What would you take?

[Tsukiyumi]

Quick question: we seem to be assuming that we have plenty of antimatter to power our M/ARA. What if antimatter generation is considered a separate technology?

You'd essentially have a gigantic bong. Not the most impressive breakthough in history.

[Duskofdead]

You get all the "stuff" to make it work. But if you take a warp engine, you can't disengage the navigational computer and use it for some other computing purpose. If you have antimatter to fuel your warp engine, you can't take it out and make a bomb with it.

[Mikey]

You'd essentially have a gigantic bong. Not the most impressive breakthough in history.

I know quite a few people who might beg to differ.

[Captain Picard's Hair]

Well, antimatter generation on it's own wouldn't make much sense either, considering that it probably is a highly energy-intensive process.

[Teaos]

Ah but making anti matter has to be less energy intencive than using it or it would be impossible to make the amounts we see.

[Captain Picard's Hair]

Clearly it is, but while the M/ARA might easily generate enough power to generate it's needed antimatter, with our current technology it may take the entire current output of France (just picking it out of a hat) to power one. And then, it surely takes a lot of tech to make matter/antimatter conversion as safe as it is in Trek (carefully worded with Seafort in mind ) - which we don' t have

[Teaos]

But once you have your first little bit of anti matter you can then use that to make more and more and more.

All you need is the first bit to get the ball rolling.

[Tsukiyumi]

You'd essentially have a gigantic bong. Not the most impressive breakthough in history.

I know quite a few people who might beg to differ.

Well, it would likely be terribly wasteful, for one thing. I guess you could use it at a Pink Floyd, or Phish concert, but for other use... meh.

[Captain Seafort]

Ah but making anti matter has to be less energy intencive than using it or it would be impossible to make the amounts we see.

Nonsense. For starters that violates thermodynamics. Secondly, why would taking, say 1000 joules to produce 100 joules ass-energy equivalent of antimatter make it impossible to produce large amounts? It's not as if the universe is going to run out of hydrogen any time soon.

The advantages of antimatter lie in it's energy density (reducing the required volume of fuel bunkers) and the fact that it's almost instantaneously throttleable - just pump more reactants into the chamber and you're set.

[mwhittington]

Wow, no one said holodecks? Now there's a great piece of Trek tech, and the applications are limitless. They'd be indispensible for military/police tactical training simulations, science and medicine, airline simulation, and entertainment. It would be a fantastic training/teaching tool. Makes the most sophisticated VR machine to date look like Pong.

[Teaos]

Nonsense. For starters that violates thermodynamics. Secondly, why would taking, say 1000 joules to produce 100 joules ass-energy equivalent of antimatter make it impossible to produce large amounts? It's not as if the universe is going to run out of hydrogen any time soon.

Why? There could well be some rather low energy way to make or collect antimatter. Forming one form of energy into another means you must have either equal or greater energy in the inital form but we have no idea how antimatter is formed or collected.

[Thorin]

The fact that they convert anti-matter on ships suggests that the process of converting dueterium to anti-deuterium isn't too energy intensive - if it was more energy intensive than the warpcore's output then you might aswell just use the 'converters' energy (which would be more than the warpcore) that it would otherwise have been used to convert matter to anti-matter.

Seafort read your statement wrong, Teaos. The act of converting one form of energy to another (ie mass-energy of matter to mass-energy of anti-matter) can be extremely tiny or increadibly huge - but the number of joules of the mass-energy cannot change.

One of the laws of thermodynamics (I can't remember which so I won't embarass myself) states simply that energy of an isolated system (ie the universe) cannot increase or decrease. Converting from one form of energy to another using only 1 joule (to convert it only) does not violate any law. Converting from one form of energy to another using only 1 joule (to convert it only) and there being an increase in energy of the new form of energy does violate the laws.

[Captain Picard's Hair]

The fact that they convert anti-matter on ships suggests that the process of converting dueterium to anti-deuterium isn't too energy intensive - if it was more energy intensive than the warpcore's output then you might aswell just use the 'converters' energy (which would be more than the warpcore) that it would otherwise have been used to convert matter to anti-matter.

Seafort read your statement wrong, Teaos. The act of converting one form of energy to another (ie mass-energy of matter to mass-energy of anti-matter) can be extremely tiny or increadibly huge - but the number of joules of the mass-energy cannot change.

One of the laws of thermodynamics (I can't remember which so I won't embarass myself) states simply that energy of an isolated system (ie the universe) cannot increase or decrease. Converting from one form of energy to another using only 1 joule (to convert it only) does not violate any law. Converting from one form of energy to another using only 1 joule (to convert it only) and there being an increase in energy of the new form of energy does violate the laws.

First law.

Zeroth law: If A is in thermal equilibrium with B, and B with C, then A is in thermal equilibrium with C

First Law: Conservation of Energy - the change in total energy of a closed system is equal to the amount of energy lost/gained by the system.

Second Law: The Entropy Law. States that thermal energy can only naturally flow from a high-temperature source to a low-temperature source
*refrigerators, air conditioners, etc do not violate this law because energy is used to "pump" heat against the gradient

[Thorin]

Yes a quick Wikipedia look up would have done it but I couldn't be bothered

Your second law summary is a bit off with regards to the technical meaning, though.

[Captain Picard's Hair]

Eh, I just rattled that off the top of my head. Thermodynamics is an essential course for a mechanical engineering student.