Why do Borg vessels lack shields?

[Captain Seafort]

I never suggested how the target was turned into neutrinos - other than that it must be a chain reaction as there's no excess energy when a smaller than average peson is hit - I simply repeated a theory I've read that is the only way using modern physics to explain why people hit by phasers dissapear into thin air without the inevitable calamatous effects of vapourising them.

[Thorin]

Doesn't really make sense to me. As far as I am informed (and I could very well be wrong!) neutrinos are elementary - yet a person's makeup is of atoms which are NOT elementary. Even if we posit that a phaser can overcome the strong and weak forces between the quarks of a persons atoms; how do you turn those quarks, which have charge, color, and spin, into a neutrino, which has no charge, color, or spin, and which is NOT composed of quarks by definition?

Besides, neutrinos have a VERY smal mass, and must therefore have relatively high energy to be converted from any given mass. I have never seen demonstrated a phaser with enough energy to overcome the strong and weak forces within a humanoid's entire count of atoms, PLUS enough to overcome the electromagnetic force between all those atoms, PLUS enough to convert all that matter to enough energy to justify neutrino conversion. A quantum a/o dimensional shift by changing the spin of a body's component quarks seems to make (somewhat) more sense.

In one of the Voyager episodes, where Kes leaves, she sees below the sub atomic. It's not great I grant you, but it does have some "Trek cannon" that quarks are not fundamental particles. So there is something smaller. However, I'm not sure exactly where you're getting this information from, as often in neutron/proton reactions, neutrinos are given off, so neutrinos can easily come from quark reactions, however it isn't admittedly destroying the quark.

The weak force and electromagnetic force would have nearly no bearing upon this, they are far too weak. The strong force would present a problem, however this may be easily circumnavigated - if we simply say it is never broken, and rather than having the quarks separated and then "converted" into neutrinos, they are converted into neutrinos straight away and the strong force is simply dissolved.

On the other hand, by the 24th century it does seem plausable that "The Theory of Everything" has been completed, and there is only one super-fundamental force, in which case it could be more easily manipulated.

[Mikey]

as often in neutron/proton reactions, neutrinos are given off, so neutrinos can easily come from quark reactions, however it isn't admittedly destroying the quark.

Unless you are talking about unfeasibly and ridiculously large amounts of energy, not nearly enough neutrinos are produced during those reactions to cover the amount of matter that is "disappearing."

[Thorin]

Maybe I am, but Star Trek doesn't conform to our laws of physics.
Energy and mass are interchangable, so for the mass of a human to transfer to energy (like a transporter), and then to mass again (in the form of octillians of neutrinos), isn't that far fetched - in trek at least.

[Teaos]

I think it makes more sense that the matter is shiftd to another dimension. The power involved doesnt need to be to huge and it deals with the disapearing matter.

[Captain Seafort]

I think it makes more sense that the matter is shiftd to another dimension. The power involved doesnt need to be to huge and it deals with the disapearing matter.

But then you run into problems with conservation of energy. The massive energy requirements mentions above must have been bypassed somehow, otherwise phasers would be vapourising people anyway, and the extent of the conversion would be dependant of the mass of the target, whereas in fact the phaser effect is much the ame regardless of the target's mass.

[Mikey]

I think, if we're speaking in terms of the 'Trek universe, it's easier to say that there's a lot more we don't understand about dimensional transferance than about the conversion of matter. We can't discuss in detail altering spin, or whatever concept is involved in dimensional transferance, as we did with the neutrino argument for example.

Perhaps it doesn't require the same sorts of energy input - it certainly to me seems the way to deal with "disappearing" matter.

[Teaos]

Maybe it is as simple as making the matter hit a certin frequency. That wouldnt take much power at all compared to vaporising it.

[Captain Seafort]

Maybe it is as simple as making the matter hit a certin frequency. That wouldnt take much power at all compared to vaporising it.

How would the frequency help? It's clearly a chain reaction of some sort, but solid matter doesn't have a frequency, so that wouldn't help.

Congratulations on the promotion BTW.

[Teaos]

Maybe you can shift a atom to another dimension by creating some sort of reaction in it. The reaction does not occure by its self but it does not take a large amount of power to achive. That way the phaser gets rid of the matter with out using huge amounts of energy like we may think it would take.

Lt Commander... oh the power

[Mikey]

Congrats, Teaos.

How would the frequency help? It's clearly a chain reaction of some sort, but solid matter doesn't have a frequency, so that wouldn't help.

But quarks do have certain characteristics, such as spin and flavor, which do affect theirforce-related properties. It could be a matter of somehow changing these attributes.

[Thorin]

Congrats, Teaos.

How would the frequency help? It's clearly a chain reaction of some sort, but solid matter doesn't have a frequency, so that wouldn't help.

But quarks do have certain characteristics, such as spin and flavor, which do affect theirforce-related properties. It could be a matter of somehow changing these attributes.

That's not hard to do at all, though. In sub atomic reactions, quarks always change flavours, spin, and charge. Up quarks go to down quarks, top quarks change to anti-strange...

[Mikey]

Exactly. It makes much more sense to discuss something like this, and say "in 'Trek, they figured how to do it with a beam weapon," than to say that it could be conversion to an extremely low mass particle beacuse the laws of physics are different. If that's the tack we take, then we can't really talk about anything.

[Captain Seafort]

The point of converting to neutrinos is that they lack charge, and therefore can carry away energy without interacting with their environment. With anything else you run into problems of violating conservation of energy (if the mass dissapears somewhere), or why everyone else in the room isn't killed (if you turn it into some other form of matter/energy).

[Thorin]

Maybe tachyons could also have a part in this?

The super-theoretical particles that travel faster than light could also take them away. At this stage of our knowledge they are so theoretical that they could do anything with them in the 24th century and not leave our laws of physics.