What if the incoming hazard is a laser
What's the most realistic possibility for 'energy shields' on a ship...
Evan Barnes
Noah Wood
haha, then you are fucked. Photons are uncharged m8. Get a first surface (a special type of mirror) or some sort of ablation / absorber made of VANTAblack perhaps.
Austin Watson
The wave equation for photons is linear.
That means two light beams go right through each other without change. Light or magnetism won't stop light or deflect light.
Vantablack is the LAST thing you want. It'll soak up all the energy and vaporize -- or transmit it to the backing structure. Which is what the enemy wants to happen to your ship.
White or mirrored surfaces bounce incoming light away. Unfortunately, they're also lousy at radiating the heat generated within your own ship by the engines, the crew, the drive, the lasers, etc. A perfect mirror would be immune to laser weapons. But you'd cook anyway.
Zachary Foster
maybe you can work in a gauge such that [math]\hat\Phi[/math] points to a place five meters from the centroid of your ship and then have a generator shunts energy into the [math]\hat\Phi[/math]-channel
Jaxon Butler
There is actual research being done to protect satellites from space debris with a plasma shield around them.
Lincoln Rivera
Hide.
If you cant cook them before you are well cooked.
Tyler Scott
plasma shielding is a lot more reasonable than using strictly a mega tesla magnetic field
Ian Gonzalez
I'd imagine a countermeasure could be a battery that shoots dielectric cateyes into the beam's path.
Jeremiah Baker
A plasma shield might stop charged particles; cosmic rays and solar flares. They carry (individually) great energy but little momentum.
A plasma shield has little mass and won't stop a bullet.
Started an SF novel wherein ships fire 10 kg masses at each other at 1/10th lightspeed.
Electromagnetic coil guns.
The ranges are such that a shot takes 5 or 6 seconds to span the gap.
Main defense is random "jinking" so the shots miss.
This is so absurd that I'm undecided whether to continue.
Blake Jackson
What about em or albucarre based "fields". Where the space around the projectile is warped so when the projectile hits the shield space will have expanded and contracted to deflect or change the projectiles path away from the ship.