I was writing this for Bowler1, but decided others might be interested, or have points of view, so decided to put it into public consumption.
It's been fairly conclusively demonstrated that no colour of visible light or combination of colours can either paralyse, stun, kill or otherwise disable men, machines or doorlocks. No electromagnetic radiation can. Nor can any form of interference between close spectral lines produce wiggly rays; though light is a waveform, it's in the sense of compression and rarefaction, not up and down. So any visual evidence you get out of your weapon is merely to tell you where you are aiming (and say if you are goodie, baddie or uncommitted; very important in a comic-book universe). Obviously, with enough light of any colour you can burn holes in people, if it's concentrated enough and they're not wearing mirrors, or, by flashing them at the right speed, confuse them or even induce epileptic fits, but this isn't going to work on any old BEM (the bacon/egg mayonnaise monster most often invading through Central Park. Since Wells' Martians {who did a good line in rayguns themselves} aliens intent on destruction concentrate on New York NY or Tokyo. Nobody annihilates Paris.) and equipping your weapon with settings for different species can easily be overcome by wearing star wars disguises or Richard Nixon latex masks (the majority of surreptitious alien invaders – the kind you are most likely to want hand weapons against – can mimic human form, so while you can guess they're extraterrestrial, you've no idea which corner of the universe.
Photon weapons
So. If no coloured light beams except lasers are effective, what else can we beam out that will discomfort beings, electronic circuits or vehicles? Elsewhere in the electromagnetic spectrum we have masers - microwaves. Cooking part of an organism generally slows it down some. Neither it or an infrared laser is a real improvement over a standard optical laser. Ultra violet? Even easier to block than the previous ones (if you know what's coming). Elsewhere on the electromagnetic spectrum? X-rays, gamma rays? Penetration power, to be sure, but not much stopping power. What else can we generate as rays, or beams?
Sonics, evidently. They'll only work in atmosphere, are relatively short range (particularly the ultrasonic frequencies) and require quite a bit of power - but I suppose that's standard for beam weapons/ray guns. What you can't do is generate the nice, gut shaking infrasonics (that's right – the ones that persuade your sphincters to relax, not killing you but making your neighbours wish they had) in a directional form but (can you tell this falls into my speciality?) you can use the nonlinearity of air to create beat frequencies down there.
But specific resonance effects are unlikely to cross species, so the sonic disintegrator which will disrupt the integument of an exoskeletal arthropod is not going to be effective against a motile blob.
Particle beam
Generally these are streams of subatomic particles (protons, alpha particles, electrons – easy to accelerate with existing technology, neutrons a bit less so, neutrinos practically dark matter as regards their interacting with conventional solids, so incapable of transferring anything much. But I'd class beams of ions, atoms or even molecules as 'particles', in this situation. Mostly they're much better in vacuum than atmosphere; air molecules will tend to absorb momentum, energy and offensive power, but I can see using strange chemicals in that ion drive system – sodium, anyone? (nice colour)
Your main charged particle beams are too much like solar flare energy, and the same magnetic technology will defend against them. A bit better aim, but not the reserve energy of a star, either. Most of the time they heat you up, and render you mildly radioactive inside as well as on the surface. Not the 'stopping power' sort of weapon, unless you can cook something directly; it could in continuous mode be used as a carving knife to slice bits off your enemy like a very long reach sword (in intermittent (pulse) mode you get a line of perforations, and you have to tear him along the dotted line like toilet paper) but it doesn't have the impact that brings a berserker to his (her or its) knees (this is a general problem with beam weapons: they're like .22 rounds, penetrating but not absorbing the momentum of a charge).
Freeze ray
Very popular in comix, generally characterised by icicles forming (this being the lowest temperature the graphists can imagine) at the reception point. Obviously ridiculous – not only is resisting sub-zero temperatures much too easy, this is absorption of energy; it can't be formed into a beam any more than a projectile weapon can shoot a lump of vacuum; the mathematics don't work.
But we can perhaps get an equivalent result by increasing molecular binding forces without deceasing temperature.
Ladies and gentlemen (and the rest of you scruffy yobs) I give you the gluon gun. Pioneered by the Goons in the forties as the Lepages glue gun (used to stick German bombers to London's skies, where they could be dealt with at leisure) it freezes liquids, condenses gasses and renders lubricants rigid, as well as lifting thresholds of chemical reactions, not only making living organisms cease metabolising, at least within the boson beam, but internal combustion engines, electric batteries, shotgun shells – anything involving chemical reactions – all have their efficiency scaled down, probably until they no longer function. It would probably even work as a fire extinguisher. Magnetic bearings, electric motors all keep working, so you can't guarantee knocking out robots, but the quantum chromodynamics projector is showing promise; and you met it first here! Better for vacuum use (the solid air dropping out of the bottom of the beam has used up some of your spare
Stasis ray
Actually, rather more effective as a projected stasis field.
Unusually for a field it does not diminish as the square (or the cube) of the distance from the point of origin, or the folded back curve of a dipole field but has a specific boundary (probably either spherical or surface following).
Within the field boundaries time is either slowed by a massive margin
Paralysis, stun ray
It's possible to imagine something that interferes with the human nervous system sufficiently to cause unconsciousness or block off motor nerves without killing the subject. A pulsed magnetic field inducing nerve, impulses synchronised with natural reflexes, perhaps? Still, if it worked on big, hunky soldiers with enough metal screening in their costumes would it not tend to stop the hearts of small children and oldsters? (The aim of a non-lethal weapon, according to Bujold, is that you don't have to hesitate to check whether your target might be one of your own; friendly fire can be excused after. And are alien species going to react identically? And a stungun is unlikely to discomfort a robot or upset a vehicle; a specific antibiological, perhaps even a specifically antihuman (don't know about cyborgs) weapon.
Antimatter dust
Don't try this at home, kiddies. Or in atmosphere, for that matter (if you live on an asteroid, ask your teacher).
Antinuclei, or even antiatoms or antimolecules, should accelerate just as easily as their more standard (round this corner of the universe, anyway) reversed spin equivalents (as long as the beam doesn't contact the structure of the weapon). Yeah, sure, the magnetic flare protection would work on antiparticles, too, but a tiny leakage of radiation is a slight burn, an increased risk of cancer a few years down the line, or a baby with three heads, while a miniscule quantity of antimatter getting through is Blooie! And the damage it does to the scenery - anything not directly protected, especially architecture.
Weirdos
Assuming action and reaction remain equal and opposite a gravity beam – a 'tractor' or 'pressor' beam beloved of early space opera would yank the operator around as much as his target, so it would only be a fixed-mount weapon. But a bullet contains the same momentum as the recoil, and that has been shown to be effective in accelerating the decease of a very large number of mammals, no few of them being homo sapiens. Would a very focused gravity ray, say a millimetre in diameter and a couple of hundred gees in magnitude scramble an organism or mechanism? It would be extremely difficult to armour against – gravity isn't stopped by stone walls, or anything much, actually.
Disintegration beams, which effect either atomic or molecular binding forces – Ender's 'little doctor', or just possibly a magnetically accelerated beam of 'grey goo' nanobots, though I suspect the cleanup afterwards and the delay between the 'ray' making contact and the target being rendered harmless, or just rendered – into mush – would not make those popular unless trashing, rather than conquering, a territory.
Fixed mount, ship mount, vehicle mount, team fired, hand weapon or concealed? I know the 'ray gun' term gives an immediate image of a pistol grip hand weapon, but actually anything that produces a beam would qualify. And some of them, like the ship's main drive (for a reaction drive) is an excellent destructive beam, be it ions, molecules or photons, and automatically has the ship's entire power plant behind it, even if it's not focused as a weapon; similarly, a communications laser designed to send messages over a few light days can be devastating at a million kilometres or so. But what we're really interested in is specialised weapons, no? Not improvised tools, makeshifts. And ship based beam weapons (Great Big Ray Guns) and fixed (planetary) mount (RERG), equivalent to fortress guns in the naval days, will not be well adapted to antipersonnel use; I got a sudden image of the diffraction grating we used with with the stage laser in front of a military grade megawatt version; the raygun equivalent of grapeshot.
Oh, that's enough for one post; the next thread will be about non-ray weaponry, or armour, stealth and protection, whichever develops first.
It's been fairly conclusively demonstrated that no colour of visible light or combination of colours can either paralyse, stun, kill or otherwise disable men, machines or doorlocks. No electromagnetic radiation can. Nor can any form of interference between close spectral lines produce wiggly rays; though light is a waveform, it's in the sense of compression and rarefaction, not up and down. So any visual evidence you get out of your weapon is merely to tell you where you are aiming (and say if you are goodie, baddie or uncommitted; very important in a comic-book universe). Obviously, with enough light of any colour you can burn holes in people, if it's concentrated enough and they're not wearing mirrors, or, by flashing them at the right speed, confuse them or even induce epileptic fits, but this isn't going to work on any old BEM (the bacon/egg mayonnaise monster most often invading through Central Park. Since Wells' Martians {who did a good line in rayguns themselves} aliens intent on destruction concentrate on New York NY or Tokyo. Nobody annihilates Paris.) and equipping your weapon with settings for different species can easily be overcome by wearing star wars disguises or Richard Nixon latex masks (the majority of surreptitious alien invaders – the kind you are most likely to want hand weapons against – can mimic human form, so while you can guess they're extraterrestrial, you've no idea which corner of the universe.
Photon weapons
So. If no coloured light beams except lasers are effective, what else can we beam out that will discomfort beings, electronic circuits or vehicles? Elsewhere in the electromagnetic spectrum we have masers - microwaves. Cooking part of an organism generally slows it down some. Neither it or an infrared laser is a real improvement over a standard optical laser. Ultra violet? Even easier to block than the previous ones (if you know what's coming). Elsewhere on the electromagnetic spectrum? X-rays, gamma rays? Penetration power, to be sure, but not much stopping power. What else can we generate as rays, or beams?
Sonics, evidently. They'll only work in atmosphere, are relatively short range (particularly the ultrasonic frequencies) and require quite a bit of power - but I suppose that's standard for beam weapons/ray guns. What you can't do is generate the nice, gut shaking infrasonics (that's right – the ones that persuade your sphincters to relax, not killing you but making your neighbours wish they had) in a directional form but (can you tell this falls into my speciality?) you can use the nonlinearity of air to create beat frequencies down there.
But specific resonance effects are unlikely to cross species, so the sonic disintegrator which will disrupt the integument of an exoskeletal arthropod is not going to be effective against a motile blob.
Particle beam
Generally these are streams of subatomic particles (protons, alpha particles, electrons – easy to accelerate with existing technology, neutrons a bit less so, neutrinos practically dark matter as regards their interacting with conventional solids, so incapable of transferring anything much. But I'd class beams of ions, atoms or even molecules as 'particles', in this situation. Mostly they're much better in vacuum than atmosphere; air molecules will tend to absorb momentum, energy and offensive power, but I can see using strange chemicals in that ion drive system – sodium, anyone? (nice colour)
Your main charged particle beams are too much like solar flare energy, and the same magnetic technology will defend against them. A bit better aim, but not the reserve energy of a star, either. Most of the time they heat you up, and render you mildly radioactive inside as well as on the surface. Not the 'stopping power' sort of weapon, unless you can cook something directly; it could in continuous mode be used as a carving knife to slice bits off your enemy like a very long reach sword (in intermittent (pulse) mode you get a line of perforations, and you have to tear him along the dotted line like toilet paper) but it doesn't have the impact that brings a berserker to his (her or its) knees (this is a general problem with beam weapons: they're like .22 rounds, penetrating but not absorbing the momentum of a charge).
Freeze ray
Very popular in comix, generally characterised by icicles forming (this being the lowest temperature the graphists can imagine) at the reception point. Obviously ridiculous – not only is resisting sub-zero temperatures much too easy, this is absorption of energy; it can't be formed into a beam any more than a projectile weapon can shoot a lump of vacuum; the mathematics don't work.
But we can perhaps get an equivalent result by increasing molecular binding forces without deceasing temperature.
Ladies and gentlemen (and the rest of you scruffy yobs) I give you the gluon gun. Pioneered by the Goons in the forties as the Lepages glue gun (used to stick German bombers to London's skies, where they could be dealt with at leisure) it freezes liquids, condenses gasses and renders lubricants rigid, as well as lifting thresholds of chemical reactions, not only making living organisms cease metabolising, at least within the boson beam, but internal combustion engines, electric batteries, shotgun shells – anything involving chemical reactions – all have their efficiency scaled down, probably until they no longer function. It would probably even work as a fire extinguisher. Magnetic bearings, electric motors all keep working, so you can't guarantee knocking out robots, but the quantum chromodynamics projector is showing promise; and you met it first here! Better for vacuum use (the solid air dropping out of the bottom of the beam has used up some of your spare
Stasis ray
Actually, rather more effective as a projected stasis field.
Unusually for a field it does not diminish as the square (or the cube) of the distance from the point of origin, or the folded back curve of a dipole field but has a specific boundary (probably either spherical or surface following).
Within the field boundaries time is either slowed by a massive margin
Paralysis, stun ray
It's possible to imagine something that interferes with the human nervous system sufficiently to cause unconsciousness or block off motor nerves without killing the subject. A pulsed magnetic field inducing nerve, impulses synchronised with natural reflexes, perhaps? Still, if it worked on big, hunky soldiers with enough metal screening in their costumes would it not tend to stop the hearts of small children and oldsters? (The aim of a non-lethal weapon, according to Bujold, is that you don't have to hesitate to check whether your target might be one of your own; friendly fire can be excused after. And are alien species going to react identically? And a stungun is unlikely to discomfort a robot or upset a vehicle; a specific antibiological, perhaps even a specifically antihuman (don't know about cyborgs) weapon.
Antimatter dust
Don't try this at home, kiddies. Or in atmosphere, for that matter (if you live on an asteroid, ask your teacher).
Antinuclei, or even antiatoms or antimolecules, should accelerate just as easily as their more standard (round this corner of the universe, anyway) reversed spin equivalents (as long as the beam doesn't contact the structure of the weapon). Yeah, sure, the magnetic flare protection would work on antiparticles, too, but a tiny leakage of radiation is a slight burn, an increased risk of cancer a few years down the line, or a baby with three heads, while a miniscule quantity of antimatter getting through is Blooie! And the damage it does to the scenery - anything not directly protected, especially architecture.
Weirdos
Assuming action and reaction remain equal and opposite a gravity beam – a 'tractor' or 'pressor' beam beloved of early space opera would yank the operator around as much as his target, so it would only be a fixed-mount weapon. But a bullet contains the same momentum as the recoil, and that has been shown to be effective in accelerating the decease of a very large number of mammals, no few of them being homo sapiens. Would a very focused gravity ray, say a millimetre in diameter and a couple of hundred gees in magnitude scramble an organism or mechanism? It would be extremely difficult to armour against – gravity isn't stopped by stone walls, or anything much, actually.
Disintegration beams, which effect either atomic or molecular binding forces – Ender's 'little doctor', or just possibly a magnetically accelerated beam of 'grey goo' nanobots, though I suspect the cleanup afterwards and the delay between the 'ray' making contact and the target being rendered harmless, or just rendered – into mush – would not make those popular unless trashing, rather than conquering, a territory.
Fixed mount, ship mount, vehicle mount, team fired, hand weapon or concealed? I know the 'ray gun' term gives an immediate image of a pistol grip hand weapon, but actually anything that produces a beam would qualify. And some of them, like the ship's main drive (for a reaction drive) is an excellent destructive beam, be it ions, molecules or photons, and automatically has the ship's entire power plant behind it, even if it's not focused as a weapon; similarly, a communications laser designed to send messages over a few light days can be devastating at a million kilometres or so. But what we're really interested in is specialised weapons, no? Not improvised tools, makeshifts. And ship based beam weapons (Great Big Ray Guns) and fixed (planetary) mount (RERG), equivalent to fortress guns in the naval days, will not be well adapted to antipersonnel use; I got a sudden image of the diffraction grating we used with with the stage laser in front of a military grade megawatt version; the raygun equivalent of grapeshot.
Oh, that's enough for one post; the next thread will be about non-ray weaponry, or armour, stealth and protection, whichever develops first.
mwahahaha...
