Making a Plasma Bolt without breaking physics... in SPACE

This is not about making plasma bolts (the bullet kind) work in an atmosphere, since nature already does this in the form of ball lightning. It is rare though compared to normal lightning. In space there is no air to react with or conduct to, so if you fire a plasma bolt from your ship, then you need to either be projecting a field to keep the ball together or you need the plasma ball to carry a field to hold it together.


What I am asking for is what real forces could be used to achieve this? And what upper range limits would be had before the plasma ball diffused from being to far out for the ship to hold it's field together, or perhaps instead the plasma ball's field expires within a certain time and the plasma diffuses.


Power considerations are a mute point here. The sky is the limit, since this is a STARSHIP doing this, and starships need biggatons of energy to do FTL/warp drive, so that essentially handwaves away the energy to do the plasma bolt thing too.


So that is my question, what force could be keep the plasma ball together? And could a ship realistically project the plasma ball very far (100 km or more) using any real forces?


Answering my own questions: Electromagnetism could be used to both propel and hold the plasma ball together over a long range. The power to this would be ridiculous though. And it stands to wonder what, if any benefit a plasma ball would have over cheaper weaponry (particle beams/lasers) that is still effective. Alternately, you could somehow make a tiny plasma ball have enough gravity to hold itself to together. How in the world would you do this? If you speed up the speed of light locally all sorts of weird things start to happen. One of the side effects is that stars would be smaller and die younger. So by speeding up the speed of light locally in plasma ball, you could theoretically make it into a mini-star, provided you had gravity control tech well understood. Of course, the radiation from this thing would be EXTREME. Even the visible rays from a mini-star like this would penetrate like gamma rays. And the invisible infrared rays it gave off would be even more penetrating. Long story short, your ship would need some really awesome handwavium hull/shielding to protect itself for when it fired such a mini-star.

On the plus side, such a plasma weapon would be so penetrating that it could compete legitimately with cheaper weapons since it would be wayyy more powerful. Like, you could literally blow a car-size asteroid to space dust with a single shot.

Pop scifi low balls plasma weapons only so they can make cowboys in space with flashy bolts instead of bullets. When we attempt to blend physics into fiction, we find that mini-star plasma bolts as I describe them would only be used in space. In an atmosphere the heat alone would kill the person/vehicle/building that fired it unless it was shielded somehow with handwavium.


So nothing like stargate below would apply. My opinion is just that, so I admit that I prefer any scifi weapons to be MUCH more powerful than a matok staff. Why go through all the trouble of making an advanced scifi weapon if your weapon is less effective than what the US army already has?

I don't know if you could devise a method of a firing irrationally-hot instant-cancer-inducing star-fragment that was sensible in any way.

They are fired from vessels which bank in a vacuum and exploding in a violent audible concussion. Sometimes you have to embrace the make believe

Dulahan said:

I don't know if you could devise a method of a firing irrationally-hot instant-cancer-inducing star-fragment that was sensible in any way.

They are fired from vessels which bank in a vacuum and exploding in a violent audible concussion. Sometimes you have to embrace the make believe

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I always ask... what if. Blending physics with fiction tells me the answer where pop scifi does not. That's all I wanted, and that's why I did this.

Atmospheres are make of molecules, which are made of atoms. Atoms have inherit frequencies. If the plasma bolt was tuned to a frequency which is not a frequency of the atmosphere, it would pass thru them with little lost.

That's the problem with plasma bolts. Most of the discussion of them is about how particles act. But quanta are wave functions, not particles. They all have frequencies. Plasma bolt can be tuned to hold together for far longer than any speculation on their behaviour as particles can describe.

@jjabrams55 fair enough, I suppose it would need a delivery method (which would, I suppose, make it more of a ballistic than energy weapon).

My thought would be some verity of core to your ball, something that would either generate its own field around the particles or that would attract the particles to it into a stable form.

goldhawk said:

Atmospheres are make of molecules, which are made of atoms. Atoms have inherit frequencies. If the plasma bolt was tuned to a frequency which is not a frequency of the atmosphere, it would pass thru them with little lost.

That's the problem with plasma bolts. Most of the discussion of them is about how particles act. But quanta are wave functions, not particles. They all have frequencies. Plasma bolt can be tuned to hold together for far longer than any speculation on their behaviour as particles can describe.

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In an atmosphere, naturally occurring plasma balls occur because of the dust in the air and tend to follow a path that leads groundward. Probably has something to do with electric charge.

If you could somehow make a plasma ball fly in a linear fashion without hitting the ground in the atmosphere, then you would have to worry about it floating upward, since plasma is essentially hot gas and wants to float/disperse in the air anyway.

What you are describing would be essentially be a fireball that does little to no damage. Might even fly upward at an angle unless you have some scifi tech to prevent that.

I created this as part of my artwork for my book, although I have been told it looks like a hairdryer It fires plasma balls which are formed in the ribbed chamber. Power is derived from a inertial confinement fusion pack which forms the grip. The knurled wheel is used to set the plasma intensity. It is primarily used as a debilitating weapon, the plasma tendrils wrap around and temporarily paralyse the victim. If pushed all the way to the red, the plasma ball will immolate.

Dulahan said:

@jjabrams55 fair enough, I suppose it would need a delivery method (which would, I suppose, make it more of a ballistic than energy weapon).

My thought would be some verity of core to your ball, something the would either generate its own field around the particles or that would attract the particles to it into a stable form.

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Yeah.... but if you have ANY sort of matter that can block the heat of your plasma ball, it makes your plasma ball a mute point. My mini-star would be programmed to heat up after it is fired from the ship like flamethrower. My ship can tank the rays of the mini-stars it fires, but it cannot tank a direct hit from a mini-star. The heat would cut through it like a hot knife through butter.

How do you program a state of matter? Isn't that sort of like telling Water to become Ice?

The plasma would, I would think, have to be stored and projected as-is.

jjabrams55 said:

Yeah.... but if you have ANY sort of matter that can block the heat of your plasma ball,...

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Nope. Don't apply Newton to Quantum Mechanics.

jjabrams55 said:

My mini-star would be programmed to heat up after it is fired from the ship like flamethrower. My ship can tank the rays of the mini-stars it fires, but it cannot tank a direct hit from a mini-star. The heat would cut through it like a hot knife through butter.

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This is a crazy cool idea though, not knocking it in the least.

Does the plasma have to be self-contained? How about making it the core of a large container/missile? You could make a plasma payload that stabilizes the plasma inside with its own mechanisms until contact with the target is made. The outer layer is then shed and the plasma inside, fed by the last bit of the payload's internal artificial atmosphere, wreaks havoc. If the outer layer can contain the heat inside, it might also make the missile invisible to enemy detection?

Dulahan said:

This is a crazy cool idea though, not knocking it in the least.

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The plasma looks like the flame of a flamethrower initially, then once plasma begins forming into a star it forms into a ball shape and also begins generating it's own gravity.

The starship is actually pulled in the direction of the mini-star it fires, but always manages to get away since it can thread space like the eye of a needle to 'move' without really moving. It can do this at STL or FTL.

Ihe said:

Does the plasma have to be self-contained? How about making it the core of a large container/missile? You could make a plasma payload that stabilizes the plasma inside with its own mechanisms until contact with the target is made. The outer layer is then shed and the plasma inside, fed by the last bit of the payload's internal artificial atmosphere, wreaks havoc. If the outer layer can contain the heat inside, it might also make the missile invisible to enemy detection?

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If I wanted missiles I would have said so. I was taking a common scifi trope and trying my best to make it actually logically competitive with something like a missile. In this case it is, since it grows hotter than a missile anything a missile could house in it's own body (even the ship's hull can't take the heat of a direct hit by a mini-star).

Dulahan said:

How do you program a state of matter? Isn't that sort of like telling Water to become Ice?

The plasma would, I would think, have to be stored and projected as-is.

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Yep. Programmed matter is impossible by our tech... but for advanced tech, programmed matter is just one more fun thing to throw in.

You could compare it to programming or just using programs. Using what nature gave us or redesigning nature from the ground up... that's what their doing (alien race of my story).

You can create self sustaining toroids of plasma if you get the spin right, apparently the electrostatics hold them together. This is why if you look at the construction of fusion reactors most of them have a toroidal core, to handle plasma in a condition in which you need to expend minimal energy to contain it and achieve fusion. Assume advances in our control of magnetic fields and do what you like with it.

I agree with the fact it is essentially pointless to develop new scifi weapons simply for your heroes to be able to shoot glowy bullets with no functional benefits over current firearms. In my WIP various parties have access to power armour that negates conventional firearms, and there is also a tactical need to be able to breach power armour and board spacecraft, which I decided to fill with a flamethrower like plasma weapon. Each unit is mounted on a suit of power armour, which then shields itself with an EM field to protect itself from back flash, giving some scope for interesting combat tactics between suits armed with the same weapons.

jjabrams55 said:

In this case it is, since it grows hotter than a missile anything a missile could house in it's own body (even the ship's hull can't take the heat of a direct hit by a mini-star)

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It would still work then if the payload generates the plasma upon target contact instead, but point taken, you want it flashier. It'd still be more practical/realistic to "ignite" the plasma once completely outside the starship's hull at a safe distance.

jjabrams55 said:

If I wanted missiles I would have said so.

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I'll point out there are nicer, less snooty ways of shooting down a suggestion. Just for next time. No harm done.

Ihe said:

It would still work then if the payload generates the plasma upon target contact instead, but point taken, you want it flashier. It'd still be more practical/realistic to "ignite" the plasma once completely outside the starship's hull at a safe distance.


I'll point out there are nicer, less snooty ways of shooting down a suggestion. Just for next time. No harm done.

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I assure you that I am not snooty. I'm from spacebattles.com. You have not seen snooty until you visit that site. Perhaps it's rubbed off on me some... not the snootiness but the fact that they are VERY curt over there.

Your suggestion and mine both are only make-believe anyway. I just don't want it, since I'm going for blending classic tropes with physics.

A missile would not cut it for my purposes.

Plasma is merely dissociated matter - electrons and protons separated. Although we think of it as star stuff, it doesn't even have to be hot ball lightning doesn't appear to be. And it's easily diverted - magnetic fields, even if they drop odd faster than d squared, take no energy to maintain when they're not being struck.

There is a fair amount of energy contained in a plasma projectile, but it only transfers on contact - it's even less effective than a conventional explosion through vacuum. And plasma bolts can be detected at a fair distance (certainly kilometres, probably hundreds of kilometres) if you're expecting them. As a surprise weapon they might be effective.

(remembers great thick cables leaping off the floor of the plasma physics labs as ten farads of capacitor charged to ten thousand volts discharged:- you didn't wear a watch in there, and belt buckles got hot).

Locrian said:

You can create self sustaining toroids of plasma if you get the spin right, apparently the electrostatics hold them together. This is why if you look at the construction of fusion reactors most of them have a toroidal core, to handle plasma in a condition in which you need to expend minimal energy to contain it and achieve fusion. Assume advances in our control of magnetic fields and do what you like with it.

I agree with the fact it is essentially pointless to develop new scifi weapons simply for your heroes to be able to shoot glowy bullets with no functional benefits over current firearms. In my WIP various parties have access to power armour that negates conventional firearms, and there is also a tactical need to be able to breach power armour and board spacecraft, which I decided to fill with a flamethrower like plasma weapon. Each unit is mounted on a suit of power armour, which then shields itself with an EM field to protect itself from back flash, giving some scope for interesting combat tactics between suits armed with the same weapons.

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Like vortex cannon, that shoots a hoop of air and knocks over a hay bail or something? Or Heston's onion smoke ring gun?

cgsmith said:

Like vortex cannon, that shoots a hoop of air and knocks over a hay bail or something? Or Heston's onion smoke ring gun?

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Essentially yes, from what I'm told is possible, though it wouldn't work especially well in atmosphere as the plasma would interact physically with the air and disrupt the toroid, causing it to dissipate.