Stargate: Gatebuster yield

[Mr. Oragahn]

I'd like to point out two other things.

• First, the measurements differ greatly when done from outdoor shots.
  As you realize, my measurements are made from indoor shots exclusively, and they are reliable enough.
  As I suspected the first time I saw the episode, the outdoor shot of the Horizon accelerating past the Apollo didn't seem right when I first saw it, and that for a simple reason.
  In the shot in question, we can see part of the room where the weapon was stored.
  We can notably see a piece of furniture, with multiple drawers, on the left of the MIRV. Well, it's not on the left of the Horizon 3D wise, but it is on the image.
  A quick eyeballing of this piece of furniture reveals that it would be considerably bigger than the main section of a F-302 (rougkly 15 meters wide, wingspan relative).
  Namely, you could store a family in those drawers, while at best they're meant to store documents and papers, eventually hand tools.
  
  Note that Stargate has already been inconsistent in terms of dimensions in the past, so there are obvious mistakes which are to be ignored.
  This is a sad thing, because we have enoug evidence that the modellers responsible of several ships do work from given scales, but those scales get totally ignored when the final scenes are composed. This is how, for example, the battle of Be All My Sins Remember'd should have featured 11 km long hiveships, which would have been akin to having starships fighting around an armada of Executors, in terms of epic scales.
• My second point is about my earlier estimation of the minimal energy which would be transfered to the stargate, if a gatebuster was detonated as advised by Daniel-Merlin.
  What I obtained was an energy figure.
  However, we are not talking about a weapon which releases its energy over a second, but within short fractions of a second.
  
  "Large x- and gamma-ray dose rates can cause transient upset and permanent failure. These dose rates are delivered over a 10–100 ns time period."
  FAS - Nuclear Weapon Radiation Effects.
  
  Let's take the higher value, e-7 (100 ns, or 100 e-9 seconds). Hell, let's say that it's even slower with naqahdria, despite how that material is extremely unstable. So e-6.
  Had the gatebuster released its energy over a second, the power absorbed by the stargate, and destroying it in the wake, would have been of 924.664 exawatts.
  As an enhanced nuclear device, the power would be of 924.664 million exawatts, which is globally what it would take, at least, to destroy a connected stargate.
  Remember that with less conservative figures, the power could be from ten to thousand times greater.
• Thirdly, I didn't consider the importance of placing the buster behind the stargate, that is, behind the event horizon. What does it mean? Large amounts of plasma and more advanced weapons can be fired through the event horizon, into the wormhole, to come out on the other end, through the receiving stargate.
  For example, in The Pegasus Project, we observe an important plume of plasma going through the wormhole and hitting an Ori warship on the other side.
  
  It is not known what would happen if such energies were coming from the back. However, we know that it will destroy a stargate, somehow. So this time, I'll try to look at the energy hitting the event horizon from the back.
  But let's get into the details first.
  
  A stargate, no matter what you do, stores the matter as energy patterns, and directly stores energy. It's a huge capacitor. So globally, firing the beam the right way, into the wormhole, would make it sure that the beam's energy would get stored into the stargate and dumped into the wormhole.
  
  We've seen that when seen from behind, the event horizon doesn't stop light. Besides a waterish blue filter, you can see through it. But when you face the stargate, you see a vortex of light from what's on the other end.
  Now, in the case of an omnidirectional blast, putting the gatebuster before or behind the stargate would make no difference, since the radiations which would miss the stargate's structural volume one way would also miss it the other way.
  The only modifying factor is the presence of the EH when a connection is established, and the EH's sides.
  
  Carter gives a bit more details later on:
  

  CARTER
  He's right, sir. A Mark IX Gatebuster beamed directly behind the event horizon so the force won't be absorbed by the active wormhole would destroy the Gate and sever the connection.

  So somehow, the point of detonating the gatebuster behind the event horizon is to prevent energy from being sent into the wormhole.
  This means that a gatebuster detonated in front of the stargate would likely fail to destroy it.
  It also means that the energy directly hitting the stargate is not the problem.
  
  It would seem that if large amounts of energy hit the event horizon from behind, they don't get transfered to the wormhole. Now, does this directly collapse the EH, or does it still get transfered to the stargate?
  
  From Carter's words, it seems that the reaction happens thusly: explosion -> energy not absorbed by the wormhole -> then the stargate is destroyed -> only then the connection is cut.
  
  Apparently, the energies liberated from the gatebuster wouldn't collapse the wormhole on their own, even if released from "behind" the stargate.
  So it means that the energy is dealt with differently when hitting the event horizon from behind.
  
  The most logical conclusion would be that the energy is transfered to the stargate, but for some reason, the stargate can't channel this energy into the wormhole.
  
  It may reveal a dual circuitry, one which deals with anything sent into the event horizon from the right direction, and one being about any energy hitting the stargate itself and the back of the EH.
  
  We know that a stargate can be powered by energy transfered directly into its structure, even before a wormhole is formed. We've seen this in Torment of Tantalus, with cables attached to the stargate and used to channel the energies from a violent storm to open a wormhole for a very short time.
  
  Obviously, the stargate can use the energy that hits its structure to open a connection, and maintain one.
  From Chain Reaction, we know that a stargate bathed in plasma can use that power to maintain a connection. In First Strike (SGA), the stargate can use the energy from a beam firectly fired into the EH to power itself.
  
  Basically, if there are two power grids inside the stargate, energy can be transfered to one from the other. One is used to power the stargate itself, the other is used for the transfer of energized matter.
  
  So, without a good explanation thus far, we're just left with a fact: the energy hitting the EH from behind would destroy the stargate, as it couldn't be transfered into the wormhole.
  Still, this is enough to estimate how much energy would hit the EH.
  
  Let's say that the gatebuster is beamed like one meter behind the stargate.
  The EH is as wide as the inner diameter of the stargate, that is a diameter of 22 feet (6.7056 meters).
  
  That makes the radius of the sphere representing the omnidirectional blast, as it touches the edges of the EH, 6.78 meters.
  
  Thus the surface area of said sphere is 577.66 m².
  The spherical cap, with a height of 5.78 meters, is 246.23 m².
  
  812 / 577.66 x 246.23 = 346.1184 Gigatons.
  
  Again, using the conservative power factor from earlier on, e6, we have 1,448.16 million exawatts.
  
  Note that we don't know for sure that this is a minimum, because it could be possible that less energy transmitted to the back of the EH could do it, but it's reasonnable to assume that Merlin would tell if a naqahdah enhanced nuke would be plain enough if it was correct, instead of absolutely requesting one of those rarer gatebusters.
  Dozens of meters and meters away behind the stargate, we would still have between hundreds or many dozens of gigatons hitting the back of the EH, and honestly, there's no reason why they'd beam the gatebuster so far from the stargate. Plus Carter says "beamed directly behind the stargate" so we have no reason to think they'd allow a greater distance if hundreds of gigatons weren't necessary.
  
  This is added to the energy that would hit the stargate at the same distance, which would be roughly worth 200 GT more.

[Jedi Master Spock]

A question:

How much energy does the collapsing wormhole of the gate release?

[Mr. Oragahn]

A question:

How much energy does the collapsing wormhole of the gate release?

A most difficult question. I'm not even sure where to start from, nor what to look at to starting digging clues.
We, at least, know that the gate is destroyed, which cuts the connection - another term of the wormhole traffic.

To adress this issue, we need to find a case where two stargates were connected, and one got destroyed.

Actually, one of such cases would be Chain Reaction. The stargate in the SGC was receiving high levels of energy from the one stuck on that planet theorized to be nothing more than a plasma ball.
The power kept the connection open ebyond 38 minutes. When the connection was cut, logically by the sending gate being destroyed, the receiving one in the SGC didn't transfer any noticeable extra of energy from what it was already delivering.

This would suggest that the wormhole cut is, obviously, immediate from the moment the stargate is destroyed, and the systems meant to transfer energy and matter through the wormhole don't have time to send the energy resulting from a stargate explosion.

Jonas said exploding stargates amplify blasts, but nothing happens on the receiving side, so obviously the time is too short to send energy through the wormhole.

Another incident could be Full Circle, when Anubis destroyed Abydos' stargate, but the SGC didn't receive any joules from that event.

Be it a purposely included failsafe, or just the fluke of wormhole mechanics applied to stargates, the receiving stargate has not been seen receiving any energy from the blast occuring on the side issued from a stargate destruction.

EDIT: may I ask you if you had any particular idea in mind?