Starfleet Jedi

Most people ever since the death star first appeared figured it destroyed planets through brute force. Here is evidence against that.

THE REACTOR

A NEW HOPE

"Space filled temporarily with trillions of microscopic metal fragments, propelled past the retreating ships by the liberated energy of a small artificial sun"

There are two possible interpretations of this statement.

1. The death star was powered by a small artificial sun; it's power was produced by fusion of hydrogen or helium. Due to the specificness of the statement this is the most likely interpretation.

2. It's power output was comparable to a small sun (probably a red dwarf.)

Either way it is impossible for the Death Star to generate enough power to destroy a planet; especially with a recharge period of 24 hours.

THE RINGS

When a planet is destroyed by the death star it forms planar rings; an effect that can't possibly come from a direct energy transfer.

theta_pinch wrote:Most people ever since the death star first appeared figured it destroyed planets through brute force. Here is evidence against that.

THE REACTOR

A NEW HOPE

"Space filled temporarily with trillions of microscopic metal fragments, propelled past the retreating ships by the liberated energy of a small artificial sun"

There are two possible interpretations of this statement.

1. The death star was powered by a small artificial sun; it's power was produced by fusion of hydrogen or helium. Due to the specificness of the statement this is the most likely interpretation.

2. It's power output was comparable to a small sun (probably a red dwarf.)

Either way it is impossible for the Death Star to generate enough power to destroy a planet; especially with a recharge period of 24 hours.

THE RINGS

When a planet is destroyed by the death star it forms planar rings; an effect that can't possibly come from a direct energy transfer.

Your format mistake reveals your commie roots!
I'll let the moderators deal with you!
Anything less than a two days long ban, consider yourself lucky!

For the moment, I'll remind you that these two points have been adressed ad nauseam here.
Robert (RSA, Guardian 2K, 2046 or any other nickname he fancied in the past) has a good article about the "artificial sun" bit on his website's section dedicated to the Death Star.

As for the rings, I would suggest you give a look at the review-thread of the book "Death Star" which was started by WILGA. Be careful though, because with the changes to come on the canon policy, such elements may not be relevant anymore ... in other words, the EU that worked in parallel to Lucas' movies for years may very well become a sealed "old continuity" with no addition anymore because of the buyout.

Oh and I believe nothing will ever beat the biggest smoking gun: the delayed secondary and much more important explosion.

I guess all the ammo stockpiled by the Rebels ignited after the first blast. They were THAT dangerous.

Mr. Oragahn wrote:

theta_pinch wrote:Most people ever since the death star first appeared figured it destroyed planets through brute force. Here is evidence against that.

THE REACTOR

A NEW HOPE

"Space filled temporarily with trillions of microscopic metal fragments, propelled past the retreating ships by the liberated energy of a small artificial sun"

There are two possible interpretations of this statement.

1. The death star was powered by a small artificial sun; it's power was produced by fusion of hydrogen or helium. Due to the specificness of the statement this is the most likely interpretation.

2. It's power output was comparable to a small sun (probably a red dwarf.)

Either way it is impossible for the Death Star to generate enough power to destroy a planet; especially with a recharge period of 24 hours.

THE RINGS

When a planet is destroyed by the death star it forms planar rings; an effect that can't possibly come from a direct energy transfer.

Your format mistake reveals your commie roots!
I'll let the moderators deal with you!
Anything less than a two days long ban, consider yourself lucky!

For the moment, I'll remind you that these two points have been adressed ad nauseam here.
Robert (RSA, Guardian 2K, 2046 or any other nickname he fancied in the past) has a good article about the "artificial sun" bit on his website's section dedicated to the Death Star.

As for the rings, I would suggest you give a look at the review-thread of the book "Death Star" which was started by WILGA. Be careful though, because with the changes to come on the canon policy, such elements may not be relevant anymore ... in other words, the EU that worked in parallel to Lucas' movies for years may very well become a sealed "old continuity" with no addition anymore because of the buyout.

Oh and I believe nothing will ever beat the biggest smoking gun: the delayed secondary and much more important explosion.

I guess all the ammo stockpiled by the Rebels ignited after the first blast. They were THAT dangerous.

Sorry about adressing this again, I wasn't aware it had been adressed ad nauseum. You were joking about the moderator thing, right? What's a commie?

There is no joke here, only fear.

theta_pinch wrote:What's a commie?

Oh . . . oh my.

Anyway, yes . . . please go here:

http://www.st-v-sw.net/STSWhi2.html

And specifically for the purpose of this thread, enjoy this:

http://www.st-v-sw.net/STSWdeathstarindex.html

Or more specifically, this:

http://www.st-v-sw.net/STSWsuperlasereffect.html

theta_pinch wrote: 1. The death star was powered by a small artificial sun; it's power was produced by fusion of hydrogen or helium. Due to the specificness of the statement this is the most likely interpretation.

2. It's power output was comparable to a small sun (probably a red dwarf.)

Either way it is impossible for the Death Star to generate enough power to destroy a planet; especially with a recharge period of 24 hours.

This isn't a smoking gun. Star Wars like any fictional setting is not bound by the rules of reality do to being fictional, and therefor can do the impossible. Authors often forget to do their math at times as well, and just write what sounds "right" to themselves at the time.

On its own the quote is just flowery language, and requires other evidence for it to be meaningful.

Lucky wrote:

theta_pinch wrote: 1. The death star was powered by a small artificial sun; it's power was produced by fusion of hydrogen or helium. Due to the specificness of the statement this is the most likely interpretation.

2. It's power output was comparable to a small sun (probably a red dwarf.)

Either way it is impossible for the Death Star to generate enough power to destroy a planet; especially with a recharge period of 24 hours.

This isn't a smoking gun. Star Wars like any fictional setting is not bound by the rules of reality do to being fictional, and therefor can do the impossible. Authors often forget to do their math at times as well, and just write what sounds "right" to themselves at the time.

On its own the quote is just flowery language, and requires other evidence for it to be meaningful.

How about the rings; even a person doing none of the math at all would know that planar rings can't come from DET effects.

theta_pinch wrote:

Lucky wrote:

theta_pinch wrote: 1. The death star was powered by a small artificial sun; it's power was produced by fusion of hydrogen or helium. Due to the specificness of the statement this is the most likely interpretation.

2. It's power output was comparable to a small sun (probably a red dwarf.)

Either way it is impossible for the Death Star to generate enough power to destroy a planet; especially with a recharge period of 24 hours.

This isn't a smoking gun. Star Wars like any fictional setting is not bound by the rules of reality do to being fictional, and therefor can do the impossible. Authors often forget to do their math at times as well, and just write what sounds "right" to themselves at the time.

On its own the quote is just flowery language, and requires other evidence for it to be meaningful.

How about the rings; even a person doing none of the math at all would know that planar rings can't come from DET effects.

It actually could if we knew of a direct energy transfer system that tended to produce all the necessary parameters to generate a compressed ring of whateverium.
The point, though, is that Wongies have for years argued that the superlaser was a rather raw, simple and powerful system.
Such is simply not the case.

Again, focus on the delay between the first, small explosion and the second, bigger explosion. That's a LOT of proof as a matter of fact.

My what you guys call "maximalist" site is gonna discuss the rings and secondary explosions eventually, as well as the hyperspace boost theory in regards to energy requirements.

theta_pinch wrote:Most people ever since the death star first appeared figured it destroyed planets through brute force. Here is evidence against that.

THE REACTOR

A NEW HOPE

"Space filled temporarily with trillions of microscopic metal fragments, propelled past the retreating ships by the liberated energy of a small artificial sun"

There are two possible interpretations of this statement.

1. The death star was powered by a small artificial sun; it's power was produced by fusion of hydrogen or helium. Due to the specificness of the statement this is the most likely interpretation.

2. It's power output was comparable to a small sun (probably a red dwarf.)

Either way it is impossible for the Death Star to generate enough power to destroy a planet; especially with a recharge period of 24 hours.

THE RINGS

When a planet is destroyed by the death star it forms planar rings; an effect that can't possibly come from a direct energy transfer.

The power output of a small star (ie, the most common type of main sequence star; the red dwarf), would be 2.6922e+25 joules for a red dwarf with around 7% of Sol's luminosity (which is pretty high for a red dwarf, you can expect that most will be closer to 2% or 7.692e+24 joules). The gravitational binding energy for a planet like Earth would be 2e+32 joules. Your several orders of magnitude to low still.

Of course, that also depends on how that quote was phrased.

That amount of power is, however, perfectly in line with the primary explosion and all the effects described in the book Death Star.

Mr. Oragahn wrote:That amount of power is, however, perfectly in line with the primary explosion and all the effects described in the book Death Star.

Would it? Hmm interesting. In any case, outside of some idiot assuming that the Enterprise D or a Retribution class Imperium warship could laugh off the superlaser, I see it as mostly academic.

Firmus Piett wrote:My what you guys call "maximalist" site is gonna discuss the rings and secondary explosions eventually, as well as the hyperspace boost theory in regards to energy requirements.

If you are going to include the EU "Death Star" novel in your work, you definitely need to pay close attention to all the passages relevant to the superlaser's effects, namely how on one-third power, the superlaser could only destroy a continent-sized area, when if it were really a DET weapon of 1e36 J, it would still have mass scattered Despayre quite effectively.
-Mike

Mith wrote:

Mr. Oragahn wrote:That amount of power is, however, perfectly in line with the primary explosion and all the effects described in the book Death Star.

Would it? Hmm interesting. In any case, outside of some idiot assuming that the Enterprise D or a Retribution class Imperium warship could laugh off the superlaser, I see it as mostly academic.

Multiple teratons is the bare minimum to cover a large area of a planet, and several petatons most likely allows for the waste of energy from an indiscriminate attack and some extra "overkill" damage.
The splash-whitening of a whole hemisphere of Alderaan fits with that (that's before the super explosions that bursts on the other side of the planet).
The mountain upheaval and worldwide crust splitting of Despayre after the first two shots also fits with that.

Any supplemental effect is allowed by gaining a damage bonus from hyperspace. Depending on how fast you reach the "hello hypaspess can i has teh xtra joules?" threshold, you get the ring (some kind of compression, a shockwave, which fits with principles of inertia) and that also explains why despite also reaching that threshold at Despayre, we didn't get any ring (there's no description of them, yet the third shot is so many orders of magnitude more destructive than the first two ones despite relying on the exact same amount of power from the DS' core), most likely imho due to the fact that the necessary exotic hyperspace window effect whatever was only reached after three shots instead of one.
There's obviously going to be differences in effect if you dump X joules in a few seconds, or dump the same total over a series of three pourings, each spaced by some hour and like fifteen minutes of charging (I think that was the time but you better check).

It's interesting that a hypermatter core (named as such in the age old first ICS) precisely managed to open a rift into hyperspace after reaching a certain level of power.
Or in other words, that some hyperspace related phenomenon that's tied to the production of the energy in the DS core literally piggy backed the entire superlaser beam to be transfered to the planet.
Heck, we could even say that part of the destruction caused to Despayre after the first two shots already was caused by the chaotic formation of that hyperspace rift which wasn't ready yet. So with some distorsion, mass was moved in all directions and mountains went up and down and the crust started to crack.
Perhaps it depends on the mass of the planet, the mass shadow, and that you can only blast a planet into hyperspace once you have brought enough raw energy to allow a hyperspace rift to form in the region of the planet despite its shadow mass.
From there, once the rift is open, it's Piñata!

That's what I was going for with this graphic:



Only that I didn't consider that any subtle manifestation of hyperspace would be affected the magnitude of damage caused by the first two shots at Despayre.
As I said above, it's actually totally possible. The effect of a window trying to open in realspace, a window of that magnitude, it would distort space. It's like trying to open a door by slamming it, at some point the door bulges. Like some terror beast, and when it opens, oh la la!