Estrecca wrote:An old hand in the pro-Wars side of the versus debate has decided to make some analysis of Stargate technology. The methodology selected to do so is based in using the Asuran Stargate weapon deployed against Atlantis as the absolute high end of what Stargate power generation technology can accomplish and extrapolate everything else from there.
For reader's convenience.
Thanks for the link!
That's the kind of stuff that would really make me want to get my own website up.
The pity being that seeing the way he handles a franchise I actually know fairly well, it makes me ponder the accuracy of all his other observations about Babylon5. I know there are some of them I'd disagree with, like the one about nukes destroying Shadow Battlecrabs.
At times, I even forget this website is Young's. Knowing his take on Star Wars vs Star Trek, I should be more cautious. For example, his SWvST section on the
links page doesn't count RSA's website.
Regarding the Atlantis Asteroid page, I took a look at the structure of the link. I got
there, but I have no idea how to get to the Atlantis or Stargate page by normal browsing means.
Actually I don't know why he calls it an Atlantis page, as it has some analysis of AOTC and ST:ENT, and lots of erroneous data. I wondered if this was due to the age of the webpage, but since it debuts with an analysis of "
First Strike", and this episode officially aired the 06.22.07 in the US, and about a year later on syndication, the last update, if there's been any, can't be prior to this date, easily.
Just before going into the details of the SGA material, I just got to point out that he peddles the same ol' nonsense about the so called vaporization of asteroids in AOTC. I covered that a while ago in 2007, both
here and at SBC (
AOTC: Slave-I's firepower and Aethersprite's shields,
AOTC: Slave-I's firepower and Aethersprite's shields - Part II, and more at
SW and the ICS. For the 9000+th time and
SW and the ICS. For the 9000+th time (Part 2)).
I have not looked at the E-D related part, but I'm sure Trekkies here will cover that one properly.
So, let's see what he says about Stargate. I'll assume that he knows at least a good number of things about Stargate as a whole, otherwise I wouldn't honestly know why he decided to pick that lone very example. Now, if there's a dishonest motive behind that page, it wouldn't be too hard to see why he picked that one: it's the most used case of low end firepower to estimate the power of a ZPM, and that's been debunked just so many times it's not funny.
I suspect to have to read the same amount of nonsense though.
I'd would also remind people to check out the following thread -
ZPM discrepancies... power levels, overloads and else - to see how the question of ZPMs isn't an easy one.
Brian Young wrote:
Analysis of Replicator Beam
In the Stargate Atlantis episode First Strike, the season 3 finale, the Replicators attack Atlantis with a unique weapon. A vessel was stripped down to the engine, navigation system, and shield, and a stargate was placed inside. When activated, the Replicators fired a beam through this stargate, not only threatening the city directly, but also preventing escape through the city’s own stargate. The beam also powered the stargate to allow it to stay open well beyond the normal 38 minute timeframe. A well-played checkmate which allows the convenient calculation of firepower, power generation, etc.
Stargates can absorb almost any energy that hits them. A continuous input of energy can maintain a stargate open. We'll see more of that later.
Brian Young wrote:
In response to this threat, Dr. McKay submerged the city in an attempt to attenuate the beam. When this tactic proved only marginally successful, it was decided the best option was to retreat to another planet. To do this with only one functioning ZPM, they had to draw power from a underwater station, and divert power from the shields to the engines. The beam therefore needed to be blocked to allow the shields to be dropped. A squadron of F-302s was dispatched to tow an asteroid into the beam’s path.
As asteroids are a natural object, and their physical properties are largely understood, this allows an order of magnitude calculation on the firepower of the beam in question. We must first determine the approximate size of the asteroid.
http://www.babtech-onthe.net/stargate/asteroid1.jpg
In this image, the pilot’s face is clearly visible, and he sits in the approximate center of the cockpit of this F-302. If the pilot’s head is 20 centimeters wide (average Human head), the cockpit is approximately 1.3 meters wide.
http://www.babtech-onthe.net/stargate/asteroid2.jpg
In this image, we see an F-302 at an approximate right angle to the asteroid in question. It has grappled on to the asteroid in preparation for towing. If the cockpit is 1.3 meters wide (9 pixels in this image), the entire fighter is approximately 10 meters wide (70 pixels). The visible portion of the asteroid is ~42 meters tall (294 pixels), this being most of its height. It is ~54 meters wide (376 pixels), this may be slightly conservative (the fighter is on the near side of the asteroid), but close to the actual value, as the fighter is in contact with the asteroid via cable and positioned close to the edge.
http://www.babtech-onthe.net/stargate/asteroid3.jpg
In this image, if the asteroid is approximately 54 meters wide, the beam is melting an area approximately 3 meters in diameter on impact. The asteroid blocked the beam completely for 139 seconds (just over 2 minutes) of screen time. The beam did not penetrate the asteroid until it nearly reached the edge, when heat expansion caused pieces to break off. This enabled the beam to hit the rising city seconds sooner than expected, damaging the control tower, and injuring key characters. To view the clip, click on the following image:
http://www.babtech-onthe.net/stargate/atlantis5.mov
I'd beg to disagree with the size, although it's not important.
F-302s are larger (
1,
2).
BY didn't account for the perspective, namely that the pilot's head is not glued to the cockpit, but found well behind.
That said, the shots I used have a problem, in that the helmet is too small. Eventually, that may make the craft even longer (assuming the ratio between the helmet width and the X-302's length doesn't change).
Brian Young wrote:
If we generously assume that the asteroid is a sphere with a diameter of 60 meters (rounding up), it would mass approximately 890 million kilograms. A uniform delivery of approximately 1.6 megatons would be needed to vaporize this mass of iron. Of course, the beam did not vaporize the asteroid, nor did it melt through it in the approximate 2 minutes of dwell time. In this image, we see the edges breaking off of the asteroid due to heat expansion. Only then does the beam penetrate the asteroid. The amount of penetration the beam did achieve is open to speculation, but the damage appears to the naked eye to be relatively superficial, as indicated by the arrow above.
If we generously assume that the beam did cut all the way through the asteroid, and assume that it actually vaporized a column 3 meters thick and 60 meters in diameter, approximately 500 terajoules (120 kilotons) were delivered to the asteroid during the two minutes, with an average firepower of over 4 terawatts. (pi*R²*L)*7870[density of iron]*7.6[megajoules/kilogram to vaporize iron in space (very low starting temperature, but zero atmospheric pressure)]/1,000,000[to convert megajoules to terajoules]
For comparison, the "Little Boy" bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in the last days of World War 2 released approximately 15 kilotons, leveling an estimated 60,000 buildings. The calculations above include some very generous assumptions, but can't be treated as an actual upper limit. However, the result should be considered very generous - if the energy delivered by the beam were greater, the asteroid would have been an ineffective barrier. But it is likely the energy delivered to the asteroid was of a similar magnitude to the energy released by Little Boy, in the high gigajoule to low terajoule range. Even though these calculations are generous, information below indicates a ZPM can output power close to this magnitude, and Dr. McKay stated this weapon would require many of them. Therefore, the firepower was logically on this order of magnitude.
It is doubtful maintaining an open stargate or maintaining shields around the satellite required more power than the beam delivered to the target. If the Replicators were capable of many times greater firepower, they could have destroyed Atlantis during the stargate's standard 38 minute cycle, without the need to provide it with extra power. The primary goal was the destruction of Atlantis, after all.
For starters, assuming the asteroid contains iron is normal. It's an asteroid that's been cratered itself, and shows patches of brown over its surface (
clicky). In other words, it
is that solid.
A figure in the terawatts is certainly not out of question.
And that's without considering the obvious fact that the beam is not just about a normal DET. There's obviously much more going on.
We still notice that the beam was not stopped by the ocean's water located above the city. How much water was there above the city?
The coast was never visible from the city, and even Sheppard, when taking a puddle jumper to go to the closest shore where Athosians settled, took a bit of time to get there:
The Storm wrote:
ATLANTIS’ PLANET. John and Teyla are in a Puddlejumper, flying over the ocean.
SHEPPARD
Haven’t been to the mainland in a while. How’s everybody settling in?
TEYLA
Halling believes the first crops will have a good yield.
SHEPPARD
You still miss home?
TEYLA
There is still talk of returning, even though I’ve told them the Wraith have scorched Athos bare in revenge for our resistance.
SHEPPARD
Well, maybe in time this place will start to begin to feel like home.
(Teyla sees something in front of and to the right of the Jumper. She stares at it.)
TEYLA: Do you see that?
(John looks up from his controls and sees a huge black storm cloud in the distance.)
SHEPPARD
That can’t be a storm – it stretches across the whole horizon.
TEYLA
I’ve never seen something like that from so high.
SHEPPARD
I’ve seen a lot of things from this altitude, but nothing like that. (He activates comms.) Atlantis base, this is Jumper One. We’re gonna change our heading to investigate a storm.
ATLANTIS CONTROL ROOM.
WEIR (into comms)
Major, this is Weir. We didn’t copy that. You’re breaking up.
SHEPPARD (over comms)
I said there’s ... (static) ... ermanence headed right ... (static) ... the weather forecasting.
WEIR (to the tech sitting at the control panel)
Did he just say ‘weather forecasting’?!
JUMPER ONE. The Jumper has now risen higher and is flying over the top of the cloud. From the shape of the cloud, it’s clearly a hurricane.
TEYLA
Do all storms look like this from above?
SHEPPARD
No. (He calls up a display.) This must cover twenty percent of the planet.
TEYLA
Is it headed towards the mainland?
SHEPPARD
Tracking right towards the settlement.
TEYLA (looking concerned for her people)
And after that?
SHEPPARD
Straight to Atlantis.
The puddlejumper wasn't exactly flying slowly either.
So obviously, being that far from the coast would allow the cityship to sit a couple kilometers below the surface. Many hundreds of meters of water is the bare minimum here.
So it's clear that there would have been several main spire heights above Atlantis.
And if you feel like needless arguing, here's
direct evidence.
The main spire is more than 600 meters high, from city-floor level. It doesn't account for the stuff below the city, that's quite thick and imposing, and we're not even adding the gap between the shield's roof and the apex of the main spire.
You easily have some kilometers of water there. With a beam that's several meters wide, how could you not need copious amounts of terawatts, if so much water had to be vaporized?
It's also very obvious that for a beam that reaches that far deep inside the ocean, the amount of water vaporization is actually very minimal. Not so DET it seems.
That's logical, since the asteroid proved enough to stop the beam for a while. The
moderate amount of water vaporized feels in line with this fact.
Sidenote: I never noticed that the Wraith had scorched the planet bare.
Besides, it's impossible to know how much of the energy transfered was powering the stargate. We do know from "Redemption" that this amount can be low, as three orders of magnitude below normal levels:
We've seen that in "Redemption", wherein the smallest power was sufficient to complete the trick. The input was so small that the SGC sensors had to be recalibrated to see the periodical blip of energy every two or three seconds.
Redemption Part I wrote:
INT—SGC CONTROL ROOM
[Lt. Simmons is working at a terminal as Carter enters the room.]
LT. SIMMONS
Major…there's a rise in power being retained by the Gate's internal capacitors of .1%.
CARTER
Well, while there's an open wormhole, the value tends to fluctuate by at least that much anyway.
LT. SIMMONS
Not for the last 12 minutes, it hasn't.
CARTER
Go to Gate diagnostic screen four.
LT. SIMMONS
Normal…no incoming energy readings.
CARTER
Increase sensitivity by 50%.
[A few blips appear on the computer graph.]
CARTER
What was that?
LT. SIMMONS
Could be interference in the line between the Gate and computer.
CARTER
There it is again. Increase sensitivity by 200%.
LT. SIMMONS
That's well within the accepted margin of error for the sensors.
CARTER
I know, try it anyway.
[A pattern of blips appears on the computer graph.]
CARTER
I admit it's a pretty small anomaly, but it could be contributing to the power build up in the Gate.
LT. SIMMONS
But, uh…
CARTER
Errors are random, Lt. Whatever this is, it has a distinct pattern.
LT. SIMMONS
Right.
Notice that the dialogue is wrong here, for two reasons.
First, visuals indicate that the sensitivity was increased 50 times and again 200 times.
Normal scale
x50
x200
Thanks to
stargate1971.com for the awesome amount of qood quality screencaps!
Secondly, an increase of 50% isn't even doubling the scale sensitivity.
x2 is equivalent to an increase of 100% of the initial value (initial value +100% of the initial value), or 200% of the initial value.
Multiplying the sensitivity by 50 is equivalent to
5000% of the initial value, or the an increase by 4900%. That's an order of magnitude and five.
On screen, the measurements go from 10 to 90. The smaller graduations go by two (0, 2, 4, 6, ...).
Much likely, the range from 0 to 10 and from 90 to 100 are not displayed. Easily a scale in percents. What we see is therefore 80%.
An increase of the sensitivity by +50% would have increased the size of the graph by 0.5, and therefore brought the overall size of the graph at 80% x1.5, or 120%.
Knowing that the screen only displays 80% of the scale, we would see 96% of the scale. That's an actual factor of
1.2.
Now, on the default sensitivity scale, the readings indicated a flatline at around 15%.
With the zoom by x50, the flatline was measured at a notch below 20%, more like 19%, with the blips climbing as far up as 28-30%. That's a difference of 9-11%. That said, it's most likely because they zoomed onto the crest of the flatline, so most of the flatline's original thickness isn't visible on the new view, and is located below the screen, so to speak.
An increase of 50% of the initial scale would have proved insufficient. See, if an increase of +50% is sufficient to show blips being about 9-11% high, then with the factor we found above, the blips would have appeared as 1.2 times smaller, 7.5-9.16%, and therefore the blips should have been very visible with the default scale.
Now, divide 9-11% by 50, and you get 0.18-0.22%, which is not even a full small graduation, which explains why it wasn't seen.
Now take a look at the
quanties of energy a stargate can normally channel, and you'll see that those blips would still rate in the high terawatts. At least in a case of a stargate staying connected that long.
We know that the magnitude of energy isn't necessarily relevant since in "Chain Reaction", the stargate disconnected some time after the 38 minutes, and that was after the planet being turned to plasma.
Brian Young wrote:
http://www.babtech-onthe.net/stargate/atlantis1.jpg
This event must have been considered very impressive by the members of the Atlantis Expedition, as Dr. McKay stated it would require "a black hole or an unlimited number of ZPMs" to power the beam/stargate. This is noted in the image above, taken from the episode with subtitles turned on. To view the clip, click on the image.
This is where things get funny.
It's a well known fact that ZPMs can provide humongous amounts of energy.
3 ZPMs proved capable of protecting a large portion of Lantean when the inhabitants of the city, eons ago, stretched the shield over a large area. Any area that was hit suffered the effects of mass extinction.
The Arctarus core, was providing the
power of 12 ZPMs at 50%, and after a dozen of minutes or two, the overload vaporized the planet and destroyed 5/6ths of the local star system.
Brian Young wrote:
This provides a possible upper limit on the power output of a ZPM, but certainly for the other power generation technology available to the Expedition. In the Stargate SG-1 episode The Road Not Taken, Colonel Carter said she needed more power to hide the alternate-universe-Earth from the Ori using an alien device. She said she needed 700 gigawatts more, but was unable to produce that much power. She was using a naquadah generator and a nearly-spent ZPM at the time. She reported her tests suggested the ZPM had been taxed too much by a previous battle with the Ori, and it was unable to produce the necessary power. She was clearly disappointed by the tests, suggesting she expected the ZPM to provide the 700 gigawatts. The President of the United States used drastic measures to provide the power. If even several naquadah generators were capable of outputting the 700 gigawatts, Colonel Carter could have simply built more, she being the scientist who built the prototype 7 years before in the Season 3 episode Learning Curve.
First of all, she wouldn't even
bother using a naqahdah generator Mk-I if it wasn't providing power in the gigawatt range, otherwise its addition would have been completely irrelevant.
They also had Prometheus available, named Air Force One.
Secondly, they were quite short on resources, and despite having a 304 available, the Daedalus, they kept it up there patrolling.
The whole planet was in a state of an advanced warm war. The US had taken quite drastic measures to prevent public protests, such as instating martial law, but that didn't help.
They had gone far enough to need to bomb some Irish village with F-302s. There had been riots and deaths in the US over food, water and fuel.
Hardly a situation where they could obtain resources as easily as before, such as naqahdah, which requires going to other planets. The Ori's conquest might have been very advanced in that reality.
See:
The Road not Taken wrote:
CARTER
You know, I've also been going over several mission reports. You abandoned the Alpha Site. You cut ties with the Jaffa. You pulled back on almost everything!
HAMMOND
(defensively)
We didn't have a lot of choice! We devoted our full resources to planetary defense!
It's going to be hard to come with naqahdah in such conditions.
The fact that in this alt-reality, they only had one naqahdah generator to spare, when in normal SG-1, they could bring a plenty to any foreign planet, should be telling.
Why they didn't use those two ships to provide extra-power is a plot hole, since it would have obviously been suggested if it had been of any use. Perhaps they didn't have the capacity to plug the ships to the SGC. But why wouldn't they plug the ZPM, the portable Mark-I into the Daedalus?
There's another problem with his analysis. It's 700 GW
above what they were already getting, and that for a prolongated period of time. Actually, an undefinite period of time.
And in regards to power, those first generation portable generators are quite capable:
Stargate: Power and lifespan of naqahdah generators.
Just to kick away from stupid low end 'hand grenade" firepower attempt, in "The Road Not Taken", Landry said:
LANDRY
I understand you're dealing with a little power shortage. How much do you need?
CARTER
Uh, well, about 700 gigawatts. That's roughly eighty percent of the power generating capacity of the continental United States.
LANDRY
So, it's doable then.
CARTER
(gulping)
I'm sorry. I don't understand.
HAMMOND
We've known about the condition of the ZPM for some time, Colonel. In addition to our Major Carter's research, as a backup we've been building an infrastructure to channel energy to the Ancient chair directly from the U.S. power grid.
[Landry finishes signing some papers an aide brought him, then leads Hammond and Carter to the table.]
LANDRY
Not enough to give us the upper hand in a shooting battle against a whole fleet, but if your plan works, there won't be any battles at all.
(to Charlie)
Charlie, I need a speech explaining to the American people why it's a good thing they'll be without power for an undisclosed period of time.
700 GW + whatever they were already providing would be insufficient to engage the Ori ships above. It's quite obvious, considering what a single Ori ship withstood in "The Pegasus Project": an energy level that proved superior enough to ~26 megatons, necessary to make the intergalactic wormhole jump from a normal stargate to an Ori supergate.
Let's also notice the "undisclosed period of time" here.
Let's notice that they had difficulties to provide power to the device. By the time they reached above 90%, the power buildup was slowing down. It's quite interesting because it means they even needed to charge the damn thing before running it, otherwise the field would collapse.
Carter pointed out that 700 GW was about 80% of this US' power production, and Landry told her that they had built an infrastructure to tap that energy.
Obviously that grid of them wasn't so much pristine. A lack of hydrocarbons would easily explain it.
Brian Young wrote:
Also note the fact that the Atlantis Expedition had several similar naquadah generators, but were unable to effectively power the city without at least one ZPM. Naquadah generators therefore produce much less power than a ZPM, perhaps by an order of magnitude or more. This is not surprising, as the generators were constructed using modern day Earth technology, and are no larger than a boombox. However, naquadah generators have proven very useful for more than their portability. In the episode Space Race, an alien from an advanced civilization, which was apparently not being threatened by the Goa'uld, actively sought out Samantha Carter and her naquadah generators to power his space ship in a race. Therefore, even this small, portable generator is powerful enough to earn respect among the most advanced races in the Milky Way galaxy.
I like the way that's twisted.
First. The city was more than well powered with naqahdah generators. It was functioning well, sensors were on, lights and life support. Even the energy prisons and transport cages (pod to pod beaming tech) worked.
Secondly, the portable naqahdah generator was given to Warrick. Warrick is
not representative of the technological advancement of the Hebridan society (mix of Serrakins and Humans, and some hybrids). The Seberus itself hardly was a high quality ship, and the naqahdah generator used first to help the ship get out when stranded on some alien planet, was deemed good when it
supplemented the ship's other systems.
They also were out of credits, unable to buy such things as a "long range scanning control unit".
And perhaps one line to settle them all:
Space Race wrote:
CARTER
With all your science and engineering I'm a little surprised that you don't have a power source that rivals this.
EAMON
Oh they exist, we just couldn't afford one.
Moving on.
Brian Young wrote:
Also interesting to note is that modern nuclear power plants typically generate approximately one gigawatt of electricity. It would thus require several hundred of them to meet Colonel Carter's 700 gigawatt requirement, or thousands to power the weapon the Replicators fired through the stargate. In The Road Not Taken, most of the power generated by the United States was required to power the alien device.
It actually required
more, since they were 700 GW
short, and they barely managed to charge the device properly, even according to Carter's requirements. Meaning they possibly did not have access to much US-made power to begin with.
Brian Young wrote:
In The Seige part 2, the Marines reported they had brought with them the new Mark II naquadah generator, which produced 600% greater power than the original. They used it to power Atlantis' chair until the ZPM arrived aboard the Daedalus. This generator was able to power the drones to counterattack the Wraith ships, but was unable to power the shields. Prior to this, a team of scientists reactivated an Ancient defense platform to ambush the incoming Wraith ships in part 1. This platform was used in the war 10,000 years prior, and was now completely out of power. They used a single naquadah generator (original) to power the platform. As the episode involving the Ori took place after this, the 700 gigawatt upper limit applies to the Mark II generator, as Colonel Carter would have had access to them even before one was transported to Atlantis. This is logical, as even the Mark II generator was unable to power the shields, and was a poor substitute for a ZPM. The Mark II therefore must only output a fraction of the power available from a ZPM (estimated below as high gigawatt to low terawatt range).
Yes, a Mk-II is a poor substitute for a ZPM, notably because it's going to run out of power very quickly, since it runs at 600% of the Mk-I's max, and that duration ended out to be some minute.
Again, for proper figures, look
here.
It doesn't change a thing to the fact that in the alt-reality, they were extremely short on all possible resources, and isolated themselves. They turtled.
There is
nothing logical in what he says. As I pointed out above, if they had those power sources available in TRnT, they'd have used them, instead of using just one Mark-I.
I also suppose that if we want to go through a DET analysis of what happened in "Siege Part II" - why not? that's what he does for "First Strike" after all - then let's remember that the naqahdah generator had enough energy to feed the weapon to shoot down three Hiveships.
See one beam bisecting a Hiveship. If you want to run some DET calcs, let's just remember that those ships, among other things, are several kilometers
wide, have regenerative hulls which can tank point blank megaton nuclear detonations and withstand several shots from cannons capable of doing at least
that and free falling through an atmosphere without burning up, and that while having the biosystems damaged by a virus.
Now estimate how much energy is necessary to burn through that kind of ship.
Brian Young wrote:
As the beam being fired on Atlantis by the Replicators was apparently in the high gigawatt to low terawatt range, and Dr. McKay felt this, powering the shields, and maintaining an open stargate would require many ZPMs, it is likely a ZPM cannot output power beyond a few terawatts. However, as noted above, Colonel Carter was disappointed the ZPM could not produce the necessary 700 gigawatts. Therefore, it is likely a ZPM can output at least several hundred gigawatts, but no more than a few terawatts. Compared to modern technology, this is, as stated in the clip above, "an insane amount of power." It easily exceeds the power generation capability of the United States or any other modern country, all from a device small enough to carry by hand.
Wouldn't be the fact that the beam would finish draining their ZPM in 29 hours what led McKay to think they had some equivalent system on the other side?
Let's remember that the Odyssey fired missiles at the Asuran satgate, yet that barely dented the shields, which were also powered by whatever kept coming from the other side. By then, they had 26 megatons shaped nukes.
First Strike wrote:
McKAY
The shield's taking its power from the beam. Look, I registered a slight drop in output when you fired on it.
[...]
McKAY
I said "slight" – as in point zero zero two. Look, I doubt *any* amount of firepower is gonna collapse it while that beam is active.
".002".
Yes, something that dangerous threatens Atlantis, and you think they would
not fire nukes?
Brian Young wrote:
In The Seige, Marines reported the Daedalus was en route to Atlantis, and was using the ZPM to arrive within 4 days. The same ship normally requires 3 weeks to travel the same distance. The ZPM therefore allowed the ship to travel at least 5 times faster than normal. As Atlantis is approximately 3 million light years from Earth, Daedalus was traveling at approximately 275,000,000 times the speed of light.
Let's point out that the Odyssey seems to have traveled even faster when using both a ZPM and the Asgard core. The Ori had no problem to tail them closely.
Brian Young wrote:
Also interesting to note is the efficiency of ZPMs. Drawing zero point energy, the ZPM requires no discernable fuel. This makes the ZPM a safe alternative to other, more destructive power generation schemes, such as naquadah generators, which require very careful handling of volatile fuels.
Naqahdah isn't volatile until you shove a nuke into a pile of it. Otherwise any planet with naqahdah on it would have long exploded because of some stupid lightning bolt hitting a hand sized bit of raw naqahdah as the one lifted by Daniel.
Weapon grade naqahdah is the stuff used for power, weapons and shields. It's used aboard Goa'uld ships. Raw naqahdah is obviously not suited for powering cores. It's full of crap.
Brian Young wrote:
The Replicators' beam struck the Apollo's shields for only an instant, but caused enough damage to require a retreat. However, Atlantis' shields were estimated to protect the city for nearly 30 hours (29 hours plus the stargate's 38 minute cycle). To view this discussion, click
here. Atlantis' shields are thus much more resilient than those of a United States Air Force starship. This is further proven by encounters with Wraith Hive ships, when an Air Force starship can withstand only a few minutes of bombardment, whereas Atlantis was estimated to withstand days with a single ZPM in The Seige.
Depends on what he means by a few minutes. Daedalus was seen coping with the firepower of two Hiveships in "Allies" and "The Hive" without flinching much. Well in "Allies" they had taken hits to the hull before that.
But the Daedalus back then was not doing anything else but sitting there and taking shots. It's obvious it could limit herself to powering the shield, since the only weapons available were nukes and railguns, hardly requiring huge amounts of power.
The shields also had to protect the city from the detonation of a thermonuclear bomb after the bombardment, as an illusion of self-destruction was attempted. The yield of this bomb is not known. Earth did have access to naquadah-enhanced bombs with a yield of 1200 megatons, but it is unlikely this bomb had such a high yield. If a terawatt-range bombardment can threaten the city, a gigaton explosion would certainly defeat the shields. However, a thermonuclear bomb must have a yield at least in the kiloton range, or it would not work at all.
If Atlantis' shields could withstand nearly 30 hours of terawatt-range bombardment, the shields would have absorbed megatons of energy. If the beam delivered one terawatt of continuous firepower, it would have delivered approximately 26 megatons in 30 hours.
When the Asuran's satgate fired at the city, the beam hit the shield and started depleting the ZPM. Not too long after that, McKay pointed out that they had 29 hours of energy left in the ZPM.
That's about 104,400 seconds.
Taking BY's figure of 4 TW, we get a total of 4.176 e2 petajoules (for 29 hours).
That would bring ZPM's energy reserve about
100 MT worth of energy in a ZPM (and not 26 megatons as he claims), and that's supposedly near an "upper limit", "very generous".
That's just not going to work. The single ZPM, used by the Tau'ri to protect their city from a point blank >20 MT detonation, tanked this without blinking. If the energy reserves of the ZPM had been dramatically taxed, I think it would have been worth a frantic report from McKay, as usual.
We also know that an Aurora ship
not powered by a ZPM, and in terrible condition, could still sit in the middle of an explosion of
this magnitude and withstand its energies for about 4.1 seconds.
McKay estimated it at being about ten thousand times greater than what blew St Helens:
Inferno wrote:
SHEPPARD
You said the blast from the eruption would wipe out half the continent.
McKAY
It will, and after four point one seconds of those extreme temperatures and pressures, our shields will be depleted.
Based on wiki (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_er...unt_St._Helens), the overall released energy was 24 megatons, including 7 for the blast (shockwave, pressure and kinetic energy) the rest being thermal energy.
So you're either looking at an explosion of 70 gigatons or 240 gigatons.
A ZPM powered Aurora is way more powerful than a crippled and badly powered one.
Heck, even the first Aurora they found, which was in poor condition and missed its entire bow, was still capable of providing life support and maintained the stasis pods and VR online. The ship itself was still capable of providing enough energy for a powerful overload that vaporized herself and the two nearby Wraith cruisers (Wraith cruisers which are tough enough as to rest for tens of thousands of years on the deepest point of the ocean bed of Lantea, where the crust was particularly thin, and remain perfectly sealed - on a semi related note, that ship alone could overload and blow a hole in the crust that would have multiplied the original blast a thousand times an destroyed Atlantis, which was certainly
not above that ship).
Brian Young wrote:
Note the city was being powered by only one ZPM at the time. The Daedalus had delivered a ZPM at the beginning of season 2, but that ZPM was depleted in McKay and Mrs. Miller. A small group of Ancients were discovered traveling at nearly lightspeed in The Return, and they delivered a new ZPM to Atlantis upon their arrival and take-over. This is confirmed by Colonel Sheppard's report to Dr. Weir, when he said the stargate could be dialed to Earth, "thanks to the Ancients' new ZPM." That was 10 episodes before the one in question.
Let's just point out that the Tria, the Lantean Aurora-class warship, was stated slamming the breaks at 23g; obviously from Atlantis' position, not from the Tria's perspective, otherwise they'd never ever slow down before Sheppard's friends would die of old age!
The Tria was flying at 0.999c or more (calcs from other bits of dialogue about age and time indicate a higher speed). Needless to say, a terawatt power source will never allow a ship to provide 23g of deceleration.
Oh, and as I pointed out years ago, in "McKay and Mrs Miller", the ZPM was
entirely depleted at a rate of 2% per second. This simply allowing to dismiss BY's entire page, simply because it would mean that if he estimated a total of 100 MT of energy in stock for 29 hours at least (and not 26 MT), that's
2 megatons per second.
Or, if we pick his upper end of 4 TW, the ZPM has a maximum theoretical stock of energy of 200 TJ.
For the reminder, an overloading Mark-I naqahdah generator would be worth ~83.68 TJ.
Brian Young wrote:
As the Wraith attacked Atlantis in The Seige with 10 Hive ships (Daedalus had destroyed 2 Hive ships before they arrived), and Dr. McKay estimated their shields could withstand days of the bombardment, the Replicator beam must have been more powerful than bombardment by even 10 Hive ships. The city was being powered by one ZPM during each incident. Therefore, whether due to range or power generation, a single Hive ship is capable of delivering a bombardment to a ground target of no greater than a few hundred gigawatts, being at least an order of magnitude less than the Replicator beam. In Enemy at the Gate, the series finale, a Hive ship was powered by a ZPM. It was able to jump to Earth and threaten the planet directly. Dr. McKay stated the main disadvantage the Wraith had against Ancient technology was inefficient power generation, which the ZPM negated.
Listen to that discussion here - audio only to reduce download time.
Yes,
a few hundred gigawatts of firepower. God bless him, he granted the Wraith a firepower greater than mere hand grenades, at least.
I guess the Lanteans putting a shield over an area of a planet, powered by geothermal power, and risking blowing up with the energy of tens of thousands of Castle Bravo, would be necessary against ships having few hundred gigawatts of firepower.
Obviously.
Brian Young wrote:
In the Season 4 opener Adrift, puddle jumpers had to clear a path through an asteroid field to provide safe passage for the helpless Atlantis. Single drones were able to fragment asteroids similar in size to the puddle jumpers, and some a bit larger, perhaps 10-15 meters in diameter. The drones penetrate a target before they explode, and this was seen in the episode in question. Fragmenting an asteroid 15 meters in diameter with a buried explosive requires approximately 3.5 tons of TNT, or 15 gigajoules. This is much greater than the explosive yield observed in other episodes, where drones explode very close to characters, causing no injury. Perhaps drones are intelligent enough to automatically adjust their yield to specific targets? Otherwise, the actual impact of the drones may have been sufficient to assist in fragmenting the asteroids. As drones are effective against individuals on the ground, as well as capital warships, the former seems most likely.
Click here to view the clip.
For one, I'd love to see his scalings first.
Drone yields have regularly varied in power. They're precisely pre-charged weapons. They are capable of making large explosions against Hiveships, Ha'taks and even Wraith cruisers.
Drones have a wide variety of behaviours. They're seen eating matter away by punching through solid objects (Kull warriors in "Lost City Part II", a city ship roof in "The Tower"), push stuff and explode after that ("Sateda") or sort of brute force their way through ice ("Rising Part I").
We also have our own calcs here:
SGA 4x01 & 4x02 Quantification thread *Spoilers*. See page 2, with the calcs (a bit old, some characters are damaged). 28.1 GJ per drone is the energy obtained from the KE alone, without the energy needed to break the asteroid and whatever lost in heating.
Don't miss out the following thread either, equally important:
SDN: To Ender, about Lantean drones.
Brian Young wrote:
There is much evidence to suggest Atlantis, and its counterpart occupied by the Replicators, are the most powerful single space ships in the Pegasus galaxy. Each is powered by 3 ZPMs, supplying at least a few terawatts of power. A constant bombardment in the high gigawatt to low terawatt range (as evidenced by the effects on an asteroid) is enough to threaten Atlantis when powered by a single ZPM.
And yet BY knows a nuke was detonated just on top of the city's shield, and the mushroom was just as large as the shield itself (> 3.6 km), with a certain amount absorbed by the shield.
I wouldn't even dare point out that since we've never seen a ZPM drained faster than by 2% per second, in order to cope with the
power of a multi-megaton nuke, a ZPM which can only be drained at 2% of its entire potential per second, would need to be able to transfer 2 e25-27 W to the shield, at least.
Why does he forget that?
Also, the cityship was good simply because it relied on 3 ZPMs. We've seen that several ships can be enhanced with ZPMs. 304s can, Auroras can. Hiveships can. On all three, at least the first two ones are far more recent and built with battles in mind, which never was the case for cityships.
The Replicators were able to build Aurora Class warships, designed by the Ancients, but they had all been destroyed by series end, minus a few owned by pirates. The next most powerful warships in that galaxy are the Wraith Hive ships. However, even 10 Hive ships were unable to threaten Atlantis as effectively as the Replicator beam, suggesting each ship is at least an order of magnitude less powerful. Wraith ships have no shields, and their hulls provide little protection from high-yield weaponry.
They actually do very well. Hulls are regenerative, and some of the Hives we've seen can survive against another Hiveships for quite some time. The Hiveships in "No Man's Land" had been damaged by that forced long intergalactic trip (we know Hiveships need to have a break after being subjected to hyperspace radiations, which for some reason damage them). You'll notice the nukes that hit the Hiveship didn't cause much external damage. And that same Hiveship was later on seen being used by the Tau'ri.
It seems likely the Wraith were able to conquer their galaxy because there were no other powerful spacefaring races once the Ancients fled. They rule a primitive galaxy through fear. Their most advanced subjects, the Genii, were only beginning to understand nuclear physics during the series run.
They also systematically destroy societies that begin to become too advanced. A level of technology as found in the most developed Terran countries during the 20th century begins to make them nervous.
Brian Young wrote:
Thor's starship that crashed into Earth's oceans in the season 3 finale Nemesis was also stated to have engines that output power in the low terawatt range. Thor stated the ship had four engines, each capable of "a maximum of 1 billion kilojoules..." the rest of his sentence is difficult to hear over comments made by Colonel O'Neill.
View the clip here. Assuming Thor said "one billion kilojoules per second," from each of the four engines, the ship produced a maximum of about 4 terawatts, comparable to the beam fired through the stargate by the Replicators.
Quite an assumption.
These are the engines. When you state a power for engines, it's relative to what it's mainly meant to do: provide mechanical force or motion. However, that's only useful in the case of moving the ship around. Providing terawatts of power to move a ship which obviously has inertia dampeners and some degree of mass lightening, it's good enough.
Let's also forget that those four engines are truly enormous, and much more advanced that Tau'ri made portable naqahdah generators. Those four big engines run all the length of a Biliskner-class warship that's more than 1 km long.
Even if you assume that a Mark-I provides only a maximum of 1 GW, don't you think it's a bit odd each of those massive engines would only provide a thousand times the output of a small core that's about 60 cm long, or boombox sized as BY put it?
If you treat a Mark-I as a 60 cm long and 20 cm wide cylinder, it's 1.885 e-2 m³ big. A thousand times that is a volume of 18.85 m³.
Now if we assume that one of those large Asgard cylindrical engines is about 200 meters long, they'd have to be 0.4 meters wide only to be share the same volume as found just above.
Obviously, since they're bigger, they're ought to produce quite more power.
Of course it becomes even more ridiculous if you go with his assumption that a ZPM's peak output is 700 gigawatts, while a Neutrion-Ion generator would output 1 TW.
And why not assume that it's not per second, but per gram or kilogram of fuel, for example? Because, you know, if we begin to claim that our little grey friend wanted to be accurate, he'd use watts directly, instead of joules per second.
Heck, with such liberties, what's stopping us from claiming he was about to say 1 billion kilojoules per nanosecond?
All Earth units, of course. :)
Brian Young wrote:
Whenever more power than the terawatt range is required in the franchise run thus far, a black hole is sought out or created, even by the Asgard and the Ori, the most advanced races seen in the show.
Based on what?
The ZPM powered Tria deceleration for example would clearly disagree with that.
The Ha'tak shields and firepower calcs disagree with that as well.
The fact that gigaton nukes are so easy to produce is just another indicator. Why pretend shields, at best powered by low terawatts, are any relevant in a context where ships can easily threaten their enemies with at the very least megaton nukes?
And black holes can release
many petawatts of power.
A ZPM is more than enough to maintain an intergalactic wormhole.
Brian Young wrote:
So how does this asteroid-busting capability compare to the technology in other Science Fiction franchises?
*snip B5, Trek and Wars stuff*
Brian Young wrote:
In summary,
* Naquadah generators are useful for both portability and providing enough power output to be used in a starship race. They are limited to a strict upper limit of 700 gigawatts, but probably much less. Still much more advanced than modern day technology.
* The Mark II generator outputs several times more power than the original, but still falls within this limit.
* A ZPM can likely output at least 700 gigawatts, but possibly as high as a few terawatts.
* Drones can apparently alter their yield according to their target, releasing as little energy as a mortar, or more energy than a 2,000 pound bomb.
* Thor's flagship before the O'Neill Class output about 4 terawatts at max power.
* The Replicators were able to bombard Atlantis with a beam carrying high gigawatt to low terawatt range power, threatening to defeat the shields in less than a day and a half.
* The Wraith bombarded Atlantis with several Hive ships, but with much less power, threatening to defeat the shields in a few days.
* The most powerful vessels of the "young races" in Babylon 5 carry greater firepower than the Replicators' beam, but they are more limited by range.
* The most powerful vessels operated by the United Federation of Planets have shields comparable to those of Atlantis, but greater firepower than the Replicators' beam.
* Jango Fett's Slave1 has far greater firepower than the Replicators' beam, without counting the missiles and seismic charges, indicating it has a power source far in advance of even the ZPM.
* An Imperial Star Destroyer vastly outguns everything else combined.
Wait, is it me or did he pick all possible so called low ends for all universes and spin doctored them, and did the inverse for Star Wars?
Seriously, when did he finish typing this?