jamesp@orstcs.UUCP (jamesp) (12/05/85)
[ "Like a version, released for the very first time..." ] I've tried and tried to come up with a method for how a Klingon disrupter actually works (The starship-sized ones, not the sonic handheld models). Having played a little Star Fleet Battles and perused a great deal of Technical Material (but no pertinant ST Novelizations), I couldn't find any explanation. So here's my two-bit ideas: The Disruptor is a warp-technology weapon which creates a warp-space "shock wave" and directs it at the desired target. This would be concievably fairly easy to do, although it would require a decent energy input and a small amount of charging (but nothing like that required for photon torpedoes). The internals of the weapon are crudely similar to the warp drive internals, but where the drives are designed for smooth, efficient fields, the disruptor generators are designed to build up a very warped packet of space-time and release the packet at the target. Before you knit your brows even more, let me re-explain: You know how gravity warps space-time. You also know what happens to objects in a strong gravity gradient (like near a black hole) -- the stresses tend to tear apart EVERYthing. Now imagine a machine which takes a volume of space, uses warp-engine like fields to bend and tear the space-time all to heck (in a very localized volume), and spits the resulting messy blob of gravitational and electromagnetic fields in a desired direction. You can be sure that anything that runs into it is going to look like its been put through a very big weed-eater, at least :-) ! This "directed extreme disturbance" theory (DED :-) would account for the ghostly rings seen in the television episodes (the effect due to starlight being warped and energized particles in space radiating energy as particle-pairs are created and annihilated by the disturbance). It would also account for the intensity of the disruptor effect weakening with distance (the energy dissipates by particle-pair creation and subsequent radiation, not to mention ggravity waves, etc.) It is also clear to see that the deflectors are not quite as effective in dealing with this non-beam, distributed sort of attack. Weelllllll..... If anybody understands me, has a more official explanation, or has any additional ideas, post away! (Or write, I like mail!) <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> "All that is gold does not glitter; tektronix!orstcs!jamesp Not all those who wander are lost." (In real life: James Perkins)