The Magnetic Weaponry Trope In Sci-fi, Explained

gamerant.com:

Science fiction authors seem to love to imagine the weaponry of the future more than they do almost any other aspect of technology's ongoing march forward. When considering the combat systems that might codify World War IV or V, certain ideas seem to take hold and become popular go-to choices.

When a sci-fi fan imagines a standard weapon of the genre, they might picture the classic Star Trek phaser or the iconic Star Wars lightsaber. While lasers have a long and storied history, there are still some works that prefer good old-fashioned lead and steel. Those who are feeling indecisive, however, will be happy to know that there's a great option in-between.

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Magnetic weapons use magnetic fields to accelerate a physical projectile or to focus a charged particle beam. Go-to examples include railguns, which use two parallel metal rails to produce a magnetic current between them, and coilguns, which pass the current along a single line and pulse in sequence to fire. In the real world, their military applications are limited and largely experimental. Modern research suggests that magnetic weapons can fire projectiles with much greater velocity than traditional explosive charges. This means that a weapon such as a railgun might have substantially greater range than a typical gun. Many logistical concerns render the weapon less ready for real-world military application, including the difficulty of acquiring and transporting an appropriate power supply. Researchers have been at work on this concept for ages, and there are tons of consumer-ready magnetic weapons, but they may never be ready for war. Wars of the sci-fi future, however, love the concept.

The first example of this trope in science