Plasma not Ion Weapons on the 304

[Sonicdahedgie]

Huh. to me, what carter says sounds not-so scientifically accurate. but I would need to do a little bit of research to prove myself wrong. Maybe being up at four in the morning has something to do with it.




did you say gymnasium is the highest level of education you can recieve? What?

[thekillman]

in holland it does. for a normal teenager of my age. if you are supersmart you can just skip some grades

[Sonicdahedgie]

Well, I live in Georgia. So I'm going to assume you're smarter than me now. but I'm not sure how you could manifest "pure energy." I'm assuming that it means plasma right there, but bleh.

[Zatnikitelman]

Hey, don't be a knockin' our home state of Georgia!
At a guess I'd say it has to do with the energy generation and conversion (remember, law of matter/energy?) more than the composition of the energy bolt. Perhaps Ion weapons use the transfer of ions to excite another material, or produce an exotic energy form that does damage, while plasma weapons, heat materials up higher. Ah well, I'm tired, 23:46 here...

[Lord You]

I'm guessing that ion cannons accelerate plasma like railguns accelerate conductive metals. Being charged, the ion bolt can be directed. Ion cannons use some kind of magnetic containment (also possible using ions instead of just regular plasma with a NET zero charge).

I'm guessing that the plasma beam cannons are like the Ancient ring or Asgard beam transporters. They use a matter stream that integrates plasma on contact with shields. They can contain a lot more energy per bolt.

I'm guessing O'Neil made a plasma beam cannon in The Lost City. Also, I'm guessing that the Ori mothership's main weapons seem to be the same based on FX. They are the same color and general shape as a ring transporter. Ori weapons are probably still stronger based on shear size and power output. But its a brute-force approach.

The Asgard weapons seem to improve on the Ori's approach using a better compression rate - being able to store more energy when each weapon is scaled to each other. This can be seen with smaller beams at a bluer color (i.e. energy is leaked out at higher frequencies in the Asgard beam, so it probably has a hotter plasma and thus higher energy density than the ori beam).

Just my theory.

[Nitzhean rage]

An ion beam is a type of particle beam consisting of ions.

In physics and chemistry, a plasma is typically an ionized gas. Plasma is considered to be a distinct state of matter, apart from gases, because of its unique properties. Ionized refers to presence of one or more free electrons, which are not bound to an atom or molecule. The free electric charges make the plasma electrically conductive so that it responds strongly to electromagnetic fields.

A particle beam is an accelerated stream of charged particles or atoms (often moving at very near the speed of light) which may be directed by magnets and focused by electrostatic lenses, although they may also be self-focusing.
High energy beams are created in particle accelerators, in which a charged particle is drawn forward by an electrostatic field with a charge opposite to the particle, as the particle passes the source of each field, the charge of the field is reversed so that the particle is now pushed on to another field source.
A natural analogy to particle beams is lightning, where electrons flow from negatively charged clouds to positively charged clouds or the earth.

An ion is an atom or molecule which has lost or gained one or more electrons, making it positively or negatively charged. A negatively charged ion, which has more electrons in its electron shells than it has protons in its nuclei, is known as an anion due to its attraction to anodes. Conversely, a positively-charged ion, which has fewer electrons than protons, is known as a cation due to its attraction to cathodes.

The concept of plasma-firing weapons is scientifically difficult, for various reasons:
If a plasma beam was fired in a planetary atmosphere, it would quickly be stopped by atmospheric resistance and would make a short hot flame like a blowtorch.
The plasma shot out of a plasma rifle would tend to dissipate in the surrounding environment within about 50 centimeters from the gun, from thermal and/or electric pressure expansion, called blooming, unless:
The magnetic confinement bottle is extended all the way to the target . Modifications to this bottle could make the plasma home in on its target.
The plasma is somehow made self-sustaining over a much longer time period (as with ball lightning).
The particles are fired fast enough to reach a target before blooming occurs. This is then a particle beam more than a plasma shot (at least as much as any technical definition for such weapons exists). This would work for use outside atmosphere (i.e. in a space vacuum), but within an atmosphere would merely cause a hotter short flame from more violent collision between the flying particles and the atmosphere.
It might also be possible to generate a laser beam "tunnel". High-energy lasers ionize the air around the beam, heating the atmosphere and providing the plasma bolt with an easy passage to the target.
Another laser-assisted plasma weapon approach for use in atmosphere is possible if the laser is powerful enough to blast the air out of the way, but having the plasma particles reach the target before the newly-created vacuum channel collapses in on itself is a problem unless the weapon possesses sufficient power to either sustain the channel or the aforementioned "plasma particle beam" approach is used.
With a railgun a 'plasma/particle thrower' similar to a long range natural gas flamethrower could possibly be made. Most railguns throw a trail of plasma (of the rail material and projectile material) out after or with the projectile: this is very short lived but extends over 3 to 30 feet. This is because of arcing of the rails and projectile. The plasma conducts and so is subject to the working force of all railguns (Lorentz force). The plasma thrower would use a rapid-fire small projectile and very thick rails spring/actuator mounted that move inwards with wear. A tungsten-aluminium-chromium alloy for both the rails and projectile would yield good results but the projectiles would have to be very small so they are fully disintegrated into the plasma.

Shiva Star or Shiva was a high-powered plasma research project with plans of using it as a weapon for the Strategic Defense Initiative. Work on it started in the early 1990s at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico in the USA. It is or was a system (presumably to be mounted on a satellite or spacecraft) for shooting down incoming missiles with toroidal projectiles of plasma, at a speed expected to be 3000 km/s in 1995 and 10,000 km/s (3% of the speed of light) in 2000. It is intended to work by damaging the missile's guidance electronics. A shot from it has the energy of 5 pounds of TNT exploding.
The tests cost a few million dollars a year.
The project was scrapped at some time between 1995 and 2000, because of problems keeping the plasma projectiles stable for the distances required by orbital weaponry.

[Lord You]

^Somebody can use wikipedia without quoting their sources... :-(

[Vala_M]

So, does anyone think we'll see these weapons in action again before the end of the season or the end of next season? I hope unlike on SG-1 that we will see them used many times as they were only used in SG-1 in "Unending".

Vala,