ENERGY WEAPONS in SCI-FI | The types of energy weapons and why they show up so much.

Generic greetings and welcome to another episode of science insanity. Today an opinion piece on a sci-fi classic, energy weapons. Everything from cannons to railguns, flak rounds and PDC’s. We’ll break down the general types you see pop up in science fiction and what they're good at. Then we’ll discuss why they're so common and what they offer to the audience and writers.

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[SkylerLinux]

On Energy Weapons and being Cheaper, Shields are also something for being cheaper. You don't have to damage your Filming Models and can have someone talking about how badly the ship is being attacked.

[Echo_]

17:13 it's funny that you say "good guy green, bad guy red" while showing Star Wars because it's actually the other way around. It's based on the USA using red tracer rounds, and the Soviets using green tracer rounds.

Another important reason why beam/laser/energy weapons are used is because it makes either a faction or the entire setting seem futuristic. For storytelling, it works.

[Dirt]

This reminds me of the Expanse's use of tracers on the PDCs. There is no need for tracers, the computers can track the rounds without any issues, but it makes the shots readable.

[arespaulson]

I do have something I'd like to say about in-atmosphere particle/plasma weapons. Before I start, I would like to draw your attention to one particular natural phenomenon: lightning. Lightning quite evidently does not bleed off and certainly can strike the ground after travelling through a large amount of atmosphere, and strike the ground in a highly contained fashion.

So, the way to make a particle/plasma weapon viable would be to use a 'guide laser', whose job is to create an ionised channel, along which the weapons package is delivered.

Direct fire lightning.

[christophergroenewald]

A unique type of plasma gun that appears in mass effect would be the geth plasma shotgun, though "shotgun" is a bit misleading. It's a three barreled cannon that fires balls of superconductive material at a target. On impact, the balls shatter and release a burst of energy, instantly superheating the air around it into plasma.

Then there are also weapons like the arc projector, which first ionise their target, to turn them into an electricity magnet before discharging it's capacitors and hitting the target with what is essentially a lightning bold.

[Verdis_deMosays]

First, thanks for featuring Eve Online! So many forget about it.

Also, the eve guys had a nice solution for plasma weapons. Putting it in a magnetic containment shell, and yeeting it with a railgun at your enemies.

[andrewreynolds]

Make surr you talk about armor, radiators, etc etc etc i suggest you cover those before space dock has the chance.

[Wastelandman]

The stowage space also plays into energy weapons on tanks. How much ammo a tank can carry is a limiting factor for historic tanks. Plus the need to ship unreal amounts of artillery rounds. Check out how many shells were shot on an average day in WWI.

[rhodes]

Plasma canisters could probably be adjusted for space combat by rigging them with proximity fuses so moments before impact they adjust their magnetic containment field to expel all of the plasma towards to target at near contact distance.
This would probably still be woefully ineffective compared to even something as simple as a HEAT warhead though.

[xoso]

Remember that the corona of a star is lasing material meaning with a set of reflectors you have a stellaser. Also the energy of a supernova can be lased for those time when you need to kill a galaxy.

[carloshenriquezimmer]

16:48 It makes sense that high power energy weapons would make all materials explode, due to the instantaneous vaporization of said material.
Just like actual conventional explosives, tat are coverted from solid/liquid to extremelly hot gases almost instantaneouslly.
Fireballs are not realistic, but neither are the conventional explosons in most media.

[MattJett]

Quick note about your critique about silly explosions when lasers hit something, this is actually partially realistic. When an energy beam stronger enough to slice through material instantly makes contact with a reactive substance or material, it will explode and continue to explode as the beam travels across anything containing liquid and flammable materials. Metal would just become sliced if thin enough, leaving molten edges, and synthetic materials would evaporate or disintegrate into molten goo or hot gas. People would get sliced as well, but not before the fluids in their body would violently expand into a burst. It would be extremely messy. That's why light sabers are hilarious to me. If they were accurate to physics, they would be more deadly than they are portrayed in the story. Holy Jesus they would be. So, cutting corners and suspending a sense of disbelief is understandable.

[desolation]

On the topic of plasma weapons, you can over come thearmol bloom via the zeta pinch effect. Which is the confinment of plasma via electical currents, and while there would be an upper limmit to range due to the charge needed, they would be able to be used at signifigant range. And plasma can be genertated via radio frequency breakdown, which is not power intensive compared to thermol radiation.

And the range issue involved with partical weapons can be overcome through velocity alone. When electons are accelerated to ultra-reletivistic velocities, by there perspective they are expanding exponentialy as they should, but by our perspective they are being directed in a thin beam out to extreme range.

[barrybend]

The difference between a plasma weapon and a particle beam is cohesive and funneling. Essentially the difference between a lightbulb and a Laser. Just more deadly by design.

[StarScapesOG]

In the Honor Verse books, they take an interesting approach. They use missiles for long-range, and for "short" range, they use xasers, grasers, and masers. It is a fairly unique mix.

[MonteKowalsky]

There’s a conversation between Natasha Kerensky and Phelan Kell about pulse lasers in one of the Blood of Kerensky books where she explains what these weird lasers are. Good to know someone did their homework writing that, even if BT lasers are still on the fantastical side.

[Schlachti]

Plasma weapons: you might want to look into the casaba howitzer which is basically a nuclear blast concentrated into a narrow cone towards the enemy.

Lasers: There is a thing called the Nicoll-Dyson beam where you use a dyson swarm to turn the sun into the galaxies biggest laser.

Particle beams. Particle beams can be neutralized and or fired through a laser beam to help focussing. Also there is the concept of the UREB where an electron beam is so close to the speed of light, that time dilation takes care of the problem of all those charged particles trying to scatter. That thing can outrange most lasers.

[Wastelandman]

A lot of why energy weapons are so used is stowage space. Even if you can lift off/on planet and push unlimited mass through super light speed, you still have a finite amount of space on a ship to stow ammo. And in most settings you do have mass limits on how much a ship can haul otherwise they wouldn't be made out of weight saving material. With energy weapons the mass of your ship remains fairly constant (reducing computing needs) and unless you burn out your systems you'll never run out of ammo.

[philipfahy]

Note, that while lasers have much longer range, it's debatable how effective that range is. Heat is one of the worst damage vectors to begin with, and there are a lot of strategies to counter lasers. A lot of this will come down to how powerful the lasers are and what kind of material science you have to defend against that. Definitely worth considering why they are or aren't used in any specific setting though.

[cpcupcake]

Theoretically, missiles and other smart projectiles could outrange lasers even when being slower. When you start thinking about the lag you would get from target acquisition, aiming, and time to target vs target's size and manoeuvrability (ie, what would determine max range with weapons without bullet drop or having to deal with the curve of the Earth), a smart projectile, while slower, could have a longer range because it is constantly updating where it should be.

I don't know how well David Weber did this in practice, but I was under the impression that its why his Honorverse series has missiles outranging energy weapons, along with basically being able to show massive missile salvos vs what is essentially the wall of flak.

This doesn't even go into stuff which can make maximum range fairly irrelevant, like cloaking and ecm.