How dangerous is a missed starship phaser shot?
WARNING! This is about to get downright nerdy. During a recent Star Trek debate a horrifying thought came over me; do missed phaser shots from starships travel through space until they hit something ? i.e. say the Enterprise gets in a firefight with a Romulan Bird of Prey and they firing wildly at each other while sailing around in space, many phaser shots miss and seemingly soar out into space... forever. How dangerous are those missed shots? Obviously I'm not a physicist, and I do know lightwaves dissipate the farther they travel, but in a close, hornet's nest shootout missed phaser canon shots can quickly turn into friendly fire. Also, many of these shootouts occur in the vacuum of space, not inside a planet's atmosphere. For recent illustration of this quandary, look no further than the Star Wars: Episode VII teaser trailer above. Around the one minute mark the millennium falcon is being shot haphazardly by two tie fighters. None of the tie fighter shots...
