Are we anywhere close to creating a transparent force field (similar to those in Star Trek)?

Hmmmm...No, not that I know of. Such a thing would surely be posted by either a serious physicist, or by a nutcase that thinks it supports one of his theories.

Force fields are a figment of the imagination; all the possible candidates I have seen described are pathetically weak compared to good physical armour; in some ways physical objects are a sort of force field on the quantum level, so it unlikely that you will be able to better good hi-tech armour with any kind of field.
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Yes. Asimov said so.

Problem with force fields is that we have only discovered 4 forces in the universe: Gravity force, electromagnetic force, nuclear weak force, and nuclear strong force. None of them have been harnessed in a way to form a force field. You might form a powerful AC or RF electromagnetic field that would fry anybody who walked into it, though. But that is not a force-field, that's a radiation field, or energy field.

Hans

i'm just curious. if gravity forces you down wouldn't a reverse field push you away? And is sonic force considered which of the following forces you've listed

sonic is just sound or the movement of energy through matter. A very strong magnetic field could be called a force field but it will only repel (or attract) something that’s magnetized so unless the bad guys bullets or projectiles are magnetic the field is useless, it would have no effect against photon or EM weapons since light waves travel through magnetic fields without distortion. A magnetic force field would deflect a plasma, ion or particle accelerator based weapon well. A anti-gravity field deflect anything including photons as a result is would distort light and if strong enough prevent any light from actually getting through. Weak and strong atomic force are only located very close to atoms and its just not possible to use them unless your talking about matter based armor.

Anti-gravity is just theory right they haven't done successful test with it have they? If so then absence of gravity would keep everything out...but if say an object came from the other side of the field would it

A. Be repelled

B. Be propelled

C. Turned inside out as passing throught the field


or

D. Float into the field and get shot into space

:eek:

We considered the use of anti-gravity as a repulsor field for interstellar spacecraft in Orion's Arm;

it turns out there is a theoretical state of matter called negative matter which has negative gravity and negative inertia.
Negative matter should not be confused with antimatter, by the way.
The negative gravity can be used to keep wormholes open, which is useful; but as a forcefield it was a washout.

Turns out gravity is a very weak force, and so is negative gravity;

a thousand tonne lump of negative matter would exert only a tiny repulsive force on any incoming dust or projectile. In fact if you had a thousand tonne lump of negative matter sitting on the Earth, the attraction of the Earth's positive gravity would be far stronger than the force of the negative gravity.

So antigravity is a tiny repulsive force until you get a mass of negative matter as massive as a planet-
not easy to carry around.
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yes anti-gavity is just a theory, anti-gravity would repel everything. Imagine it in 2D as a steep hill going around your generator: anything trying to penetrate from inside or outside would have to clime the hill. If the projectile hits at a slanted angle it will roll sideway off the hill being deflected.

Originally posted by eburacum45
So antigravity is a tiny repulsive force until you get a mass of negative matter as massive as a planet-
not easy to carry around.


Negative matter Black holes.

For in air 'shields', static electricity/plasma may work. It would be more of a wall type shield than a bubble.

A CIWS unit firing at 6000 rpm can create a wall of bullets in front of the incoming missile. Kind of like a "shield" projector.

Why the solid NO? What happened to that natural human inquisitiveness and perseverance?

Is it possible to give an object a negative charge?

How about "Transporters"- that is- making objects travel long distances without covering space? :)

how about an extremely high amplitude white noise that would crumble something which entered its range

No true force fields have as yet been made. That isn't to say that in the future there might be ways to design them though.

Yes it is totally possible, and I have done it! I live a house which is made completely out of force fields. All my furniture is also made out of force fields too. The only problem is everything is transparent; therefore it doesn’t go down too well with the neighbors. They keep telling me to stop walking around in the nip and when I righteously defend myself, they call the police and I subsequently get arrested. Don’t you fear though, as soon as I get the colour thing sorted out I plan to go public with my scientific breakthrough.

Regards

Namdam

It's very unlikely that any kind of all powerful "Force field" will ever be created. If your talking about defense against weaponry, the most likely course will be defensive systems with multiple layers of redundency, meaning you will have multiple layers of different kinds of armor used for different purposes. Even if a Force field were possible, armor made from multiple layers of redundency is much cheaper, and probably more reliable, as it wouldn't require any kind of power source that could fail or be destroyed.