If I may:2046 wrote:Dude, the debate ended with my last post. I thought you weren't interested anymore . . . now you're trying to extend it?
I'll respond to your last post for fun and profit, but the debate's over.
Starlog Magazine's Official Technical Journal of the Imperial Forces, Volume #2, published by Lucasfilm Ltd. in 1994, says that the DS is 120km in diameter, and its fuel is" compressed stellar hydrogen." and that the Death Star Reactor Core contains only a "solar ionization reactor."
From Page 38:
"At the core of the Death Star was an immense, cavernous housing for the battle station's power generator matrix. A fusion reactor of increditle proportions, fed by steller fuel bottles lining its periphery, produced the raw energy demanded by the Death Star's superlaser and hyperdrive systems."
This overrules later publications, or those by other publishers.
Accordingly, there's simply no way to get enough hydrogen to accelerate the planet's mass to escape-velocity of 11km/s, which requires 1.1E+4J/kg, * 6E+24kg = ~ 7E+28J.
Likewise a "hypermatter mass-energy conversion beam" is impossible for similar reasons: i.e. M-E is an endothermic process, and therefore such a beam would cost more energy than it would yield.
Likewise, a DET weapon-- or even an anti-matter beam-- would vaporize the planet on the side of the beam, while blasting the remainder of the planet out of the solar system from the other side. (Meanwhile, an E+38J reaction is enough energy to vaporize the planet 10,000 times over).
However that doesn't happen; but rather, the planet explodes from the inside out, transforming a planet-sized mass of mostly molten rock, into field of solid asteroids called "The Alderaan Graveyard;" the falcon runs into these asteroids when it comes out of hyperspace where Alderaan was supposed to be.
The only way to accomplish this, would be to convert the planet's thermal energy to kinetic energy, by radiating it into space; and this can be done by shortening the distance between the planet's hot mass and cold space; then, the hottest part of the planet-- i.e. the center-- will explode, while cooling it rather than heating it as the energy expands outward, like putting an egg in a microwave oven vs. a pressure-cooker: i.e. both increase the internal temperature equally, but there's no ambient pressure in the microwave to contain it.
Furthermore, the fact that the planet remains in the same area without dispersing into space, means that the explosion was no faster than escape-velocity of 11km/s-- which would permit an energy of no more than than 11kJ/kg, giving an upper-yield figure of E+29J.
Meanwhile, the viewed speed of the acceleration is far faster than this-- about .05C, or 15,000km/s (i.e. about 1400 times faster)-- which would require 6E+38J, enough to vaporize the entire planet 10,000 times over, and blast it well out of the solar-system-- unless the distance was shortened through hyperaccelerated means, and the energy came from the planet itself rather than an outside source.
This indicates a hyperspace-accelerator shortened the distance between the planet's core and the surrounding space, spreading its thermal energy over the larger area via entropy-- and the planet's mass along with it.
This likewise fits into accord with the Death Star's hyperdrive, i.e. adapting it for use as a weapon, when it's not being used to move the station; this wouldn't require a great amount of energy to destroy a planet, since it was using the planet's own thermal energy to destroy itself, while the hyperspace beam would simply serve as a catalyst via reducing the distance between the planet's core and the surrounding space, thereby reducing the insulating effect of distance between them.
This would allow the DS to destroy a planet, the same way that a trilithium warhead destroyed a star: i.e. by catalysizing the reaction, rather than injecting the energy required to cause it outright; no one would suggest, for example, that the trilithium warhead struck the star with enough energy to fuse its hydrogen and cause a supernova; but that's essentially the equivalent of what Warsies are claiming with the DS destroying a planet!
So to recap, we have the following:
1) the DS is powered by fusion, which can't possibly produce enough power to blow up a planet;
2) the planet explodes with no more than E+29J (escape velocity), but no less than E+28J;
3) the mostly-liquid planet solidifies rather than vaporizes, from the explosion;
4) the planet appears to explode much faster than possible for where its pieces end up; and
5) the DS already has a hyperaccelerator large enough to move itself across the galaxy.
All this points to a hyperspace-catalytic process, and denies any other sort of beam-- particularly since the empire doesn't even have a bomb able to destroy a planet; and it's ridiculous to say that the empire can manage a controlled reaction which can produce that much power, but not an uncontrolled one via a bomb-- indeed, this would be like saying that we can build a fusion-generator that produces 20MT of energy at once, but not a 20MT H-bomb! Ridiculous.
In conclusion, the DS blows up planets by entropy (i.e. the law that says that heat always flows to a cooler area), through
1) shortening the distance to the space around it, thereby
2) increasing the inverse-square law with regard to the amount of heat radiated heat into space by about 1400 times, and thereby
3) spreading a large amount of thermal energy in a small area, into a small amount of energy in a large area, which
4) simply converts the planet's thermal energy to potential energy, moving high-temperature rock at a low-point, to low temperature rock at a high point-- just like a car burning gasoline to drive uphill.
Essentially, this simply reverses the process by which the planet was originally formed from colliding asteroids to form a pool of molten rock at the bottom of a gravity-well-- via separating the planet into a field of frozen (i.e. reducing the planet's thermal energy) asteroids at a distance from that well (i.e. converting that thermal energy to potential energy)
There's really no other way to explain it.