Got a lot of questions and venting so bear with me...

The only ST weapon I really grasp is a photon torpedo. Simple enough. Antimatter is held in a magnetic containment field until the torpedo hits a target, or is programmed to detonate; the magnetic field collapses and the matter/antimatter annihilates into pure energy, ie photons. OK.... if that is so, either: 1.) Torpedoes contain VERY small amounts of antimatter or 2.) The explosive force of the torpedo is far under represented on the explosions seen in the TV shows and movies. I'm sure everyone has seen pics and vids of the detonation of atomic and hydrogen bombs, yes? Well those are just puny fission and fusion reactions. We're talking annihilation here, pure E=MC2! Do the math and you find out that just a mind boggling amount of energy is produced by even a gram of the stuff. So either the torpedoes only have a small amount of antimatter or we should see a MUCH bigger boom! Suppose that you have 1kg of antimatter. That yields 186,000X186,000 units (joules?) of energy. YOW! The graphical representation would be the equivalant of a supernova. Now I can actually buy that a shielded ship, itself powered by antimatter, could survive such a blast, but no unshielded ship or planetary target could possibly survive.

Point two: What the heck is a Quantum Torpedo, anyhow? Has there ever been an answer? All we know is that it is somehow better and/or more powerful than a photon torpedo. Purely my speculation- Perhaps it doesn't "detonate" per se but shunts the force of the matter/antimatter reaction into several phases, ie multiphasic, to affect and break down matter on the subquantum level- not just blowing it apart but shredding the gravitational, electroweak, etc. forces (there are 4 but I can't think of the other 2 off hand) that bind matter together. Thoughts?

What does a phaser do? It most definately is NOT a laser. A laser is visible only if there is a medium such as dust to impact; otherwise you only see the light at the muzzle and on the target. Corny though it looks, I like Andromeda's portrayal of energy weapons as it is more scientifically correct. But we can see a phaser. Moreover it does not need a steady power stream to function; we see pulse phasers on Defiant. I would be tempted to say it is some sort of plasma weapon but several references imply it is just focused energy. And what does it mean, PHASEd energy? Phased into or from what?

Part two: How do we see Phase Cannons and Phase pistols on Enterprise NX01? The Cage and The Menagerie clearly establish that Enterprise NCC1701 was still using lasers c.2257. So are we supposed to believe that phasers were invented, dropped, and reintroduced? Why?

Also regarding Enterprise, what the heck is polarizing the hull plating supposed to do against an explosion? I have "polarized" sunglasses and could put a magnetic charge on my car but I don't want to detonate a bomb next to it. They either need to explain this or get on with inventing shields for starships.

So what are disruptors then compared to phasers?

I fail to see how a plasma cannon or rifle or what not would do much of anything. Plasma is superheated gas. If you shoot it off into an open area, that is cold, such as an atmosphere or the vacuum of space, in the quantities one could realize in a rifle, it would very quickly disappate and travel only a few yards perhaps. No?

Ah, I feel better! Thoughts?

>The only ST weapon I really grasp is a photon torpedo.<

Hope you hold on tight-those things go fast!

A quantum torpedo is a zero-point energy weapon. No, really. It's in the Deep Space Nine Technical Manual. I think they kind of fudge on how it's supposed to actually work.

I always wondered how the Klingons sonic disruptor weapon worked? It was a cool looking weapon in the original series but exactly how did they confine sound waves in a tight beam so that the sound waves simply didn't spread out all over the place once they left the gun? The Green Hornet had a really nifty weapon on his 1966 TV show called the Hornet Sting & that also operated on sonic waves.

Did they actually call it a SONIC Disruptor? I thought it was just 'Disruptor'. Basically, you can't say 'ray gun' because that's not taking the subject seriously, you can't say 'laser gun' because the 23rd Century is supposed to be so far advanced that just-plain-lasers are considered obsolete, and you can't say 'phaser' because 'that's what our guys use, so we have to come up with another turn for the Klingons' weapon'.

Oops! I meant 'another TERM'.