"Star Wars: Death Star" and the destruction of Ald

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The Elder Dwoof
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Post by The Elder Dwoof » Wed Apr 16, 2008 2:21 am

Um...stupid question I suppose, but isn't it supposed to be impossible for something to enter hyperspace close to large objects...like planets...due to the Hyperspace Shadow Effect?

Wouldn't the planet's own hyperspace shadow (which is usually larger than the planet, otherwise you could use a hyperdrive from the planet's surface) prevent any of it's mass from being so shifted?

This would seem to dictate that the Superlaser would have to be a purely normalspace effect.

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Post by SpanishInquisitor » Wed Apr 16, 2008 6:16 am

The Elder Dwoof wrote:Um...stupid question I suppose, but isn't it supposed to be impossible for something to enter hyperspace close to large objects...like planets...due to the Hyperspace Shadow Effect?
It's just impossible in the sense that is a suicide, since the mass of the object entering hyperspace would collide with that mass shadow, with deadly results. What actually happens is this:
starwars.com (bold is mine) wrote:Safety cut-offs restrict the hyperdrive from activating, and the gravitic presence also interferes with a nav computer's ability to calculate accurate coordinates.
From http://www.starwars.com/databank/techno ... projector/
In other words, in SW physics terms is possible to do it, but by default all hyperdrives don't allow that for safety reasons. There were at least one exception in the Bakuran "hyperwave inertial momentum sustainers" system. This device allowed a ship to pass through the *fake* mass shadow projected from interdictor cruisers to trick gravitic sensors, but the ship would have been still destroyed if entered a real one.

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Mr. Oragahn
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Post by Mr. Oragahn » Wed Apr 16, 2008 1:41 pm

SpanishInquisitor wrote:
Mr. Oragahn wrote:It's official nonsense that's debunked. If you're naïve enough, if you lack objectivity, the ability to criticize certain sources, and if you blindly drink official stuff in a religious way, instead of looking at facts from the movies themselves with intelligence, so be it, but the debate will pretty much end there then, because I'm not interested in zealots.
Since in this thread we are talking about the DS *novel*, I think is fair enough to say that in *this* debate, the standard of evidence must come from the official Movies+EU continuity canon.
For those who go by this standard, of course. I for one could live happily with no EU, and nothing here restricts people from doing so.

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Post by SpanishInquisitor » Wed Apr 16, 2008 5:47 pm

Mr. Oragahn wrote:
SpanishInquisitor wrote:Since in this thread we are talking about the DS *novel*, I think is fair enough to say that in *this* debate, the standard of evidence must come from the official Movies+EU continuity canon.
For those who go by this standard, of course. I for one could live happily with no EU, and nothing here restricts people from doing so.
Sure, and for me, Han shot first ;)

However, is confusing to debate about "Movies only" and "Movies+EU" in the same discussion thread, and sometimes even the same posts. I've read too many people getting mad at each other for what it was at the end just a case of different standards.

Maybe it has been proposed before, I don't know. But I think it would be a good idea to tag the name of discussion threads here with [SWNOEU], [SWEU] or something like that. It would serve as a filter for debaters, and that way there would be less time spent arguing about the basics. What do you think?

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Post by Mike DiCenso » Wed Apr 16, 2008 6:58 pm

You probably might want to drop that idea off in the website suggestion and feedback forum as JMS could probably set something up so that posters can quickly mark the thread.
-Mike

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Mr. Oragahn
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Re: "Star Wars: Death Star" and the destruction of Ald

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sun Jan 05, 2014 2:28 am

I might have bumped another thread, like this one, or perhaps this much shorter and recent thread, but I think that what I post below is slightly more in tune with the topic of Alderaan's demise and the effects related to the superlaser.
And [random reason #14845].
Also because that EU book is clearly the one that largely confirmed the exotic side of this technology.
So here we go.
Straight from the ANH novelization:
A New Hope novelization wrote: Behind them small flashes of fading light marked the receding station.
Without warning, something appeared in the sky in place of it which was brighter than the glowing gas giant, brighter than its far-off sun.
For a few seconds the eternal night became day. No one dared look directly at it.
Not even multiple shields set on high could dim that awesome flare.
Space filled temporarily with trillions of microscopic metal fragments, propelled past the retreating ships by the liberated energy of a small artificial sun. The collapsed residue of the battle station would continue to consume itself for several days, forming for that brief span of time the most impressive tombstone in this corner of the cosmos.
Oddly enough, the bit about the small artificial sun has been quoted ad nauseam, but the one that comes right after seems to go largely unnoticed, although it's not without interest! ;)
We have a mix of microscopic elements shot past the rebel ships (fits with what we see of explosions related to superlasers, there's always a part that is accelerated away from the initial center of gravity of the destroyed object). It's bound to happen, otherwise there wouldn't be any explosion to observe at all.
There's a part of classic DET at play in all superlaser related effects, but in my opinion this portion also holds a side effect position in regards to the main exotic phenomenon.

Sidenote: I also find it interesting that no collection of (stacked?) shields put on high could block the light from that explosion.
Last edited by Mr. Oragahn on Sun Jan 05, 2014 2:48 pm, edited 3 times in total.

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Re: "Star Wars: Death Star" and the destruction of Ald

Post by 2046 » Sun Jan 05, 2014 4:44 am

Genius!

That fits perfectly with my observation regarding Alderaan from http://www.st-v-sw.net/STSWsuperl-4.html

Animated .gif:
Image
Watch carefully . . . the glowing curve of the displaced surface moves downward. In other words, the expanded surface collapses.

{...}

This may mean that the disappearances may all be some sort of rapid compression or implosion event, and/or that there was a "normal" (i.e. hull-esque) material disappearance beneath the remaining surface of Alderaan.
I'd be willing to roll with the idea of a single-frame implosion on ship-sized material disappearances.

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Re: "Star Wars: Death Star" and the destruction of Ald

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sun Jan 05, 2014 2:45 pm

2046 wrote: I'd be willing to roll with the idea of a single-frame implosion on ship-sized material disappearances.
Indeed, the smaller the mass, the less inertia we'd expect in that collapse process.
After all it is a very solid rule of physics.
In fact, what we see of a planet collapsing already represents hundreds of kilometers being crushed per fraction of a second.
It goes without saying that a similar albeit dramatically downscaled effect, applied to targets such as starships or space stations, would be barely noticed, unless, I suppose, the superlaser would be purposely set at a significantly lower power output. What I mean by lower is at a level that goes well below the overkill "instaflash" hit and destruction fate that we saw starships suffer from.

Besides, it is quite a well verified idea when we think about it: only one target has been exposed for a somewhat longer duration, i.e. Alderaan, and that's also the only mass we've seen subjected to a "slow" collapse.
Considerably smaller targets (rebel capital ships) or objects subjected to superlaser overload (Death Star, about to fire at Yavin IV) all went up near immediately and so did the mass.
Somehow, a planet such as Alderaan seems to represent the proverbial ceiling, the sort of biggest target the Death Star's superlaser could assuredly destroy in its entirety with its system's power banks totally maxed out.

In the EU book, the 3 km wide Rebel cruiser and its hundreds of fighters sent against the battle station were again totally destroyed in a flash with a level of power that was quite close to the amounts fired at Despayre. Read: totally overkill for the nature of the target in question.
Next, with Despayre, we even saw that if the weapon wouldn't saturate a massive target such as a planet in one shot, the exotic effects wouldn't even kick in, or perhaps would do so in such unnoticeable magnitudes that even the second shot at Despayre was barely capable of causing more destruction than the first, although some effects seemed to be slightly more severe, aside from the mere fact of shooting another round of neutrino-intertwinned-mountain-upheaving-energy-level into the planet. It's only the third shot, at the same power as the first two other shots, that seemed to unlock the chest and free the genius to the superblast, perhaps because the planet (or its shadow mass in hyperspace, whatever) was near sufficiently saturated (destabilized?) with the first two shots as to need just another push to literally pop.
Still, even that third shot, since not as powerful in terms of shock/inertia and perhaps hyperspace-strain as one full power single shot, didn't seem to manage to produce the reflux ripple, like if the superlaser somewhat couldn't pass the equivalent of the wall of sound.

Now, adding to those facts the superlaser's tendency to react with the whole of a target's mass, perhaps it comes as no surprise that the crew of the Death Star could simply not shoot through Yavin, not even take the risk of grazing the planet, but instead needed a clear shot at Yavin IV.

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