$$$SPOILERS$$$ = Stargate Atlantis: Submersion and ZPMs

[GStone]

I watched Submersion last night, it being the newest ep to air here in the states, but I was wondering something. They were thinking of hooking a naquadah generator to power the partially submerged wraith cruiser, at least in the fake message Tayla passed to the queen, but since hooking up ZPMs seem to enhance the power output of ships, even when the power conduits are not designed to handle that much, I wonder if it would enhance a wraith cruiser, if they had an extra one to put in?

But, more to the point of this thread is just what is it that lets ZPMs enhance the power of ships? It must be doing something to the power conduits or they'd be blowing up before they got up to ZPM levels. Off the top of my head, my first guess would be some kind of force field thing. They did make them small enough to sit in the center of a chest and they were pretty tough, but it'd be pretty advance force field manipulation.

What do you guys think lets ZPMs enhance ships?

[Mr. Oragahn]

What ZPMs have enhanced on terran ships thus far is hyperdrives and shields.
Both were asgard systems.

My idea would be that the main power conduits in place were never used at 100%, and unable to be filld up by teh output of the naqahdah generator.

Then they dump a ZPM, and the device outputs more energy.

However, there's a point I'll talk about later on, but let's remember that absolutely nothing says that in between season 6 to Unending, the asgard we had was the best the Asgards had.

Considering our level, probably anything they'd throw us would be mounts and marvels anyway.

This, with limited power conduits and still inferior hyperdrives and shields, would explain why even when boosted with ZPMs, it still takes, for example, several days to go to Pegasus, when it takes mere minutes or so for an asgard ship to tug the Prometheus back to the Ida galaxy.

But there's lot to say about ZPMs anyway.

Another point: Were they planning to lift the cruiser of the seabed with a naqahdah generator? That would be neat.
I'm very vocal, at Gateworld, about how it made no sense to even pretend that a single ZPM couldn't lift Atlantis, even less 3 of them!

[GStone]

When Tayla tricked the queen (she was onboard the first ship that attacked Atlantis when the Ancients were fighting them; the ship crashed and she survived by feeding on her crew and going in and coming out of hibernation to check to see if she could get out the bottom of the ocean) was by feeding the queen an imagined scene, while she tried to act like she was trying to get the command code from the queen's mind to stop the self-destruct the queen activated before she swam (and continued to be crushed-healed-crushed because of how deep down they were) over to the geothermal plant transport thing most of the ep takes place on. The cruiser was a short distance from the transport and would have taken out the transport, as well as break through the thin section of the ocean floor, where there was a huge amount of geothermal energy/magma on the other side

In the fake memories, McKay supposedly thought that hooking the naq generator into the cruiser would work because the only real problem with it was her engines. They wanted the queen to believe this and go back to the cruiser and put the code in herself, thinking the generator would be hooked up by then and she could get out/have Shepperd fly her out. The queen dies after putting in the code and Ronon, Tayla, Weir, Shepperd and McKay are in the same room together at the end and McKay says they need to work on the engines, I believe, and he leaves with Weir.

Now, it's possible that they would have hooked up the naq generator, since the queen was convinced just hooking a power generator up would solve the problems (I'm asuming she understood something about wraith cruiser ship design and knew what the specific problem was), but they weren't explicit as to what they were gonna fix.


I had originally assumed that they had asgard sensors because of having the beam transporter till it was said they didn't and that's why they could only beam people up from the surface of a planet (I think it was in the ep where the people on the planet used a geothermic powered shield at 100% all the time and that made the volcano underneath explode sooner than it was supposed to) and when the wraith AI virus got aboard the Daedalus and they were having problems with sensors and tracking the 2 302s when they were getting close to the star, so part of the hyperdrive might not even be asgard, but still Tauri/Goa'uld.

I, too, don't think the asgard gave the Tauri the best they got. At most, I'd bet they gave them no more than mediocre equipment at the highest levels of being hopeful, but mediocre by asgard standards would probably be shitloads more powerful than almost anything else from the Milky Way, so the people of the Tauri would still be very very grateful. And the disparity between the tech levels would still require an asgard technician onboard.

I'd also say the construction processes for the Daedalus is also a factor in the lower speed. Wraith ships are organic and have to stop every so often because of damage from hyperspace energies that need to be healed, which is not necessary with inorganic ships. Asgard ships are not able to survive uncontrolled re-entry into atmo and the heat build up deliberately because of the effect it would have on the subspace fields for the hyperdrive, which would slow hyperspace speeds. I would assume that Tauri ships could survive uncontrolled re-entry.

Yeah, when you have a power source that can destroy more than half a star system, one fucking Atlantis style city ship can be lifted by a single ZPM and have it be nothing in power consumption.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Submersion has one of the most horrible plots ever. From the way Teyla implants the fake memories, on how the quen doesn't kill her despite the absolute defenseless position Teyla was in, how her mates let her go with the queen, despite the lethal danger and so on... and many other things... the plot was truly embarassing.
That said, there are things to say. Many, actually.

When Tayla tricked the queen (she was onboard the first ship that attacked Atlantis when the Ancients were fighting them;

As they resued stock footage, we now have confirmation that they used cruisers and hiveships back then... nevermind if the lantian holo shows silhouettes that correspond to none of both classes, and that the athosian carvings show, again, another type of ship that display no similarity with a cruiser or a hiveship.

This leads to people to think that the ships have been severely retrofitted from that time.

There was that essay I wrote at Gateworld's forum, The Wraith Empire's true war machine, which served to highlight how the numbers for the Wraith side would to be insanely high to explain how the Lantians, with all their technologies, could never ever reverse the situation.

Of course, I knew at that time that there were large chances that hte producers wouldn't bother with such a logic, and instead of actually thinking about what really happened back then, they'd go for the suimple solution and resuse stock models at some points. Well, they even went beyond that and reused visuals from Letters from Pegasus if I recall correctly. They just pasted that queen looking past the window of a cruiser.

That said, my points completely remain. In my essay, it was rather simple. Either there were vast numbers which ranged beyond what we could imagine, or there was a technology we didn't see yet, or maybe both.

They just settled on the cheapest solution. Same models, small numbers, less money. Now, it doesn't mean they are actually convinced they need to explain that the ships were vastly more powerful back then.

Afterall, sending hiveships, which were nothing more than large sitting duck cities, at your enemy, only to be one shot by lantian defenses, would be utterly stupid. This would be an irresponsible genocide. Mass suicide.

... the ship crashed...

And survived. It's incredible, really. Back in Condemned, we have a puddle jumper, which barely has enough intermitent power to fire a drone. Yet, the drones manages to dig through several hundreds of meters of external armour (the drone veers off and actually digs along the external hull, instead of going inside the ship, which would have probably wasted it - it's likely that the drone seeked the highest source of energy, and turned towards the engines).

But 10000 years ago, a cruiser survives the full fledged defenses of Atlantis, so much that it's only barely bruised and crashes in the ocean.
Let's also appreciate how structurally tough the cruiser is. It's been lying for more than 10000 years on the bottom of an ocean, where the crust was particularily thin.

Which, of course, brings us to the uberqueen...

...and she survived by feeding on her crew and going in and coming out of hibernation to check to see if she could get out the bottom of the ocean) was by feeding the queen an imagined scene, while she tried to act like she was trying to get the command code from the queen's mind to stop the self-destruct the queen activated before she swam (and continued to be crushed-healed-crushed because of how deep down they were)...

Yes, isn't it amazing how a queen, only feeding on the crew of a cruiser, possibly a couple of preys stuck in cocoons, and resting from time to time, can actually survive a pressure, probably at a depth of 30 km or so, one that would completely destroy Atlantis, if the city would loose its shield!

But dies after a few gunshots... well, this isn't new. They managed to kill that Keeper back in Rising, just by impaling her. Nevermind she had just fed on a healthy military man with lots of presto.

... over to the geothermal plant transport thing most of the ep takes place on. The cruiser was a short distance from the transport and would have taken out the transport, as well as break through the thin section of the ocean floor, where there was a huge amount of geothermal energy/magma on the other side

The energy would have likely been huge. There has been that real life theorized project about sending a probe in the core of the planet by detonating a nuke on the floor of the ocean, creating a very provisary breach that would auto seal itself due to pressure, but would leave enough time to send the probe through.
It was considered that a megaton nuke would be necessary, at least, do that.

Point being, if the level of destruction was going to crack a large chunk of the underwater crust, the amount of energy released back then would have needed to be largely higher.

In the fake memories, McKay supposedly thought that hooking the naq generator into the cruiser would work because the only real problem with it was her engines. They wanted the queen to believe this and go back to the cruiser and put the code in herself, thinking the generator would be hooked up by then and she could get out/have Shepperd fly her out. The queen dies after putting in the code and Ronon, Tayla, Weir, Shepperd and McKay are in the same room together at the end and McKay says they need to work on the engines, I believe, and he leaves with Weir.

Now, it's possible that they would have hooked up the naq generator, since the queen was convinced just hooking a power generator up would solve the problems (I'm asuming she understood something about wraith cruiser ship design and knew what the specific problem was), but they weren't explicit as to what they were gonna fix.

Which seems to clearly point out that they were serious about using a naqahdah generator to lift the cruiser off the ocean floor, as soon as the engines could be repaired.

Which clearly shows that either the stardrive of Atlantis is stupdly unefficient, I mean very stupidly unefficient, or McKay and co have completely forgotten to unlock something... maybe that antibuyoancy thing...

I had originally assumed that they had asgard sensors because of having the beam transporter till it was said they didn't and that's why they could only beam people up from the surface of a planet (I think it was in the ep where the people on the planet used a geothermic powered shield at 100% all the time and that made the volcano underneath explode sooner than it was supposed to) and when the wraith AI virus got aboard the Daedalus and they were having problems with sensors and tracking the 2 302s when they were getting close to the star, so part of the hyperdrive might not even be asgard, but still Tauri/Goa'uld.

I think the Asgards said that the upgrades would concern defenses and hyperdrives. It was already the case for the Prometheus, but I can't recall if they had time to implement them.

Asgard ships are not able to survive uncontrolled re-entry into atmo and the heat build up deliberately because of the effect it would have on the subspace fields for the hyperdrive, which would slow hyperspace speeds. I would assume that Tauri ships could survive uncontrolled re-entry.

Heat build up seemed minimal though. Watching the sequence, again, before the ship crashes, I can't spot a single piece of hull actually glowing red.
I believe kinetic energy has everything to do here, especially as the ship was falling like a rock.
On that point, ha'taks seemed to be sturdier (Descent).

Yeah, when you have a power source that can destroy more than half a star system, one fucking Atlantis style city ship can be lifted by a single ZPM and have it be nothing in power consumption.

I hope my insistance on that very simple point at Gateworld would prove succesful, in a way or another. I see that they already dropped from 3 ZPMs being absolutely necessary to one ZPM + geothermal station.

Let's just hope they reach the logical point where they realize that a couple of naqahdah generators would have been all they needed from go. Add a few Mk-II for the initial boost if it needs to.

[GStone]

And survived. It's incredible, really. Back in Condemned, we have a puddle jumper, which barely has enough intermitent power to fire a drone. Yet, the drones manages to dig through several hundreds of meters of external armour (the drone veers off and actually digs along the external hull, instead of going inside the ship, which would have probably wasted it - it's likely that the drone seeked the highest source of energy, and turned towards the engines).

But 10000 years ago, a cruiser survives the full fledged defenses of Atlantis, so much that it's only barely bruised and crashes in the ocean.
Let's also appreciate how structurally tough the cruiser is. It's been lying for more than 10000 years on the bottom of an ocean, where the crust was particularily thin.

Yes, isn't it amazing how a queen, only feeding on the crew of a cruiser, possibly a couple of preys stuck in cocoons, and resting from time to time, can actually survive a pressure, probably at a depth of 30 km or so, one that would completely destroy Atlantis, if the city would loose its shield!

Don't the ships regenerate because they're organic? Maybe that's how it could have survived down there. The crew onboard did what they could, as they sunk below because the ship was getting water inside it. They end up on the ocean floor and with all the fighting and crashing going on, the ship gets covered (all or partially) and they get stuck. There's damage to the engines, so they can't get out.

Which seems to clearly point out that they were serious about using a naqahdah generator to lift the cruiser off the ocean floor, as soon as the engines could be repaired.

Which clearly shows that either the stardrive of Atlantis is stupdly unefficient, I mean very stupidly unefficient, or McKay and co have completely forgotten to unlock something... maybe that antibuyoancy thing...

They might have only needed a little power to shake the cruiser loose of its ocean bed confines, assuming there isn't any water inside keeping it down. Even then, there might be ways to expell it. Don't cruisers have some kind of force field projector for the hangars with darts in them?

Heat build up seemed minimal though. Watching the sequence, again, before the ship crashes, I can't spot a single piece of hull actually glowing red.

All I remember is an 'aura' of flame around the ship as it descended and it turned on its horizontal axis, as it neared the ocean surface and most of the hull broke up at one time.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Talking about ZPMs, here's some speculation about those devices I posted at Gateworld :

Descriptions were way too clear to remain vulgar hyperboles. Lee made a quick and dirty calculation about it, and pretty much considered at first glance that the tainted 50% full ZPM would destroy the entire planet.

Carter checked Lee's preliminary calcs, refined them by making corrections (they were no more in urge by that time, so she had time to relax and concentrate on her stuff), and she estimated that what was left in the ZPM would obliterate the whole solar system.

Now, getting energy from vacuum isn't free, but obviously, in Stargate, the Alterans managed to find a way to grab that energy from a limited subspace region at very minimal costs.

Certain real-life estimations say that a field of zero point energy of a volume of 1 m³ could contain an energy density of 10^92 joules.

I'm going to fiddle with numbers. Not sure it's going to be correct, so feel free to verify.

Let's assume that the artificial subspace field in the ZPM is 1 cubic yoctometre small. Yocto is the smallest SI prefix (10^-24). The smallest particles I've heard of are measured in femtometers (10^-15).

Which means there are 10^72 ym³ in 1 m³. So 1 ym³ would contain the following energy:

10^92 / 10^72 = 10^20 joules / ym³, or 23.9 gigatons / ym³.

That's already hundreds of times more than enough to propel the city into space and open an hyperspace window.

That said, considering Carter's final estimation, a 50% full (or empty) ZPM would need an amount of energy at least as high as in a supernova, in order to (only) torch a whole star system.
Of course, considering that the ZPM would explode from Earth, and above that Earth would actually act as a shield, the levels of energy would need to be much higher, both because the explosion is off-axis and largely hampered by a planet roughly 12,746 km large.
That's why I think a ZPM holds at the very least an amount of energy worth of two supernovas. If not hypernovas.

That's roughly twice 10^44 joules. So the subspace ZP field couldn't be only a few ym³ wide.

So using the estimation above (10^92 J/m³), we could figure out the size of the subspace ZP field in a ZPM.

With total energy E being 10^44 J, and density D being 01^92 J / m³:

Volume = E / D
V = 10^44 / 10^92
V = 10^-48 m³

There are 10^54 cubic attometres in one cubic metre (everytime you go down by one order of magnitude, you have to multiply or divide by 10³).

So the subspace ZP field within a ZPM would be about a few times 10^6 am³ wide, but could be considerably larger.
That's way smaller than neutrons or protons. Sounds right for something as exotic as subspace field.

Let's start with "Trinity".
That Arctarus device barely had to time to charge up, and it was said that working at 50%, it would have the power of 12 ZPMs (power, not energy, this is very important).
By the time energy finished building up, it destroyed five sixths of a stellar system.

Basically, once more, the effects are extremely similar to what we can expect from a supernova.

Say it took half an hour - which is extremely over conservative and unlikely - for the Arctarus device to explode from the moment McKay switched the controls on.
So let's do some quick maths.

30 minutes is 1800 seconds.

10^44 / 1800 = 5.5 x 10^40 watts.

Divided by 12, you get 4.63 x 10^39 watts for a ZPM. And that's power, not energy.

If this power corresponds to what a ZPM can unleash when drained at 100% per second, that is, when you take all it has in one second, then a ZPM has a total energy of 4.63 x 10^39 joules (it's power multiplied by one second), more than enough to turn a planet ablaze and have its debris disseminated across the system.

Basically, there's no proof that you can drain a ZPM in just one shot.

Now, if this power McKay mentionned is not meant to be max power, or say peak power, then a ZPM will have far more energy in the reservoir than that.

If we want to mesh that with Lee's and Carter's estimations, then we know that it wasn't a reference to the maximum power.


Then we can look at "McKay & Mrs Miller".

They drained a ZPM which was around 60% or 70% at that time, at a rate of 2% per second, to close a transreality rift which was about to tear a hole in the fabric of that other universe, that is, destroy it.
This can't be a matter of small energies, especially if compared to what happened in "Trinity".
This was due to the activation of a man made power core which worked on principles extremely similar to the Arctarus device, safe that they dumped the exotic particles in some other universe.

If 2% is the maximum output you can get from a ZPM, then the total energy, based on the figure obtained above, would be:

4.63 x 10^39 x 50 = 2.315 x 10^41 Joules.

And this would be a low end.

There are probably other examples and crossover indirect evidence between SG-1 and SGA to support this.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have the explosion in Progeny, which looks like, at best, several tons of C4 exploding alltogether. An overloading naqahdah generator Mk-I would have done much much better.
This alone helps to prove that an overloading ZPM, or any ZPM about to explode, will not always release its maximum energy.
Actually, it's very likely that the level of overload can be set as well. I'm sure McKay wouldn't have wanted the asuran city to destroy the whole star system where Atlantis was because he decided to overload not only one ZPM, but three of them, all fine and shiny that they were.

Maybe they could have took one or two with them, and left the third to explode...

For example, Misbegotten. While I'm firmly convinced that the Wraith have two sets of weapons (as described in this thread), one that is rather raw and very powerful, but weak against shields like Atlantis' one, and the other class that can put an enormous strain on a shield, but are all in all quite weak in terms of pure energy (and then we're exactly looking at a weapon with the same duality as the asruan beam), it seems that most people don't bother with that (nevermind how it would neatly explain a couple of things).

So if I go down this road, and follow what I assume is the common thought, then we look at Misbegotten, with a crippled hiveship working at 50% of its power abilities, and firing at the surface of a planet, producing fireballs worth of hundreds of megatons, if not gigatons, then you got to wonder how much energy a ZPM would hold, at minimum, considering that McKay estimated it would take days for a fleet of 10 hiveships and possibly around 20 to 30 cruisers, constantly firing at the city, to drain the ZPM - and we're not even sure the ZPM was full!

So anyway, the numbers are still going to be hugely huge, and one ZPM should have been way way enough to lift that city, power all systems, go into hyperspace and go on for millenia from there.

Though your explanation could make sense, I'm afraid zero point energies don't seem to follow energy production based on chain reactions like it goes for nuclear reactions.

Besides, if the estimations energy potential of ZPE fields is true, then a ½ ZPM destroying a star system is not a plot hole. As insane as it sounds, it's in fact conservative.

The tainted ZPM is not the plothole. Let's see other power estimations.

"Echoes": The one where a ZPM is used to deflect an abnormally huge CME (well, it was intended to be, but the VFX dpt royally screwed there, especially since it was easily avoidable and easy to depict it correctly).
Some people have estimated the energies to be literally huge, although they calculated the total energy, not the portion of the stream actually hitting the ship.
If you consider the visuals valid, you have to assume that almost all the stream hit the 304, as absurd as it can sound. This leads to big numbers.
Otherwise, we're still talking about a shielded ship stuck inside a coronal mass ejection which would, at the very very least, be in the hundreds to thousands of teratons of energy.

Independanly on what your interpretation is, and your stance on the validity of the visuals, it clearly doesn't seem like the ZPM's reserves were even remotely dented after this feat. Knowing the historical records of McKay pressure surges, and considering the utmost importance of the ZPM they had, I presume that even 25% of the ZPM being empitied.

"The Return Pt I": The Tria decelerating. According to relativistic equations, considering how close to c the ship was flying, there were results showing that the ship was putting out teratons of energy per second to slow down to the Daedalus' velocity (1). If they were using the ZPM, we already see that this one single power source has enough energy to make Atlantis take off millions of time.
If the Tria wasn't powered by the ZPM then, despite character comments, then the ZPM is obviously going to be able to provide even more energy than that.

Some have argued that the Tria might have mass lightening technology, similar to the one found on puddle jumpers, and that it was active.
Well, if that's true, the numbers would be lower, but you'd wonder why they took so much time decelerating then.

See, all the evidence either remains neutral on the subject of how powerful the ZPMs are, as they're used to feed devices which we know nothng about, or they literally disagree with the idea that ZPMs are weak.

Weak as unable to lift a freaking cityship while the Wraith do it routinely for their hiveships, while the Gadmeer had a ship two miles large, with enough juice to explore hundreds and hundreds of planets, terraform one and even bring the Enkarans to their homeworld and return to the soon-to-be terraformed world. Anubis' and Apophis' superships were many times the sise of a ha'tak, yet had no issue to fly around and so and forth.

Simply put, the plot hole isn't where you think. It's a lousy plot trap to have our heroes stuck on a base, and while it would have been smart, for a change, to pretend that maybe for once, a system doesn't work as they'd wish to because they actually don't know how to make it work properly, the writers decided that since everything in Atlantis was USB friendly, then it was a problem with the power sources.


All in all, it's literally insane to even imagine that the pinacle of alteran power sources would look that miserable, when on the other hand, the Tau'ri sling multigigaton nukes left and right simply adding funky matter to their warheads, for example, and wraith vessels seem to fire multiple megaton or gigaton shots at their enemy, really.


As for McKay & Mrs Miller, I've checked the video once more.
The figure of 2%/s I used is remarkably close to the truth. Using a sofware which lets me go frame by frame, we see that it takes precisely 0.5 second to drain 1% of the ZPM when the systems are ar full power.
So that's 2%/s.
The ZPM started at 66%, and they maxed it out.

Point being, at that rate, it'd take 50 seconds to deplete a completely full ZPM.



So I assume that apparently, you can't drain a ZPM faster than 2% per second.

The total power of a ZPM would be, at least, fifty times the wattage mentionned in Trinity, thus 2.315 e41 Joules (I already presented that number in my previous post).

This number was based on the assumption that it took 30 minutes for the Arctarus device to build up enough energy to do what it did when it exploded.

What's incredible, and this is an element which is not often considered, is that up to the point the device exploded, it actually stored all that energy - we're not going to pretend that the gun was outputting yottatons of energy to bleed off the power build up, otherwise any nearby explosion from a bolt on a debris would have pulverized both the puddle jumper and everything around, and completely wasted the atmosphere of the planet as well.

The other element which was used to determine the power of the blast is the assumption of a Solar system sized alien system. But there's no way to know what the size of that system was. It could have been smaller, or bigger.

So, eerr, you think that floats?

I'll reply to your post a bit later.

[GStone]

Talking about ZPMs, here's some speculation about those devices I posted at Gateworld :

So, eerr, you think that floats?

Well, the light gray quote boxes float very nicely on the darker gray ones of the message. :-P

Certain real-life estimations say that a field of zero point energy of a volume of 1 m³ could contain an energy density of 10^92 joules.

I've seen estimates, which include the temporal energy part of the density of space vacuum, to reach as high as 10 to the 127th joules per cubic centimeter. The spatial energy density only reaches about 10 to the 93rd grams per cubic centimeter.*


* Geometrodynamics, J. A. Wheeler and C. Misner, Academic Press, New York, 1962

I'm going to fiddle with numbers. Not sure it's going to be correct, so feel free to verify.

Let's assume that the artificial subspace field in the ZPM is 1 cubic yoctometre small. Yocto is the smallest SI prefix (10^-24). The smallest particles I've heard of are measured in femtometers (10^-15).

Which means there are 10^72 ym³ in 1 m³. So 1 ym³ would contain the following energy:

10^92 / 10^72 = 10^20 joules / ym³, or 23.9 gigatons / ym³.

That's already hundreds of times more than enough to propel the city into space and open an hyperspace window.

I'm with you on the lifting thing, but I sware I remember you writing your calcs down somewhere for how much energy it'd take to open a window. Where did you put them again? Even without looking at them, I'd still say there'd be plenty left over after you raised the city and opened the window. The naq generator they put on the 302 and used it to open a window to toss the soon to be exploding stargate in wasn't zapped of power and I think we might have more firm figures in the canon for the naq generator. I keep thinking back to when Apophis attacked Earth just after Kinsey shut down the stargate program, but I can't remember what they said they end yield of the naq enhanced warheads were or how much naw they used.

That said, considering Carter's final estimation, a 50% full (or empty) ZPM would need an amount of energy at least as high as in a supernova, in order to (only) torch a whole star system.
Of course, considering that the ZPM would explode from Earth, and above that Earth would actually act as a shield, the levels of energy would need to be much higher, both because the explosion is off-axis and largely hampered by a planet roughly 12,746 km large.

I agree.

That's why I think a ZPM holds at the very least an amount of energy worth of two supernovas. If not hypernovas.

Yeah, it's probably got a few in there minimum.

Let's start with "Trinity".
That Arctarus device barely had to time to charge up, and it was said that working at 50%, it would have the power of 12 ZPMs (power, not energy, this is very important).
By the time energy finished building up, it destroyed five sixths of a stellar system.

Basically, once more, the effects are extremely similar to what we can expect from a supernova.

Say it took half an hour - which is extremely over conservative and unlikely - for the Arctarus device to explode from the moment McKay switched the controls on.
So let's do some quick maths.

30 minutes is 1800 seconds.

10^44 / 1800 = 5.5 x 10^40 watts.

Divided by 12, you get 4.63 x 10^39 watts for a ZPM. And that's power, not energy.

If this power corresponds to what a ZPM can unleash when drained at 100% per second, that is, when you take all it has in one second, then a ZPM has a total energy of 4.63 x 10^39 joules (it's power multiplied by one second), more than enough to turn a planet ablaze and have its debris disseminated across the system.

Basically, there's no proof that you can drain a ZPM in just one shot.

I'm not even sure the Ancients have the tech to be able to drain it all at once.

Now, if this power McKay mentionned is not meant to be max power, or say peak power, then a ZPM will have far more energy in the reservoir than that.

If we want to mesh that with Lee's and Carter's estimations, then we know that it wasn't a reference to the maximum power.

Given the levels of energy we're dealing with, it'd make sense they put in a type of buffer to let only so much be removed from the ZPM at any given time.

Though your explanation could make sense, I'm afraid zero point energies don't seem to follow energy production based on chain reactions like it goes for nuclear reactions.

In the real world, they don't...but this is Stargate, buddy. ;-) Dimensions of an individual universe are not varying in size, like some being tiny tiny and curled up very small. It's like stepping outside a house. Going into Hyperspace/Subspace is like going into the attic or basement.

Some have argued that the Tria might have mass lightening technology, similar to the one found on puddle jumpers, and that it was active.

They've got what? I just thought it was some hover tech. When'd they say this?

Well, if that's true, the numbers would be lower, but you'd wonder why they took so much time decelerating then.

Maybe it was a precaution because they didn't know they could trust them.

[Mr. Oragahn]

I've seen estimates, which include the temporal energy part of the density of space vacuum, to reach as high as 10 to the 127th joules per cubic centimeter. The spatial energy density only reaches about 10 to the 93rd grams per cubic centimeter.*

So that makes my premises over conservative.

I'm with you on the lifting thing, but I sware I remember you writing your calcs down somewhere for how much energy it'd take to open a window. Where did you put them again?

I'm not sure I remember doing anything detailed on that, safe quick hits here and there, but not reliable enough. Not conclusive. There's the hyperspace tuggin thread here, though, where you can an idea of what can be done.

Even without looking at them, I'd still say there'd be plenty left over after you raised the city and opened the window. The naq generator they put on the 302 and used it to open a window to toss the soon to be exploding stargate in wasn't zapped of power and I think we might have more firm figures in the canon for the naq generator.

Probably because it was a naqahdria generator, providing more energy and power, but being particularily unstable, especially the more you taxed it.
That's a weird aspect of the show. The first time they did a test with the X-302, the jump failed because, apparently, they plotted a long trip, thus probably tried to pull lots of energy from the generator to maintain a hyperspace conundrum for a long time, enough to cover the distance.

Since there's just no way naqahdria has precog abilities, the only way the generator would go pop is if it was too taxed, and the only way to tax a generator too much, even before going into hyperspace, is by charging up some capacitor.

The jump barely worked later on, when they attempted a shorter jump, like 3 million miles away from Earth I think.

But naqahdria generators have rarely been used.
Portable generators, and large scale generators, use naqahdah.
There are two generations of portable generators. The Mk-I and the Mk-II, which works in control overload at 600%, 6 times more powerful than the Mk-I. It also lasts shorter.

A Mk-I is capable to produce a 20 KT explosion due to overload after a 30 seconds build up.

The couple of drones fired by John while he was sitting in the chair completely depleted a Mk-II.

I keep thinking back to when Apophis attacked Earth just after Kinsey shut down the stargate program, but I can't remember what they said they end yield of the naq enhanced warheads were or how much naw they used.

On the schematic displayed on screen, we see that the load of naqahdah only represented a small volume of the warhead.
It was raw naqahdah, and would boost a Mark 12-A to a yield in excess of 1,000 megatons.
A Mark 12-A is a MIRV warhead, with a 375 KT yield.

I'm not even sure the Ancients have the tech to be able to drain it all at once.

We at least know that Arctarus was able to deal with the power of 24 ZPMs (the dialogue said that working at 50% would provide the power of 12 ZPMs).
Atlantis can happily handle 3 ZPMs working parallel.

By feeding the man made transuniversal generator built in Atlantis, we've seen that at full power (Zelenka's words), they were draining a ZPM at 2% per second.

In the real world, they don't...but this is Stargate, buddy. ;-) Dimensions of an individual universe are not varying in size, like some being tiny tiny and curled up very small. It's like stepping outside a house. Going into Hyperspace/Subspace is like going into the attic or basement.

Oh, yes, nevermind. ;)

They've got what? I just thought it was some hover tech. When'd they say this?

A puddle jumper has the ability to fiddle with its own effective weight. Beckett used this function in The Storm, when he saw trees getting toppled around and was afraid to be blown away.
Of course, we don't know if that system actually uses energy, which would make it moot and pointless if energy requirements and economies were nullified.

Maybe it was a precaution because they didn't know they could trust them.

Not bad, but I wouldn't use that excuse. I'd rather say that the engines were damaged, or something.

[GStone]

So that makes my premises over conservative.

Just a smidge. ;-) But, really, with the level of power and energy we're using, the end figures would be just a distinction without a difference, so it isn't a worry.

We at least know that Arctarus was able to deal with the power of 24 ZPMs (the dialogue said that working at 50% would provide the power of 12 ZPMs).
Atlantis can happily handle 3 ZPMs working parallel.

By feeding the man made transuniversal generator built in Atlantis, we've seen that at full power (Zelenka's words), they were draining a ZPM at 2% per second.

My first guess would be that they built additional 'drains', like parallel processing.

A puddle jumper has the ability to fiddle with its own effective weight. Beckett used this function in The Storm, when he saw trees getting toppled around and was afraid to be blown away.
Of course, we don't know if that system actually uses energy, which would make it moot and pointless if energy requirements and economies were nullified.

Now, I remember, but I thought they were using the shield/cloak field to do it. Maybe that's what I thought they were using, but they never said specifically.

Not bad, but I wouldn't use that excuse. I'd rather say that the engines were damaged, or something.

I'm liking that answer better, too. Even if we assumed that the quality of the engines would fall in line with the aging of the ancients, they were still being run for a very long time without a break.