Phasers
Phasers
Starship phasers
The ship-board phaser is known to have existed for a long time. The original variety of the ship-mounted phaser was known as the phaser bank, which fired from a single point on a ship's exterior and required a short period to recharge between discharges. This was eventually replaced with the phaser array or strip, a long, shallow device imbedded within a ship's hull. This was composed of short sections, each of which contained facilities for receiving, adding to, passing on, and firing a phaser charge. The phaser strip functioned by having its two end segments each create a phaser charge; these were passed along the sections, each adding to one of the charges, until they met at the center segment, which aimed and fired the combined charge. The firing segment could be changed by instructing the sections receiving one of the charges to operate more slowly than the others. A third, less common variety, seen on such ships as the type-one Miranda class and the Defiant class, is the pulse phaser cannon. This device is a phaser bank which features a length of focusing coils, which slow the front of a beam and form the charge into a layered sphere before it leaves the cannon. A light phaser array or phaser bank, such as those seen on a Saber class starship. The phaser is the standard Federation beam weapon system.1 The Federation divides weapons into Type classifications; a Type 1 phaser is a small weapon which fits into the palm of the hand, a Type 2 is a larger hand-held variant2, while a Type 3 is a rifle style weapon.3 Phaser hand weapons came into service c.2260, replacing the laser pistols then in service.4 Larger version had been in service on board Starships for at least ten years before this.5 Phaser is an acronym for PHASed Energy Rectification, a term which referred to the original process by which stored or supplied energy was converted to another form for release toward the target without any need for an intermediate energy transformation. Although this term is something of a holdover, it remains true in modern phaser systems.6
Phaser energy is released by the rapid nadion effect. Rapid nadions are short lived subatomic particles which can liberate and transfer strong nuclear forces within a class of crystals called fushigi-no-umi.6
Phasers have various distinct effects on the target. At low settings the beam causes pain and loss of consciousness in most beings.7 At higher levels a great deal of thermal energy is imparted to the target, causing significant heating - phasers can heat rock to 8,0000C.7 Phasers can also be set to nuclear disruption5, and phaser beams can carry physical objects such as nanoprobes.8 Phaser weapons can be set to fire narrow beams9, wide beams10, long pulses11, or short pulses - the latter can even be set to proximity blast if required.12 Federation phaser weapons are enourmously powerful - even a small hand unit is capable of blasting the whole side off a building.13Various models have been used over the years; several designs allow a Type 1 unit to be plugged into a handgrip to form the Type 2.7 In early models the large phasers carried by starships were mounted as single element weapons, known as a phaser bank.14 More modern weapons group weapons into multi-element arrays. These use force coupling to allow the energy of one emitter to be transferred almost instantly to another - a process which can be repeated along arrays of almost limitless size.6 The effects of a Federation Type 1, 2 and 3 weapons are according to a 16 level scale. Settings 1-3 cover stun effects; at levels higher than 7 the majority of phaser energy is in the form of nuclear disruption. A large portion of the target is simultaneously vaporized and transitioned out of the continuum, a process which is instantly fatal. The higher power settings available with Type 3 phasers (setting 9+) cause severe damage over a wide area. These settings are rarely used because of the relatively high power consumption; a single setting 10 discharge uses more than twenty five times as much energy as a setting 7 discharge, while a setting 16 discharge uses over three hundred and fifteen times as much.15
Info from : http://www.ditl.org/
