes me wonder how powerful 32nd century shields must be.
If nothing else the more efficient power systems will give you more way better shields
@@Nostripe361depends on the rate of advancing weaponry
Ok, Stay with me, I am thinking hypothetically here: So to fire through their own shields, they have to match the phaser and shield frequencies. They can fire through a targets shield if the know the frequency which means when they fire, both ships would have the same shield and weapon frequencies. Seems a bit risky considering you would effectively have no shields as the enemy fire would would be at the same frequency to penetrate your shields. Its fine if you're firing a "Shot" but phasers tend to be a continuous stream for a second or two so once they realise you fired through their shields, if they're quick enough they can so the same knowing the frequency snd with automation it could literally blow up in their faces (and hsve concrete falling from the ceiling for some reason 😂)
I like the idea that the ships may change their shield shape to become more aerodynamic in atmosphere
iirc in Iain Bank's books the outer shield is thought of as the 'true hull' of the ships, or something like that.
@@AlternicityBlogspot Yes, and people routinely hang out on the physical hull, under the stars.
As an 8 year old avidly watching ToS, my mom once asked me how the shields worked and I told her; Kirk says 'Shields Up' and that's all that mattered at the time :)
Remember that one kind of shield that was proven to protect you from being inside of a star’s corona?
I don’t and neither does anyone else.
Metaphasic Shielding is the one you mean.
Yeah. That was just an efficient was of dealing with the solar radiation. Enterprise was still cooking, just slower.
In my Space Opera the defensive shielding is actually a hard light for defense in addition the ship also has Point Defense Turrets to obliterate oncoming warheads, where as the ship's anti grav engines would deflect oncoming micro meteors. Which makes me wonder... if Star Fleet ships have Phaser Belts why don't they just use it as a point defense system and destroy oncoming enemy torpedoes?
Hard to calculate or hit (it is a good question thought as it should be possible) the "half a Galaxy" class ship with the module utily on top is seen in games to have an option to have a torpedo point defence module that can take out all incoming torpedos for a short time when activated (as well making a ship immune torpedoes would make it pretty powerful in a game)
Funny thing is you see the phase cannon based taking out most of neos mining torpedos in the alternate time line
@@leexgxNebula Class, with the Point Defense Phaser upgrade in Star Trek Armada 2 is what you're thinking of.
@@Kittamaru yes it was very cool if you could Stagger the ship groups so you could make them never get hit by torps
Do one on sensors next 😊
Those are just slaves on long tethers
I've had the notion that a warp bubble, even at low power, could act to deflect anything around it, thus combining two functions in the one technology.
The real physics would support this; pretty much all warp drive solutions to Einstein’s field equations have an extremely large gravitational shear at their edges - essentially tearing stuff apart if it tried to cross the threshold of the bubble.
I'm delighted to hear that. I've got a humanities background, so I was totally just spitballing. :)
One possible explanation for the deflector shield is the "positive curvature bubble".
As we all know, the conventional spacetime curvature is "negative curvature" from a simplified flat perspective. Therefore, the straight line vector from the flat spacetime perspective will be deflected to the inside of this negative curvature depression.
Then, if we create a positive curvature spacetime bulge in reverse, we can form a repulsion and deflection effect.
And it just so happens that this is exactly the structure of the warp bubble. An important difference between Star Trek's warp engine and the Alcubierre engine is that it first forms a sub-spacetime bubble to wrap the starship, and then warps the spacetime outside the "warp bubble" for propulsion.
Considering Star Trek's in-depth development of gravitons, subspaces, and spacetime phases, this technical principle is feasible.
In Star Trek Voyager, shields were useless against chronometric weapons, a weapon that was slightly out of time, as seen in Year Of Hell.
What’s never made sense to me is that they decrease in effectiveness as they are struck. It seems as long as the emitter was projecting the shield and undamaged that their strength would remain constant. Especially since they can be raised immediately and don’t take time to build up strength.
It helps the narrative by giving a countdown/enumeration.
One thing that Rik skips is that there's an absorbtion/redirection/energy-sinking component involved. They can only sink a certain amount of incoming energy during a period of time without overloading.
In regard to a vessel matching their shield frequency so they could fire through their own shields, I always felt this was a plot hole in Star Trek: Generations. When the Klingon Bird of Prey matched their weapon's frequency to the Enterprise-D's shield frequency, they would have had to match their own shields to the same frequency to be able to fire through them. Therefore when the Enterprise-D returned fire, they would have fired straight through the Bird of Prey's shields as the frequency of the Enterprise-D's weapons would have matched the Bird of Prey's shield frequency, and they could have destroyed the Bird of Prey in swift order without needing to find a weakness in the cloaking device's plasma could they could exploit.
The early films showed the shields represented as an outline around the ship. This was brought back to the Enterprise E. The Enterprise D’s shields were a big bubble around the ship.
Great topic. Are you wrong about the navigational deflector though? Doesn't it take huge amounts of warp power to push particles out of the way, especially at high warp? Perhaps it's still just less than shields which take an even huger amount?
The Deflector is a low power long acting thing. The idea in general is that it pushes things out of the way gently millions of kilometers ahead of the ship under warp, that way they're not knocking things away at near luminal velocities. It's more closely related to tractor beam technology in a lot of ways.
I know this is for laughs and intrigue, however if something we're to be effective for shields then it would stand to reason that shields would be black or something similar to polarized sunglasses, there is no way the shields would be clear. Because energy weapons are similar to light and in order to block light you need a filter.
There may be multiple layers
Actually polarizing the hull plating simply increased its overall density by multiple orders of magnitude, thus improving the durability and essentially making it an early form of armor.
Roddenberry hated it whenever a writer slipped the word "deflectors" near the word shields. He said that those 2 systems were completely separate, for different purposes, and different technologies.
Shields up.
didnt early shields basically consist of beaming and maintianing position of exotic matter outside the ship? to create a physical barrier?
Actually it kinda makes sense that we see beaming through shields less. Because with the whole refresh rate frequency idea, when it comes to energy weapons it doesn't really matter if 1% of the energy doesn't make it through due to slight inaccuracies in one's knowledge in what that frequency is and/or the accuracy of whatever is controlling/generating/regulating the frequency reference (like how a radio needs to have the oscillating frequency generator for reference to process the incoming information normally via the use of a crystal oscillator; I might be screwing that up slightly or oversimplifying). However with a transporter.... that 1% may very well be the difference between life and death for the person beaming through.
Ok, so shouldn't raising shields blind the ship? Oh and distort the image of the vessel or full on stealth the ship?
That's part of the 'holes' in the shielding...they're designed *not* to stop non-damaging levels of energy from passing through, like most visible light,
the lack of transporting through shields could be an issue of bandwidth.
Here is how they work. Much technobabble. But based in current day Science.
Forcefields/shields work by projecting a dense Sigma Baryon field between the emitters. When interacted with the Sigma Baryons decay into Lambda Baryons, or something close to Neutrons. Due to the Inverse-square law the small amount of Neutron like emissions radiated by the Sigma Baryons decaying into Lambda Baryons is negligible. This keeps Neutron like radiation at a level safe set by Federation standards. However, when Sigma Baryons decay there is also a secondary effect called the Pi-Zero weak interaction. This effect emits electron positrons and thus the annihilation of nearby electrons are ensured. So any incoming weapons fire that has electrons is annihilated. This annihilation causes matter to be converted in to energy (E = mc^2). This is why there is a visible 'light effect' that happens as the field is interacted with. The 'harder' the field is under pressure the more visible light effect there is. Therefore, more matter being converted into energy can also cause heat radiation and burns. This is also why you can see a forcefield being 'put up'. As the forcefield is put up it has to move the air out of the way of Sigma Baryon field. That is why brig force fields also 'sparkle' when turned on. Because a small amount of matter is converted into energy as the forcefield engages, thus the light effect when activated in an atmosphere. When a forcefield/shield engages in space, which is basically a vacuum, you don't see this energy effect as much as space is basically empty. The power requirements that are used to make a Sigma Baryon field are immense. That's why forcefields/shields can weaken overtime, as they are being energized/matterized(?) by gigantic capacitors that must be recharged by the Warp Core. That's why star ship shields can take several minutes to be brought back online.
Firing through shields by matching a frequency makes sense. Having this work for transporters not working as well could be because the teleportation takes a longer duration to complete. So the likelihood that the frequency could change during the process could be why it is not often done.
How do you fire torpedoes and phasers through the shields from your own ship?
That's why matching shield frequencies is so important. You know the frequency of both your own shield and your weapons, make a guess.
Shield strengths seemed to vary, making an exact calculation of how much damage they could take impossible. However, there were some examples:
•A Constitution-class starship's shields could take the equivalent of ninety photon torpedoes t once. They could do so a total of five times before shattering completely.
•A Sydney-class starship could be destroyed by two photon torpedoes from a Galaxy-class starship with weaken shields.
•According to Malcolm Reed, the shields of the 22nd century Nausicaan ships won't hold against a torpedo from the Enterprise NX-01.
I'd be curious to see a future shield design which uses modern day asteroid shielding as a basis. You have a bunch of angles built into the layered plating, which diverts the impacting material by "normalizing" its trajectory with the plate. This could be used in shielding to not just defeat an incoming energy beam, but actually turn it around to a point. Let's say that under light fire, the shields could bounce the beams back fairly accurately, but under heavy duress, they kind of just glance off, saving as much energy as possible for the next impact.
The downside is that this would have an absolutely catastrophic effect on any solid matter impacting the shielding at relative speed. Like a giant cheese grater.
I wish they would just do a complete reboot of star trek and all of it's technology. For instance, deflector shields working only against energy weapons, requiring point defense guns to shoot down incoming torpedoes, coilguns or some other weapons that fire physical rounds and of course physical defenses like reactive armor, NERA armor, and electric reactive armor to mitigate against such weapons, and of course, replacing idiotic "cloaking" with systems that make detection more difficult at longer range and when "running silent" and make exact weapon targeting more difficult even at closer range instead of the "magical" nature of post ST-VI "perfect" cloaks.
As with any technology based on magnetism, it can either attract or repel metallic objects... This means the object must be either magnetic itself or attract magnetic force, obviously meaning that the shield and the object have opposite polarities. For non-magnetic objects and matter, extra layer must be added to generate gravity field that for example repels or slows down any matter, like ozone in Earth's atmosphere.
The reason why torpedoes hit the shields is due to the speeds involved. Torpedoes are fired at relativistic velocities and use warp sustainers if fired at warp speed. Any object like that striking a charged plasma field, like a ship's plasma shield, would go through a rapid change in speed. This shock would prematurely detonate the warhead at the shield's perimeter unless the warp sustainer could be configured to match the shield's frequency, effectively passing through it with no shock.
The shields in the first movie used multiple emitters that each had a piece of a very strong and resilient plate of metal then energy is run through it making a copy appear outside the hull. As described in Mr. Scott's guide to the Enterprise.
5:20 another stand in for how it works is the Air layer created by some Ice Breakers and Merchant vessels plodding the northern routes of trade and exploration
In gravitons part, when he is talking about the layer of distortion. The little image he shows reminds me of a cellular membrane made up of phospholipids bilayer.
Maybe the shields just cause torpedoes to detonate prematurely by screwing with their impact sensors.
Speculation: If you try to shoot through shields and it doesn't work, you just hit the shields. Perhaps if you beam through shields and it doesn't work there might be more serious repercussions. Like death of the away team, or accidentally setting off an explosive on your end rather than theirs.
Plase do a video on the deflector dish.
If the deflector shields disrupt any incoming matter or particles, how is it possible to see the ship inside the shield? Or how can the ship inside the shield see outside of it? Wouldn’t ships just end up being opaque bubbles in space with shields up?
I actually had a thought on this recently. If the shield is an energy field that can be disrupted then *any* particle - such as a photon - hitting it would result in some tiny change to the field.
If you could detect these changes and feed them into a powerful enough computer, you could form a rough picture of what's on the other side of the shield, and we already have the tech today to generate imagery of all the things we see in Trek. If you get something that vaguely suggests the outline of a Bird of Prey with the generalized EM signature of a bird of prey you can guess it's a Bird of Prey and adjust whatever image is shown accordingly - and we know that sensor ghosts can show up on a ship's display as the actual ship, since Worf has used that trick once.
As for seeing outside of the ship, it may be that the field is somewhat directionally selective in how it disrupts output and it's only for some things which are too high energy or which require some level of high-fidelity bi-directional communication that you might have some sort of issue.
With that said, Starfleet shields do apparently have a 'refresh' cycle which largely would solve this issue, as it means there's non-continuous gaps in the shield and a sufficiently high refresh speed is basically invisible to the human eye (you probably don't notice that the display you're reading this on is rapidly refreshing the screen, for example)
Very bright and colorful presentation
My biggest gripe with shielding is how random its effect is.
Like in one scene it is blocking all kinetic energy making it dangwrous to impact even with another ship and in the next a random astroid(even though bigger or a way smaller jem harda craft just passes through ramming the ship in the process.
And then there is the thing that ships under fire have exploding consoles and celling rocks fly everywhere only for tactical to say "shields holding at 70%".
Second heavily implies that impacted energy still somehow gets imparted into the ship by some kind of reverse energy flow or kinetic momentum
Seems like starfleet vessels use the hull plating polarization still, the shield that hugs the hull and the area shield was a new development that was premiered in ST: motion picture. Hence the line, "the new shields held."
"Shields" are an odd concept the more you think about them. We're so used to them that they're just accepted in any old Sci-Fi thing. But, consider the vast differences between Star Trek, Star Wars and Dune's various shield techno-babble.
I have often speculated which Master of Orion 2 technologies a given starship or station in science fiction would have. For Starfleet shield systems, I have thought Class V or Class VII shields with the Hard Shields augmentation. This doesn't quite fit, however. While Hard Shields protect against some things which Star Trek Deflector Shields protect against, they also protect against more which Deflector Shields do not.
if I'm remembering correctly, the only species we see beam through Federation shields are: the Borg, the Dominion, and the Voth. I think I'm forgetting one, but it's late and I'm tired so I can't think of 'em at this moment. Also, I keep thinking about Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis.
Some energy does manage to bleed through the shield tho.
The is a STNG episode where Riker says that lasers wouldn't get through their shields. If lasers can't get through than light couldn't, and couldn't get out.. so shields up, lights out.
Any chance of an episode about the NX-01 refit (seeing as Enterprise got cancelled before we got the chance to see it)?
Nice breakdown
thanks for the video
6;27 where is that scene from?
Thank you for another dive into some Trek tech! I enjoy seeing a synthesized presentation of all the various techno-babble into one coherent picture of how the tech works.
God be with you out there everybody. ✝️ :)
I always thought that one of the shield "layers" was from very short ranged repulsor beams. They have the technology to tractor/repulse objects, so why not physical weapons too?
4:25. How do shields work in ST lore? Deus ex machina.
Is phaser dimpling a thing in canon anywhere?
I don't even remember where I read about it, maybe FASA trek.
honest question, how do you even get into STO to get the shots. Anytime I open that game it crashes on loads lol.
Pew pew bubl bubl bloc bloc
If no matter or energy can pass through the shield, how does the ship move while shields are up without exploding? I feel like there would be a lot of energy building up inside the shield while it was moving.
adding layers of technobabble fixes everything.
I don't mean that in a mean way, I genuinely think it's great we can come up with pseudo-physics explanations for everything.
Another great video, thank you
if i have to guess it some form of particle shielding, that use magnetic to regulate, and it is not soft but extremely durable
I always figured that forcefields weren't just energy but a form of manipulated matter as well, and that's how they can stop both energy and physical objects while still being more "realistic".
Smart move opening a certifiably ingame episode on shields with a Defiant-Class. We got armour too. Nerds. Edit: sorry you covered the shields transporter thing. The transporter is a death machine so it doesn't really matter. Nerds going to Nerd out.
All that keeps you from falling through the floor is the electromagnetic repulsion of atoms on the tiniest distance scales. Therefore, in principle, you can create a solid barrier with nothing but electromagnetism, that is how shields work in Star Trek.
The weak force is weak and short.
One thing I've always wondered is how attacking deflector shields will drain them.
I am almost certain that I read that the shields were literally a shield of projected transparent aluminum surrounding the ship, creating an eggshell of protection.
So to make a force shield you just need to bend space, got it!
But what about holograms?
Meanwhile in 40k, "Our shields open up a doorway to nothing"
The real question is why no one uses visible light lasers. Sure, they're less efficient, but shields let visible light through unimpeded as evidenced by the fact we can see the ships.
Shields in my own head:
Some kind of specialized high speed short range high power repulsor tech
(Doesn't explain hull hugging shields from tos )
Personally I love the David/Goliath thing the Duras sisters had going on, when they pwned the ugliest Enterprise with their aged BoP.
Another great video! But I must add, that any minutia details about the operation of shields or ingredients thereof that nobody seems to be able to fully answer or explain, I would just chalk it up to being an extremely guarded technical secret by Star Fleet. In other words, it's "CLASSIFIED" military information. ;)
3:48 what game is it?
Armor vs Weapons is external battle, yet both give way to the passage of time,
It's a shame you got it fundamentally wrong. But then again, they frequently get it wrong on the show too, so at least you're in good company. A "deflector" is not a defensive force shield. It's supposed to be shorthand for "navigational deflector" and it's supposed to be a field that is projected out in front of the ship to deflect dust, micro-meteorites and other smaller-sized space debris out of the ship's path. The faster the ship is going, the more dangerous such collisions would be,