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To add to this, even massless particles have momentum, although I'm not sure how powerful the shot would have to be to produce the observed recoil.

Nickswitz wrote:

Mark wrote:I just noticed a nit of my own. When Kirk and Spock beam to the Narada..........their phasers have "kicks". What logical sense can a phaser have a recoil?????

In all logical sense, a Nadion is a particle, which has energy, and a mass, and ever action has an equal an opposite reaction... So why wouldn't it.

Well, a recoil is the byproduct of the explosion of gunpowder in a firearm. What kind of propellant does a nadion particle have?

Whatever it is, it has never caused a recoil in ANY incarnations of Trek.

Recoil in general is a byproduct of accelerating a mass with another object.

Of course we assume that Newtonian laws still apply, even though we're dealing with these "nadions." However, the recoil shouldn't be anywhere near enough to produce visible, significant muzzle climb.

Perhaps its because it is a pulse instead of a beam. Its fitting a few seconds of fire in a microsecond.

Just another possible nit I just noticed: Altough they do look good, where exactly are the rank signatures on the female short-sleeve uniforms?

Mikey wrote:Of course we assume that Newtonian laws still apply, even though we're dealing with these "nadions." However, the recoil shouldn't be anywhere near enough to produce visible, significant muzzle climb.

Yeah... In reality, it should be the same as the "recoil" of a laser pointer... nothing :/

DarkOmen wrote:

Mikey wrote:Of course we assume that Newtonian laws still apply, even though we're dealing with these "nadions." However, the recoil shouldn't be anywhere near enough to produce visible, significant muzzle climb.

Yeah... In reality, it should be the same as the "recoil" of a laser pointer... nothing :/

Not really. We know nadions have mass based on people being knocked back when hit (in all except TOS). So they should have some recoil. Otherwise why would the phaser rifles have stocks.

Added support when aiming. It's easier to aim a braced rifle and keep it steady than one you're just holding in front of you.

Tyyr wrote:Added support when aiming. It's easier to aim a braced rifle and keep it steady than one you're just holding in front of you.

Ah, good point, especially the odd TOS rifle. Ok ignore that last bit from me.

Still, nadions do have significant mass, at least enough to knock back whomever gets hit, and apparently enough to provide visible recoil when bundled into a pulse.

The problem with the knock back is that reaction are equal and opposite. If the beam hits someone hard enough to throw them through the air then it'll throw the shooter through the air too.

Built in inertial dampners, maybe?
Hey, it is TNG. It wouldn't surprise me if they made something as insanely complex as that.

Or perhaps the throw-back effect is due to some kind of reaction the beam causes within the body? Though I certainly can't think of anything that would cause such an effect.

DarkOmen wrote:In reality, it should be the same as the "recoil" of a laser pointer... nothing :/

Laser pointers do have recoil, albeit so little that it's unnoticeable.

Sionnach Glic wrote:Or perhaps the throw-back effect is due to some kind of reaction the beam causes within the body? Though I certainly can't think of anything that would cause such an effect.

Conversion into neutrinos - they have mass so they can carry away the mass-energy of the target when they're "vaporised" and occasionally throw the target around as though they'd been hit by a high-velocity projectile. However, since they can pass through vast amounts of matter without interacting, they wouldn't give anyone nearby the sort of horrific steam burns a true vaporisation would.

Basically a paraphrasing of this.

Pretty much what he said. The knockback would have to be a side effect of the beam's interaction with the target, not of the beam itself. I wouldn't be shocked by an inertial dampner though. Starfleet does so love to over complicate things.

Tyyr wrote: Starfleet does so love to over complicate things.

And as the annual Anomaly-of-the-Week and Explodes-When-Someone-In-Ten-Forward-Sneezes GCS Warp Core: "The more they over think the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain"