AQS Talk

[Jorahl 0]

Did a little looking into the whole Hawking radiation thing and some of the practical ideas behind an Artificial Quantum Singularity power source.

 

First, the thought that an AQS could get free and cause a world destroying black hole is unfounded. As I think Tachyon mentioned the smaller the singularity the more radiation it produces. This apparently is because beyond a certain mass the radiation can't escape it's gravity. One thing I read said a singularity with the mass of the moon would be in equilibrium, basically anything more massive than the moon would not produce any energy and anything less will.

 

It would then seem the AQS power core would be a balance between power output and longevity. Smaller would mean more power and less effect on ship performance and mass. But you get too small and your power grid would be in constant overload and the core would evaporate quickly. You see the more radiation it produces the smaller the core becomes and then even more radiation is produced, thereby increasing the rate of shrinking and power output. A basic cascading overload situation. Your AQS core would then need to be massive enough that after a good long service lifetime the core is still not in danger of going critical in this manner.

 

In the article I was looking at it also spoke of the possibility of creating a micro singularity to test for the pressence of Hawking radiation. So, creating an AQS isn't that far fetched. The ones they were talking about would be so small that they would evaporate quicker than they could draw in new matter. This would probably also be the case for an overloading AQS core. While it might try and suck the ship and surrounding area into itself it would be losing mass as radiation quicker than it could gain mass. As the AQS died there would either be an explosion or a sudden burst of gamma rays or both. Either of these are probably what would destroy the ship... not the gravity.

 

This doesn't mean the AQS is harmless. You could probably drop a standard AQS into a sun and the core would begin to suck in the stellar mass. It would grow, increasing it's gravity thereby increasing the rate of eating up the sun until you have a black hole with the mass of the sun. But what exactly would that mean? We're still talking about a set total sum of mass. If the sun is the size of a nickel does that suddenly mean it has enough gravity to suck all the planets into itself? The true science people out there might have the answer to that. My thoughts are it would not. The singularity nature of things I believe would mean the sun would go black, no more thermal radiation, and the worlds would all freeze very quickly. But, they would still revolve in their orbits. That's at least my guess.

 

Then, is a matter/anti-matter reactor that much safer or better? We know from Trek canon that these cores produce hazardous waste. Personally, antimatter would scare me to death. There are so many times in Star Trek where the ship loses power and all systems go down. One little brown out in the antimatter pods shielding and it's all over with. You're literally riding around in a bomb waiting to go off. The system also has a lot of moving parts, integrated systems, and simply put a whole bunch of things to go wrong. You have your fuel to haul around which if you look at the cross section of the Enterprise-D, the deuterium tanks are massive and must effect ship performance. Then you have all the times the dilithium crystals give out, injectors fail or stick open, coolant systems leak.... my word the things more like driving a Pinto then a state of the art spaceship!

[Mreh K'hal 0]

Then, is a matter/anti-matter reactor that much safer or better? We know from Trek canon that these cores produce hazardous waste. Personally, antimatter would scare me to death. There are so many times in Star Trek where the ship loses power and all systems go down. One little brown out in the antimatter pods shielding and it's all over with. You're literally riding around in a bomb waiting to go off. The system also has a lot of moving parts, integrated systems, and simply put a whole bunch of things to go wrong. You have your fuel to haul around which if you look at the cross section of the Enterprise-D, the deuterium tanks are massive and must effect ship performance. Then you have all the times the dilithium crystals give out, injectors fail or stick open, coolant systems leak.... my word the things more like driving a Pinto then a state of the art spaceship!

 

The M/AM reaction doesn't create any waste materials, though depending on the efficiency of the unit may waste energy. When a particle of matter collides with a particle of anti-matter, the process completely turns the fuels to energy, hence its use as a power source. The dilithium crystals control the 1:1 intermix reaction, and the energy created is used to turn another flow of deuterium into plasma, which is routed to the warp nacelles or through the ship to be tapped (though why Starfleet engineers always seem to route an EPS conduit right behind/under/over manned consoles escapes me). Its much more fuel intensive and inefficient compared to an AQS, though the problem of post-reacton containment result is equally difficult on a ship with AQS, which creates highly energized quantum particles as the means of energy which need to be routed/stored and tapped outside of the actual AQS unit. Either way there is post-reaction containment of energetic particles, though plasma would probably be safer than highly energized quantum particles.

 

Some of the other hazardous materials involved besides plasma involved are the fuels themselves (deuterium by itself isn't any more of a problem than standard hydrogen, but in chemical reactions can create toxic compounds, heavy water for one, and of course anti-deuterium is just not good to have around normal matter because of the anti-matter effect). The coolant required to keep the equipment around the reaction core itself from immolating is the most toxic material involved, witnessed of course by the melting of the Wicked Witch... erm, Borg Queen in First Contact. The coolant seems to be an issue that engineers should try to fix using a different technology, as you'd think they'd be beyond having to install a radiator by the 24th Century. More advanced use of force fields or something else entirely. Advantage there goes to the AQS system, which uses field containment and structural integrity features only.

 

The containment of the anti-matter itself is an issue, but the danger between anti-matter containment and a quantum singularity containment seem to be about equal, as loss of containment of either equals boomage, and use the same basic principles with different configurations. Containment of either takes up a good chunk of the energy produced by either of the power systems. The advantage of a M/ARA is that it can be shut down, while you're stuck with an AQS whether you like it or not.

 

As for the fuel cargo, even though deuterium is heavier than plain Hydrogen, it's not by much and wouldn't account for a great deal of the ship's overall mass and wouldn't be any more complicated than deuterium storage is today. Those stores also go to fuel the fusion reactors on board. Most of the deuterium would either go to the fusion reactors or for creating the plasma in the M/ARA reaction. Post-processing of the spent plasma would allow for recycling of the materials, though what percentage could be re-used I'm not sure about. Most sources I've seen seem to say that the impulse engines use plasma from the nearby fusion power systems, but I see no reason that plasma generated by the M/ARA reaction wouldn't be routed to the impulse engines as well, as that's a much more efficient plasma generator than the fusion systems which would be the most fuel intensive and inefficient. Even Romulan vessels with AQS still use deuterium fueled sublight drives, so would have the same problems with needing tanks.

 

Any way you slice it, generating power on the levels needed on a starship is going to be dangerous, and there are advantages and disadvantages to any system. For more "local" ships I think the M/ARA would be more ideal, as refueling isn't a problem if you're in your own neighborhood and the versatility of the system would outweigh the high initial start-up costs of an AQS. Long-term or long-distance vessels would benefit more from the AQS ability to sustain itself.

[Jorahl 0]

The M/AM reaction doesn't create any waste materials,

 

In the episode "Starship Mine" we had people trying to swipe trilithium resin, which was described as a toxic waste material from the ship's warp core. A Trek tech fact born more for plot purpose then realism most likely. The matter/antimatter reaction should creature pure energy and nothing else. I would guess that the waste is actually from something else involved in thre whole process, probably from dilithium.

 

One possible work around with the AQS always producing energy is to up the mass again to something which does not release Hawking radiation. Then you either use some Trek tech gizmo (tunneling cochrane field siphon) to draw the radiation out or perhaps throw a warpfield around the core which is suppose to reduce mass and therefor push the AQS over the equilibrium line so that it now releases energy. All that probably however creates more problems than it solved.

 

One beauty of the AQS is it's containment field is directly powered by the core itself. If all power is cut from the core and to the core the containment fields stay powered and in fact the fields would increase in strength because power is going nowhere BUT to field containment. Containment can only be lost if the AQS shuts down which it can't or the containment field generators are directly destroyed.

 

This is probably how the AQS goes critical in the episode "Next Phase". Memory Alpha mentions that the core pressure increases so they have to eject it. Enough of the containment fields must have failed that the ones left were overloading from the power input and strain of compensating for the lost fields. The physical shielding then began to buckle under the pressure and this is the "boom" seen after the core is ejected.

 

Thinking about it perhaps an AQS can be enveloped in sometype of negative warp field. The warp field is suppose to decrease mass as mentioned in the episode "Deja Q". Is something could be done to increase the mass you might be able to shove the AQS back over the point where the Hawking radiation escapes. You would then have a non-power producing AQS. Release the field and you're back to normal output. I'm sure there's a lot of field balancing that goes into play here however energy output is handled.

[Mreh K'hal 0]

In the episode "Starship Mine" we had people trying to swipe trilithium resin, which was described as a toxic waste material from the ship's warp core. A Trek tech fact born more for plot purpose then realism most likely. The matter/antimatter reaction should creature pure energy and nothing else. I would guess that the waste is actually from something else involved in thre whole process, probably from dilithium.

 

I figured that was the episode in question, and that's one of those that seems to run counter to every other episode's technobabble about what happens in the reaction chamber. Geordi had the RC open more than once on TNG and there was never any other mention of having to deal with something like that, so that may be one of those that only happens when the warp core is operating inefficiently or the dilithium crystal is degrading, or can be thrown out of the technical book as an inconsistent plot device. If it routinely created such a dangerous substance you'd expect Starfleet to have a security detail staring at the thing 24/7 and the Maquis would've been trying to slip into every starship in the quadrant to get some.