PHASERS

	Even before the development of true interstellar spacecraft by 
various cultures, it was clear that directed-energy devices would be 
necessary to assist in clearing gas, dust, and micrometeoroid material from 
vehicle flight paths. Emerging space-faring races are continuing to employ 
this method as an excellent maximizer of shipboard energy budgets, because 
a relatively small energy expenditure produces a large result. Material in 
space can be vaporized, ionized, and eliminated as a hazard to spaceflight. It 
did not take an enormous leap of imagination, of course, to realize that 
directed energy could also prove to be an effective weapon system.
	The lead defensive system maintained by Starfleet Command for 
sublight use for the last century is the phaser, the common term for a 
complicated energy release process developed to replace pure EM devices 
such as the laser, and particle beam accelerators. Phaser is something of a 
holdover acronym, PHASed Energy Rectification, referring to the original 
process by which stored or supplied energy entering the phaser system was 
converted to another form for release toward a target, without the need for 
an intermediate energy transformation. This remains essentially true in the 
current phaser effect.
	Phaser energy is released through the application of the rapid nadion 
effect (RNE). Rapid nadions are short-lived subatomic particles possessing 
special properties related to high-speed interactions within atomic nuclei. 
Among these properties is the ability to liberate and transfer strong nuclear 
forces within a particular class of superconducting crystals known as 
fushigi-no-umi. The crystals were so named when it appeared to 
researchers at StarfleetÕs Tokyo R&D facility that the materials being 
developed represented a virtual Òsea of wonderÓ before them.  Æ