Starfleet Jedi

This may not be new material, and I realize I'm opening up a can of worms, but . . .

In "The Die is Cast", 30% of a planetary crust is "destroyed" by Trek beam and torpedo weapon bombardment. Some claim this is not so, because supposedly we cannot see large amounts of magma. Or as one commenter put it, "I don't see how anyone can take such stupidity seriously. If they destroyed one third of the crust, why don't we see the red-hot glowing magma underneath?"

Should we really expect to? Even on Earth the upper mantle is not molten, save for a very small percentage area of magma hotspots. We've known this for decades. Further, it doesn't seem necessary for the Founder's planet to have a molten mantle either. Sudden disappearance of overlaying crust would possibly allow for decompression melting all along the now-exposed mantle, but I rather doubt the timetable for such melting to a sufficient degree to be visible from high orbit is measured in seconds.

Should there be some magma in place as the phaser beams strike that we would expect to see exposed? Sure. But there's no reason to assume there ought to be enough to look like Wong's Lexx image that he claims is what we should see.

(e.g. www.stardestroyer.net/Empire
/Essays/ForeShadow-Planet.jpg
(remove line break) )


(Indeed, I would wager that Mustafar, the ever-popular lava world, has a surface that in places would be too bright to be around . . . that is, I'm wondering if the level of red glow is probably unrealistic.)

And yes, photon torpedoes and possibly phasers could produce direct heating of the planet's surface, undoubtedly causing some melting. Phasers might not actually do this depending on how they were being used, but torpedoes definitely would. Then again, if the first torpedoes fired (e.g. the ones we saw) were intended as airbursts for maximum blast effects (to kill the greatest number of founders in the least amount of time), thermal effects on the surface below might be at least somewhat mitigated.

Of course, all this assumes that the crust was actually "destroyed" in the sense of being vaporized or made into a stock of high-quality rubble, whereas the timetable of the scene compared to the timetable we were previously told in the episode suggests this might not be so . . . that is, we are seeing about 1/500th of the first crust-destroying hour of the bombardment, so this thirty percent of destruction may simply refer to the surface.

Thoughts?

For some reason the SDN image page you linked to keeps giving a "cannot display" message, dispite several reload attempts.
-Mike

Mike DiCenso wrote:For some reason the SDN image page you linked to keeps giving a "cannot display" message, dispite several reload attempts.
-Mike

Edited.

Anyway, I've only vaguely been interested in most of the TDiC arguments, mainly only to giggle at just how far some of the opposition claims go, so pardon any ignorance on my part regarding the details I brought up.

What about the crust destroyed in X hours and the mantle in Y hours, according to the computer?

Then, is it 30% of the crust = surface, or is it 30% of the surface?
The first one is hard to defend:
1. Effects, regardless of magma, should be noticeable all around the planet to affect the whole surface that hard.
2. 30% of the crust isn't exactly the surface only, if we treat 30% as a whole layer.

The second one would fit at least with the area that could be affected --what we see plus other ships firing on the other side, since we know the fleet was larger than those couple of ships seen firing.

But then, considering the time needed to affect 30% of the surface, we would need to know if it fits with the computer's estimation of the time needed to destroy the crust.

Besides, as I pointed out in the early ages of this forum, if the moderate damage seen would be enough to destroy the crust, and would still take that much time, then what would be enough to destroy the mantle, both upper and lower parts? Would that even fit with the computer's estimation?

2046 wrote:

Mike DiCenso wrote:For some reason the SDN image page you linked to keeps giving a "cannot display" message, dispite several reload attempts.
-Mike

Edited.

Anyway, I've only vaguely been interested in most of the TDiC arguments, mainly only to giggle at just how far some of the opposition claims go, so pardon any ignorance on my part regarding the details I brought up.

There is one issue that few seldom ever address on both sides: why is it that nearly a minute after the bombardment has ceased, are there explosions and shockwaves still going full blast over the planet. That indicates to me that the crust has been punctured in some fashion, not disrupted.
-Mike

As I mentioned over at ASVS, let's be fair. We don't know specifically what was meant by "destroyed". It could mean anything from plowed up to slagged or vaporized. This is a wide area within which to work.

Yes, well whatever was done to the planet by the phasers and torpedoes, it was not dependent on the weapons once they stopped firing as many Warsies would claim in saying that Star Trek weapons are technobabble NDF-based only.
-Mike

Mr. Oragahn wrote:What about the crust destroyed in X hours and the mantle in Y hours, according to the computer?

Then, is it 30% of the crust = surface, or is it 30% of the surface?
The first one is hard to defend:
1. Effects, regardless of magma, should be noticeable all around the planet to affect the whole surface that hard.
2. 30% of the crust isn't exactly the surface only, if we treat 30% as a whole layer.

The second one would fit at least with the area that could be affected --what we see plus other ships firing on the other side, since we know the fleet was larger than those couple of ships seen firing.

But then, considering the time needed to affect 30% of the surface, we would need to know if it fits with the computer's estimation of the time needed to destroy the crust.

Besides, as I pointed out in the early ages of this forum, if the moderate damage seen would be enough to destroy the crust, and would still take that much time, then what would be enough to destroy the mantle, both upper and lower parts? Would that even fit with the computer's estimation?

Two things here:

1) The energy involved is decisively non-moderate. The resulting shockwaves last very long, are really rather big and move relatively fast. The amount of energy needed to move even a thin layer of dust over that area at that speed is already mindboggingly high. Even if wonky-tech is used it's still a rather impressive display.

2) Ironically, the computers prediction makes rather more sense if ST weapons are using NDF/chain reactions. See, the crust is liable to have all kinds of stuff in it. Mostly silicon, but all sorts of impurities etc. The mantle and core however are far more likely to be dominantly iron (or some other element).

If ST weapons are chain-reaction based or NDF based, I'm assuming that making them work effeciently on one specific element is rather easier (less energy needed for the same effect) than making them work effeciently on a range of elements.

Roondar wrote: 2) Ironically, the computers prediction makes rather more sense if ST weapons are using NDF/chain reactions. See, the crust is liable to have all kinds of stuff in it. Mostly silicon, but all sorts of impurities etc. The mantle and core however are far more likely to be dominantly iron (or some other element).

Actually, if the Founder's homeworld's mantle is similar to Earth's, it will have a higher range of silicate composition. In fact, the Earth's mantle is only about 5.8% elemental iron by composition, with oxygen, magnesium and silicon as the primary constituants (approximately 88% total). So that doesn't hold water as far as that goes. The other real problem is that we have no idea what the thickness of the Founder's homeworld crust is. If the mantle and core cooled off enough that a ship firing on the mantle has to work harder to raise it's temperature and so on.

Roondar wrote: If ST weapons are chain-reaction based or NDF based, I'm assuming that making them work effeciently on one specific element is rather easier (less energy needed for the same effect) than making them work effeciently on a range of elements.

That would hold true if the weapons were solely DET-based as well. A LASER will not effect or burn through a 1 cm thick sheet of steel whereas one of the same power will go right through or set on fire a sheet of writing paper. And we still have no idea canonically what it is exactly that phasers do on certain settings other than at the highest setting for the TOS-era Type-II phaser it disintegrates people and objects. On top of all the other complications, we still have the torpedoes effects to contend with, and we know that for the most part, those are essentially DET nukes.
-Mike

Mike DiCenso wrote:There is one issue that few seldom ever address on both sides: why is it that nearly a minute after the bombardment has ceased, are there explosions and shockwaves still going full blast over the planet. That indicates to me that the crust has been punctured in some fashion, not disrupted.
-Mike

Why wouldn't it keep going? Fact of the matter is, no matter what form it's in, it takes time for large concentrations of energy to distribute themselves out thermally. Waves through matter tend not to travel more than a couple tens of kilometers per second.

If anything, the SFX we see in Star Trek and other SF shows tends to be overly short. See, for example, the short "puff" of SOE, which is too short to be the actual fireball of a high-yield thermal device, but also too fast to represent the shockwave of anything less than a gigaton. (As I've mentioned before many times, it's very difficult to pin SOE down to something short of a gigaton.) Reverberations going on for a minute? Not at all strange whatever may be going on.

Mike DiCenso wrote:

Roondar wrote: 2) Ironically, the computers prediction makes rather more sense if ST weapons are using NDF/chain reactions. See, the crust is liable to have all kinds of stuff in it. Mostly silicon, but all sorts of impurities etc. The mantle and core however are far more likely to be dominantly iron (or some other element).

Actually, if the Founder's homeworld's mantle is similar to Earth's, it will have a higher range of silicate composition. In fact, the Earth's mantle is only about 5.8% elemental iron by composition, with oxygen, magnesium and silicon as the primary constituants (approximately 88% total). So that doesn't hold water as far as that goes. The other real problem is that we have no idea what the thickness of the Founder's homeworld crust is. If the mantle and core cooled off enough that a ship firing on the mantle has to work harder to raise it's temperature and so on.

My mistake about the contents of Earth's mantle, but the point I made was that the crust is likely to have more different elements in it than the mantle or core.

Roondar wrote: If ST weapons are chain-reaction based or NDF based, I'm assuming that making them work effeciently on one specific element is rather easier (less energy needed for the same effect) than making them work effeciently on a range of elements.

That would hold true if the weapons were solely DET-based as well. A LASER will not effect or burn through a 1 cm thick sheet of steel whereas one of the same power will go right through or set on fire a sheet of writing paper. And we still have no idea canonically what it is exactly that phasers do on certain settings other than at the highest setting for the TOS-era Type-II phaser it disintegrates people and objects. On top of all the other complications, we still have the torpedoes effects to contend with, and we know that for the most part, those are essentially DET nukes.
-Mike

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No, it would not hold true because I'm not saying what you think I am ;)

I meant to say that a NDF/CR weapon is liable to be more effective if the bulk of the matter involved is one element rather than say, a hundred in a mix. This because you could probably tune the weapon to be at maximum effectiveness vs that single element (the 'perfect' ratio of nadions for that element for example).

That obviously wouldn't work if the target is composed of a lot of different elements, which would mean less efficient NDF, based on the fact there are different elements, not their densities, thermal qualities etc.

DET and TDiC have major problems - not the least of which is the lack of blinding flashes of light and lack of any fireball that resembles a real nuke's one when the torpedoes detonate.

Roondar wrote: That obviously wouldn't work if the target is composed of a lot of different elements, which would mean less efficient NDF, based on the fact there are different elements, not their densities, thermal qualities etc.

Right, but any similar effect would hold true for DET as well since density and thermal qualities of different elements and compostions would slow down it down as well. In other words, you can still argue both ways. But arguing one method and only one method based solely on timeframes is flawed to say the least.

Roondar wrote:DET and TDiC have major problems - not the least of which is the lack of blinding flashes of light and lack of any fireball that resembles a real nuke's one when the torpedoes detonate.

That's a common failing in most sci-fi shows and movies. And it's inconsitantly handled in Trek where sometimes we blinding flashes for torpedo detonations (e.g. the warning blast from a torpedo seen in TNG's "Preemptive Strike").
-Mike

Just wondering what exactly we see on the planets surface, wasn't the Founders world mostly liquid? Or what if we were seeing an extra dense cloud layer rather than the actual surface. I dont know.

No, we see that the planet has a solid surface as shown clearly in "The Search, parts I and II", and the use of terms like "crust", "mantle" and "core" indicate a geologic structure similar to any Sol system terrestrial-type world. Only the Founders themselves were described to cover the planet in their prefered liquid state.
-Mike

And if weapons were solely NDF based, then it would explain why they were ineffective against shields and/or hulls of battlebugs - meaning that fleet had only torpedoes to use against Dominion; that is around 40% to 60% reduction in firepower.