Mike DiCenso wrote:Another possible indicator of GCS firepower can be found in TNG's "A Matter of Time", where the E-D attempts to remove a thick layer of volcanic dust from Earth-like planet Penthara IV's atmosphere. The dust was such a large amount that it was effectively blocking all sunlight around the entire planet.
The E-D attempts to remove the dust using her ventral saucer phasers, but at the risk that, if the variance in the phaser's power output is off by more than 60 gigawatts, a chain-reaction will occur that will completely burn of the Pentharan atmosphere! Suffice to say, the process is sucessful, and only the volcanic dust is burned off.
A long time ago, I once calculated under some conservative assumptions that the amount of energy generated by the burn-off attempt was conservatively in the range of 183 gigatons over 11 seconds. This assumed that the amount of dust in the Pentharan atmosphere was only equal to the moderately large explosive
volcanic eruptions of Krakatoa in 1883, which blasted more than 10 cubic kilometers of dust into the Earth's atmosphere.
While Krakatoa certainly had signficant effects on Earth's global climate, some lasting for a number of years after the event, it did not do so (thankfully) to anything like the effect that the Penthara IV volcanoes did in effectively blocking all sunlight from reaching the surface of the planet, and so 183 gigatons is likely a highly conservative estimate.
It's been a while. Anyone want to take a crack at assessing the Penthara IV event?
-Mike
Mr. Oragahn wrote:
I remember our argument over the 60 GW variance thing, but it was settled rather satisfyingly. Now, this is puzzling. What did this atmosphere had so special that a chain reaction could be started if you dumped too much energy in it?
I'am sorry, but nothing of the sort was done, except in your viewpoint. You simply refused to except that the 60 GW variance was a critically tiny fraction of the total output, despite characters like Geordi and Picard implying or outright stating that it was.
There were no technobabble elements or anything. The only thing was that the dust had by that time become simply electrostatically charged, and the phaser blast was going to turn the dust into high energy plasma so that it could be drawn upward through the E-D's navigational deflector beams and shields, and then shunted out into space (essentially they were turning the E-D and her deflector into a giant lightning rod).
Mr. Oragahn wrote:
Did the volcanos release some exotic element which was contained within the mantle thus far or what?
Again, no exotic elements, the dust had merely become electrostatically charged. But that is neither here nor there. One interesting part about all this is, regardless of the phaser power, the ionized plasma energies would in the hundreds of gigatons range at minimum, and yet the E-D's shields held out against it, and even held it while the E-D rotates for several seconds to point the deflector dish out into space and vent the plasma. So if shields are that strong, then the phasers and torpedoes themselves by default must be strong enough to punch through them, therefore at least high-megaton range to low-end gigaton weapons yeilds are implied here.
What I was actually asking, if you read more carefully, is what the calculated energies needed to turn the volcanic dust into a plasma, regardless of where the energy comes from: i.e. the phasers, chain-reaction, ect.
For example, how much total dust would need to have been deposited into Penthara IV's atmosphere by the volcanoes to utterly blot out the sunlight around the entire planet such that within a day or two, it was snowing heavily in otherwise were once warm temperate and or tropical climates?
-Mike
