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The sort of energy needed to do that at range, and in significant amounts, is (no pun intended) astronomical - even for starships whose primary everyday power generation is M/AM annihilation.

We've been creating anti-matter for ages, just in tiny amounts.

Hell we all have anti matter passing through us right now in the form of anti-nutrinoes thrown out by the sun.

plus, this beam thing that your suggesting mark, would have to be able to only target anti-matter, how could yous stop it from altering the structure of regular atoms?

If it would affect matter as well as antimatter (which it would, as I don't see any way for this beam to differentiate,) wouldn't it just destroy the launching ship as it either a) turns the barrel of its own gun into AM, which then annihilates with the the rest of the hull; or b) hit a random patch of H2/dust/water ice/whatever, turn that into AM, and then annihilate.

exactly...Starfleet would have to find some way to make the weapon that would only target anti-matter which would explain why they still don't have the weapon.

That and the fact that it's far easier and cheaper just to shove half a dozen torpedoes up their exhaust ports.

First, we KNOW that it is possible to deactivate anti matter in Trek without destroying the ship or even causing significant damage, because we've seen it done. Therefore we know that it is possible, and would just have to find a way to do that, using what we know, what we learned from the remains of the DM, and from detailed analysis of the Enterprise's sensor logs.

I agree that it WOULD be easier to pump out photon torps as well, but following starfleets dictates of peaceful resolution, a beam weapon which would kill an enemies power core OR be used to defend against incoming torps, so much the better.

just b/c we know it's possable and have a broken one to look at doesn't mean it's easy to analyze or build...

Has anyone else thought that in TR-116, if they couldn't get an automatic machine gun type weapon, couldn't they just strap 4 hand phasers into a holding device, and then wire them to one trigger?

I agree that it WOULD be easier to pump out photon torps as well, but following starfleets dictates of peaceful resolution, a beam weapon which would kill an enemies power core OR be used to defend against incoming torps, so much the better

Not if said weapon costs a shitload more than a salvo of torps. Then it just becomes plain stupid to use it. Also, there may be issues with it knocking out life support, thus killing everyone on board just as surely as a torpedo would. Not such a peaceful weapon in that instance, eh?

Has anyone else thought that in TR-116, if they couldn't get an automatic machine gun type weapon, couldn't they just strap 4 hand phasers into a holding device, and then wire them to one trigger

Like a Gatling gun, but with phasers? Yeah, I suppose that could work.

Or they could just replicate some AK47's.

Mark wrote:First, we KNOW that it is possible to deactivate anti matter in Trek without destroying the ship or even causing significant damage, because we've seen it done. Therefore we know that it is possible, and would just have to find a way to do that, using what we know, what we learned from the remains of the DM, and from detailed analysis of the Enterprise's sensor logs.

I agree that it WOULD be easier to pump out photon torps as well, but following starfleets dictates of peaceful resolution, a beam weapon which would kill an enemies power core OR be used to defend against incoming torps, so much the better.

There is a common fallacy about reverse engineering. Drop a Ramjet engine into 15th century Italy, and even da Vinci wouldn't be able to determine the principles or duplicate the workings.

Indeed. The fact that they have it does not mean that they can recreate it. They were never able to rebuild the Doctor's mobile emmiter, for example.

Mark wrote:You'd think that would have sparked some research.............that would be a super weapon for Starfleet. Just deactiviate main power on most ships.

It may well have. But just because you do research, doesn't mean the research will bear fruit.

Captain Seafort wrote:

Praeothmin wrote:But, as Graham said, Geordi stated there was "nothing he could do", which indicates that he had tried everything he knew.

There were only a few seconds, if that, between the coolant leak and Geordi stating there was nothing that could be done - he didn't try anything. This indicates that loss of coolant is a known single-point-of-failure in the GCS.

OR, it indicates that Geordi had just finished a system damage check and was thinking "well hell, after all those hits we're in bad shape. Half the safety systems are offline, it's a miracle she's holding together at all. It's a good job the coolant system still has integrity, because a leak right now would.... oh crap..."

Then he should have dumped the core before that problem had time to build.