Why are they needed? I mean if you use a powerful magnetic field wouldn't that be enough to contain the matter/anti-matter reaction?
Why are those crystals needed at all?
Why are those crystals needed at all?
Dilithium Crystals -- What's the Point?
- Thread starter CuttingEdge100
- Start date
All Seeing Eye
Admiral
The crystals convert the explosion into energy that can be used, it's not used to simply contain the explosion.
ProtoAvatar
Fleet Captain
They sound cool. That's why they were introduced.
How can one rationalize their appearance?
M/AM reactions produce gamma rays(~40%) and neutrinos (~60%).
Gamma rays are immediately usable, without any magical dilithium crystals.
Neutrinos - not so much. They'll just disperse into space without interacting with anything. Let's say the dilithium crystals are there to convert neutrinos into an usable form of energy, greatly increasing the M/AM reactor's efficiency.
How can one rationalize their appearance?
M/AM reactions produce gamma rays(~40%) and neutrinos (~60%).
Gamma rays are immediately usable, without any magical dilithium crystals.
Neutrinos - not so much. They'll just disperse into space without interacting with anything. Let's say the dilithium crystals are there to convert neutrinos into an usable form of energy, greatly increasing the M/AM reactor's efficiency.
Electroplasma!
Magnetic containment isn't that easy. It's difficult to create a stable containment bottle, to get the fields in the right configuration and keep them strong enough to contain the particles. The idea behind dilithium (as devised by Sternbach & Okuda during TNG) is that its crystalline lattice makes an ideal containment vessel when immersed in a powerful magnetic field. The atoms of the crystal magnetically suspend and channel the particles and antiparticles between them. This would also facilitate the reaction, since protons and antiprotons are very small and if they were just swirling around in a big open space, they'd rarely collide at all (meaning the "swirl chamber" design from TMP and VGR is actually rather silly, no matter how cool it looks). The dilithium crystal lattice forces the particles and antiparticles into contact and thus makes the reaction far more efficient.
Moreover, it helps to contain and focus the energetic particles that result from the reaction, channeling them into a plasma stream that can be directed to the warp engines.
Of course, the real reason they use dilithium is that TOS's writers made up (di)lithium crystals as a plot McGuffin without bothering with the technical details, and later creators had to work with what they were given.
In regards to the 'swirl chamber'... wasn't Rick's explanation that the chamber walls were lined with dilithium? Perhaps the electromagnetically charged dilithium lining might draw the reactants into the crystal lattice and thus into contact, with the resulting energetic plasma released back into the center of the chamber. The plasma stream would then be channeled 'downstream' through the shaft to the engines.
(I don't know if that could actually be made to work--just spitballing.)
--g
^I do recall Rick mentioning that the walls were lined with dilithium, yes. Although that introduces a bit of a paradox, since I think he said the lining was done with vapor deposition, and if they could vapor-deposit dilithium at the time (which is basically growing crystals atom by atom), why couldn't they recrystallize it prior to TVH?
The dilithium crystal is used to tune the reaction. Lower freqs come up, high ones come down, and those tuned freqs work better with the materials in the nacelle coils. Howzat?
Rick
www.spacemodelsystems.com
^ And there are certainly more than a few hints of this fuction during TOS, going back as far as "Mudd's Women".
Will a magnetic field confine a photon?
No. Photons have no charge. Indeed, photons are the carriers of electromagnetic force in the first place, so they're basically made of electric and magnetic fields, or are wave packets within those fields.
That's what I thought.
They contain and focus the reaction, while not being effected by it as both the matter and antimatter can pass through the crystals without actually touching it, so it's more managable.
Meta - It's "treknobabble" to make it work while at the same time not claiming to be "real." So with dilithium they can say, "See we're not really saying you can go FTL with matter/antimatter reactions becasue the dilithium plays a role in making it all work!
"
^That's an after-the-fact justification. The real metatextual answer is, "lithium crystals" were invented in "Mudd's Women" purely as a McGuffin, something the ship needed to function and had run out of, putting them in a crisis and requiring them to seek out "lithium miners" in order to advance the plot. At the time, they hadn't even settled on matter/antimatter as the power source of the ship (that clearly didn't happen until after "The Alternative Factor"). They were making stuff up as they went, and it served the needs of that particular story to claim that the ship required some special mineral to function properly, because it served to bring Mudd's women into contact with some lonely miners and leave Kirk and the Enterprise at their mercy.
And once that was established, later episodes had to stick with it, though they tweaked the name of the crystals to something less mundane. "Alternative Factor" even claimed the crystals were the source of the ship's power rather than a component of the circuits that channeled it as in "Mudd's Women." But then, their science researchers pointed out that matter/antimatter power would be the best energy source for the ship, so they started referencing that in the scripts, so dilithium went back to being a means of channeling power. And then, decades later, Sternbach and Okuda took that accumulated conceptual baggage and tried to come up with a reasonable-sounding explanation for why dilithium was needed.
And once that was established, later episodes had to stick with it, though they tweaked the name of the crystals to something less mundane. "Alternative Factor" even claimed the crystals were the source of the ship's power rather than a component of the circuits that channeled it as in "Mudd's Women." But then, their science researchers pointed out that matter/antimatter power would be the best energy source for the ship, so they started referencing that in the scripts, so dilithium went back to being a means of channeling power. And then, decades later, Sternbach and Okuda took that accumulated conceptual baggage and tried to come up with a reasonable-sounding explanation for why dilithium was needed.
This is very true, and always important to bear in mind.
During TNG, Sternbach, Okuda et al stated (unofficially... ie, in the TNG TM) that dilithium is used to "moderate" the reaction... which really isn't quite the right term (since "moderate" usually means "help bring together" in this sense... and instead, the dilithium is really helping to keep them apart. Or rather... it ensures that the reaction is "on particle at a time" or something to that effect... a relatively small, continuous stream of energy instead of a single massive BLAST.
I don't personally prefer that explanation, by the way... I'm just restating one of the more popular "conceits" about what Dilithium does.
In my "personal canon," Dilithium is something entirely different. I base this upon my own personal interpretation of everything I've seen in TOS and TAS, and less on what came along afterwards. But it fits everything seen in TOS and TAS, and isn't directly contradictory with anything seen on-screen in TNG or other TNG-era shows (although it is contradictory to what's in the TNG TM).
See, for me, I look at the TOS crystal, which was a flat "slab" of crystal with a pair of terminal knobs cut into the crystal at either end. This sort of configuration for materials is not unheard of in real electronics design... and was more common at the time of TOS (when all components were "discrete" and the concept of the "integrated circuit" was still just a concept, not reality).
The "dilithium crystal" seen in TOS looks very much like a photodiode might.
A photodiode is the exact opposite of an L.E.D. With an L.E.D, you put voltage in, and get light out. With a photodiode, you put light in and get voltage out.
When I see this TOS crystal, I see a device that, if subjected to certain types of high-energy radiation (and we know pretty well what EM output a matter/antimatter reaction produces, because we've experimentally determined the answer), produces a high output voltage.
We know (from "sparks and electrical shorts" and so forth) that the TOS Enterprise uses, at least in SOME situations, and frankly, it seems to be in virtually ALL situations, "simple electricity" as the primary internal power source.
This is not unreasonable. Electrical power distribution is a pretty fundamental "laws of nature" thing... used by nature, used in our brains and bodies, used in all of our technology. There is no REASONABLE argument by which you could conclude that "they won't use electricity in the future" which wouldn't be a clear, "bad science fiction conceit."
SO... to me... dilithium crystals are the means by which the high-energy reaction products from the matter/antimatter annihilation reaction are converted into usable energy (in the form of some type of electrical power).
However... in the end... Christopher is correct. Dilithium crystals are a McGuffin, nothing more.
"Elaan of Troyius" shows they'd at least firmed up the position of dilithium in the whole process, especially when the crudely shaped crystals of Elaan's necklace were shown to have some interesting effects on the energy flow, most notably by the flickering lights on Scotty's console on the bridge.
To be sure, Kirk said they were "the very heart of the power" of his ship. They were shown to emit some sort of distinct radiation on their own, but the episode doesn't necessarily establish them as power sources or net producers of power or anything like that. For all we know, antimatter was already decided upon as the power source of the ship, but the right moment to express that in technobabble would not come until more than a season later... Dilithium crystals as a key commodity were simply a preestablished Trek fact the writers could use in "Alternative Factor", without assigning any further role or characteristics to said commodity.
Timo Saloniemi
Rick Sternbach,
Why not just use the dilithium as part of the warp-nacelles being required to regulate the warp-field rather than regulate the matter/anti-matter reaction? That seems to make a lot more sense if you ask me...
Christopher,
Sounds like it -- a plot device that they ended up getting stuck with, LOL.
CuttingEdge100
Why not just use the dilithium as part of the warp-nacelles being required to regulate the warp-field rather than regulate the matter/anti-matter reaction? That seems to make a lot more sense if you ask me...
Christopher,
Sounds like it -- a plot device that they ended up getting stuck with, LOL.
CuttingEdge100
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