# How long before society develops a working phaser? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 11, 2013, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-before-society-develops-a-working-phaser/668577 "2013-09-11T15:57:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-before-society-develops-a-working-phaser/668577/21 "2013-09-11T23:07:38Z")
I would point out that “society” rarely makes technological developments. ---
**Author:** ![pkbites](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pkbites/32/204_2.png) [@pkbites](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pkbites)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-before-society-develops-a-working-phaser/668577/22 "2013-09-11T23:14:43Z")
> [@Keeve](#): > > I’m trying to understand the question. Are [tasers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taser) too deadly for your taste? Or are you looking for something which doesn’t require contact? I think you are on the right track. Imagine a wireless taser that was able to shoot out a pulse of electricity and stun/stop it’s target for a significant time without wires. The taser can stop the threat but only once, and only one target before reloading. Imagine the same thing without wires: Nonlethal, but threat stopping and able to do it multiple times unlike the taser. I actually think this is closer to reality than some of you think. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-before-society-develops-a-working-phaser/668577/23 "2013-09-11T23:23:04Z")
> [@Huvudtvatt](#): > > Have you seen the [Stun/Kill-guns](http://catacombs.space1999.net/main/images/space/ttoa/spttoa128.jpg) from Space:1999? OK, this is a bit off-topic, but the [Phaser Type I](http://media.liveauctiongroup.net/i/11189/11537496_2.jpg?v=8CE77139E33D6A0) was palm-sized. It attached to the power-pack and amplifier to create the larger, pistol-sized Phaser Type II. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-before-society-develops-a-working-phaser/668577/24 "2013-09-11T23:57:54Z")
> [@pkbites](#): > > I think you are on the right track. Imagine a wireless taser that was able to shoot out a pulse of electricity and stun/stop it’s target for a significant time without wires. > The taser can stop the threat but only once, and only one target before reloading. Imagine the same thing without wires: Nonlethal, but threat stopping and able to do it multiple times unlike the taser. > > I actually think this is closer to reality than some of you think. So then you can explain how this “wireless taser” can conduct a controlled high voltage current across a dielectric gas of variable capacitance and conductivity at significant distances? Stranger ---
**Author:** ![The\_Man\_In\_Black](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bcef8e/32.png) [@The\_Man\_In\_Black](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Man_In_Black)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-before-society-develops-a-working-phaser/668577/25 "2013-09-11T23:59:28Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > 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 Out of curiosity, do you think in 200 years (about the time Star Trek:OS takes place) we could build such a device? Is there a hard limit on how much energy you can store in a battery of a given size? ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-before-society-develops-a-working-phaser/668577/26 "2013-09-12T00:06:05Z")
More importantly, the thought occurred to me the other day, _it is the twenty-third century, you have a sophisticated weapon that can incapacitate or dematerialize your foe – and you miss???_ ---
**Author:** ![aNewLeaf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ac91a4/32.png) [@aNewLeaf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aNewLeaf)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-before-society-develops-a-working-phaser/668577/27 "2013-09-12T00:14:31Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > So then you can explain how this “wireless taser” can conduct a controlled high voltage current across a dielectric gas of variable capacitance and conductivity at significant distances? > > Stranger The initial, visible, pulse is laser light that ionizes the air in a straight path. then, so quickly that turbulence hasn’t started, you fire your energy bolt down that line of plasma. This explains why they keep missing if they don’t make the first shot- the air is so roiled up that accuracy suffers. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-before-society-develops-a-working-phaser/668577/28 "2013-09-12T00:17:47Z")
> [@beowulff](#): > > OK, this is a bit off-topic, but the > [Phaser Type I](http://media.liveauctiongroup.net/i/11189/11537496_2.jpg?v=8CE77139E33D6A0) was palm-sized. > > It attached to the power-pack and amplifier to create the larger, pistol-sized Phaser Type II. Not off-topic, but I’ve already said it above. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-before-society-develops-a-working-phaser/668577/29 "2013-09-12T00:22:03Z")
> [@The\_Man\_In\_Black](#): > > Out of curiosity, do you think in 200 years (about the time Star Trek:OS takes place) we could build such a device? Is there a hard limit on how much energy you can store in a battery of a given size? I think it is fundamentally unlikely that an electrochemical battery will ever have sufficient energy density or power throughput to provide sufficient power for a handheld or even man-portable directed energy weapon. It is possible that advances with supercapacitors could although that would basically be like carrying a vial of nitroglycerine around on your belt. Metastable chemical isomers (high energy configurations in the electron shell of an element or molecule) can be and are used for some high energy lasers (albeit taking up the size of a large room or jumbo jet fuselage) but all of the high energy chemical isomers I know of are highly reactive and require cryogenic conditions to keep them from immediatley decaying. A more exotic possibility is a nuclear isomer “battery” in which the energy is stored in a metastable configuration of the atomic nucleus. Most nuclear isomers have decay half-lives on the order of microseconds or picoseconds, but if you could somehow ‘freeze’ the state of the atom to maintain stability (which is beyond even speculative energy storage technology) it would be possible to achieve the kind of energy densities to allow realistic man-portable directed energy weapons. The problem of dealing with the thermodynamic inefficienies and resulting massive heat buildup, on the other hand, may prove a more fundamental problem than the power supply as well. If you can only fire your weapon once or twice before the waste heat turns it into a white-hot puddle of slag it doesn’t do you much good. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-before-society-develops-a-working-phaser/668577/30 "2013-09-12T00:29:11Z")
> [@aNewLeaf](#): > > The initial, visible, pulse is laser light that ionizes the air in a straight path. > then, so quickly that turbulence hasn’t started, you fire your energy bolt down that line of plasma. Uh huh. Any laser powerful enough to ionize a channel of air sufficient to direct a high voltage discharge–essentially, creating a tube of plasma–will also do explosive thermal damage to the target. The actual eletrical pulse wiill be entirely incidental to the damage done to the target by the laser. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![TSBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@TSBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TSBG)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-before-society-develops-a-working-phaser/668577/31 "2013-09-12T00:32:41Z")
> [@aNewLeaf](#): > > The initial, visible, pulse is laser light that ionizes the air in a straight path. > then, so quickly that turbulence hasn’t started, you fire your energy bolt down that line of plasma. > > This explains why they keep missing if they don’t make the first shot- the air is so roiled up that accuracy suffers. This sounds somewhat like what I described above, except with an “energy bolt” (=electric current?) instead of a “sonic bolt”–quite possibly what I half-remembered is what New Leaf describes. But is this actually possible at all, or scifi? ETA, Stranger’s response above is kind of what I was thinking, he posted before me. And I suppose there’s no way to get that much laser power from a handheld weapon. ---
**Author:** ![aNewLeaf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ac91a4/32.png) [@aNewLeaf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aNewLeaf)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-before-society-develops-a-working-phaser/668577/32 "2013-09-12T00:36:42Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > Uh huh. Any laser powerful enough to ionize a channel of air sufficient to direct a high voltage discharge–essentially, creating a tube of plasma–will also do explosive thermal damage to the target. The actual eletrical pulse wiill be entirely incidental to the damage done to the target by the laser. > > Stranger It’s all good then. Just need a power supply. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-before-society-develops-a-working-phaser/668577/33 "2013-09-12T00:44:09Z")
> [@TSBG](#): > > And I suppose there’s no way to get that much laser power from a handheld weapon. Not with any existing energy storage medium, nor could you construct a lasing medium and excitation system with sufficient energy density in a handheld weapon. > [@aNewLeaf](#): > > It’s all good then. Just need a power supply. Sure, if you want something like the weapon in _District 9_ which causes the target to explode in a big bloody sploosh. Not so much for ‘stun’. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Huvudtvatt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Huvudtvatt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Huvudtvatt)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-before-society-develops-a-working-phaser/668577/34 "2013-09-12T00:51:44Z")
> [@beowulff](#): > > OK, this is a bit off-topic, but the > [Phaser Type I](http://media.liveauctiongroup.net/i/11189/11537496_2.jpg?v=8CE77139E33D6A0) was palm-sized. > > It attached to the power-pack and amplifier to create the larger, pistol-sized Phaser Type II. Thanks for the clarification guys. You are right, I was thinking about the Type II Phaser then. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-before-society-develops-a-working-phaser/668577/35 "2013-09-12T01:02:24Z")
Actually, if what you desire is a ranged weapon which can immobilize a target with minimal chance of permanent harm, a gel projectile containing a regulated neurotoxin with solvent that would allow it to rapidly penetrate through skin is probably the most feasible. It would not be instantaneous, of course, and would only work against exposed skin or light clothing, but there are existing toxins which can cause almost complete loss of neurological function within seconds of entering the bloodstream. If you could tailor such a substance or have targeted delivery such that it temporarily disables function of the somatic nervous system but leaves the autonomic system and spinal cord unimpaired. It would still probably be incredibly painful and/or terrifying (like when you wake up with sleep paralysis) but potentially workable with only modest advances in biochemical knowledge and technology. It’s not as cool as a phaser, but you also won’t paint the room with protoplasm if you forget to change the setting to ‘Stun’ Stranger ---
**Author:** ![The\_Man\_In\_Black](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bcef8e/32.png) [@The\_Man\_In\_Black](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Man_In_Black)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-before-society-develops-a-working-phaser/668577/36 "2013-09-12T02:11:41Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > I think it is fundamentally unlikely that an electrochemical battery will ever have sufficient energy density or power throughput to provide sufficient power for a handheld or even man-portable directed energy weapon. It is possible that advances with supercapacitors could although that would basically be like carrying a vial of nitroglycerine around on your belt. Metastable chemical isomers (high energy configurations in the electron shell of an element or molecule) can be and are used for some high energy lasers (albeit taking up the size of a large room or jumbo jet fuselage) but all of the high energy chemical isomers I know of are highly reactive and require cryogenic conditions to keep them from immediatley decaying. > > A more exotic possibility is a nuclear isomer “battery” in which the energy is stored in a metastable configuration of the atomic nucleus. Most nuclear isomers have decay half-lives on the order of microseconds or picoseconds, but if you could somehow ‘freeze’ the state of the atom to maintain stability (which is beyond even speculative energy storage technology) it would be possible to achieve the kind of energy densities to allow realistic man-portable directed energy weapons. > > The problem of dealing with the thermodynamic inefficienies and resulting massive heat buildup, on the other hand, may prove a more fundamental problem than the power supply as well. If you can only fire your weapon once or twice before the waste heat turns it into a white-hot puddle of slag it doesn’t do you much good. > > Stranger Thanks for the reply. ---
**Author:** ![pkbites](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pkbites/32/204_2.png) [@pkbites](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pkbites)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 8:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-before-society-develops-a-working-phaser/668577/37 "2013-09-12T08:20:04Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > So then you can explain how this “wireless taser” can conduct a controlled high voltage current across a dielectric gas of variable capacitance and conductivity at significant distances? Yes, I can. But at $100K per share only to my stockholders, Mr. Duell. ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 9:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-before-society-develops-a-working-phaser/668577/38 "2013-09-12T09:04:00Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > Actually, if what you desire is a ranged weapon which can immobilize a target with minimal chance of permanent harm, a gel projectile containing a regulated neurotoxin with solvent that would allow it to rapidly penetrate through skin is probably the most feasible. Some science fiction authors have postulated a gun that would fire needles made of a crystalline anesthetic, which would dissolve in the wound and knock out the target. I first ran across the idea in Larry Niven’s books, but I don’t know if he invented it. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-before-society-develops-a-working-phaser/668577/39 "2013-09-12T14:26:05Z")
> [@mbh](#): > > Some science fiction authors have postulated a gun that would fire needles made of a crystalline anesthetic, which would dissolve in the wound and knock out the target. I first ran across the idea in Larry Niven’s books, but I don’t know if he invented it. The “sliver gun” concept definitely pre-dates Niven (I think first appearance was in _A Gift from Earth_ but I could be mistaken) but I can’t cite the specific origin offhand. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-before-society-develops-a-working-phaser/668577/40 "2013-09-12T17:50:42Z")
> [@](#): > > The “sliver gun” concept definitely pre-dates Niven (I think first appearance was in A Gift from Earth but I could be mistaken) _A Gift from Earth_ was by Niven. Did you mean to say that that was the earliest appearance in Niven’s works, but that it showed up in someone else’s works before that? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-before-society-develops-a-working-phaser/668577.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-before-society-develops-a-working-phaser/668577.md?page=3)