Call this a sneak preview of what will show up on the ANH, ROTJ, and Star Wars Power Technology page under the section header of Death Star(s). Numbered links will appear (as per standard SFJN practice) in the right sidebar with icons and descriptions to the side of the text. For now I'm also including some reference to the EU in the article, although the EU's treatment of the Death Stars' destruction (Vader's Hand comes to mind) is not particularly informative.
The most curious part of the entire problem of the Death Stars are their deaths, full of narrowly examined oddities.
First among these is the Endor Holocaust (1 2). Some have argued that the second Death Star's destruction necessarily entailed the complete ecological destruction of the forest moon of Endor.
The obvious problem with the Endor Holocaust is that in Lucas's sequence of events, it does not happen. The Rebels celebrate happily with the Ewoks and everybody is fine. Detailed analysis of the movie (see first link) shows not only that the idea originated from clear mis-scaling of the Death Star relative to Endor and its orbital height, and videographic analysis of the explosion (see first link again) indicate that the remains of the second Death Star eventually imploded, consuming itself in a similar manner to the first Death Star.
Second is the description of the destruction of the first Death Star in the official ANH novelization. Remarkably detailed, it discusses the power and duration of the event in quantitative terms. Barring the escape of energy into some alternate dimension, Alan Dean Foster's description in the novelization provides numerous valuable pieces of information.
- The Death Star's explosion - seen onscreen in a presumably dimmed form - was "brighter than the sun" from the surface of Yavin IV, "briefly turning night into day" (presumably only on some parts of the surface).
- This bright period lasted several seconds. Significant heating of Yavin IV was not observed.
- The Death Star's remains consumed themselves for several days. There is no mention of any continuum transition of matter.
- (Note, incidentally, that "not even multiple shields set on high could dim that awesome flare." This will be explored on the ANH Shields and Star Wars Shields pages in this winter's series of upcoming updates.)
- "Trillions" of microscopic metal fragments "filled space," overtaking the fleeing ships. This is, all told, a small amount of debris, presumably mostly including structural portions of the Death Star.
We may clarify that the sun about which Earth orbits emits on the order of 10^26 watts. Were the Death Star to maintain the raw output of our sun for five days - the most generous possible interpretation of the novel Star Wars' detailed description - it would emit no more than 1e32 joules of energy. The kinetic energy of a Death Star sized object accelerated to a speed that would be observed overtaking the Falcon, or the maximum speeds of debris observed in ANH or ROTJ, is negligible in comparison to this outer limit.
It comes into play significantly in a more realistic (10^26-28 J) estimation of the total energy of the first Death Star's demise, however; the simple fact that Yavin did not suffer any significant thermal effects from the Death Star's destruction eliminates the high end possibilities.
A comparably energetic destruction of the second Death Star, possessed of a larger reactor of similar type, would have completely cooked Endor's surface within seconds. We may therefore suggest that the fuel is stored in a relatively non-volatile form and the energy "charged" into a volatile form in the amount needed to fire the weapon; the DS2 was only firing ship-destroying shots rather than planet-destroying shots. The limit above may then be suggested to be the energy of a shot by the Death Star rather than its total potential reserve.
In order to maintain that the Death Star contained power generation significantly past the range required to enter hyperspace, it is necessary to presume that the charging superlaser was discharged into another dimension of existence.
This problem, incidentally, is one of the numerous confounds to the DET theory of superlaser operation...
