Shields (Star Trek)

In the fictional Star Trek universe, shields are the defenses most commonly used to protect a starship. However, in Star Trek: Enterprise, shields have not been discovered and hull polarization is instead used. The physics of a shield is extracted from the physics of a force field. A force field in simple terms is a wall of atoms, minus the atoms, leaving just the "interatomic cohesion forces" that bind matter together. Generators then project this field. These are shield generators. Force fields have the unfortunate effect of only being as hard as normal matter and equally penetrable by high speed objects and also can be disrupted by high levels of energy. To counter this the force field must be strengthened by increasing the power and thus reducing the penetrability of the force field or by multiply layering force fields to increase the density of the force field and thus repelling even smaller particles than the average single force field.

This leaves the ship two options:

1. Have an incredibly high number of bulky and energy hungry generators
2. Increase the power to the generators and make the shields denser.

Number two is the most common option. The problem with this is that at a certain point the interatomic cohesion forces will buckle space; large amount of forces of energy concentrated in a tiny paper-thin-to-inch-thick area of space. When space buckles the field will collapse and create a shockwave of energy that is suddenly released from its previous location.

The only way to circumvent this involves the fact that, the higher the energy and density of the force field, the shorter it lasts. So you set the force field to a sufficient strength and set it to work by the strobe method. The shield flicks on and off before in can buckle space. It can do this up to a billion times a second. The less time the shield runs, the higher the strength of the shield can be, as long as you can produce the energy to do so.

Shields are just force fields that are bent like a graphed function, a parabolic curve, from each shield generator and which then overlap to form one solid bubble. Energy and matter impacting on the force field creates an excess of energy as the force field's interatomic cohesion forces interact with the interatomic forces of matter and energy of the weapon, object or particle. The energy produced feeds itself back to the shield generator; this reduces the capability of the shield generator and reduces the shield strength.

You should never allow two force fields or shields to interact, integrate or come into contact with each other, since this is akin to a piece of incredibly dense, hard and energetic matter passing through another piece of incredibly dense, hard and energetic matter. This will cancel out the shield, as where the shields intersect the energy will be too great, and the strobe effect will not be able to counteract the buckling of space.

Electromagnetic fields can be used to deflect plasma away from the hull of a starship. This plasma could come from a nuclear explosion, or a matter-antimatter annhilation explosion. A strong electric field erected around the hull of a starship can re-ionize neutral particle beams, and thus cause them to fly apart due to space charge effects within the beam via the electrostic repulsion between the charged particles in the beam. Highly reflective mirror surfaces can reflect laser and maser beams, and minimize the absorption of energy from them by the hull of a starship. Mirrors made of beryllium can also reflect neutrons and gamma rays like a mirror. Pneumatic springs placed between multiple layered walls in a starship hull can also protect a starship's core modules from explosive shock waves of any origin.