On the Lamplighter, How does it work?

[DehAtomSmasher]

Being a science geek, i love hearing about future weapons and high-tech devices which i mostly see on games like Transcendence and movies like Star trek, Star wars, and other space themed sci-fi. What if we achieved such technology in the future? how will it work?.

My Theory
I think it will be somewhat related to particle and positron cannons, combined. and uses a magnetic interior that repels the antimatter and prevents it from touching the inside, because antimatter, as we know it, annihilates matter which could destroy the weapon and kill the user. I shared my thoughts, how about yours?

[PM]

In game or theoretical future Earth? In game, effects made up by the program. As far as I am concerned, it is damage X of type Y that interacts with enemies' defense Z. If programmer cannot think of something to explain it, make up some nonsense and call it a day.

[EditorRUS]

I think there's nothing hard.

If we take in account that in future they have energy fields (shields) researched and being used everywhere, then containing antimatter becomes easy. Just take a chunk of antimatter (antimatter acts like common matter, except it's explosion when collided with matter or, maybe, antigravity effect) and put between four energy fields:

----
|@|
----

- | - Fields
@ - antimatter.

So, accelerating of antimatter can be easily permormed just by moving one of energy fields. I assume that the deflectors - it's just a field that bow out any particle.

Antimatter can be created by accelerating some particles to some value of energy, but, of course, to even make a gram of antimatter we need extremaly big amount of energy.

[sun1404]

If that's how you contain and control the antimatter, according to the game, you'd need a very strong energy field (shield). Even the Kaidun, a level 9 shield with huge amount of durability, falls quickly when fired at by the Lamplighter. Even the Iocrym's best shield (seen, at least) fares badly against sustained Lamplighter fires. If you use shield-like energy fields to control the antimatter then it has to be stronger than an ancient race's best shield.

IMO, a more efficient way would be to use some kind of artificial gravity, or even magnetic power, if the antimatter has magnetic properties. Considering living in space stations is normal, and that graviton is the next level of weaponry, making a specialized gravity mechanism to contain and control the antimatter shouldn't be too hard. We don't need super strong gravity, because no other forces are affecting the antimatter, we just need a little gravity that can originate from many directions (relative to the antimatter. The generators could be in the weapon's chamber walls) and for shooting the antimatter out, either use particularly strong burst from the gravity generators (the shots aren't really fast in the game), or just make the antimatter accelerate inside the weapon, gathering velocity, like in a particle accelerator, flying in circles or a spiral, and collapse the system to let the antimatter out.

[Autohummer]

I actually would like to know how much energy the Lamplighter takes to create antimatter to use as a projectile and how much of it is actually converted to antimatter and shot out of the ship. This is because I don't think it uses ammo (that means no external antimatter source), I assume the ship's reactors' energy is used to create antimatter.

The theory that I go with in normal gameplay is that the Lamplighter works with a long pole, wax, oil, a wick, and a fire.

[Atarlost]

Xenotite is an exotic matter fuel that contains or converts into antimatter and all fuels higher up are either similar or used in ZPE generators. ZPE involves the creation of matter/antimatter pairs as a byproduct.

While it is theoretically possible to run the Lamplighter on He3 using an SN2500 it is extremely inefficient and antimatter can therefore be assumed to be available as part of normal reactor operation for simplicity's sake.

[EditorRUS]

IMO, a more efficient way would be to use some kind of artificial gravity, or even magnetic power, if the antimatter has magnetic properties. Considering living in space stations is normal, and that graviton is the next level of weaponry, making a specialized gravity mechanism to contain and control the antimatter shouldn't be too hard. We don't need super strong gravity, because no other forces are affecting the antimatter, we just need a little gravity that can originate from many directions (relative to the antimatter. The generators could be in the weapon's chamber walls) and for shooting the antimatter out, either use particularly strong burst from the gravity generators (the shots aren't really fast in the game), or just make the antimatter accelerate inside the weapon, gathering velocity, like in a particle accelerator, flying in circles or a spiral, and collapse the system to let the antimatter out.

Do you know that artificial gravity can be created at the moment?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7WJ9FPEYU4

Just by spinning. I assume that artificial gravity at the stations is being made by spinning, not by a device that creates gravity otherwise there would be weapons which are shatter target easily, but there's only one weapon actually can do that - the iocrym manipulator device, that even don't have ship-version.

[sun1404]

From what I know, that is actually centrifugal force, not gravity. Although it can be adapted to pull things onto a space station's wall/floor, it will not radiate further than the spinning object's volume. While perfectly enough for a station's artificial gravity substitution, it would be rather tricky to use for controlling antimatter, while not letting it touch the chamber's wall (using multiple layers of freely-spinning rings or cylinders might be possible, but very hard still.), and impossible to use as a weapon, like the graviton weapons in the game. The main difference would be that centrifugal force moves objects away from the center, but gravity moves objects into the center. Also, from that earlier properties, centrifugal force will affect an object from every directions, but gravity can affect an object from just one direction.

Also, I think centrifugal force will only affect an object that is spinning with the container, so if you are in deep space, and put a water ball inside a large jar, not letting them touch each other, then spin the jar, the water will just float in the center, not being pulled into the sides.

[Ultimate Chicken]

Antimatter (and Positron) weapons are essentially rail guns. They should be because:

"The second problem is the containment of antimatter. Antimatter annihilates with regular matter on contact, so it would be necessary to prevent contact, for example by producing antimatter in the form of solid charged or magnetized particles, and suspending them using electromagnetic fields in near-perfect vacuum. Another, more hypothetical method is the storage of antiprotons inside fullerenes. The negatively charged antiprotons would repel the electron cloud around the sphere of carbon, so they could not get near enough to the normal protons to annihilate with them."

CF: Antimatter Weapon, wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter_weapon.

(Which also says that technically a Positron weapon is quite difficult to create, even if Positrons are more easily created than Antiprotons and thus Positron and Plasma are on the same tier.)

The problem here is that with the exception of Dragonballs-- uh, Longzhus, antimatter containment is tricky business outside of a starship reactor. It's far safer to start with matter, THEN convert into antimatter. Most fuels in the game all the way to Petracnium and Hadron Vacuum are matter; exotic matter that pays for its own conversion in a way, but still matter.