Phasers Effects and the Nuclear Disruption (NDF) Theory
Based on the work of famed observational theorist Michael Wong of Star Destroyer.

Maximum-power phasers make a humanoid "disappear" in a flash of light, without debris or gas clouds. People can stand right next to said disintegrated person are not affected.

Phaser disintegrations occur slowly, taking a significant amount of time even after the phaser beam stops: anywhere from ½-second to 2 seconds.

Maximum-power phasers disintegrate a human body in its entirety, regardless of mass, and no excess energy ever spills into the environment.

Phasers can heat rocks until they become luminescent, allowing away-teams to keep themselves warm.

Phasers can shatter large amounts of rock, knocking very large boulders loose and causing explosive reactions.

Phasers are ineffective against heavy armor, only effective against light silicates like rock.

Phasers violate Conservation of Momentum. A man can fire a one-handed phaser shot, without significant recoil, that picks up an opponent and hurls him through the air upon impact (as seen in ST3).

Harmless disappearance of matter. Matter cannot simply disappear. So, if the matter can't simply disappear into nothingness, it must transform into a form of matter which we cannot perceive.
There are several candidates:
1. Vaporization into invisible gas. If the three-quarters of the human body composed of water is converted to invisible water vapor by boiling at atmospheric pressure, increases it volume more than three thousand times. Hot scalding steam 8 meters wide, filling the room from the floor to the ceiling. You would notice and be scalded, but people next to disintegrated persons are not affected whatsoever.
2. Disruption into subatomic particles. If a human body were disintegrated into all of its component subatomic nucleons and electrons, the result would be a huge cloud of ionized hydrogen plasma and a large neutron radiation flux. Picture the same deadly cloud of water vapor, multiplied in volume by several orders of magnitude and heated to many thousands of degrees, accompanied by dangerous levels of radiation and highly flammable! Complete conversion into energy. 80kg adult male humanoid converted to energy would be the equivalent mass/energy conversion of a 1700 megaton gamma radiation blast. Chekov would have at least flinched if his comrade standing next to him was converted to a 1700 megaton blast.
4. Complete conversion into neutrinos. This is my favorite possible destination which does not violate the core fundamental physical laws. It can't become vapor, it can't become plasma, it can't leave the universe, it can't disappear into the zero-point domain, and it can't turn into photons, etc. Therefore, it must turn into something even smaller than nucleons. No matter how small that particle may be, it cannot have an electric charge since charged particles, regardless of size, interact with matter. Even quarks, which carry fractional charge, will interact strongly with matter for this reason alone, in spite of their tiny mass. So we know that the matter must become something which is very small, and electrically neutral. The answer? Neutrinos. Trillions upon trillions of neutrinos could pass through every square millimeter of your body and you would never notice it. They carry mass and energy, and they can potentially remove an arbitrary amount of energy from the locality of a disintegrating mass without any noticeable effects, unlike all of the other explanations advanced so far.

Slow disintegrations. The effects of a phaser blast continue even after the phaser is no longer pumping energy into the target. As we can see from the phaser disintegrations in ST2 and ST6 among others, the phaser beam might only strike for a fraction of a second, but the energy slowly propagates through the body for a long period after that, sometimes as long as two full seconds. This slow process rules out any sort of direct energy transfer to the body because the tissues in the impact zone would have to temporarily hold a very large excess of energy (over and above the energy required to induce the neutrino conversion reaction) if they can "bleed" enough energy to the rest of the body to induce that same reaction throughout the entire body mass. We know how quickly the mass disappears in the rest of the body when exposed to the energy "bleeding out" of the impact site, so there is no way the tissues at the impact site would "hang around" in solid form long enough, overloaded with this energy, to disperse that energy to surrounding tissues over a period of several seconds. Therefore, we know that the phaser reaction most likely transforms matter into neutrinos, and that it occurs in some sort of chain reaction rather than a direct transfer of energy.

Independence of target mass, lack of excess energy. Phasers act independently of the mass of the target, an important fact. In "The Vengeance Factor" we actually saw Riker increase the power setting on his hand phaser to maximum, before using it to disintegrate a diminutive female humanoid, probably no more than 50 kg in mass. We know that hand phasers on maximum setting also disintegrate large adult male humanoids, in excess of 80 kg in mass. In both cases, there is just enough energy to disintegrate the entire body, and there is no excess energy to damage the ground under the victim's feet, or spill over to damage other solid objects in the victim's vicinity. This can only make sense if the energy for this reaction somehow comes from the victim's mass, so that the reaction continues until it runs out of mass but does not continue afterwards. Otherwise, if the energy all comes from the phaser, there should either be a deficit of energy when shooting at large targets, or a surplus of energy when shooting at small targets. Therefore, we know that the phaser reaction most likely transforms matter into neutrinos, and that it must occur in a chain reaction which feeds off the victim's mass.

Heating effects. At low power levels, phasers can be used as simple heating devices. Their behavior, when used in this manner, seems totally different from their behavior when used to disintegrate targets. In fact, they seem to act like simple "heat lamps" in this mode. This initially seems contradictory, but the TM describes SEM:NDF ratios (Simple Electromagnetic effects to Nuclear Disruption Force), which are weighted heavily toward SEM at low power settings and heavily toward NDF at high power settings. This suggests that a phaser is indeed a simple "heat beam" at low power settings, but induces an exotic "nuclear disruption" reaction at high power settings. This NDF chain reaction must be the neutrino-transformation chain reaction that has been discussed above. Therefore, we know that the phaser reaction most likely transforms matter into neutrinos, we know that it occurs in a chain reaction which feeds off the victim's mass, and we know that there is some sort of "threshold" for this reaction, below which the phaser weapon merely adds thermal energy to the target.

Rock shattering. We've seen phasers shatter rock quite easily in some episodes, easily blasting boulders free which may be as large as several tons. On the other hand, we've also seen phasers strike the ground in combat situations (e.g. "Rocks and Shoals") without damaging the ground noticeably at all. This is extremely confusing, especially since phasers tend to produce a disintegration chain reaction or a localized heating effect in other situations. Why then, do they sometimes blast large, intact, unheated chunks out of rock walls? One possible explanation might be that natural rocks are not chemically or micro-structurally homogeneous, so the phaser chain reaction may "shoot through" the rock along natural pre-existing grain boundaries, hence the shattering effect.

Material dependence. We saw in "Devil in the Dark" that a silicon-based life form are more resistant to phaser fire than carbon-based life forms. We also see that high-density arm our is extremely resistant to phasers, as we can tell from comparing something like "The Die is Cast" or "Inheritance" in which light silicate planetary surface crust is destroyed with something like ST2 or "Way of the Warrior", in which repeated phaser blasts does only minor damage to armor. Therefore, it is quite obvious that the material composition of the target has an enormous effect on the effectiveness of phasers. Since we already know that phasers operate on some sort of chain reaction, and that they must derive much of their energy from the target itself, this is not a surprise. The pattern appears to favor atoms with very high nucleon counts, such as heavy metals. Apparently, the higher the atomic number, the less susceptible an element is to the NDF reaction. This is also consistent with "Devil in the Dark", since silicon has a higher atomic number than carbon (14 as opposed to 6).

Apparent failure to observe Conservation of Momentum. Conversation of momentum is a fundamental law, like conservation of energy. It affects even the most stupendously massive objects, such as neutron stars (conservation of angular momentum is what causes their high rates of rotation). So how does Captain Kirk fire a one-handed phaser shot in ST3 which carries so much momentum that it can lift a Klingon off his feet and hurl him dozens of feet back through the air? Shouldn't his shoulder be at least dislocated from the recoil? The simple answer is that the phaser cannot possibly carry that much momentum, because conservation of momentum is a fundamental law. Therefore, the Klingon's movement through the air must not have been due to simple impact physics. Perhaps the chain reaction propagated in such a manner that the stream of neutrinos coming out of his body was largely aimed in one direction (neutrinos do have momentum), so it acted as a jet and drove him backwards. Presumably, phaser particles were ejected from the disrupted nuclei in the other direction, which impacted on deeper tissues. Perhaps the Klingon's body armor somehow contributed to this unusual effect.

We know now that phasers most likely transform matter into neutrinos. We know that they use some sort of chain reaction, which feeds off the target matter somehow. We know that the effect is highly dependent on material composition, and has shown a correlation to atomic number. Therefore, we can formulate a phenomenon-based theory of what they really do the NDF theory.


The Nuclear Disruption Theory (NDF Theory) :

To explain the behavior of phasers, phasers must fire some sort of special "phaser particles" that disintegrate atoms into a shower of neutrinos. A portion of the mass must transform into new phaser particles, probably with slightly less energy than the original phaser particle, since the chain reactions doesn't go on indefinitely. Low-energy phaser particles seem to have very different effects from high-energy phaser particles: below the "nuclear disruption force" threshold, they seem to be capable of causing a variety of effects ranging from simple heating to electrical shock effects. The particles apparently have mass because phaser beams are known to propagate at distinctly sublight speeds in certain situations (particularly hand phaser beams), and they appear to be very short-lived, hence their apparent inability to propagate through gases (where the large inter-atomic spacing apparently causes enough of a delay to prevent continuation of the NDF chain reaction), or across the gaps between a victim's shoes and the ground. This suggests that a phaser beam incorporates some sort of containment or suspension field to keep the particles from decaying - perhaps it is this field (possibly related to subspace) which accounts for the ability of phasers to be effective against shields in spite of the absence of matter for the NDF reaction.

In general, carbon-based life forms are easy to disintegrate because they are dominated by hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen (atomic numbers 1, 6, and 8 respectively), and light elements like this are probably very susceptible to the NDF chain reaction. Silicates and silicon-based life forms should be more difficult to disintegrate.

Phasers are very effective for planetary surface bombardments, since typical planetary crust compositions are heavily weighted toward light silicates rather than iron or heavy metals. This allows starships to get a lot of bang for their buck by using the chain reaction to destroy large amounts of rock without having to expend a great deal of energy.

Phasers are not very effective against high-density arm our and very weak against ablative arm our, since the chain reaction propagates very poorly through gases and the violent gas expulsion from ablative armor scatters the beam, it will not be effective.

The Enterprise-D's crew had to strictly regulate the power output of their phaser array in "A Matter of Time" to prevent an "exothermal inversion" of the atmosphere, which would have actually heated the planet's atmosphere to the point where the atmosphere would largely "boil off" the planet. The term "exothermal inversion" describes a "flip" in some material property which releases heat energy. The possibility of a sudden chain-reaction in the atmosphere demonstrates clearly that phasers do not perform direct heat energy transfer. If phasers heat matter directly, then there will be no possibility of a sudden "flip"- only a steady heating that can easily be controlled. Furthermore, it was clearly stated that the output had to be controlled to within "0.06 terawatts" to avoid this exothermal inversion. If phasers operate through direct heating, then an error of 0.06TW, 0.6TW, or even 600TW would not possibly make the difference between an unaffected atmosphere and an atmosphere being blasted off the planet.

The DS9 TM expands upon the original TM's descriptions of the mechanism of phaser operation, stating that "the basic phaser mechanism remains the strong nuclear force liberation method found in the rapid nadion effect", and it also states that "almost no classical thermal or other unwanted E/M effects are present in the discharge beam." The Federation's official technical literature clearly states that the basic mechanism of phaser operation is not thermal or electromagnetic in nature.

The DS9 TM indicates that the total power output of DS9's fusion reactors is a 790 TW, which is the total power output available to the entire station, including its shielding and weapons systems. If we examine the claimed effectiveness of phasers in "The Die is Cast", we can easily determine that 790 TW would not be anywhere near enough to power such weapons. You would need many orders of magnitude more power to be capable of destroying a planet's crust in one hour as the Romulans claimed they would be able to do. Therefore the limited power output of DS9, and the demonstrated effectiveness of its weapons against entire fleets of enemy starships, in conjunction with "The Die is Cast", all combine to demonstrate that phasers must be capable of doing greater damage than what their raw power levels would suggest. This is another clear piece of evidence that phasers operate on some sort of chain reaction.

Momentum Effects:
"The Die is Cast": The momentum of light is U/c, and it is impossible for any particle of any kind to have less momentum than photons because photons have zero mass, and nothing can have less momentum than a zero-mass particle for any given energy level. Therefore, U/c is a solid lower limit for the momentum of any weapon, including phasers. We know that the "The Die is Cast" fleet would have had to release at least 4E28 joules of energy to vaporize the Founder planet's crust, and that they estimated they would be able to do this in one hour. The resultant reaction momentum (remembering that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction) must therefore have been 1.3E20 kg m/s. This works out to 3.7E16N of reaction force once we factor in the one-hour estimated time duration, or 1.85E15N applied to each ship. How much force is this? This is enough force to accelerate a 4.5 million-ton ship like a Galaxy Class Starship at 410,000 m/s^2, more than 40,000 G's! No such acceleration was seen in "The Die is Cast", and the accelerative capability of Federation impulse engines is only 5000G's, so even if the impulse engines were applying full power, the ships would still have been accelerated backwards at 360,000 m/s². Federation inertial dampers don't prevent accelerative forces from moving the ship. Inertial dampers only affects the human beings within the habitable volume of the starship, rather than affecting the entire ship.

Hand Phaser Momentum and Battery Storage
Hand phasers can "explosively uncouple" 650 cubic meters of rock with a 0.28-second burst at maximum power. This is consistent with the NDF theory but there is no such thing as "explosive uncoupling" of rock due to direct energy transfer. If we assume that the term "explosive uncoupling" actually means vaporization, then hand phasers would need to transfer more than 9 TJ of energy into the rock, in just 0.28 seconds. The resulting power output estimate is 32 TW! The battery storage capacity of a Type III phaser (also known as a phaser rifle, which is the most powerful hand-held weapon carried aboard Federation starships) is supposedly 67.5 TJ, so a phaser rifle would be capable of firing on full-power for only two seconds if its power output were this large. It is most likely that both the phaser shot energy and cell capacity are actually much lower than this. A phaser on overload releases an amount of energy which is greater than one full-power shot, but if one full-power shot is 9 TJ, then a phaser overload should be a 2 kiloton nuclear-yield explosion! We've seen phaser overloads before, and they did not exhibit any of the fireball or shockwave effects of a low-yield nuclear weapon.

If hand phasers operated on direct energy-transfer principles, they would easily kill their users. The inevitable counter-argument is that the phasers incorporate technology for counteracting the reaction force, but the only way to do such a thing is to discharge massive energy or a highly energetic stream of particles out of the back of the phaser. This would simply kill the user in a different manner, and there is absolutely no mention of any such countermeasure in the TM. Again, the direct energy-transfer theory fails to explain known phenomena while the NDF theory succeeds.

Phaser Stun Settings
At low power levels, phasers can stun a human being into unconsciousness without causing significant physical damage. They can cause localized burn effects and even death if fired at the cranium from close range, but at long range the damage is easily repairable. However, there is no known method for making a direct energy-transfer weapon that stuns a human being without causing enough physical damage to kill him as well. This is yet another example of the dismal failure of the direct energy-transfer theory to explain known phenomena, while the NDF theory is not so limited.

Collateral Damage
Direct energy transfer weapons (lasers, kinetic energy weapons, plasma weapons, chemical explosive weapons, etc) release their energy in an indiscriminate manner. Collateral damage is always part of the equation, yet phasers never do any collateral damage whatsoever, to the ground under the victim's feet or any bystanders. However, when they are set to a high power level, they completely disintegrate the victim's body! This is yet another example of the failure of the direct energy-transfer theory and the success of the NDF theory.

Heat and Pressure Waves
When a human body is vaporized by a phaser blast, there is no heat wave. No pressure wave. No blast of wind, or cloud of gas. In short, there are no waste products whatsoever, yet Conservation of Energy demands that there be waste products and heat. The only way to circumvent this problem is to postulate that the matter transformed into neutrinos or some other miniscule particle that can pass harmlessly and unnoticeably through matter. However, the only way to do this with normal energy transfer is to heat the matter up to a trillion degrees so that it "melts" into quarks, and such a massive energy release would not only cause some collateral damage, it would cause massive collateral damage, equivalent to a large-scale nuclear strike involving hundreds of warheads. Obviously, this isn't happening every time someone is vaporized on the show, and it certainly wouldn't mitigate the lack of a pressure or heat wave! Again, we see how the direct energy transfer theory fails while the NDF theory succeeds.

Material sensitivity
In "Devil in the Dark", hand phasers were shown to be ineffective at their default settings against a silicon-based life form. Although this is consistent with the NDF theory, it is totally inconsistent with the direct energy-transfer theory. Silicon-based materials do not necessarily have higher specific heat capacities than carbon-based materials; in many cases the heat capacities and melting points of carbon-based materials are actually higher. As if it needed to be said, we have yet another example of how the direct energy transfer theory fails to explain known phenomena while the NDF theory succeeds.

Non-Linearity
The TM clearly describes the destructive capabilities of hand phasers, but the destructive effect described in the TM is a non-linear exponentially increasing effect. In other words, when you double the energy (in "discharge units"), you get more than double the destruction. This doesn't fit with the direct energy transfer theory but it does fit with the NDF theory.

Duranium vs. Rock
Duranium perhaps it stands for "depleted uranium", which has been truncated to "duranium" by the 23rd century. Since we know that duranium ore is found on Bajor and transuranic elements are never found in significant quantities in planetary ores. This means that duranium most likely does not have a remarkably high melting point or a high specific heat, and yet it has a remarkable ability to resist destruction from phaser fire. Based on "The Die is Cast", it is many trillions of times more resistant than rock. In fact, it doesn't really matter what duranium is, nothing can contain such large amounts of energy without melting, because the state of matter is essentially an indication of energy content.
. If less than 10 cubic meters of duranium armor are destroyed by a ½-second phaser burst and 1E18 cubic meters of rock are vaporized by a 5-second burst (according to "The Die is Cast"), then a single cubic meter of duranium must absorb at least 4E26 joules before vaporization. This is roughly 100 billion megatons, for one single cubic meter!
. No element can possibly withstand this much energy. Not only would it easily vaporize, but its protons and neutrons would dissolve into quarks!
. The Technical Manual indicates that 2.4TJ is required to vaporize a cubic meter of tritanium, so this would suggest that duranium is more than 150 trillion times as resistant as tritanium even though the two materials are both used in the ship's armor! This doesn't make any sense from either a Trek perspective or a scientific perspective).
. There is no conceivable way to reconcile the damage levels of phasers against duranium and rock, using the direct-energy-transfer theory. However, the NDF theory explains these effects easily. The light silicates in the planet's crust and mantle have low atomic numbers, while duranium obviously has a high atomic number. Yet another example of how the direct energy-transfer theory fails and the NDF theory succeeds.