Have you ever wondered what's the more effective weapon of mass destruction?  Nukes vs. Photon Torpedoes?  Sure, everyone has.  In fact Dvice put scientists to the task and, uh, STAR TREK WINS!

To find some semblance of an actual answer, we turned to two scientists: Dr. Lawrence M. Krauss, a professor at Arizona State University and author of The Physics of Star Trek, and science-fiction author Dr. Geoffrey Landis, a former professor of astronautics at MIT. Hit the jump for their take on whose boom is best.

"Antimatter weapons are always more effective, in that they give the biggest bang for the buck," says Krauss. "They turn 100% of the matter energy to radiation, and thus extract all the energy possible for an explosion. Nuclear fusion, on the other hand, extracts about 1% of the available energy."

Landis agrees that an antimatter weapon would give "more kaboom for the kilogram," but that it's irrelevant for most practical purposes.

"In terms of weapon effectiveness, though, it's not relevant — an 'ordinary' nuclear weapon is already quite capable of destroying a city. It doesn't really matter which you use — either one is going to have quite an effect."

Defending against either type of weapon would be a huge challenge. Short of some kind of "magical" technology like energy screens, says Landis, any spacecraft would be toast if it were hit.

"In Star Trek they have 'deflector shields' that seem to be pretty good at keeping the nasty stuff like photon torpedoes away," he says. "At least, right up to the point where the shields are overloaded and Scotty calls up from engineering to say 'the engines can't take much more.' Which seems to happen once per episode, so maybe the shields aren't so good after all." (source Dvice)

Read the full article here.

Image credit Trekcore.com