Based upon current scientific studies, how long before we have a working hand held phaser, either energy or sound based, that can be used as a non-lethal weapon for military/LEA use?
There is currently no technology in development which shows the potential of being able to do this. Such a weapon would therefore require a breakthrough, of a sort which is inherently unpredictable.
Yeah, I was gonna say, instead of “how long?” (as though it’s inevitable), maybe we should ask whether it’s possible, or whether it’s just a sci-fi trope like the Vulcan nerve pinch. It’d sure come in handy though.
We’ve got the Agonizer though. A long range version at that. Which means we’re in the evil twin universe I guess.
That makes sense, I do have a goatee.
There are both microwave and sonic weapons which produce immobilizing pain, albeit tehy don’t work as instantaneously as a Star Trek type phaser. These weapons are typically several hundred pounds, have an emitter roughly the size of a digital satellite TV dish, and are vehicle mounted including a large power supply. Even if the emitter itself could be reduced to a man-portable size and mass, the required energy throughput vastly exceeds the amount of energy that could be carried in a battery pack that could fit in a backpack, much less within the mold line of a handheld weapon itself.
Supercapacitor projectile weapons are also at least conceptually possible, but keeping a supercapacitor chaged and isolated for an extended duration of time would be highly technically challenging and the effects would likely vary from “painful but not disabling shock” and “mild cardiac dysrhythmia” to “immediate cardiac arrest” and “third degree penetrating thermal trauma”, depending on what the target was wearing and the local environment.
A weapon as compact, effective, reliable, and assuredly non-lethal as a phaser? That is pretty much pure fantasy, even if the power throughput problems could be resolved.
Stranger
If the Government declassified the alien technology they’ve obtained since 1947, we’d have Phasers, handheld Laser Guns, robot maids and Jetson’s cars, but they’re keeping all that stuff for themselves. I hope they unveil at least some of it before I croak, at least something more dramatic and fun than silicon chips. Androids would be nice.
I’m trying to understand the question. Are tasers too deadly for your taste? Or are you looking for something which doesn’t require contact?
Well, they do have this little gizmo that will replace CDs someday. Guess I’ll have to buy The White Album again. 
A Blu-Ray phaser makes an effective weapon against attacking alien balloons.
There have been scientific papers on PHonon Ampliffication by Stimulated Emission of Radiation since the early 1980s. By any reasonable use of acronyms, these would be called PHASERS. But a.) they don’t work really well (too much scattering) and b.) They don’t do anything like a Star Trek Phaser does.
It’s notable that, in the first Pilot, Gene Roddenbery had the weapons called “lasers”, and only changed it after that because he realized that Lasers couldn’t really do what he wanted them to. At any rate, I’ve never seen a laser that could “stun”. Well, not the way they did on the show. I’ve seen a few stunning lasers, but that was for theoretical or aesthetic reasons.
Almost lastly, Stranger has put his finger on the salient issue. Lasers, by their very nature, aren’t 100% efficient. Ther are a few now edging their way up to 100% efficiency, but they generally have to be driven by other, less optimal lasers. This means that a fair amount of power gets dissipated as heat, which makes your Star Trek-like phaser, if it’s at all similar, very hot to handle. Use kitchen gloves. Even if it were 100% efficient, though, you’d be packing a huge amount of energy in a very small space, and just askin’ for trouble. It would make a pretty good bomb. (And, to their credit, Star Trek actually did have phasers blow up on occasion).
Lastly, just a note. I’ve been doing a survey of ray guns recently (I got this book, see…), and the Star Trek phasers from the original series ought to get a prize for smallest and least lethal-looking hand-held energy weapons ever. Buck Rogers’ “Wilma” didintegrator pistol was bigger. So were the Blasters in Forbidden Planet, the ray guns on the covers of SF magfazines and comics of the 30s 40s 50s and 60s, the ones from *the Black Hole * and — well – just about anything. Even the current Star Trek movies use MUCH bigger hand weapons. The onlty smaller ones are jokes (the “Cricket” in Men in Black), things meant to be concealed (The “Derringer” from Wilk Laser Technologies in the Rifts RPG), and the non-human gun in The Hidden. This may make the Star Trek:TOS weapons more physically unlikely, being so small, but they do seem more adult and sophisticated.
Which reminds me, hope this isn’t too much of a hijack, but:
In the original series, IIRC, if someone is hit by a full-power phaser discharge, they just sort of…evaporate. Would it not be more likely that the unfortunate victim would blow up like a bomb, as all the water in their body instantly flashed to steam? If you’ve ever seen accounts of boiler explosions, I wouldn’t give the person firing the phaser much of a chance of survival if they were standing within 50 feet or so of their target.
I welcome correction if I’m getting this wrong.
Well, you’d certainly expect it to be kind of messy. Even if it did somehow reduce the target to component molecules, that’s still a lot of water, minerals, and amino acids that have to go somewhere. Yick!
Stranger
Replace CDs? Damn, that explains my poor CD sales and increased downloads. I guess I need to catch up to current technology.
The purpose of the phaser, like the earlier disintegrator was to eliminate people “with a minimum of bloody parts to sweep up”, to semiquote The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. It was a useful way to kill people without leaving a distasteful bloody mess. When you’re writing for kids, it helps to be discreet in these little ways.
Well, it isn’t the 1920’s anymore, yanno.
Have you seen the Stun/Kill-guns from Space:1999?
Nope, I have to admit I haven’t. My recollection of the Space 1999 weaponry was somewhat bigger.
Though a ST"TOS phaser still looks smaller, if it’s not in one of the handgrips.
I remember that just before the was in Afghanistan began, there were all kinds of gassy articles floating around about the futuristic weapons the US Army might be about to roll out–laser rifles and bionic assist and such. All about propaganda and selling newspapers. But I do recall something about a “sonic stunner”–a handheld device that used low frequency noise to induce nausea/physical disablement. I know these things exist in larger sizes–here’s a wiki link:
I vaguely remember something (in this long ago article) about a laser doing something to the air (ionizing it?) in order to permit a focused sound wave to hit an individual, thus incapacitating him. But I’m thinking it’s BS, because if you had a battery small enough and powerful enough for a laser to reliably ionize air over combat distances, you’d have a laser pistol. Right?
Early seasons of Next Generations had the “TV remote-sized phaser”. Which I wager they replaced because it was too small to show up well on screen, being almost entirely hidden by the hand holding it.
