OT: Revised Edition Star Trek

[Suicide Junkie]

Everything you posted there makes it seem more technobabbly.

In the same manner that "gamma rays" make "the hulk", "tachyons" make the "cloak detector".
Pure fertilizer-grade technobabble.

[Atrocities]

What is your favorite Trecknobabble comment of all time?

Mine was in Generation when Scotty was coming with the the idea on how to get the Enterprise B out of the Nexus. I do miss him, and McCoy too.

[Wolfman77]

Yeah tachyons are all technobabble, but how does exhaust make sense? What exhaust does a matter-antimatter reaction produce? The only thing I can find is that they produce gamma-rays (funny how that ties in, huh SJ?). We can detect gamma-rays wit hour current level of technology, It's only fair to assume they can as well. Therefore cloaking devices must block any gamma-rays that the warp core shielding doesn't, or they would be spoted quite easily.

Since we are keeping the artificial gravity, masking that signature should be doable.

I suppose we could say a few gamma rays leak through, compareable to background radiation, but if their sensors are configure to look for only to wavelength produced by certain engines, they could at least narrow it down. Especially it the source is moving. Still a bit of technobabble, but no tachyons.

[NullAshton]

Matter-antimatter engines are only used for warp drive, and are simply not used for impulse engines. Impulse engines use fusion generators, which also serve as secondary power in battle. Helium exhaust! Q is plot device, and doesn't mess with stuff that much, so I say leave him in there. And timetravel is just plain funny, and serves as a good excuse to revisit yesterday's enterprise. Besides, I like that episode where the Enterprise-D is stuck in a timeloop.

[NullAshton]

And tachyons are emitted by the cloaking generator as a by-product of cloaking the ship.

[Suicide Junkie]

The goal of a reactor would be to absorb all of the gamma rays for use by ship's systems. None need be emitted by the ship.

The thermodynamic argument is simple. If the cloaking device prevents the ship from emitting energy (in order to be undetectable), then the ship can't be losing energy.
Since the ship is generating energy to power lifesupport, the cloak, and anything else they're using, the energy in the ship is monotonically increasing.
At some point, the temperature of the ship will exceed the melting point of its hull, and its bye-bye cloaked ship.

Thusly, the ship must be emitting at least as much energy as it is generating, averaged over time. Even when cloaked.
This can be in the form of neutrinos, large numbers of low energy photons, small numbers of high energy photons, hot particles, whatever.
It is highly unlikely that you would see gamma rays. That would mean that their reactor is not powering the ship, and is unshielded (in the lead-wall sense).

[Wolfman77]

Null: I thought they needed the matter-antimatter engines to run the cloak. Even so why not store the helium while you are cloaked? Of course it seems rather odd as the cloak is supposed to absorb energy, why does it need energy to run?

SJ: yes, the reactor would absorb gamma rays to create power, I just didn't think it needed to absorb every single one. Thought they might have a few leak out though, since some of those high energy ones can pass right through the Earth and all, but I suppose those would be hard for sensors to detect. My original thought was that the reactors could absorb them up to a certain wavelength (or down to as more acurately discribes higher energy EM waves). After this the shielding (lead wall sense) would absorb the rest, but not perfectly.

Then again if the cloak is absorbing energy, or even just deflecting it back to the ship, couldn't that be used as a temporary power source while cloaked? Assuming that some, barely detectable, energy is lost, then its just a matter of sensitve enough sensors to pick it up. Or waiting untill they need to start their engines for loss of power after a few hours or something. I suppose this could be called the exhaust.

[NullAshton]

Romulan cloaks don't work by masking emissions, they work by phasing a ship a bit out of tune with reality. In theory, a perfect cloak would be indetectable, and the cloaked ship would be able to move through other objects. The energy is expended in remaining out-of-phase. My guess is that the expended energy is re-emitted as tachyons, like heat is emitted during most reactions.

ST reactors do not 'absourb' gamma rays, rather, they use the dilithium crystal to channel the energy into a purer form, called 'plasma', which is redirected through the plasma conduits to power the main systems, and isn't very regulated. Fusion power is used for the items that require less power, such as lights, or those touch panels.

Exhaust could be contained... but for regular space-travel it's probally so small as to not give away the ship. They just didn't think that exhaust would give away a cloaked ship, since sensors probally weren't programmed to detect it...

[Suicide Junkie]

My point is that the power source dosen't matter.
They need to have some energy generation in order to stay alive and operating.
If they were to have no emmissions, then the temperature of the ship would have to rise. On a temporary basis that can be handled, but these ships run on gigawatts. Lifesupport, artificial gravity, structural integrity, containment fields, doors & lifts, and all the bells and whistles. It won't take long before they have to release the waste heat or melt into a bubble of expensive goo.

[NullAshton]

Okay, so the more energy it uses, the faster the tachyons emitted are? Or slower, actually.