Which is itself a problematic concept. A protostar of 0.01 solar masses – a typical size during the early phase of collapse, though still too small to sustain fusion – would have a Schwarzchild radius of almost 30 metres. Crushing it into a sphere a couple of metres across would turn it into a black hole.
Trek isn't consistent with real science most of the time.
I think this might be one of those instances in which UFP shrunk the Protostar to a size of a core we saw in the show and is supposed to be a Protostar with all the energy it gives out.
The Hirogen subspace relay station used a tiny quantum singularity as a power source... about 2 cm in diameter.
Its containment field was unstable which emitted gravitational waves, and the crew sent out a shuttle to reinforce it which did stabilize it.
Near the end of the episode, VOY intentionally destabilized the containment to level the playing field with the Hirogen... eventually, the field collapsed and the singularity was exposed... and it seemed like it 'grew' in size by many times.
I think the effect here was similar. Use a containment field to keep an interstellar object (like a black hole or a protostar) in a small enough spherical unit, but with the ability to emit large amounts of energy.
If the containment field goes... it would result in a full fledged protostar to form (most likely) - similar to what happened when that subspace relay station containment field collapsed.
So why use a protostar in that case? If you can do that, build an array of dozens of miniaturised warp cores and let rip.
Warp cores require dilithium for regulating M/AM reactions. Protostar in a certain sense is self-sustaining or at least in this instance SF must have seen some kind of potential for energy use so the ship can use Proto Warp.
The miniaturisation in DS9: "One Little Ship" seems to proportionally reduce the energy output of the runabout too. Photon torpedoes are barely powerful enough to kill a Jem'Hadar, whereas if they'd retained their full-scale destructive power they'd blow the Defiant apart from the inside. Remember, Bashir points out to O'Brien that while miniaturised that "20 microamps of current" used in isolinear circuitry would "fry every synapse in his tiny body", even though to a full-size O'Brien this would be imperceptible.
We don't know that the energy output of the runabout was proportionally reduced. We know that photon torpedoes can be reduced in intensity to virtually nothing if needed... or just enough to kill the Jem'Hadaar for instance.
As for 20 microamps being deadly to a tiny body... well, its possible technology is not affected the same as biological organisms.
We've had previous instances where an effect had one effect on the crew, while leaving the technology intact.
Yes. It's hugely lower, because protostars aren't undergoing fusion. Initial phases of protostellar cloud collapse will produce temperatures of 60-100 K and radiate only in far infrared and microwave radiation. Once it becomes opaque due to hydrogen ionisation it's still only radiating at about 2000 K. Once deuterium fusion begins and the accretion process stops they become pre-main-sequence stars, rather than protostars. Before this point the protostar is dependent on continual inflow of material from the protstellar cloud at this point, or else it will just become a gas giant. It's a very inefficient way to generate energy.
I would agree with you there... but why use a protostar in that case?
WIthin the confines of Trek universe, there has to be 'some' kind of use they can get out of it that conventional energy sources wouldn't allow.
There's a flaw in the calculation here. 1.5kg of antimatter and 1.5kg of matter annihilating would be equivalent to ~128MT (the mass of both the matter and antimatter needs to be factored in, since both undergo a total conversion to energy).
If you can magically amplify energy using subspace – and thermodynamics says you really can't, no matter how conveniently magical subspace's properties might be – then why use antimatter as a fuel source at all? Why not use something safer and a handy subspace amplifier?
Thank for the correction... 128MT... without subspace effect... with it,the explosive yield ends up just over 100 000 times bigger (this could also explain why in the late 24th century, Federation replicators are usually always referred to as converting energy into matter - not matter into energy and then matter again).
But remember what was also said in TNG when they were testing out the Soliton Wave technology? Data mentioned there is less than 2% power loss between the wave and the ship... and that this process is 450% more efficient than ENT-D means of power generation (M/AM).
As for why use antimatter as a fuel source at all... because for example, fusion reactors still won't result in greater baseload production of plasma vs what M/AM smashing would achieve coupled with dilithium crystals to regulate the reaction (even though in real life, dilithium crystals or any kind of similar substance was never mentioned that it would be necessary to regulate M/AM reactions).
And Warp drive is energy consuming system.
So, Fusion is fine for baseline power systems (and possibly achieving Warp 1 or 2)... for greater Warp speeds, you need much greater energy production capability... and for UFP, M/AM and dilithium does the trick it seems.
Also, Subspace is what Trek uses to achieve FTL in the first place.
It doesn't exist in reality, but it exists in Trek... so, within the confines of Trek, its not 'magic'... it just allows you to get much higher energy from conventional energy sources... which is rather convenient, and allows manipulation of the space time continuum in a large enough area.
As UFP improves technology... they increase energy efficiency by modulating subspace technology (which is used by practically every major system on a SF ship).
So, its a two fold benefit here... not only would Warp cores increase in baseline power generation as time goes on (unless they don't, which would be very odd), but subspace technology is also fine tuned to increase the gains on energy you get.
Warp drive isn't just a question of how much energy you pump into the nacelles though. It's not a rocket (and even if it were, a 200,000 times increase in output energy is going to cause your ship to melt).
I know that its' not a rocket or how much energy you pump into it.
Trek ships achieve sublight and FTL speeds via field manipulation (the only exception to this would be thrusters - impulse engines and Warp engines seem to operate on the principles of field manipulation which would allows the ship to use reverse full impulse in TNG and reverse warp from TOS - though neither are frequently used).
And this does make sense (at least from what we saw in Trek) because ships seem to emit a subspace field which lowers their inertial mass that also ends up resulting in them achieving at least 74 000 km/s without relativistic effects (again, subspace effect most likely) - a technique which O'Brien used to move DS9 to the mouth of the wormhole.
The nacelles are there to generate the Warp field necessary to achieve Warp speed.
Similarly, the Proto Warp nacelle might be using a different kind of coils to generate Proto Warp. As for what 'Proto Warp' stands for... well, one of the displays on Protostar bridge said 'Trans Warp'... so, Proto Warp could simply be a different use for Trans Warp (or any speed surpassing regular Warp).
To this effect, even Slipstream drive would fall into the category of TransWarp using a broad definition, but within Trek, they are both referred to as separate systems (incidentally, the QS v2 VOY created in Timeless is much faster than TW used by the Borg or the Voth - so it was curious that 'Prodigy' didn't decide to use that technology instead since its the closest one VOY crew got to work - next to 'infinite TW speed').
Only because they're smaller. A fusion reactor the size of a star is a star. The amount of energy per unit of fuel is the same. If you could make a fusion reactor that fused 600 million tons (about 100 Galaxy-class starships) of hydrogen into helium every second then it would have the energy output of our sun.
Yeah, producing that much hydrogen every second might be a bit of a problem for UFP.
Hence why they probably create small reactors and then amplify the energy output they get using subspace field technology.
I don't understand what you mean by "use gravity as a means to emitting radiation". Are you referring to them producing heat by gravitational collapse?
Depending on the stage the protostar is in, it might emit less radiation than you do.
Not sure... I read something recently that a Protostar depends on gravity forces to produce radiation but that could have just been a tired brain reading things late at night.
There are different types of radiation in Trek. Its possible the Protostar (or at least the one SF contained on the USS Protostar) is emitting certain type of radiation that's useful for achieving Proto Warp.
Also, fusion seems to occur to a degree in Protostars too, if this explanation is any indication:
https://www.e-education.psu.edu/astro801/content/l5_p4.html
Here's an extract:
Much of the gas inside all protostars is hydrogen. Recall a few things about hydrogen from previous discussions:
- Hydrogen is the simplest atom with a single electron and a nucleus of a single proton.
- If the electrons in a gas of hydrogen atoms absorb enough energy, the electron can be removed from the atom, creating hydrogen ions (that is, free protons) and free electrons.
By the time a collapsing gas cloud has become a protostar, its core has reached a temperature of several million kelvin. At this temperature, the hydrogen in the core will be a plasma, a "soup" of hydrogen ions and electrons moving around at very high speed. Particles of like charge repel each other, so if you take two protons (both have the same positive charge) and try to push them together, the electrical force between them will provide resistance. Inside of a protostellar core, the temperature and density are high, so the protons are packed together very tightly and are moving very rapidly. When the temperature reaches a high enough point (about 10 million kelvin), the protons are moving so fast inside the core that the electrical repulsion cannot prevent them from colliding. Once they collide, they fuse together in a process that generates energy.
That's like the argument that an iceberg has more heat energy than a lit match, because the sum total of the kinetic energy of all its molecules is significantly higher than that of the flame and fuel combined. Which is entirely true, but I'd still question of useful a hyper-compressed iceberg would be when I wanted to light a candle.
This is where things get tricky. Trek has played fast and loose with these things before, so its a possibility that here, the UFP found a way to hyper compress the proverbial 'iceberg' without losing out on the energy density (the principle of something tiny being insanely energetic/powerful).
But again, maybe its not the energy itself that the Protostar gives... but it might be the radiation type that's useful for Proto Warp.
I don't know... I'm basically spitballing here with minimal information based on what was said thus far (or effectively what the kids concluded).
Its also possible a clearer explanation will become available during the show's run which could also show that Zero incorrectly described it as a Protostar... but that it might be something that exhibits similarities to a Protostar.
The bigger question is – if the ship contains a protostar inside a containment unit, how does it move? Something 1% the mass of our sun would still weigh more than the rest of the solar system combined. It wouldn't land on a planet, the planet would land on it.
Yes... but my question still stands. What the heck happens to the protostar itself when the containment unit is shut down?
Does it phase out? And when the thing is on, does it phase back in?
In regards to yours, this could be one of those 'highly selective shrinkages' where the energy/radiation emitted by the Protostar isn't affected, but its size and mass are (I know, doesn't make sense, but a lot of Trek doesn't).
And maybe a careful application of a finely tuned subspace field is keeping that mass in check too (aka, lowers it to insanely low proportions - maybe SF found a way to get a bigger effect on a Protostar compared to a ship).
If you're dependent on the Penrose process to get power out of a black hole, sure; but you can generate power with a black hole without feeding it directly by using it as a giant dynamo.
But all of this is complete speculation. It makes no sense that the protostar drive would have a real protostar compressed into a tiny sphere and somehow negating its mass while simultaneously amplifying its energy output because that's more energy-efficient than a matter/antimatter reaction. To paraphrase the TNG Technical Manual – if you could do that to a protostar you wouldn't need to.
Wouldn't the Penrose process generate more energy though rather than relying on the dynamo effect itself? So you occasionally 'feed' it portions of matter periodically to maintain high energy outputs.
The existence of Subspace in Trek (and other scifi) doesn't make any sense either, and yet, there it is.
Maybe this is what Isotons stand for when counting the explosive yield of Photon torpedoes. Instead of using MT, GT, TT and PT for description of explosive yields, because they use Subspace technology to radically enhance on the energy generating effects (and also get weird effects) from existing power sources, they decided to use a different description.
Again, I don't know for certain... and its still early days, so the show could explain things better.
Also, if they used that kind of process on a Protostar... why not use an actual main sequence star? Maybe containing an actual star is a worse problem compared to a Protostar?
