What if Captain Janeway was packing a standard Army-issue .45 pistol instead of a phaser when she ran into some Borg-types? Would a projectile-type weapon be effective? I did a google search and came up with some arcane stuff, like:
TREK: The KE of a bullet is low enough to be effectivly dissipated by a forcefield, but the effects of hand to
hand combat can not be dissipated because the area they would be dissipated accross is not much larger than the area they would otherwise act upon, hence there is no point.
WARS: Wrong. The total amount of energy contained in an assault rifle bullet greatly exceeds the energy in a
punch thrown by a human being, regardless of focus. Dissipation isn’t the issue- the total amount of
energy is the issue, and there is more energy in an assault rifle bullet than a punch.
And it went on and on like this, along with Death Star v. Cube debates, etc. Interesting stuff, but it didn’t answer my question. Help!
Quick ‘n’ dirty answer: It would work if it helped to advance the plot in a (bwah hah hah) convincingly realistic manner.
Didja see First Contact, when Picard blew away a couple borgs with a tommy gun? A more appropriate-to-the-genre interpretation would be that it would take the Borg a few kills to adapt, particularly since projectile weapons are not standard Starfleet issue.
Aw hell, I thought this post would be about a theoretical tennis match between Bjorn Borg and a gun!
As Ethilrist has pointed out, the Borg “collective consciousness” is a huge deux-es-machina that enables them to continue to be a menace for as long as they prove interesting.
I remember having a discussion somewhere, sometime about something like this but I can’t remember what was decided. I’ll try and redo some of though…
Sorry if this is a hijack but let me re-phrase the question:
Can a physical object penetrate a shield in Star Trek?
Answer: The data is contradictory.
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Picard shooting Borg with a Tommy Gun.
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Data and Worf flying a shuttle through a Borg shield so they can beam over and grab Picard off of the ship.
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An episode (don’t know which) where a shuttle is approaching the Enterprise but they can’t land with the shields up and the Enterprise is getting fired upon so they don’t want to lower the shields.
Back to the OP:
As to overall kinetic energy a possible way to look at this is the shield setup in Dune. “The slow blade penetrates the shield.” Basically, the more power going into the shield (i.e. a bullet) provides the shield with more repulsive power. However, move into the shielf slowly (i.e. a fist) and the shield provides less resistance.
Think of it like a pool of water. To any of us who have done a belly flop we know that water can be quite hard and resistant to penetration. However, if you put you hand on the water adnslowly push in there is very little resistance.
Of course this is all Sci-Fi and meaningless so take it all with a grain of salt.
Quoth Ethelrist:
Exactly correct: What happens in Star Treck is exactly what the writers say happens. If you want a non-factual answer, take it to a non-factual forum, like In My Humble Opinion.