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I am not an engineer, but I am writing a story in which Trip writes a computer programm to make to warp core overload (or it looks like it).

My question for all those technical Starfleet guys out there:

How does a warpcore overload? Any ideas to help Trip?

There seems to be an assumption that the primary power comes from a matter/anti-matter reaction releasing massive amounts of energy which is captured and harnessed somehow involving the dilithium matrix. Things involving anti-matter usually involve using magnetic fields to contain it since it will annihilate any ordinary matter it comes into contact with. I envisage something like the magnetic setup at CERN but on a much smaller scale being used to control streams of matter and antimatter and bring them together in the right proportions and at the right rate to produce the required amount of power. If the magnetic containment fields get weakened sufficiently for anti-matter to leave the magnetic container then there would be an uncontrolled reaction with whatever matter it came into contact with. Probably, this would be the hardware that makes the magnetic containment field. In that case, even a minor initial loss could collapse the containment field resulting in the sudden release of all the ship's antimatter supply, which would annihilate itself against the rest of the ship. Given that the warp drive requires massive amounts of power and that the anti-matter supply is supposed to supply this for months or years, the amount of energy released all at once must be a cataclysmic.

So, to cause this or appear to cause it, I think Trip would need to interfere with the mechanism that generates or controls the magnetic containment fields so that antimatter escaped or appeared about to escape.

As Cogito notes when matter and anti-Matter meet there is an hellasious explosion. wiping out everything within a ffew miles. Enterprise would be vaporized. You don't play with that stuff.

I guess the scientists at CERN know how to but I damn sure wouldn't want to try.

Good luck to Trip I hope is life insurance is paid up.

SB

Cogito wrote:So, to cause this or appear to cause it, I think Trip would need to interfere with the mechanism that generates or controls the magnetic containment fields so that antimatter escaped or appeared about to escape.

Or he could mess with the sensors that feed data about the magnetic containment fields to the computer, so the computer THINKS the field is about to collapse and sets off all the alarms. I would think that would probably be much safer than actually messing with the containment fields themselves.

Well it depends on the ship...

Thanks Cogito and Distracted, that was very usefull. I think the messing with the sensors that feed data about the magnetic containment fields to the computer, so the computer THINKS the field is about to collapse and sets off all the alarms is what I was aiming for.

So don't worry, Silverbullet, Trip (and the other guy) are to much brilliant engineers to blow up the worpcore. Blowing up things are more Malcolms style.