Meson Gun

High-tech weapon that creates high energy mesons and directs them at targets. The collision of an electron and a positron creates a pi neutral meson. Mesons have short lives, which can be prolonged to precise duration by accelerating them to relativistic speeds. Range is set by varying the velocity of the mesons.

Mesons can pass through armor and matter without resistance. They do not interact significantly with other particles, and matter is therefore transparent to them. However, in a short time mesons decay into high-energy particles which do interact. If the point of decay is manipulated to occur inside the target ship, the result is high energy explosions and radiation damage. In a meson beam, the mesons travel to their target where they decay and release a large amount of energy. The beam can be stopped by a meson screen.

Toward the end of the Interstellar Wars , Solomani breakthroughs in starship weapon technology created the starship-mounted meson gun. When the Vilani first encountered meson fire from the Solomani , they were horrified as their ships exploded from the inside. This fear was derived from an old Vilani legend about the planet Sabmiqys ( ?????? / Antares 2117), called Gashukubi ("certain death" in Vilani ), a place where ships exploded from the inside. Rumours of the weapon did much to break the Vilani will to fight.

(BOOK-5, 1107; CHALLENGE-28, 1112; MT-ENCYC, 1120)

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