B5, ST & SG stuff (ships, firepower, bits and bangs)

[Mr. Oragahn]

I mentioned magnetic fields as part of the process in normal conditions.
The... thing... that came to life in Echoes is totally abnormal, and I'm afraid nothing would explain that. It happened before, and would happen again, that's all we know for fact.

You keep repeating these subjective impressions of the jet as if they will in any way alter the limitations on it's power. They won't.

No, since I only talked about them in relation to the flare phenomenon in general.
I'd rather stop arguing about the magnetic field since it was only a note, and doesn't provide any further constructive material.

*sigh*
Pretty much anything from the way the stream bounces off the shield to the blobs that drift away, etc. I find it amusing how you're using an utmost absolute stance on physics to appreciate the implication of such events, but fail to see the issues in the video and the way the VFX team portrayed a stream of fiery protons being diverted by an ovoid surface.

But you tried to use absolute science when you thought it would imply enormous energy figures didn't you? Basically plugging energy figures for large CMEs?

No, my original stance was trying to treat the super CME as something that would be more akin to a CME than a beam of particles the way it's portrayed in the episode, along working out the implication of the rem figure. We've both gone through a lot of material to thicken those observations and estimations. Well, at least I did.

Now that I have pointed out clear limitations dictated by the physical laws all of a sudden physics isn't good enough.

If I had thrown physics through the windows altogether, I wouldn't even bother with energy intensity, atmospheric irradiance and else.
But it, again, needs to be pointed out that Rodney knew such stream could exist. The former one threatened the same planet, the Lanteans at that time used their city's shield and three ZPMs to stretch it as far as possible, against its own very design, and no matter the time, even back then, 3.2 GW wouldn't threaten a planet.

That is called intellectual dishonesty. Needless to say you still haven't provided any reasoning as for what is wrong with the plasma jet as depicted in the episode.

Depiction = visuals, and for the visuals, I did. Please read.

It obviously isn't a CME but that itself is not a reason to pretend it didn't happen.

Well of course that's rather troubling since it is said to be a CME, a very powerful one, and McKay bizarrely thinks that that star can channel super CMEs into tubes.
Also why would he think it's a super CME if it doesn't eject a fraction of the mass of normal CME...

Based on what exactly, aside from you reaching to find an excuse to dismiss the figures?

You are describing yourself now. Just below you claim that since we are dealing with "Stargate universe" we should accept that the stars have the possibility of shooting high density jets that don't expand even though that's physically impossible. At the same time you insist that Ozone layer must be the same for this planet even though there are no physical laws dictating how thick the Ozone layer must be based simply on the appearance of the planet.

You know, the reason why I originally rejected the stream fact and still consider it a good solution is because as though it lets me argue that the ship did create a dead zone in the CME burst, so whatever it would intercept would never reach the planet, it also had the advantage that the density of the material that hit the ship wouldn't need to match that of the corona, since the ship would be caught in the equivalent of an explosion, and thus would be hit with a compressed front of matter travelling at 4000 km/s.

The ship's bow was suffering extensive damage. It's a ship that uses trinium, 100 stronger than steel, plus perhaps some naqahdah (think of the enduring stargates as an example).
We know that iron's specific heat starts at 0.45 J/g/C°, is also close enough to steel's, and steel melts at 1535 C°.
Specific heat can climb to 0.65 J/C° per gram at 800 C, and up to 0.72 J/C° per gram at 1400 C, but let's keep the low end value for this, and pretend that we start at 0°C.
For the heat of fusion, 1 kg of steel turns to liquid with 272 kJ.

Low end energy needed to melt 1 kg of steel: E_low = 0.45 e3 x 1535 + 272 e3 = 962,750 J.
A value that is interesting to compare to those.


A very low low end, since it usually takes a couple of megajoules to achieve this in reality. We can, for the sake of simplicity, work with a melting energy of 1 MJ/kg.
Densities of steel.


7.86 g/cc (pure iron), for a 1 m² plate that would be 10 centimeter thick, would weigh 786 kg. So that's 786 MJ to melt it, and therefore 78,600 MJ to melt the same volume of a trinium (and perhaps alloyed with naqahdah) plate. And of course twice that if the plate is twice as thick. Plus the fact that it's a very low end.
The hull was taking damage. Even one of the F-302 bay took damage.

Should we believe that the shield is so miserable that on the 3.2 GW it's taking, it can't even prevent enough energy from spilling through so much as to deposit 78.6 GJ/m² anywhere onto the hull?

I mean, even if we take the figure for steel, 768 MJ /m² for plates 10 cm thick, and work from the intensity of the stream, which is 100 meters wide, and has a crosssection's area of 7.8540 e3, we get 407.44 KW/m² for the intensity of the stream's crosssection.
To get an intensity of 768 MJ/m² on the hull, assuming the shield stopped nothing, it would take 1884.94 seconds for the metal to reach the required temperature and energy level (that of course without counting the metal shedding heat to nearby plates and inwards over that time).
That's 31.41 minutes.
If the shield stops 90% of the energy, then 40.744 KW/m² gets through, and it takes ten times longer, or 5.23 hours.
And finally, it takes 52.3 hours if the shield only lets 1% of the energy pass through.

That's for steel, not even the trinium-naqahdah alloy that's used, which would require increasing power figures by two OoMs.

We could also compare this calculation to this event.


And that's not counting the fact that we're talking about a stream of more "simplistic" matter, which contrary to photons, especially high energy ones, will be coming into contact with the atmosphere and react like matter does, the atmosphere adopting the behaviour of a barrier: the faster something hits a fluid, the harder the fluid acts against the penetrating element.
You calculated a density of e-14 kg/m³ for the stream in the corona. But what about momentum? There are asteroids which weigh more than thousands of kilos per cubic meter and which get blasted by the atmosphere if they come too fast and too sharply into it. How are particles, coming in faster, but the overall mass they represent being extremely more diffuse, ever get anywhere deep enough?

I don't even recall we tried to estimate how much energy the stream would radiate as heat on its way to Lantea btw. At 4000 km/s, it would take 37,399.5 to cover 1 AU.
That's a lot of time for a plasma to cool down naturally during its trip.
This may prove interesting, as well as an important factor to your figure, since you assume that the 3.2 GW in the coronal region will not be lost to some degree when hitting Lantea.
A degree which may be significant.

First I would like some evidence that this trinium is 100 times stronger than steel. (which steel?)

Nature of steel is not defined. The ratio is given in Spirits.
I didn't mention that it's also lighter than steel.

Secondly what do energies taken to produce 1kg of various materials have to do with this discussion?

Very little, but I found the numbers interesting nonetheless. I should have pointed out that it was largely irrelevant.

Thirdly the shield was not only taking the kinetic energy of the plasma jet but also the standard radiation from the sun. It seems that the shields are less effective against impacts by objects with mass like protons than the EM radiation.

Intensity for our sun is 2.009 e7 W/m².
The ship clearly was far from the photosphere, but even if it were two radii from the core, the intensity would be 5.0225 e6 W/m², and it would probably be silly to pretend that the shield lets a high percentage of that energy through.

Fourthly the plates were not melted entirely but were blown off which means you have no basis for calculating the energy needed to melt the entire plate. Materials start to loose structural integrity as they are heated up so the hull could collapse long before it was actually melted.

It didn't collapse to such a deplorable degree when glowing red though. But there could be a disagreement between both episodes though, so I give you that.
Ah, talking about trinium, I remember that it took a while for Carter to cut her way through one of the mundane walls of Prometheus with a plasma cutter. They were composed of trinium alloy (6.11, Prometheus).

DAVIS
Major Carter, the sublight control relay is right above you on Deck 8. If you can get to it and sever the connection, that will ground them for sure.

CARTER
I found a plasma cutter in here, but it will take me a while to get through the Trinium alloy.

DAVIS
We have less than three hours to deliver the prisoners before they blow the ship.

...

INT—X-303 STORAGE ROOM

[Carter is making slow progress with the cutting torch.]

SERGEANT
Sir, we're approaching deadline.

DAVIS
Radio the hijackers. We're sending in the prisoners.

INT—X-303 STORAGE ROOM

[Carter is still working with the cutting torch.]

Fifth what you think that short atmospheric descent proves? The speeds did not seem more than 100km/s and the ship was still in the upper atmosphere.

Just before the hyperspace windows opens, we can see the large lights of Janus' outpost.
They were obviously not in high orbit anymore. 100 km/s is nothing to scoff at either when talking about a powered reentry at 90°.

Ah? Do you have a relevant absorption figure for infrareds?

Why? They are low frequency radiation and are not dangerous.

S'ry. What kind of gamma rays were you thinking of?
Picking the much earlier value relative to 500 Sv, and dividing by 500, we still get a total of 11.3332 e15 J so that the whole exposed face of the planet gets 1 Sv.
Over 23 hours, that's 136.875 e9 W. That's for 0% absorption. As we saw earlier on, the factors for absorption reach several hundreds.

Also, planets being spherical, and the emission of particles or radiations being rather focalised in comparison, getting enough radiations at the poles while radiations and particles will follow more and more tangential trajectories (coming at very low angles), in order to meet the required intensity relative to 1 Sv, more energy will be required, and that is not counting the greater volume of atmosphere particles and radiations have to go through.

As I alluded to much earlier on, my calculations are only good as much as an early indication since they're based on the idea that particles and radiations hit each square meter of the exposed surface at near 90°, which is obviously not the case in reality. For reference, the value would be halved at 60° (cosine), and 25% of max at 75°.

It doesn't matter, because it already happened before, and McKay was convinced that based on what he knew of the star and the precedent event, 50,000 rems could be delivered to the planet by starting out as a stream narrow enough to be intercepted by the shield of a 304.
So science or not, this funky star made it happen once already.

Again: the fact that it happened before doesn't give him the crystal ball. Saying that the star is "funky" doesn't somehow change the limits on it's energy content.

Considering that he thought 50,000 rems could be crammed into a narrow beam, perhaps it doesn't give him the crystal ball, but it surely gives him the right to claim it could happen again.
And 50,000 rems being 500 Sv, you obviously know which figure needs to be multiplied by 500 to know what the stream's lowest power would be.
Which, again, shows that terawatts is an absolute low end value, and that a stream from this star could indeed have such a power, or more, and still be that narrow.

Also, they were very far from the sun, actually. Would you be able to prove that your equation stands at such a distance from the star?
Did you verify if the ambient gas pressure you used even fits with the observed distance from the photosphere?

Why would the jet depart for the planet if what maintained it in place didn't collapse yet, exactly?

McKAY: It's a coronal mass ejection on a scale that dwarfs anything our sun has ever emitted. Apparently the sun in this solar system goes through an unusually turbulent sunspot cycle every fifteen thousand years or so. The Ancients have records of this class of CME occurring twice before.

SHEPPARD: The ship was very close to the sun when it happened.

McKAY: It's a massive prominence. It arced up and then collapsed when the magnetic field surrounding it weakened. We're talking an intense proton stream travelling at over four thousand kilometres per second.

And...

McKAY: The magnetic field around it is already beginning to weaken.

When that prominence collapses, the coronal mass ejection will occur. It'll erupt from a very small area – a mere pinprick in comparison to the total sun's surface, but it'll immediately begin to fan out. Within a few million miles, the blast wave will cut a swathe wide enough to take out this entire planet.

SHEPPARD: How much time do we have?

ZELENKA: The prominence will collapse any moment now. After that, we have less than an hour before the radiation wave hits us.

How does this changes the fact that you have no evidence that jet erupted only after the main collapse?

Aside from this idea flying against dialogue and visuals, why would the jet erupt before the collapse of what maintains it? (notice that's quite the same question I already asked)

A proton stream of 3.2 GW wouldn't even threaten Earth, even if it entirely deposited its energy and heated up the surface (again, 3.2 e9 W / 2.55 e14 m², we get much more via mere sunlight alone).
Just as much as you tried to downplay the importance of EMR by claiming that Lantea has little ozone and the sun emits very little UV, you should perhaps also pretend that the planet has little atmosphere and a weak magnetic field, so that would explain how it can survive to the weaker cosmic rays as well, and thus be threatened by 3.2 GW of protons.

No matter how many times you accuse me of dishonesty the fact that you utterly failed to find any problems with gas laws or the calculations means that any other objections are irrelevant and mean that McKay was wrong.

If we take the episode at face value, he could hardly be wrong, since he worked from two recorded similar events, and he's rather intelligent enough to know about gas pressures and temperature.
You don't build reactors and nukes, or finish hyperdrives, if you don't know that a hot gas expands just as far as the ambient cooler gas allows it to expand.

Furthermore it is you who is dishonest not me since you are claiming that there is a narrow jet that is somehow high powered yet at the same time claim that the idea that Lantea has a weaker magnetic field and thinner Ozone layer is somehow outlandish.

Because Occam would simply point out that what has shown to be outlandish, thus far, is that pecular eruption, and nothing else.

I didn't claim 200 MT/s for the shield, but clearly, a ship that can fire that much energy, even if only once in a while, would have no reason not to fire energy in that region, even just 10% of this, when fighting against another Ha'tak, especially when we see them exchanging bolts without one shooting each other. In a matter or life or death, no one would have a reason to hold back.
Hell, the same logic would still apply if they only fired 1 megaton of energy, or even one kiloton, which is still 312.5 seconds at 3.2 GW.

Except you have no evidence that ship's primary energy weapons were responsible for that blast as opposed a device they dropped on those cities.

And do you have evidence that a Ha'tak is equipped with any other type of weapon it could fire from orbit?
And more, I suppose you have a good reason why such weapons are not used against capital ships, right?

Of course, this is evidence from another episode, and I would refer to Enemies, where a bog standard Ha'tak sits close to a bright blue giant. With the Ha'tak sitting one diameter away from the photosphere, we have a total of 3 radii, each radius being, for a low power blue giant, 7 times greater than Sol's, which is R_sol = 6.955 e8 m.
So that's a final radius of 1.46055 e10 m². Surface area at that distance would therefore be 2.6807 e21 m².

A low end luminosity would be 25 times Sol's, 25 x 3.846 e26 W, L_bg = 9.615 e27 W.

The intensity, one diameter away from the photosphere, would be 3,586,749 W/m².


Dimensions of a Ha'tak. They're sort of low end, but I never consider a Ha'tak larger than ~700 meters. It doesn't mean the VFX people don't fuck the scales up regularly though.

Shield dimensions.


The ship's width I use is 675.88 m, and the height is 255.9 meters.
The dimensions of the shield are those above, times 1.06. It's an oblate spheroid.
Width: 716 m.
Height: 271 m. (shield height would actually be greater since the base of the pyramidal core would stick out of the shield otherwise).

That's a SA of 1,011,141 m². Taking half of it, 505,570 m².
So the shield takes a total of 1,813,352,691,930 W.
1.813 TW.

With the added fact that if it can sit that close to a blue giant for ten hours (and one hour without shields), it has no reason to be threatened by a solar flare from a star of the main sequence close to ours.

Finally, a BC-304 rates higher than this super low end, and even more with a ZPM.

This calculations puts it on the same order of magnitude as those from the "Echoes". It is likely that shields are more susceptible to particle streams hence why Daedalus only started experiencing trouble when the jet hit. Furthermore we have further evidence that reradiation capacity of the shields is in the TW range thus they would be overloaded after 10 hours. None of this gives the ship any chance to withstand 1000TW beam at the intensity of over 10 million MW/m2.

Both figures for Stargate are lowest ends.
I could also point out that the cutting beam is technobabble by being anal on the fact that we can see a beam passing through a Narn cruiser's hull without even having blown it up (picked from the same scene with the two cruisers, and this time even the cropped video doesn't betray me).

Also just how much metal would a 50 meters wide beam vaporize, when going through a Narn cruiser? And what kind of metal are we talking about?

Huh. It barely tappers for 99.99% of its whole length. Scales are fucked up. Period. It makes that rockball smaller than a fraction of the Death Star.
And I recall that there were circular structures being hit there, on the ground, and it didn't look big either. Don't you have a video or pictures of this?

The fact that you say "period" means nothing. I'm not interested in your subjective image analysis which you tried to use before to claim the Narn cruiser was not cut in half.

Based on a video you happily refrained from indicating that it was incomplete.

Either provide evidence or concede.

Get your eyes checked. Anyone looking at the picture can see that the beam has barely narrowed, and that down to its last bit just before it touches the fireball.
It's basic perspective here, nothing too fancy.

A problem of scale as well. Bombs supposedly reaching the atmosphere, and then the surface. Both contradicted by their ejection speed and their size before they explode.

Obviously they fired several rocks in generally same directions hence as one rock vanishes from view the rocks that were fired before already impacted the surface. Thus it seems that the rock suddenly accelerated. No need to dismiss the video footage.

Boy that's the shittiest rescue mission I've ever seen for some fanboy trying to save his sweet loved franchise.
Click here, and let's laugh at it, at the "rocks", how they suddenly change course on their own, and how the explosions are barely bigger than the projectiles themselves, how they explode against the clouds, how the scales are fucked up, etc.
Really, try not to insult my intelligence with such mediocre excuses.

That's not the point. The point is that in this universe, with this star, a blast delivering 50,000 rems could be narrow enough to be stopped by a 304's shield.
Even if it lasted 23 hours, 3.2 GW would provide a total 264.96 e12 J.

And yet I'm dishonest for suggesting that Ozone layer might be thinner? In any case if the laws of physics operate differently then you shouldn't use them in the first place. Maybe the molecules of human beings in this universe get destabilized by 0.000001rems? Maybe rem doesn't mean the same thing in this universe? Etc. etc.

All of which would have to be proved first. The odd ball here is the sun's jet, nothing else.

I'm suggesting that at the time it hit the ship, it was some kind of super-toroid. That's just a wild guess.
I also read about solar tornadoes that look like tubes of twirling fire. Anyway, it doesn't matter, because it's a fact in that universe, such bizarre things can take place.

None of this has any effect on the upper limit I calculated. The fact is what we've observed: a jet which doesn't expand thus putting an upper limit on it's density and temperature. Everything else is, as you say, your wild guesses.

I'll eagerly wait for you to prove that your assumed ambient gas pressure even works with the observed distance from the sun, and I'll point out that 3.2 GW of protons is a ridiculous amount of energy, if only to threaten a planet.

Also, despite including my request in one of your quotations, you didn't prove that the stream would still retain its energy while closing on the planet.

Can we treat the episode as if it was Rodney's first time in a 304? Before coming up with a plan, he'd first want to know what the ship is at the very least capable of.

This doesn't answer my question: how can he not know power or time yet know the energy?

The answer is in your question, and I already addressed this, notably the part about assuming the power would be constant.

Yes it does, because it did happen, and with what McKay had at hand's reach, he knew that such a stream could exist, no matter how baffling it is.

You are fusing your unsupported claims with actual events. Yes, the jet did in fact occur but no there is no evidence for your firepower claims.

Firepower of what? A jet from the past? 50,000 rems.

The firepower is limited by my calculations and not in any way disproven by you. Yes the stream existed and yes it was limited by gas laws.

Which doesn't fit with the necessary power requirements.

The whales would just need to take a dive to get cover from the UV (12%/5 meters) and those whales were rather very smart, with extremely good genetic memories about something that occurs every 15 millenia.

Again: what is your evidence they accurately predicted the final strength of the jet? It's entirely possible that there were such powerful jet or jet's which lasted much longer. None of that proves this particular one turned out to be as powerful as they feared.

If they didn't, they'd either have not bothered coming, or would live under Atlantis 24/24, because a flare rated at 3.2 GW, based on regular, coronal ambient gas pressure, is nothing weird or particularly exceptional.

They are regulated, ordered not to use nuclear weapons. The UFP slinging antimatter weapons completely nixes this idea and makes your claim ridiculous. There's not much difference, on such terms, between a punchy kiloton warhead and a low megaton one.

First I must point out: the fact that solar events can harm ships PROVES that their shield strength is in TJ range. There is no way around this. If a photon torpedo doesn't penetrate the shields that means it's in TJ range and that's all there is to it.

Or perhaps like in many fictional universes, nothing is totally consistent.

The idea of different warheads serves as an explanation for why not all photon torpedoes have the same strength but whatever the explanation the fact from above doesn't change.
I have already stated that larger warheads mean the photon torpedo would become more massive and thus easier to shoot down.

Yes, you stated that, but didn't prove it. The casing of the torpedo didn't change, even when Tuvok and Kim were changing the warheads for greater isotons.
You have no evidence they have larger torpedoes, no evidence that there are larger tubes for those larger torpedoes either.
You're pretty much running on thin air.

I don't see where less massive warheads would help, when the room that's allowed for warheads is already very small, and we're talking about a few kilos of M/AM more to get yields in the megatons.
In other words, compared to the speeds the torps are capable of: peanuts.

How do you know what is the efficiency of the photon torpedo warhead? A few kg might be enough in theory but there is no guarantee it will work in practice. For all we know if they want a multimegaton explosion they would need to take out certain guidance or engine equipment from the torpedo to make more room.

Oh yes I'm sure they do dismantle their torpedoes, scrap couch, microwave, MP3 player, boiler and coffee machine, but keep the rocket assembly and just enough room for more antimatter balloons.

Conservative calcs can lead to such numbers. You can always look through this website and get them, and bump the threads in question if you want to, any valid criticism being more than welcomed.

All I'm aware is "Rise" from Voyager dependent on photon torpedo glow being 10m wide and asteroid vaporized to get into high megaton range. What other incidents do you know?

What about the Groumal incident? A weapon strapped to a cargo ship, proven to be able to largely vapourize most of an asteroid, and yet only force away a BoP hit twice, notably in a weak spot, without destroying it?
Would shields suck that much in comparison to a hull that can take such energy? Generally, it tends to be the contrary, the hull failing rather easily in comparison to shields.

Yes, but then, again, I don't see any valid reason as to why they wouldn't use more powerful warheads for naval combat.

How exactly does this change the obvious limitations on their shields? Understand that when I proposed the multiple warhead types scenario I was merely trying to provide a possible explanation to a known state of affairs: that shields get overwhelmed by TW levels of power and that it takes more than one photon torpedo to take the shields down. You cannot somehow change the upper limit imposed upon the shields by attacking my explanation for the photon torpedo.

Unless we have figures that prove that energy production in Trek can reach higher values, and that just like in Rise, the implied power of a non-modified torpedo is way above the value obtained from the solar flare event.

[Roondar]

How exactly does this change the obvious limitations on their shields? Understand that when I proposed the multiple warhead types scenario I was merely trying to provide a possible explanation to a known state of affairs: that shields get overwhelmed by TW levels of power and that it takes more than one photon torpedo to take the shields down. You cannot somehow change the upper limit imposed upon the shields by attacking my explanation for the photon torpedo.

Tssk, tssk, tssk.

You've not proven the shields to buckle to TW level yields. You've made a guess based on a few assumptions that are shakey at best and ignored all evidence to the contrary.

In other words: arguing about standard solar flares and GME's when everyone is worried because it's all so non-standard and scary what is happening is at best stupid and at worst an outright lie to get the numbers lower.

[Kane Starkiller]

No, my original stance was trying to treat the super CME as something that would be more akin to a CME than a beam of particles the way it's portrayed in the episode, along working out the implication of the rem figure. We've both gone through a lot of material to thicken those observations and estimations. Well, at least I did.

Exactly as I said: let's discard the think jet as impossible but let's use the energy numbers from large CMEs anyway. The only one who worked with observed evidence is me, you simply fished for excuses to dismiss it.

If I had thrown physics through the windows altogether, I wouldn't even bother with energy intensity, atmospheric irradiance and else.

Which is exactly the intellectual dishonesty I talked about: dismiss the real science when it doesn't suit you, but use it when it does.

But it, again, needs to be pointed out that Rodney knew such stream could exist. The former one threatened the same planet, the Lanteans at that time used their city's shield and three ZPMs to stretch it as far as possible, against its own very design, and no matter the time, even back then, 3.2 GW wouldn't threaten a planet.

Rodney knew it could exist. Final duration and energy were unknown to him. For all we know the one the Ancients blocked lasted for days.

Depiction = visuals, and for the visuals, I did. Please read.

You are playing games now. "Reasoning" means citing physical laws and presenting calculations and numbers proving there is something wrong with the jet not your subjective declarations it's "weird" etc.

Well of course that's rather troubling since it is said to be a CME, a very powerful one, and McKay bizarrely thinks that that star can channel super CMEs into tubes.
Also why would he think it's a super CME if it doesn't eject a fraction of the mass of normal CME...

Because he is not omniscient maybe? Not infallible? Samantha correctly identified a CME in "Window of opportunity" and the VFX correctly showed it. McKay was wrong.

You know, the reason why I originally rejected the stream fact and still consider it a good solution is because as though it lets me argue that the ship did create a dead zone in the CME burst, so whatever it would intercept would never reach the planet, it also had the advantage that the density of the material that hit the ship wouldn't need to match that of the corona, since the ship would be caught in the equivalent of an explosion, and thus would be hit with a compressed front of matter travelling at 4000 km/s.

Motives do not justify your cherry picking of evidence and areas to which you are willing to apply laws of physics.

Nature of steel is not defined. The ratio is given in Spirits.
I didn't mention that it's also lighter than steel.

Sam: "Yeah, I remember hearing about this. It's supposed to be 100 times lighter and stronger than steel."

Let us disregard the fact that Samantha is not really sure about the properties and the fact that we can't tell whether "100" refers only to weight or both weight and strength and the fact that greater strength doesn't mean greater melt energy and concentrate on this:
if a material has 100 times greater melt energy than steel but at the same time is 100 times lighter (as in 100 times less dense) than steel then equal volumes of trinium and steel will have the same melt energy.
In your calculations you increase the melt energy by factor of 100 for trinium but forget to modify the density by factor of 0.01.

Intensity for our sun is 2.009 e7 W/m².
The ship clearly was far from the photosphere, but even if it were two radii from the core, the intensity would be 5.0225 e6 W/m², and it would probably be silly to pretend that the shield lets a high percentage of that energy through.

What does this have to do with my statement that shields appear to be less effective against particle streams than against EM radiation?

It didn't collapse to such a deplorable degree when glowing red though. But there could be a disagreement between both episodes though, so I give you that.
Ah, talking about trinium, I remember that it took a while for Carter to cut her way through one of the mundane walls of Prometheus with a plasma cutter. They were composed of trinium alloy (6.11, Prometheus).

This doesn't really give us any useful information.

Just before the hyperspace windows opens, we can see the large lights of Janus' outpost.
They were obviously not in high orbit anymore. 100 km/s is nothing to scoff at either when talking about a powered reentry at 90°.

But is it more than GW level or TW level power? Does it contradict the incident in "Echoes"?

S'ry. What kind of gamma rays were you thinking of?
Picking the much earlier value relative to 500 Sv, and dividing by 500, we still get a total of 11.3332 e15 J so that the whole exposed face of the planet gets 1 Sv.
Over 23 hours, that's 136.875 e9 W. That's for 0% absorption. As we saw earlier on, the factors for absorption reach several hundreds.

Also, planets being spherical, and the emission of particles or radiations being rather focalised in comparison, getting enough radiations at the poles while radiations and particles will follow more and more tangential trajectories (coming at very low angles), in order to meet the required intensity relative to 1 Sv, more energy will be required, and that is not counting the greater volume of atmosphere particles and radiations have to go through.

As I alluded to much earlier on, my calculations are only good as much as an early indication since they're based on the idea that particles and radiations hit each square meter of the exposed surface at near 90°, which is obviously not the case in reality. For reference, the value would be halved at 60° (cosine), and 25% of max at 75°.

My original point was that humans only receive 2.3mSV/year because high energy radiation (ultra violet and above) consists only a small fraction of the total solar radiation. A high energy event like collapse of a flare could emit a greater percentage of it's total energy in ultra violet rays and above. Thus a TW level radiation with 50% UV component will be far more dangerous than a TW level radiation with 0.01% UV component for example.
This was in response to your claim that to reach 500Sv the radiation would have to increase 200,000 times from normal 2.3mSv/year. It won't if the percentage of the dangerous radiation is also increased.

Considering that he thought 50,000 rems could be crammed into a narrow beam, perhaps it doesn't give him the crystal ball, but it surely gives him the right to claim it could happen again.
And 50,000 rems being 500 Sv, you obviously know which figure needs to be multiplied by 500 to know what the stream's lowest power would be.
Which, again, shows that terawatts is an absolute low end value, and that a stream from this star could indeed have such a power, or more, and still be that narrow.

Also, they were very far from the sun, actually. Would you be able to prove that your equation stands at such a distance from the star?
Did you verify if the ambient gas pressure you used even fits with the observed distance from the photosphere?

Why would I need to verify it? The density will only get lower with distance which won't affect my upper limit figures. The jet appearance is a completely independent event which allows us to calculate the upper limits on it's density content. Rodney's predictions are completely irrelevant and cannot change the observed fact that the jet wasn't expanding thus being physically incapable of containing much greater energy than what I've calculated.

Aside from this idea flying against dialogue and visuals, why would the jet erupt before the collapse of what maintains it? (notice that's quite the same question I already asked)

It doesn't fly against visuals, you claim it does because you treat your assumptions on the time of origin as facts. As for the dialogue I already went over that: the jet was thin and it's easily possible that they didn't see it.
Your methodology is backwards: you make an assumption about the exact time the jet erupted and then when visual evidence about the speed of the jet contradicts with your assumption you claim the visuals are contradictory and furthermore ask me to prove that your assumption about the time of origin is incorrect.
Your assumption contradicts the visuals, my doesn't that's all there is to it.

If we take the episode at face value, he could hardly be wrong, since he worked from two recorded similar events, and he's rather intelligent enough to know about gas pressures and temperature.
You don't build reactors and nukes, or finish hyperdrives, if you don't know that a hot gas expands just as far as the ambient cooler gas allows it to expand.

So what? Many scientists today are well educated and there were many earthquakes and yet they still can't predict the final power of a tsunami for example. You are pitting your belief that McKay is infallible against observed evidence. That's not how it works.

And do you have evidence that a Ha'tak is equipped with any other type of weapon it could fire from orbit?
And more, I suppose you have a good reason why such weapons are not used against capital ships, right?

It is up to you to provide evidence that Ha'Tak's primary weapons are 200Mt just because someone somewhere mentioned that some cities were destroyed by a 200Mt blast. I don't need to give any reasons as to why such weapons aren't used against capital ships since upper limits on shield performance are independently established by their performance against stellar phenomena.
However, in the interest of discussion I have already given a reason: large warheads could be to massive to evade defense batteries on ships and thus would be shot down.

Both figures for Stargate are lowest ends.
I could also point out that the cutting beam is technobabble by being anal on the fact that we can see a beam passing through a Narn cruiser's hull without even having blown it up (picked from the same scene with the two cruisers, and this time even the cropped video doesn't betray me).

Also just how much metal would a 50 meters wide beam vaporize, when going through a Narn cruiser? And what kind of metal are we talking about?

Figures for Stargate are not lowest ends because the ships were threatened both times and Daedalus was even starting to receive damage. Thus they wouldn't be able to take much more.
The fact that there are some frames in which we can't make out the hull being vaporized, probably obscured by the beam itself, doesn't somehow mean it's behavior is strange.
I used 10m wide beam even though it sometimes appears to be wider in the interest of coming up with a lower limit.

Based on a video you happily refrained from indicating that it was incomplete.

What was incomplete?

Get your eyes checked. Anyone looking at the picture can see that the beam has barely narrowed, and that down to its last bit just before it touches the fireball.
It's basic perspective here, nothing too fancy.

It doesn't touch the fireball. It is obscured by the glare since the beam is between the fireball and the camera. Again objective evidence is required for your continual attempts to dismiss the evidence not insults about my vision.

Boy that's the shittiest rescue mission I've ever seen for some fanboy trying to save his sweet loved franchise.
Click here, and let's laugh at it, at the "rocks", how they suddenly change course on their own, and how the explosions are barely bigger than the projectiles themselves, how they explode against the clouds, how the scales are fucked up, etc.
Really, try not to insult my intelligence with such mediocre excuses.

You have shown nothing that disproves the explanation that the explosions we see come from previously launched rocks nor is there evidence that rocks change course on their own. Just like with your claim about the time of jet eruption your claim makes the visual evidence contradict itself while mine explains how it can work without any contradictions. Clearly my explanation is superior and the fact that you have to resort to insults and appeals to my sinister motives only proves that.

All of which would have to be proved first. The odd ball here is the sun's jet, nothing else.

You know there is no physical law I'm aware of that dictates that all planets that look like Earth shall have a magnetic field and Ozone layer identical to that of Earth.

I'll eagerly wait for you to prove that your assumed ambient gas pressure even works with the observed distance from the sun, and I'll point out that 3.2 GW of protons is a ridiculous amount of energy, if only to threaten a planet.

Also, despite including my request in one of your quotations, you didn't prove that the stream would still retain its energy while closing on the planet.

I don't need to prove any of that. The gas pressure I used was for the corona, if the pressure is actually lower then the energy of the jet is lower still. It doesn't affect my upper limit. The observed event and my calculations are completely independent from any further considerations about damage to the planet. These only concern the accuracy of McKay's predictions.

The answer is in your question, and I already addressed this, notably the part about assuming the power would be constant.

This is for you to prove since you are the one claiming that Rodney must have known the total energy yet had no clue about either power or time and using that assumption to contradict the observed beahvior of the jet stream.

Firepower of what? A jet from the past? 50,000 rems.

rem is not a firepower measure and for all we know it took days in the past. 50,000rem is not a fact but an assumption.
non-expansion of the jet:fact
50,000rem: assumption

Which doesn't fit with the necessary power requirements.

Necessary for McKay to be correct yes. That's too bad for McKay but it doesn't change the calculated upper limit.

If they didn't, they'd either have not bothered coming, or would live under Atlantis 24/24, because a flare rated at 3.2 GW, based on regular, coronal ambient gas pressure, is nothing weird or particularly exceptional.

You keep clinging to the firepower figure even though the effect of radiation is cumulative so the total duration would greatly affect the damage level. Also you ignore the EM radiation component.

Or perhaps like in many fictional universes, nothing is totally consistent.

But there is no proof of inconsistency. Only your insistence that the photon torpedoes MUST be megaton range. Your insistence creates the inconsistency, there is no actual proof the photon torpedoes used in combat are megaton range.

Yes, you stated that, but didn't prove it. The casing of the torpedo didn't change, even when Tuvok and Kim were changing the warheads for greater isotons.
You have no evidence they have larger torpedoes, no evidence that there are larger tubes for those larger torpedoes either.
You're pretty much running on thin air.

Why would I need to prove the existence of various warheads? We know how much their shields can take and we know one photon torpedo doesn't cut it. Therefore the limitation on a standard torpedo used in battle is clear. No further evidence is necessary.
Various warheads is an attempt to explain a known state of affairs. Maybe there is some other explanation I'm not aware of but it doesn't change the limitations on their shields.

Oh yes I'm sure they do dismantle their torpedoes, scrap couch, microwave, MP3 player, boiler and coffee machine, but keep the rocket assembly and just enough room for more antimatter balloons.

What?

What about the Groumal incident? A weapon strapped to a cargo ship, proven to be able to largely vapourize most of an asteroid, and yet only force away a BoP hit twice, notably in a weak spot, without destroying it?
Would shields suck that much in comparison to a hull that can take such energy? Generally, it tends to be the contrary, the hull failing rather easily in comparison to shields.

They blew apart an asteroid a few tens of meters wide. How does that translate into megatons?

Unless we have figures that prove that energy production in Trek can reach higher values, and that just like in Rise, the implied power of a non-modified torpedo is way above the value obtained from the solar flare event.

Who says they are unmodified? To fragment an asteroid 390m wide (even accepting the size based on "photon torpedo glow growth") takes 50kt-100kt. We never saw it being vaporized.

Tssk, tssk, tssk.

You've not proven the shields to buckle to TW level yields. You've made a guess based on a few assumptions that are shakey at best and ignored all evidence to the contrary.

I already had plenty of subjective complaints from Mike DiCenso and Mr. Oragahn. When you have objective arguments about the events in question we'll talk.

[Mr. Oragahn]

No, my original stance was trying to treat the super CME as something that would be more akin to a CME than a beam of particles the way it's portrayed in the episode, along working out the implication of the rem figure. We've both gone through a lot of material to thicken those observations and estimations. Well, at least I did.

Exactly as I said: let's discard the think jet as impossible but let's use the energy numbers from large CMEs anyway. The only one who worked with observed evidence is me, you simply fished for excuses to dismiss it.

No all you did was assume that characters would be dumb enough to keep being worried about a trail that wouldn't threaten a planet, assume that a jet could form by mere gas pressure without even verifying if there was any noticeable gas pressure at all from where the ship was.

If I had thrown physics through the windows altogether, I wouldn't even bother with energy intensity, atmospheric irradiance and else.

Which is exactly the intellectual dishonesty I talked about: dismiss the real science when it doesn't suit you, but use it when it does.

That's absurd because I already proved that 3.2 GW fails at threatening the planet, and you have not proved that the gas would remain that hot after leaving the star's vicinity actually..

Depiction = visuals, and for the visuals, I did. Please read.

You are playing games now. "Reasoning" means citing physical laws and presenting calculations and numbers proving there is something wrong with the jet not your subjective declarations it's "weird" etc.

No, I did my part on the physics, as far as it is required to fit with the episode. You are literally incapable of understanding something excruciatingly simple, in that science wouldn't normally explain how such a jet could exist and yet threaten a planet, cause a mass extinction and deliver some 500 Sv at once.
Considering that McKay estimated it possible, from what he knew, and that it already occured twice over the same period (it's a recurring phenomenon that's timed), you can't say high energy claims are impossible because science says so, since the episode already establishes that our science would have largely been smacked in the face twice in the past.
So basically your entire argument that is that the stream can only have X density and Y temperature otherwise it would be wider is debunked by the episode itself, and there is nothing to argue on here.
If you do so, you are dismissing canon to an even greater degree than I when I suggested treating the phenomenon as a burst instead of a jet.

Well of course that's rather troubling since it is said to be a CME, a very powerful one, and McKay bizarrely thinks that that star can channel super CMEs into tubes.
Also why would he think it's a super CME if it doesn't eject a fraction of the mass of normal CME...

Because he is not omniscient maybe? Not infallible? Samantha correctly identified a CME in "Window of opportunity" and the VFX correctly showed it. McKay was wrong.

Don't be silly. Any basic encyclopedia would show what a CME is, and any respected physicist would know by name that what happened to the Lantean star is naturally impossible.
Omniscience has nothing to do with that. You can't normally claim that a super CME can eject the equivalent mass of a mountain at thousands of kilometers per second, be very hot, and yet be channeled into a tube naturally.
Yet it did happen before. Rodney wasn't being speculative, he worked from FACTS.
So dismissing the higher power figures because "it can't be" just doesn't work. The sooner you get that the better.

Nature of steel is not defined. The ratio is given in Spirits.
I didn't mention that it's also lighter than steel.

Sam: "Yeah, I remember hearing about this. It's supposed to be 100 times lighter and stronger than steel."

Let us disregard the fact that Samantha is not really sure about the properties and the fact that we can't tell whether "100" refers only to weight or both weight and strength and the fact that greater strength doesn't mean greater melt energy and concentrate on this:
if a material has 100 times greater melt energy than steel but at the same time is 100 times lighter (as in 100 times less dense) than steel then equal volumes of trinium and steel will have the same melt energy.
In your calculations you increase the melt energy by factor of 100 for trinium but forget to modify the density by factor of 0.01.

I'd work with a lower heat capacity. That said, your interpretation is rather fishy as well, otherwise there would be no gain from steel at all, and they would need stupidly thicker plates to obtain the same protective/ablative performance. No one would bother with this material.

So would the factor of 100 apply to both strength and density?
If the material was 100 stronger and lighter than steel, then if it weighed 1 g/cc, instead of 8g/cc, then to get 100 in the end, it would be 12.5 times stronger, "pound for pound".
Looking at steel, it would bring its strenght to 25 MPA, or 2.48 that of carbon nanotubes.

The issue in your interpretation is also evidenced by the performance of the trinum wall against a plasma cutter.
Starship hulls use an alloy of naqahdah and trinium.
Again, just check out what stargates can withstand and you'll get a clue of how tough the alloy can be.

Intensity for our sun is 2.009 e7 W/m².
The ship clearly was far from the photosphere, but even if it were two radii from the core, the intensity would be 5.0225 e6 W/m², and it would probably be silly to pretend that the shield lets a high percentage of that energy through.

What does this have to do with my statement that shields appear to be less effective against particle streams than against EM radiation?

You made an unsubstantiated claim, since the EM radiation itself is so low in comparison to the H+ energy intensity, that the only way for the shields to suck more against the protons than against the EM, would be to have the shield incapable of stopping the entirety of the power rating at less than 5.0225 e6 W/m², if it were delivered by atoms.

It didn't collapse to such a deplorable degree when glowing red though. But there could be a disagreement between both episodes though, so I give you that.
Ah, talking about trinium, I remember that it took a while for Carter to cut her way through one of the mundane walls of Prometheus with a plasma cutter. They were composed of trinium alloy (6.11, Prometheus).

This doesn't really give us any useful information.

There's info you missed in the material I provided (that includes the transcript part). It took Carter very close to three hours to get through that wall section. Say 2h30 (150 min). It's also possible that the wall was plated with trinium, but not entirely made of trinium. This of course would only increase trinium's performances. She had to cut what looks like a ~5 cm thick wall.
Considering that the wall was not prepated for plasma cutting (specific electrical charge), she much likely used an inverter model, which are more efficient. "Prometheus" is supposed to have occured within the new millenium. If we look at the hole, the cut is not too messy. Clearly the torch wasn't capable of going through the whole thickness in one blow, but the material didn't drip too much as it was being melted.

I'd wager the plasma cutter she used would be of good quality, and considering the amount of trinium on that ship, it would increase the chances of the cutter being tough enough so it would be somehow relevant to its environment.
That said, even picking a weaker cutter would still point to a device outputing a couple of kilowatts, focused onto a small surface. Going by the size of the hole, the cut had a perimeter between three and four meters tops (118.1 in to 157.5 in).

We're probably be looking at a cutter which cutting thickness was only short of several millimiters, perhaps one centimeter at worst (to explain the caking on the other side that is an effect similar to distance plasma gouging, but of a lesser magnitude here).
This model would fit the bill rather nicely. It's only used as an example. The gas may have been oxygen or nitrogen.

You can see example of cutters here.
More examples here and here:

Cutting Capability
Determine the type and thickness of metal you need to
cut and your desired speed. Then compare your needs to
product specifications. Miller qualifies its cutting
capabilities by a rated cutting capacity at approximately
10 in. per minute. You can increase your speed by using a
machine with more amperage power. For example, a
Spectrum 375 cuts 3/8 in. steel at 10 in. per minute.; a
Spectrum 875 can cut that same material at 41 in. per
minute.

Note that the Spectrum 875 cuts 7/8" at a displacement pace of 10"/minute. The Spectrum 1000 cuts at a depth of 1" for the same rate.

Looking at the Miller products, picking the 1&3 phase cutters (7/8" to 1"), we get power between 10 KW and 15 KW.
Right from the description above, we could rather take the Spectrum 875, which has the following specs.:

• "Rated" cutting thickness, stainless steel: 7/8 in
• Recommender generator power: 10,000 watts

This would fit with our requirements and the "maximum pierce capacity". Also, looking at the "Rated" part, we're told that the "rating" is defined as "Cutting Capacity: 10 in. per minute (minimum speed at which an operator achieves a smooth, steady cut using a hand-held torch)."

When you're not looking for anything smooth, really, but trying to dig your hole out of a room, you can probably go faster.

So now, if the wall thickness had fallen within the parameters, it would have taken between 11.81 and 15.75 minutes to cut a smooth hole.
Knowing how much time would be required to cut a thicker steel plate is tricky, but while it would obviously require a longer process, it is also necessary to remember that it's not a clean work.
So doubling the required time to melt the last millimeters appears very excessive, but should serve as a good cap, bringing our cutting timeframes to 23.62 and 31.5 minutes.

Carter had to spend between 4.762 and 6.351 more time on the material, as a low end. That's an average of 5.5. <- this is therefore the factor I shall use for thermal calculations.*
A low end because, again, there's only a couple millimeters more to remove, because I considered that the process would be twice as long, and because these values correspond to smooth cuttings.
Using the Spectrum 1000 as the basis of this analysis would cut the times by at least two, and that for a smooth cutting.

5.5 applied to carbon steel heat capacity (0.49 kJ/kg K) for example would correspond to 2.695 kJ/kg K.

* : note that a large part of my observations earlier on were based on plain steel.

Just before the hyperspace windows opens, we can see the large lights of Janus' outpost.
They were obviously not in high orbit anymore. 100 km/s is nothing to scoff at either when talking about a powered reentry at 90°.

But is it more than GW level or TW level power? Does it contradict the incident in "Echoes"?

Check out the asteroid impact simulator here.

A 1 meters wide iron asteroid entering the atmosphere at 100 km/s, at a 90° elevation, returns this:

Atmospheric Entry:
The projectile begins to breakup at an altitude of 42400 meters = 139000 ft
The projectile bursts into a cloud of fragments at an altitude of 37200 meters = 122000 ft
The residual velocity of the projectile fragments after the burst is 87.5 km/s = 54.3 miles/s
The energy of the airburst is 4.93 x 1012 Joules = 0.12 x 10-2 MegaTons.
Large fragments strike the surface and may create a crater strewn field. A more careful treatment of atmospheric entry is required to accurately estimate the size-frequency distribution of meteoroid fragments and predict the number and size of craters formed.

Does it fit with Echoes now? All would depend on how much energy the shield let through.
Of course, from my point of view, the energies were so high that although the reentry case represents a high end, we wouldn't be looking at a disparity akin to light and day.
That, would be what would happen if we compared this event and your Echoes' calculation though.

S'ry. What kind of gamma rays were you thinking of?
Picking the much earlier value relative to 500 Sv, and dividing by 500, we still get a total of 11.3332 e15 J so that the whole exposed face of the planet gets 1 Sv.
Over 23 hours, that's 136.875 e9 W. That's for 0% absorption. As we saw earlier on, the factors for absorption reach several hundreds.

Also, planets being spherical, and the emission of particles or radiations being rather focalised in comparison, getting enough radiations at the poles while radiations and particles will follow more and more tangential trajectories (coming at very low angles), in order to meet the required intensity relative to 1 Sv, more energy will be required, and that is not counting the greater volume of atmosphere particles and radiations have to go through.

As I alluded to much earlier on, my calculations are only good as much as an early indication since they're based on the idea that particles and radiations hit each square meter of the exposed surface at near 90°, which is obviously not the case in reality. For reference, the value would be halved at 60° (cosine), and 25% of max at 75°.

My original point was that humans only receive 2.3mSV/year because high energy radiation (ultra violet and above) consists only a small fraction of the total solar radiation. A high energy event like collapse of a flare could emit a greater percentage of it's total energy in ultra violet rays and above. Thus a TW level radiation with 50% UV component will be far more dangerous than a TW level radiation with 0.01% UV component for example.
This was in response to your claim that to reach 500Sv the radiation would have to increase 200,000 times from normal 2.3mSv/year. It won't if the percentage of the dangerous radiation is also increased.

That factor was if this energy was delivered via the protons.

And as far as all light is concerned, I already went there, looking at each wavelength, including UV-A/B/C, to see how much energy would be required for each of them, considering their respective irradiance/insolation factors, and more. Sunlight already required 2.8335 e19 J for 500 Sv, and that with each sqaure meter equally illuminated.
For UVB, I pointed out that "for example, a constant increase by 9% over 40km (1.09^40) would correspond to a final difference of 31.41."
For sunlight, all radiations amount to 342 W/m², all surface and all angles counted. If you count exposed surface, that's an average of 684 W/m² with the angles taken into account. Around the half of the usual total that is 1.366 kW/m², at the top of the atmosphere. As for sunlight and solar irradiance, 120 W/m² is the threshold, on the ground, used to define what corresponds to a bright sunshine, as measured in France and defined by the WMO. Values can be verified there.
I also pointed to a rate for UV underwater absorption, showing that the whales would have not been worried.

Considering that he thought 50,000 rems could be crammed into a narrow beam, perhaps it doesn't give him the crystal ball, but it surely gives him the right to claim it could happen again.
And 50,000 rems being 500 Sv, you obviously know which figure needs to be multiplied by 500 to know what the stream's lowest power would be.
Which, again, shows that terawatts is an absolute low end value, and that a stream from this star could indeed have such a power, or more, and still be that narrow.

Also, they were very far from the sun, actually. Would you be able to prove that your equation stands at such a distance from the star?
Did you verify if the ambient gas pressure you used even fits with the observed distance from the photosphere?

Why would I need to verify it? The density will only get lower with distance which won't affect my upper limit figures. The jet appearance is a completely independent event which allows us to calculate the upper limits on it's density content. Rodney's predictions are completely irrelevant and cannot change the observed fact that the jet wasn't expanding thus being physically incapable of containing much greater energy than what I've calculated.

Just estimate the density of the space environment where the Daedalus was and we'll see if your figure makes sense there.

Aside from this idea flying against dialogue and visuals, why would the jet erupt before the collapse of what maintains it? (notice that's quite the same question I already asked)

It doesn't fly against visuals, you claim it does because you treat your assumptions on the time of origin as facts. As for the dialogue I already went over that: the jet was thin and it's easily possible that they didn't see it.

Perhaps, but why would we have to believe that the jet formed before the collapse, when the model was that the collapse would trigger the eruption?

Your methodology is backwards: you make an assumption about the exact time the jet erupted and then when visual evidence about the speed of the jet contradicts with your assumption you claim the visuals are contradictory and furthermore ask me to prove that your assumption about the time of origin is incorrect.
Your assumption contradicts the visuals, my doesn't that's all there is to it.

Not really no.

If we take the episode at face value, he could hardly be wrong, since he worked from two recorded similar events, and he's rather intelligent enough to know about gas pressures and temperature.
You don't build reactors and nukes, or finish hyperdrives, if you don't know that a hot gas expands just as far as the ambient cooler gas allows it to expand.

So what? Many scientists today are well educated and there were many earthquakes and yet they still can't predict the final power of a tsunami for example. You are pitting your belief that McKay is infallible against observed evidence. That's not how it works.

It doesn't matter. Since it happened in the past (Rodney wouldn't make such an asine suggestion if he had no reason to do so), it can happen again, and thus dismissing higher figures because of the stream's width, when former streams proved to kill life where Atlantis' shield didn't go, means that the whole argument about how it can't be because science says no doesn't work here.

And do you have evidence that a Ha'tak is equipped with any other type of weapon it could fire from orbit?
And more, I suppose you have a good reason why such weapons are not used against capital ships, right?

It is up to you to provide evidence that Ha'Tak's primary weapons are 200Mt just because someone somewhere mentioned that some cities were destroyed by a 200Mt blast.

Since there is no evidence that they have other weapons, there, it's done. Hard, eh?
So again, do you have evidence that they have other weapons they can fire from orbit?

I don't need to give any reasons as to why such weapons aren't used against capital ships since upper limits on shield performance are independently established by their performance against stellar phenomena.

Wrong on both fronts sir, if only for the fact that said stellar phonemena include EMR, and in case of CMEs and solar flares, these EMRs tend to border on the x-ray/gamma-ray region.
So a Ha'tak that can stand close to a blue giant is a very good indicator.
And a Ha'tak that can withstand a sort of bizarro bolt that contains matter and can rank up to 200 MT, even if only once, counts as a good indicator on shields vs. particles.

However, in the interest of discussion I have already given a reason: large warheads could be to massive to evade defense batteries on ships and thus would be shot down.

That's a reason for Star Trek, not Stargate. Naqahdah is so ridiculously powerful that the equivalent of a French fry of raw naqahdah would rate in the several megatons.

Both figures for Stargate are lowest ends.
I could also point out that the cutting beam is technobabble by being anal on the fact that we can see a beam passing through a Narn cruiser's hull without even having blown it up (picked from the same scene with the two cruisers, and this time even the cropped video doesn't betray me).

Also just how much metal would a 50 meters wide beam vaporize, when going through a Narn cruiser? And what kind of metal are we talking about?

Figures for Stargate are not lowest ends because the ships were threatened both times and Daedalus was even starting to receive damage. Thus they wouldn't be able to take much more.

That Daedalus was receiving damage is meaningless since it also works with my figures. As for the Ha'tak, it's a low end because it assumes a distance that appears to be greater than how close the ship was to the blue giant, and it's based on the weakest blue giant type. The medium and strong cases would bring the rate +1OoM above the figure in question.

The fact that there are some frames in which we can't make out the hull being vaporized, probably obscured by the beam itself, doesn't somehow mean it's behavior is strange.
I used 10m wide beam even though it sometimes appears to be wider in the interest of coming up with a lower limit.

Well that clearly doesn't even begin to answer my questions.
Besides, there's no frame-hidden to duck behind:

Get your eyes checked. Anyone looking at the picture can see that the beam has barely narrowed, and that down to its last bit just before it touches the fireball.
It's basic perspective here, nothing too fancy.

It doesn't touch the fireball. It is obscured by the glare since the beam is between the fireball and the camera. Again objective evidence is required for your continual attempts to dismiss the evidence not insults about my vision.

That's rather absurd. It is a continuous beam. It generates an explosion. It HAS to get into the fireball and feed it. Ergo, it touches it.
If you want to call the white ball a flare or glare, it doesn't matter, because perspective dictactes that there's no way the beam could suddenly tapper within the fraction of the pixel that's left before it links with the explosion effect. The beam should have become invisibly small waay before.
After all, the Shadow Battlecrab is 1~3 km wide, and if that planet is anywhere near Earth-sized, the explosion would be of the size of a country. There is simply no way the beam could still be seen just before it gets into the explosion.

Again, the picture:



And this, because I can't affor loosing patience over such basic and petty matters, nor go down to the basics of why the world we live in is in three dimensions and looks the way it does.

Boy that's the shittiest rescue mission I've ever seen for some fanboy trying to save his sweet loved franchise.
Click here, and let's laugh at it, at the "rocks", how they suddenly change course on their own, and how the explosions are barely bigger than the projectiles themselves, how they explode against the clouds, how the scales are fucked up, etc.
Really, try not to insult my intelligence with such mediocre excuses.

You have shown nothing that disproves the explanation that the explosions we see come from previously launched rocks...

Aside from the fact that we don't see balls to be launched prior to this, and aside the fact that the slow moving balls which have barely left the cruisers' launching ramps suspiciously disappear right where explosions occur, at the very same moment. When it gets that inane!

... nor is there evidence that rocks change course on their own.

Oh yes there is. See the ship on the right, that shoots one of these semi-glowing balls. Follow the projectile, and see how it suddenly changes its course down at a ~20° angle.

Just like with your claim about the time of jet eruption your claim makes the visual evidence contradict itself while mine explains how it can work without any contradictions. Clearly my explanation is superior and the fact that you have to resort to insults and appeals to my sinister motives only proves that.

No, it proves that you're just being silly and have no understanding of perspective.

All of which would have to be proved first. The odd ball here is the sun's jet, nothing else.

You know there is no physical law I'm aware of that dictates that all planets that look like Earth shall have a magnetic field and Ozone layer identical to that of Earth.

And there is no law that would say Lantea's magnetic field couldn't be extremely stronger either.
Since we don't know either, and since the planet appears to mimic Earth's properties, more or less, with just more water, it's basic safety to work on the premise that it's close enough.
The magnetic field of a planet is related to its active geology, and Lantea has one, since the Lanteans used a mobile geothermal power plant to feed the city.

I'll eagerly wait for you to prove that your assumed ambient gas pressure even works with the observed distance from the sun, and I'll point out that 3.2 GW of protons is a ridiculous amount of energy, if only to threaten a planet.
Also, despite including my request in one of your quotations, you didn't prove that the stream would still retain its energy while closing on the planet.

I don't need to prove any of that. The gas pressure I used was for the corona, if the pressure is actually lower then the energy of the jet is lower still. It doesn't affect my upper limit. The observed event and my calculations are completely independent from any further considerations about damage to the planet. These only concern the accuracy of McKay's predictions.

That's dealt with earlier on in my post, so I can focus on the second point: how do you know the stream won't lose its energy en route?
You know, black body radiation and the coldness of space.
Your result largely posits that that ridiculous power rating you obtained, as miserably irrelevant it would be to a planet, wouldn't even loose a watt of energy from the corona to the planet.
That goes against common sense, so I'd like to know how you prove that the stream wouldn't cool down and see your numbers on that.

The answer is in your question, and I already addressed this, notably the part about assuming the power would be constant.

This is for you to prove since you are the one claiming that Rodney must have known the total energy yet had no clue about either power or time and using that assumption to contradict the observed beahvior of the jet stream.

That is, again, makes no sense. He considered they'd be hit by 50,000 rems. If he couldn't know the power, then he couldn't know the time, since they go hand in hand.
As I said, there was no certainty that the power itself would be constant, and that's without suggesting that McKay perhaps estimated they'd get at least 50,000 rems, as a guaranteed minimal ionizating radiation.

Firepower of what? A jet from the past? 50,000 rems.

rem is not a firepower measure and for all we know it took days in the past.

Indeed it is not, that's why your words didn't make sense to me. That said, we can understand the rem figure to get an idea of firepower, even if for a natural event that is about a star shooting a stream of hot stuff at a high speed.

50,000rem is not a fact but an assumption.
non-expansion of the jet:fact
50,000rem: assumption

Huh. Don't you think Rodney would have more than doubts about the success of the mission if they wanted to intercept a super-CME which, for some reason, was concentrated into a jet, and yet the ship, with a ZPM, couldn't do more than take some gigawatts of protons to the face?

Which doesn't fit with the necessary power requirements.

Necessary for McKay to be correct yes. That's too bad for McKay but it doesn't change the calculated upper limit.

It is not an upper limit.
I have proved, by looking at both EMR and protons that your value was a gross underestimation of the necessary energy to kill life to that extent, so that your number was below a low end, and I have proved in that post and in others in fact, that this star has the capacity to concentrate powerful flares that kill life on a planet, and that applying your reasoning to the former events would be met with the same cold welcome, because your conclusion would be "it can't be" while in the show, it did. Twice, at least.
In simpler words, this star is capable of singularities that make your claim moot.

If they didn't, they'd either have not bothered coming, or would live under Atlantis 24/24, because a flare rated at 3.2 GW, based on regular, coronal ambient gas pressure, is nothing weird or particularly exceptional.

You keep clinging to the firepower figure even though the effect of radiation is cumulative so the total duration would greatly affect the damage level. Also you ignore the EM radiation component.

It's funny to accuse me of ignoring EM when you also accuse me trying to add as many watts as possible to get big numbers. I can't really do both.

Realistically, the situation is so complex that the planet would be subjected to ionizing radiation twice. First by the first wave of photons that fall in the traditional ranges which are considered ionizing (the closer to sunlight you get, the more is has to do with mere heating and skin cooking than radiation poisoning), secondly by the energy of the protons which, if they interacted with the atmosphere, would cascade into a fountain of other particles and radiations.
50,000 rems would probably be a source of both. However, rems is not used for thermal energy. So whatever power rating you get for the stream, only a fraction of that would be counted when looking for the radiation. Which would again boost numbers based on the ionizating radiation.

Or perhaps like in many fictional universes, nothing is totally consistent.

But there is no proof of inconsistency. Only your insistence that the photon torpedoes MUST be megaton range. Your insistence creates the inconsistency, there is no actual proof the photon torpedoes used in combat are megaton range.[/quote]

Of course the only time we can gauge a torp for sure is when it hits an inert target that doesn't rely on technobabble shields, on bizarre alloys and isn't running on an AM/fusion/blackhole power plant.
Although there's room to wiggle when dealing with the Groumall case (you can always bump the thread and gives your 2c), the case of Rise wouldn't be arguable. They clearly expected the asteroid to be pulverized to tiny bits, even the low end measurements of the asteroid, as made by vivftp, give yields in the one digit megaton range.
They fired, with no evidence that they went down to the store room to alter the warheads.
When they did this, it was to destroy very specific bizarre particles, which required specific warheads. It was a very rare kind of mission.

Yes, you stated that, but didn't prove it. The casing of the torpedo didn't change, even when Tuvok and Kim were changing the warheads for greater isotons.
You have no evidence they have larger torpedoes, no evidence that there are larger tubes for those larger torpedoes either.
You're pretty much running on thin air.

Why would I need to prove the existence of various warheads?

Lemme think... because it's your claim, perhaps?

We know how much their shields can take and we know one photon torpedo doesn't cut it. Therefore the limitation on a standard torpedo used in battle is clear. No further evidence is necessary. Various warheads is an attempt to explain a known state of affairs. Maybe there is some other explanation I'm not aware of but it doesn't change the limitations on their shields.

Unfortunately your explanation requires the assumption that different conventional AM warheads exist and that they use the better ones against asteroids.
It puts it on equal groud with the one that acknowledges inconsistencies.

Oh yes I'm sure they do dismantle their torpedoes, scrap couch, microwave, MP3 player, boiler and coffee machine, but keep the rocket assembly and just enough room for more antimatter balloons.

What?

An open mockery of your suggestion about them gutting out torps to cram more AM for their tests against asteroids.

What about the Groumal incident? A weapon strapped to a cargo ship, proven to be able to largely vapourize most of an asteroid, and yet only force away a BoP hit twice, notably in a weak spot, without destroying it?
Would shields suck that much in comparison to a hull that can take such energy? Generally, it tends to be the contrary, the hull failing rather easily in comparison to shields.

They blew apart an asteroid a few tens of meters wide. How does that translate into megatons?

See the thread. Perhaps the figure is a not higher than necessary, but as Mike pointed out, the BoP model I used is a small-crew one.

Unless we have figures that prove that energy production in Trek can reach higher values, and that just like in Rise, the implied power of a non-modified torpedo is way above the value obtained from the solar flare event.

Who says they are unmodified? To fragment an asteroid 390m wide (even accepting the size based on "photon torpedo glow growth") takes 50kt-100kt. We never saw it being vaporized.

To fragment an asteroid into 10 meters wide pieces. Not dust-to 1 cm debris.
And the values are obtained from centrally buried explosives, which immensely increases the efficiency of a nuke.
Also the Golevka sophisticated simulation has shown that planting a 10 MT nuke into a 500 x 600 x 700 meters asteroid results in the core being vaporized within a 200 meters wide sphere, the intermediary shell being molten and the outer layer being fragmented.
In other words, there couldn't be more energy input into the rock of the asteroid than in such a scenario. However Wong's calculator returns a value that's between 3 to 6 times inferior to what you'd get for a 200 meters wide asteroid being entirely vaporized.
Take this as an introduction to a possibly new discussion in the Groumall thread, as I don't intend to continue this one here.

[Kane Starkiller]

No all you did was assume that characters would be dumb enough to keep being worried about a trail that wouldn't threaten a planet, assume that a jet could form by mere gas pressure without even verifying if there was any noticeable gas pressure at all from where the ship was.

Intelligence of the characters doesn't enter into it. The pressure of the jet is dictated by the surrounding pressure since it didn't expand. There is no parameter in the equations called "intelligence of characters" or anything. As I said before if the pressure was even lower then the pressure of the jet was lower still.

That's absurd because I already proved that 3.2 GW fails at threatening the planet, and you have not proved that the gas would remain that hot after leaving the star's vicinity actually..

What difference does it make whether gas would remain hot? How does this change the upper limit calculated by observing it's lack of expansion?

No, I did my part on the physics, as far as it is required to fit with the episode. You are literally incapable of understanding something excruciatingly simple, in that science wouldn't normally explain how such a jet could exist and yet threaten a planet, cause a mass extinction and deliver some 500 Sv at once.
Considering that McKay estimated it possible, from what he knew, and that it already occured twice over the same period (it's a recurring phenomenon that's timed), you can't say high energy claims are impossible because science says so, since the episode already establishes that our science would have largely been smacked in the face twice in the past.
So basically your entire argument that is that the stream can only have X density and Y temperature otherwise it would be wider is debunked by the episode itself, and there is nothing to argue on here.
If you do so, you are dismissing canon to an even greater degree than I when I suggested treating the phenomenon as a burst instead of a jet.

It's impossible to have a jet much more powerful than 3.2GW and have it fit with the episode because then the jet would expand. You yourself say it "McKay estimated it possible". That is not the same as clearly observed lack of expansion. You are pitting McKays estimation against observed fact.
How am I dismissing canon by saying that McKay was incorrect? It's not canon that McKay was correct about the total amount of energy merely that he predicted it. What is canon is that jet didn't expand. Since it didn't expand it cannot possibly have larger energy no matter what other events happened later in the episode.

Don't be silly. Any basic encyclopedia would show what a CME is, and any respected physicist would know by name that what happened to the Lantean star is naturally impossible.
Omniscience has nothing to do with that. You can't normally claim that a super CME can eject the equivalent mass of a mountain at thousands of kilometers per second, be very hot, and yet be channeled into a tube naturally.
Yet it did happen before. Rodney wasn't being speculative, he worked from FACTS.
So dismissing the higher power figures because "it can't be" just doesn't work. The sooner you get that the better.

Dismissing higher power because laws of physics don't allow it doesn't work? What does work then if not basic laws of physics? The issue is very clear: your insistence that McKay was right vs observed events+laws of physics.

I'd work with a lower heat capacity. That said, your interpretation is rather fishy as well, otherwise there would be no gain from steel at all, and they would need stupidly thicker plates to obtain the same protective/ablative performance. No one would bother with this material.

So would the factor of 100 apply to both strength and density?
If the material was 100 stronger and lighter than steel, then if it weighed 1 g/cc, instead of 8g/cc, then to get 100 in the end, it would be 12.5 times stronger, "pound for pound".
Looking at steel, it would bring its strenght to 25 MPA, or 2.48 that of carbon nanotubes.

The issue in your interpretation is also evidenced by the performance of the trinum wall against a plasma cutter.
Starship hulls use an alloy of naqahdah and trinium.
Again, just check out what stargates can withstand and you'll get a clue of how tough the alloy can be.

Samantha said it's "100 times lighter and stronger than steel". How is it "my interpretation" that 100 refers to density as in being lighter? She said so herself. The only thing possible is that it didn't also refer to strength.
As for usefulness, a material as strong as steel but 100 times less dense would certainly be an improvement. Lifting a ship into orbit for one thing.

You made an unsubstantiated claim, since the EM radiation itself is so low in comparison to the H+ energy intensity, that the only way for the shields to suck more against the protons than against the EM, would be to have the shield incapable of stopping the entirety of the power rating at less than 5.0225 e6 W/m², if it were delivered by atoms.

The upper limit on the jet power is in GW range. At a distance of 1 million km the EM intensity, assuming star is similar to our sun, would be about 10MW/m2 which means that Deadalus (assuming it's about 100m wide) would receive 91GW. Hence the EM radiation would be higher and yet Daedalus wasn't affected before the jet impacted. Ha'Tak was bombarded with more powerful EM radiation and could withstand it for 10 hours. Thus particle streams appear to be more effective against shields than EM radiation.

There's info you missed in the material I provided (that includes the transcript part). It took Carter very close to three hours to get through that wall section. Say 2h30 (150 min). It's also possible that the wall was plated with trinium, but not entirely made of trinium. This of course would only increase trinium's performances. She had to cut what looks like a ~5 cm thick wall.
Considering that the wall was not prepated for plasma cutting (specific electrical charge), she much likely used an inverter model, which are more efficient. "Prometheus" is supposed to have occured within the new millenium. If we look at the hole, the cut is not too messy. Clearly the torch wasn't capable of going through the whole thickness in one blow, but the material didn't drip too much as it was being melted.

I'd wager the plasma cutter she used would be of good quality, and considering the amount of trinium on that ship, it would increase the chances of the cutter being tough enough so it would be somehow relevant to its environment.
That said, even picking a weaker cutter would still point to a device outputing a couple of kilowatts, focused onto a small surface. Going by the size of the hole, the cut had a perimeter between three and four meters tops (118.1 in to 157.5 in).

We're probably be looking at a cutter which cutting thickness was only short of several millimiters, perhaps one centimeter at worst (to explain the caking on the other side that is an effect similar to distance plasma gouging, but of a lesser magnitude here).
This model would fit the bill rather nicely. It's only used as an example. The gas may have been oxygen or nitrogen.

You can see example of cutters here.
More examples here and here:

Cutting Capability
Determine the type and thickness of metal you need to
cut and your desired speed. Then compare your needs to
product specifications. Miller qualifies its cutting
capabilities by a rated cutting capacity at approximately
10 in. per minute. You can increase your speed by using a
machine with more amperage power. For example, a
Spectrum 375 cuts 3/8 in. steel at 10 in. per minute.; a
Spectrum 875 can cut that same material at 41 in. per
minute.

Note that the Spectrum 875 cuts 7/8" at a displacement pace of 10"/minute. The Spectrum 1000 cuts at a depth of 1" for the same rate.

Looking at the Miller products, picking the 1&3 phase cutters (7/8" to 1"), we get power between 10 KW and 15 KW.
Right from the description above, we could rather take the Spectrum 875, which has the following specs.:

* "Rated" cutting thickness, stainless steel: 7/8 in
* Recommender generator power: 10,000 watts


This would fit with our requirements and the "maximum pierce capacity". Also, looking at the "Rated" part, we're told that the "rating" is defined as "Cutting Capacity: 10 in. per minute (minimum speed at which an operator achieves a smooth, steady cut using a hand-held torch)."

When you're not looking for anything smooth, really, but trying to dig your hole out of a room, you can probably go faster.

So now, if the wall thickness had fallen within the parameters, it would have taken between 11.81 and 15.75 minutes to cut a smooth hole.
Knowing how much time would be required to cut a thicker steel plate is tricky, but while it would obviously require a longer process, it is also necessary to remember that it's not a clean work.
So doubling the required time to melt the last millimeters appears very excessive, but should serve as a good cap, bringing our cutting timeframes to 23.62 and 31.5 minutes.

Carter had to spend between 4.762 and 6.351 more time on the material, as a low end. That's an average of 5.5. <- this is therefore the factor I shall use for thermal calculations.*
A low end because, again, there's only a couple millimeters more to remove, because I considered that the process would be twice as long, and because these values correspond to smooth cuttings.
Using the Spectrum 1000 as the basis of this analysis would cut the times by at least two, and that for a smooth cutting.

5.5 applied to carbon steel heat capacity (0.49 kJ/kg K) for example would correspond to 2.695 kJ/kg K.

* : note that a large part of my observations earlier on were based on plain steel.

Just because you don't use the highest performance plasma torch doesn't mean that you are calculating a lower limit since you haven't used the lowest performance torch. If the plasma torch type is unknown then the lower limit requires the lowest performance torch as an assumption and that would be Spectrum 125C for example which cuts 1/8inch thick steel at a rate of 10inch/minute. It would cut at through 157 inches of such steel in 15.7 minutes. In other words it would cut through 5cm thick steel in 247 minutes.

Check out the asteroid impact simulator here.

A 1 meters wide iron asteroid entering the atmosphere at 100 km/s, at a 90° elevation, returns this:

Atmospheric Entry:
The projectile begins to breakup at an altitude of 42400 meters = 139000 ft
The projectile bursts into a cloud of fragments at an altitude of 37200 meters = 122000 ft
The residual velocity of the projectile fragments after the burst is 87.5 km/s = 54.3 miles/s
The energy of the airburst is 4.93 x 1012 Joules = 0.12 x 10-2 MegaTons.
Large fragments strike the surface and may create a crater strewn field. A more careful treatment of atmospheric entry is required to accurately estimate the size-frequency distribution of meteoroid fragments and predict the number and size of craters formed.

Does it fit with Echoes now? All would depend on how much energy the shield let through.
Of course, from my point of view, the energies were so high that although the reentry case represents a high end, we wouldn't be looking at a disparity akin to light and day.
That, would be what would happen if we compared this event and your Echoes' calculation though.

What does this prove? A 1m wide asteroid was fragmented at an altitude of 42km, how does this point to shield capacity of Daedalus?

That factor was if this energy was delivered via the protons.

And as far as all light is concerned, I already went there, looking at each wavelength, including UV-A/B/C, to see how much energy would be required for each of them, considering their respective irradiance/insolation factors, and more. Sunlight already required 2.8335 e19 J for 500 Sv, and that with each sqaure meter equally illuminated.
For UVB, I pointed out that "for example, a constant increase by 9% over 40km (1.09^40) would correspond to a final difference of 31.41."
For sunlight, all radiations amount to 342 W/m², all surface and all angles counted. If you count exposed surface, that's an average of 684 W/m² with the angles taken into account. Around the half of the usual total that is 1.366 kW/m², at the top of the atmosphere. As for sunlight and solar irradiance, 120 W/m² is the threshold, on the ground, used to define what corresponds to a bright sunshine, as measured in France and defined by the WMO. Values can be verified there.
I also pointed to a rate for UV underwater absorption, showing that the whales would have not been worried.

Yes and all this is for normal sunlight which of which only a tiny fraction is UV radiation and above and you keep ignoring that fact. High energy event would emit a more concentrated and higher percentage of it's radiation in UV and above. Not to mention that this entire discussion cannot somehow retroactively change the upper limit on the energy and power densities of a star. All that it can affect is McKay's credibility.

Just estimate the density of the space environment where the Daedalus was and we'll see if your figure makes sense there.

All I can possibly know is that the density is somewhere between deep interplanetary space and density of a corona near the photosphere. How exactly wouldn't it make sense?

Perhaps, but why would we have to believe that the jet formed before the collapse, when the model was that the collapse would trigger the eruption?

We don't have to believe it. We've seen it. The relative speed between Daedalus and the jet was nowhere near the speed that would've been required if the jet only erupted after the collapse was finished.

Your methodology is backwards: you make an assumption about the exact time the jet erupted and then when visual evidence about the speed of the jet contradicts with your assumption you claim the visuals are contradictory and furthermore ask me to prove that your assumption about the time of origin is incorrect.
Your assumption contradicts the visuals, my doesn't that's all there is to it.

Not really no.

If you are not going to bother to make an argument then what's the point of responding at all?

It doesn't matter. Since it happened in the past (Rodney wouldn't make such an asine suggestion if he had no reason to do so), it can happen again, and thus dismissing higher figures because of the stream's width, when former streams proved to kill life where Atlantis' shield didn't go, means that the whole argument about how it can't be because science says no doesn't work here.

Do you even read what you write? You admit that it can happen again therefore there is no evidence that it definitely certainly 100% will happen again. And then you don't seem capable of understanding how observed non expansion of the jet overrides a prediction of what could but doesn't necessarily has to happen again.

Since there is no evidence that they have other weapons, there, it's done. Hard, eh?
So again, do you have evidence that they have other weapons they can fire from orbit?

Since they can land their large capital ships and since they are clearly a space capable civilization then they obviously have a capability to build a large nuclear device (say 4 times larger than Tsar bomba) and then drop it from orbit onto a city. Are you disputing that they have this capability? What you haven't proven is that they have the capability of feeding such energy to their "bolt" weapons they use in ship to ship combat.
Now, of course, an easier response would be to point out Stargate:Continuum in which Ha'Tak fleet bombards Washington in the attempt to exterminate the human race and the explosions are comparable to 2000lb JDAM bombs. This however wouldn't deal with the peculiar logic you use.

Wrong on both fronts sir, if only for the fact that said stellar phonemena include EMR, and in case of CMEs and solar flares, these EMRs tend to border on the x-ray/gamma-ray region.
So a Ha'tak that can stand close to a blue giant is a very good indicator.
And a Ha'tak that can withstand a sort of bizarro bolt that contains matter and can rank up to 200 MT, even if only once, counts as a good indicator on shields vs. particles.

How does any of this change my point? Nothing you have said changes the fact that TW level radiation is dangerous to the ships which is what my point is. You calculated the power for Ha'Tak sitting next to the blue giant yourself. It's in TW range and would overwhelm the shields after 10 hours. Therefore the reradiation capacity of the shields is also in TW range.
For the 200MT weapons see above.

That's a reason for Star Trek, not Stargate. Naqahdah is so ridiculously powerful that the equivalent of a French fry of raw naqahdah would rate in the several megatons.

Source?

That Daedalus was receiving damage is meaningless since it also works with my figures. As for the Ha'tak, it's a low end because it assumes a distance that appears to be greater than how close the ship was to the blue giant, and it's based on the weakest blue giant type. The medium and strong cases would bring the rate +1OoM above the figure in question.

Your figures, based on McKay's infallibility, can't change the upper limit calculated from directly observed events and application of gas laws. If you use a more powerful blue giant then it's no longer a lower limit. Not to mention there are other cases like Stargate: Continuum and "First Strike" which further prove TW and GW numbers.

Well that clearly doesn't even begin to answer my questions.
Besides, there's no frame-hidden to duck behind:

You haven't posed any questions but claimed that there is something strange with the beam since at certain frames we can't make out the vaporized material. I already pointed out that those few frames proves nothing.

That's rather absurd. It is a continuous beam. It generates an explosion. It HAS to get into the fireball and feed it. Ergo, it touches it.
If you want to call the white ball a flare or glare, it doesn't matter, because perspective dictactes that there's no way the beam could suddenly tapper within the fraction of the pixel that's left before it links with the explosion effect. The beam should have become invisibly small waay before.
After all, the Shadow Battlecrab is 1~3 km wide, and if that planet is anywhere near Earth-sized, the explosion would be of the size of a country. There is simply no way the beam could still be seen just before it gets into the explosion.

Again, the picture:
http://www.b5tech.com/science/weapons/d ... an1_bg.jpg

And this, because I can't affor loosing patience over such basic and petty matters, nor go down to the basics of why the world we live in is in three dimensions and looks the way it does.

Of course the beam ultimately touches fireball but what I'm saying it's not touching it at the apparent point of contact seen on the image. This is merely perspective. Also the beam could not be perfectly cylindrical but slightly conical.
Finally, it's your claim, you better have the patience to construct a logical objective argument around it. I won't do your homework. I backed up my claims about jet with laws of physics, calculations and numbers. I expect you to do the same.

Aside from the fact that we don't see balls to be launched prior to this, and aside the fact that the slow moving balls which have barely left the cruisers' launching ramps suspiciously disappear right where explosions occur, at the very same moment. When it gets that inane!

What is your evidence that we cut in to the very start of the bombardment? Understand that you wish to declare the entire scene as a VFX error which is the worst possible explanation therefore the burden of proof lies with you. Declaring my explanation "inane" doesn't cut it. Inane? Why because you say so?

Oh yes there is. See the ship on the right, that shoots one of these semi-glowing balls. Follow the projectile, and see how it suddenly changes its course down at a ~20° angle.

"On their own" being the key in my statement. The ships mass driver (magnetic or gravity field) could still be controlling the rock.

No, it proves that you're just being silly and have no understanding of perspective.

It doesn't since you haven't presented any evidence other than your assumptions that about jet's time of eruption, assumptions about the angle at which Shadow beams strike the planet etc. etc.

And there is no law that would say Lantea's magnetic field couldn't be extremely stronger either.
Since we don't know either, and since the planet appears to mimic Earth's properties, more or less, with just more water, it's basic safety to work on the premise that it's close enough.
The magnetic field of a planet is related to its active geology, and Lantea has one, since the Lanteans used a mobile geothermal power plant to feed the city.

So you admit that we don't know? And you pit your numbers based on something you admit "we don't know" against the upper limit on jet's density which we do know must be low. Just like I said many times: you pit your own unsupported assumptions against clear cut evidence and when it doesn't match declare your assumption to carry more weight.

That's dealt with earlier on in my post, so I can focus on the second point: how do you know the stream won't lose its energy en route?
You know, black body radiation and the coldness of space.
Your result largely posits that that ridiculous power rating you obtained, as miserably irrelevant it would be to a planet, wouldn't even loose a watt of energy from the corona to the planet.
That goes against common sense, so I'd like to know how you prove that the stream wouldn't cool down and see your numbers on that.

As I asked above: what does that have to do with the clearly established upper limit derived from direct observation and the gas laws?

That is, again, makes no sense. He considered they'd be hit by 50,000 rems. If he couldn't know the power, then he couldn't know the time, since they go hand in hand.
As I said, there was no certainty that the power itself would be constant, and that's without suggesting that McKay perhaps estimated they'd get at least 50,000 rems, as a guaranteed minimal ionizating radiation.

What makes no sense is your insistence that McKay must have known the total energy even though he didn't know the time and then declare that you assumption somehow overrides clearly observed events. It doesn't. McKay was wrong and you are wrong.

Huh. Don't you think Rodney would have more than doubts about the success of the mission if they wanted to intercept a super-CME which, for some reason, was concentrated into a jet, and yet the ship, with a ZPM, couldn't do more than take some gigawatts of protons to the face?

You assume that power would change greatly instead of the total duration. If McKay didn't know whether it would last for seconds or hours it's easily possible it could've lasted for days for all he knew.

It is not an upper limit.
I have proved, by looking at both EMR and protons that your value was a gross underestimation of the necessary energy to kill life to that extent, so that your number was below a low end, and I have proved in that post and in others in fact, that this star has the capacity to concentrate powerful flares that kill life on a planet, and that applying your reasoning to the former events would be met with the same cold welcome, because your conclusion would be "it can't be" while in the show, it did. Twice, at least.
In simpler words, this star is capable of singularities that make your claim moot.

You cannot disprove the upper limit derived from direct observation and application of the laws of physics with your assumptions that McKay is right. Don't you understand this?

Of course the only time we can gauge a torp for sure is when it hits an inert target that doesn't rely on technobabble shields, on bizarre alloys and isn't running on an AM/fusion/blackhole power plant.
Although there's room to wiggle when dealing with the Groumall case (you can always bump the thread and gives your 2c), the case of Rise wouldn't be arguable. They clearly expected the asteroid to be pulverized to tiny bits, even the low end measurements of the asteroid, as made by vivftp, give yields in the one digit megaton range.
They fired, with no evidence that they went down to the store room to alter the warheads.
When they did this, it was to destroy very specific bizarre particles, which required specific warheads. It was a very rare kind of mission.

You yourself calculate sub kiloton energies for fragmentation of those asteroids. Again where is the evidence for megaton range?
In Rise their expectations can't override other observed events and the fact the episode doesn't show them modify their warheads doesn't prove they didn't.

Lemme think... because it's your claim, perhaps?

Yes as a possible explanation for why the torpedoes are sometimes stronger. The proof is not necessary for a claim it's one possible explanation.

Unfortunately your explanation requires the assumption that different conventional AM warheads exist and that they use the better ones against asteroids.
It puts it on equal groud with the one that acknowledges inconsistencies.

Existence of various warhead is not an "inconsistency" but an explanation that doesn't require the breaking of suspension of disbelief.

An open mockery of your suggestion about them gutting out torps to cram more AM for their tests against asteroids.

We've seen them gut photon torpedoes to put a person inside and launch it at warp. What's your point?

See the thread. Perhaps the figure is a not higher than necessary, but as Mike pointed out, the BoP model I used is a small-crew one.

I've seen the thread and there is zero evidence for megaton level energy levels. Just because BoP has a larger crew doesn't mean it's bigger. A 100m ship can easily accommodate more than 12 crewmembers.

To fragment an asteroid into 10 meters wide pieces. Not dust-to 1 cm debris.
And the values are obtained from centrally buried explosives, which immensely increases the efficiency of a nuke.
Also the Golevka sophisticated simulation has shown that planting a 10 MT nuke into a 500 x 600 x 700 meters asteroid results in the core being vaporized within a 200 meters wide sphere, the intermediary shell being molten and the outer layer being fragmented.
In other words, there couldn't be more energy input into the rock of the asteroid than in such a scenario. However Wong's calculator returns a value that's between 3 to 6 times inferior to what you'd get for a 200 meters wide asteroid being entirely vaporized.
Take this as an introduction to a possibly new discussion in the Groumall thread, as I don't intend to continue this one here.

But asteroid wasn't dusted to 1cm pieces was it? So again we have a statement from a character deemed to override clearly established upper limit. Also you still haven't explained why we shouldn't use a clearly established precedent of varying warheads instead of declaring some kind of inconsistency. I already dealt with Groumall.

[User1356]

And I thought just trekkies were bad, when it comes to blatantly ignoring everything that doesnt support their preconceived notions.

[The Dude]

And I thought just trekkies were bad, when it comes to blatantly ignoring everything that doesnt support their preconceived notions.

Nah, it's in every franchise man. Halo and B5 are supposed to be really bad for it.

[Kane Starkiller]

Every franchise is wanked out to some extent. Even if you look at BDZ for Star Wars the initial mistake was that the assault must be executed with turbolasers which were fed by reactor as opposed to high yeal antimatter or "hypermatter" warheads similar to how Ohio would launch a multimegaton assault against enemy cities.
When you examine most of franchises more closely (beginning with Stargate here) you see that all the talk about gigatons and teratons being exchanged in regular ship to ship battles is bullshit and one needs to concoct more and more excuses as to why battles don't look nearly as damaging.

Obviously when one takes 500MT destroying Shadow battlecrab without question but concocts excuse after excuse about events in "Echoes" and "First Strike" and takes off hand description about 200MT blasts hitting cities without bothering to check what kind of weapons were they he will arrive at a conclusion that Stargate races could easily destroy the Shadows.

[User1356]

Every franchise is wanked out to some extent. Even if you look at BDZ for Star Wars the initial mistake was that the assault must be executed with turbolasers which were fed by reactor as opposed to high yeal antimatter or "hypermatter" warheads similar to how Ohio would launch a multimegaton assault against enemy cities.
When you examine most of franchises more closely (beginning with Stargate here) you see that all the talk about gigatons and teratons being exchanged in regular ship to ship battles is bullshit and one needs to concoct more and more excuses as to why battles don't look nearly as damaging.

Like the 1000MT nukes they shoot at a ha'tak in the beginning of season 2

Obviously when one takes 500MT destroying Shadow battlecrab without question but concocts excuse after excuse about events in "Echoes" and "First Strike" and takes off hand description about 200MT blasts hitting cities without bothering to check what kind of weapons were they he will arrive at a conclusion that Stargate races could easily destroy the Shadows.

No, sounds to me like someone with an agenda, cherry picking evidence to favor his chosen franchise. Although I must admit this is the first time I've seen a fiver decide to make everyone else weaker, rather than just wanking up what is seen in B5.



By your logic we need to reassess B5 since we know that tiny starfuries are a significant threat to highly advanced minbari and centauri capital ships

[Kane Starkiller]

Like the 1000MT nukes they shoot at a ha'tak in the beginning of season 2

They stated they should yield in 1000MT. Did they actually have the time to test the new naquadah warhead design? We see the missiles approaching the ships at perhaps 1km/s both missiles have the same speed as they approach the ships. The first missile struck about 35 frames before the second one meaning the other missile was perhaps 5km away when the first one detonated. The second missile would thus receive the energy of 13GJ/m2. That is the 32 times the energy of Iowa battleship main guns per square meter. No US missile can withstand such energies. Thus that entire event is suspect and certainly can't stand up to clear cut evidence from "Echoes" and "First Strike".

No, sounds to me like someone with an agenda, cherry picking evidence to favor his chosen franchise. Although I must admit this is the first time I've seen a fiver decide to make everyone else weaker, rather than just wanking up what is seen in B5.

You are welcome to provide objective reasoning as to how examples like "Echoes", "First Strike" and "Stargate Continuum" attack against Washington can be reconciled with supposed gigaton level firepower and shields.

By your logic we need to reassess B5 since we know that tiny starfuries are a significant threat to highly advanced minbari and centauri capital ships

I made no claims based on the size of a ship. What is the firepower of a Starfury? Is it greater than a Russian MiG or US F-15 which we know can easily take out Goa'uld Death Gliders?

[Mr. Oragahn]

No all you did was assume that characters would be dumb enough to keep being worried about a trail that wouldn't threaten a planet, assume that a jet could form by mere gas pressure without even verifying if there was any noticeable gas pressure at all from where the ship was.

Intelligence of the characters doesn't enter into it. The pressure of the jet is dictated by the surrounding pressure since it didn't expand. There is no parameter in the equations called "intelligence of characters" or anything. As I said before if the pressure was even lower then the pressure of the jet was lower still.

This only applies in normal conditions. The stream was not normal. Don't even ask me why, at least that's an established fact from at least two former occurrences, and again, an intelligent character wouldn't be stupid to suggest that a stream that would largely contribute to the final radiation of 500 Sv to be concentrated into a stream. And yes, character intelligence has to be taken into account. If you don't, you're ignoring episode canon, and therefore your calculation is worthless. Not to say that it's anyway relevant anyway.

That's absurd because I already proved that 3.2 GW fails at threatening the planet, and you have not proved that the gas would remain that hot after leaving the star's vicinity actually..

What difference does it make whether gas would remain hot? How does this change the upper limit calculated by observing it's lack of expansion?

Of course, if we work from the idea that the stream was ridiculously light to boot...

No, I did my part on the physics, as far as it is required to fit with the episode. You are literally incapable of understanding something excruciatingly simple, in that science wouldn't normally explain how such a jet could exist and yet threaten a planet, cause a mass extinction and deliver some 500 Sv at once.
Considering that McKay estimated it possible, from what he knew, and that it already occured twice over the same period (it's a recurring phenomenon that's timed), you can't say high energy claims are impossible because science says so, since the episode already establishes that our science would have largely been smacked in the face twice in the past.
So basically your entire argument that is that the stream can only have X density and Y temperature otherwise it would be wider is debunked by the episode itself, and there is nothing to argue on here.
If you do so, you are dismissing canon to an even greater degree than I when I suggested treating the phenomenon as a burst instead of a jet.

It's impossible to have a jet much more powerful than 3.2GW and have it fit with the episode because then the jet would expand. You yourself say it "McKay estimated it possible". That is not the same as clearly observed lack of expansion. You are pitting McKays estimation against observed fact.

So you're saying that he's a total dick. Got that.

How am I dismissing canon by saying that McKay was incorrect? It's not canon that McKay was correct about the total amount of energy merely that he predicted it. What is canon is that jet didn't expand. Since it didn't expand it cannot possibly have larger energy no matter what other events happened later in the episode.

The point is not if his estimation came true, but the simple fact that he made such an estimation.
The only way in real physics to increase the mass of the stream would be to have an even cooler gas, which is rather silly considering what dialogue said, about the stream's temperature and the fact that the jet itself was ejected from a spectacular singularity over the photosphere, so you couldn't use a lower temperature figure.
I mean, you're really so hellbent on defending your little precious number that you totally fail to realize that protons don't even need the goddamn ozone to be stopped, since oxygen and nitrogen do it already all too well (which triggers the cascade). Those particles themselves being absorbed by the atmosphere.

Also, let me point out something about the calculation you did on page 1:

As I already explained the jet cannot be super dense. Stellar corona has the temperature on the order of 1,000,000K while the photosphere and thus the mass ejection has a temperature of roughly 10,000K. Now corona has a density of about 10^-16kg/m3 and thus about 10^11 particles/m3. We also know that pressure p=N*k*T/V therefore we can equate the pressure of corona(p2) and the plasma jet(p1).
p1=p2
N1*k*T1/V1=N2*K*T2/V2
Now since each part of plasma jet needs to have roughly equal pressure to each part of the corona or at least surrounding corona we can equate V1 and V2 thus:
N1*T1=N2*T2
N1=N2*T2/T1
N1=10^13 particles/m3
Assuming it consists mostly of hydrogen atoms that gives it a density of 10^-14 kg/m3.
At the width of 100m a layer of plasma jet 1m thick will have a mass of 10^-10kg. Since the jet, according to Rodney, was moving at 4000km/s the ship would be hit by 0.4 grams of matter for a kinetic energy of 3.2GJ every second or 3.2GW.

One joule is 6,241,457,005,723,417,000 eV (that is 6.241 e18 eV).
One gigajoule will roughly be worth 6.241 e27 eV.
So, you found that one 1 meter thick disc carried 3.2 GJ of energy. That's around 2 e29 eV.
You obtained a density of 10^13 particles per cubic meter. Since your disc was one meter thick and a hundred meters wide, that's 7.854 e16 particles in a slice of that stream.

That's 2,546,473,134,708 eV per particle, or 2.546 e12 eV/particle.

That is something very fishy, since even the particles released by extremely powerful CMEs that reach close to the speed of light only carry, at best, energy levels rating in the hundreds of MeV.

Your average CME has a mass of 1.6 e12 kilograms, and travels at a speed of 489 km/s.
The kinetic energy is 1.913 e23 J, or 1.194 e42 eV.
The mass of a proton is 1.672621637 e-27 kg. Let's round that down to 1.6 e-27 kg. So the CME expels 10^39 particles.
Which basically gives us around 1.194 KeV per particle, and obviously two orders of magnitude more if the speed is ten times greater (4,890 km/s).

Even if your CME lasted 23 hours, you'd have a grand total of 8.28 e17 particles fired. Good job, your CME's mass is only 22 orders of magnitude below that of the average CME.
That's what we could call a yocto-CME. Obviously with a character expecting a super CME that would dwarf anything our sun could output, and somehow miraculously focused into a stream, your CME wouldn't even be worth the talk.

Two more things.

According to this source, the density of the atmosphere on the surface of the sun is 1 e23 particles per cubic meter, and the density of the solar atmosphere just a few thousand kilometer above the ‘surface’, or in the solar corona, is 1 e14 particles per cubic meter. That's 3 orders of magnitude above the figure you used. Although that is quite close to the sun,

Also, you used the temperature of the photosphere as your frame of reference, but literally ignored the density of material in that region, and instead finding a density ten order of magnitude lower. This would mean the CME only carried away a hundred trillionth of the mass of the same volume picked from the photosphere.
In other words, a bird's fart vs. Tsar Bomba.

Don't be silly. Any basic encyclopedia would show what a CME is, and any respected physicist would know by name that what happened to the Lantean star is naturally impossible.
Omniscience has nothing to do with that. You can't normally claim that a super CME can eject the equivalent mass of a mountain at thousands of kilometers per second, be very hot, and yet be channeled into a tube naturally.
Yet it did happen before. Rodney wasn't being speculative, he worked from FACTS.
So dismissing the higher power figures because "it can't be" just doesn't work. The sooner you get that the better.

Dismissing higher power because laws of physics don't allow it doesn't work? What does work then if not basic laws of physics? The issue is very clear: your insistence that McKay was right vs observed events+laws of physics.

Oh there are laws at play, but you have to assume that we don't know them all, and we're missing data to explain why we either have a super stable toroid or a super stable pinch effect. That with the wonky materials in Stargate such as naqahdah.
You really have no choice, unless you think McKay is dumber than an ape.

I'd work with a lower heat capacity. That said, your interpretation is rather fishy as well, otherwise there would be no gain from steel at all, and they would need stupidly thicker plates to obtain the same protective/ablative performance. No one would bother with this material.

So would the factor of 100 apply to both strength and density?
If the material was 100 stronger and lighter than steel, then if it weighed 1 g/cc, instead of 8g/cc, then to get 100 in the end, it would be 12.5 times stronger, "pound for pound".
Looking at steel, it would bring its strenght to 25 MPA, or 2.48 that of carbon nanotubes.

The issue in your interpretation is also evidenced by the performance of the trinum wall against a plasma cutter.
Starship hulls use an alloy of naqahdah and trinium.
Again, just check out what stargates can withstand and you'll get a clue of how tough the alloy can be.

Samantha said it's "100 times lighter and stronger than steel". How is it "my interpretation" that 100 refers to density as in being lighter? She said so herself. The only thing possible is that it didn't also refer to strength.
As for usefulness, a material as strong as steel but 100 times less dense would certainly be an improvement. Lifting a ship into orbit for one thing.

And yet offers no advantage in protection and requires much less energy to be moved away by an explosion.
And then they'd mix that with naqahdah, which is rather heavy, to negate the only advantage trinium would provide.

You made an unsubstantiated claim, since the EM radiation itself is so low in comparison to the H+ energy intensity, that the only way for the shields to suck more against the protons than against the EM, would be to have the shield incapable of stopping the entirety of the power rating at less than 5.0225 e6 W/m², if it were delivered by atoms.

The upper limit on the jet power is in GW range. At a distance of 1 million km the EM intensity, assuming star is similar to our sun, would be about 10MW/m2 which means that Deadalus (assuming it's about 100m wide) would receive 91GW. Hence the EM radiation would be higher and yet Daedalus wasn't affected before the jet impacted. Ha'Tak was bombarded with more powerful EM radiation and could withstand it for 10 hours. Thus particle streams appear to be more effective against shields than EM radiation.

An observation solely based on your fraudulent numbers.

There's info you missed in the material I provided (that includes the transcript part). It took Carter very close to three hours to get through that wall section. Say 2h30 (150 min). It's also possible that the wall was plated with trinium, but not entirely made of trinium. This of course would only increase trinium's performances. She had to cut what looks like a ~5 cm thick wall.
Considering that the wall was not prepated for plasma cutting (specific electrical charge), she much likely used an inverter model, which are more efficient. "Prometheus" is supposed to have occured within the new millenium. If we look at the hole, the cut is not too messy. Clearly the torch wasn't capable of going through the whole thickness in one blow, but the material didn't drip too much as it was being melted.

I'd wager the plasma cutter she used would be of good quality, and considering the amount of trinium on that ship, it would increase the chances of the cutter being tough enough so it would be somehow relevant to its environment.
That said, even picking a weaker cutter would still point to a device outputing a couple of kilowatts, focused onto a small surface. Going by the size of the hole, the cut had a perimeter between three and four meters tops (118.1 in to 157.5 in).

We're probably be looking at a cutter which cutting thickness was only short of several millimiters, perhaps one centimeter at worst (to explain the caking on the other side that is an effect similar to distance plasma gouging, but of a lesser magnitude here).
This model would fit the bill rather nicely. It's only used as an example. The gas may have been oxygen or nitrogen.

You can see example of cutters here.
More examples here and here:

Cutting Capability
Determine the type and thickness of metal you need to
cut and your desired speed. Then compare your needs to
product specifications. Miller qualifies its cutting
capabilities by a rated cutting capacity at approximately
10 in. per minute. You can increase your speed by using a
machine with more amperage power. For example, a
Spectrum 375 cuts 3/8 in. steel at 10 in. per minute.; a
Spectrum 875 can cut that same material at 41 in. per
minute.

Note that the Spectrum 875 cuts 7/8" at a displacement pace of 10"/minute. The Spectrum 1000 cuts at a depth of 1" for the same rate.

Looking at the Miller products, picking the 1&3 phase cutters (7/8" to 1"), we get power between 10 KW and 15 KW.
Right from the description above, we could rather take the Spectrum 875, which has the following specs.:

* "Rated" cutting thickness, stainless steel: 7/8 in
* Recommender generator power: 10,000 watts


This would fit with our requirements and the "maximum pierce capacity". Also, looking at the "Rated" part, we're told that the "rating" is defined as "Cutting Capacity: 10 in. per minute (minimum speed at which an operator achieves a smooth, steady cut using a hand-held torch)."

When you're not looking for anything smooth, really, but trying to dig your hole out of a room, you can probably go faster.

So now, if the wall thickness had fallen within the parameters, it would have taken between 11.81 and 15.75 minutes to cut a smooth hole.
Knowing how much time would be required to cut a thicker steel plate is tricky, but while it would obviously require a longer process, it is also necessary to remember that it's not a clean work.
So doubling the required time to melt the last millimeters appears very excessive, but should serve as a good cap, bringing our cutting timeframes to 23.62 and 31.5 minutes.

Carter had to spend between 4.762 and 6.351 more time on the material, as a low end. That's an average of 5.5. <- this is therefore the factor I shall use for thermal calculations.*
A low end because, again, there's only a couple millimeters more to remove, because I considered that the process would be twice as long, and because these values correspond to smooth cuttings.
Using the Spectrum 1000 as the basis of this analysis would cut the times by at least two, and that for a smooth cutting.

5.5 applied to carbon steel heat capacity (0.49 kJ/kg K) for example would correspond to 2.695 kJ/kg K.

* : note that a large part of my observations earlier on were based on plain steel.

Just because you don't use the highest performance plasma torch doesn't mean that you are calculating a lower limit since you haven't used the lowest performance torch. If the plasma torch type is unknown then the lower limit requires the lowest performance torch as an assumption and that would be Spectrum 125C for example which cuts 1/8inch thick steel at a rate of 10inch/minute. It would cut at through 157 inches of such steel in 15.7 minutes. In other words it would cut through 5cm thick steel in 247 minutes.

The reason I didn't use the lowest performance torch is because a torch has a given thickness efficiency in how far it can heat and propel gas to expel slag. Beyond that range, it requires more exposure to the plasma to melt the metal, and the ejection is not as powerful. That, and as heat piles up since the cut is not so immediate, you heat a large amount of metal on the other side of the wall, which will obviously NOT lead to a fine cut. Therefore it takes more time for the metal to melt, and it's not outright expelled out on the other side. Thus the "caking". But as we could see on the picture, it was rather minimal, meaning that the factor that defined when the cut would be made was not the short and inefficient heating depth of the torch (with radial radiation of energy as waste), but how long it would take to reach melting point of the outter layer, so much that once that point would be reached, the torch would rather quickly break through, thus resulting in a minimal formation of random bulbous lip on the other side.

As you can see on this video, even with the cutter and a rather very thin layer of metal to be cut, a lip formed on the edge of the underside of the disc (0:45). Again compare with this and you'll see that the cut is rather very clean considering the thickness to go through. You can also compare the result to the cuts visible in this video (and salivate btw).
Hell, the fact that it's not glowing hot, with much smoke and so on, proves that the cut was rather clean and immediate once the necessary melting point was reached, with little residual heat.
An inefficient torch with a short cutting thickness would have piled up joules over a wide area on the corridor side of the wall and made a mess of the metal.
So clearly she had a good torch at hand, and it just took that long to heat up the metal to the appropriate temperature.

Check out the asteroid impact simulator here.

A 1 meters wide iron asteroid entering the atmosphere at 100 km/s, at a 90° elevation, returns this:

Atmospheric Entry:
The projectile begins to breakup at an altitude of 42400 meters = 139000 ft
The projectile bursts into a cloud of fragments at an altitude of 37200 meters = 122000 ft
The residual velocity of the projectile fragments after the burst is 87.5 km/s = 54.3 miles/s
The energy of the airburst is 4.93 x 10^12 Joules = 0.12 x 10^-2 MegaTons.
Large fragments strike the surface and may create a crater strewn field. A more careful treatment of atmospheric entry is required to accurately estimate the size-frequency distribution of meteoroid fragments and predict the number and size of craters formed.

Does it fit with Echoes now? All would depend on how much energy the shield let through.
Of course, from my point of view, the energies were so high that although the reentry case represents a high end, we wouldn't be looking at a disparity akin to light and day.
That, would be what would happen if we compared this event and your Echoes' calculation though.

What does this prove? A 1m wide asteroid was fragmented at an altitude of 42km, how does this point to shield capacity of Daedalus?

It shows that the Daedalus took much more punishment than this lump of sheer iron could take in the same conditions (the ship didn't suffer from her hull being blasted apart by 1 kiloton explosions, in case it wasn't already obvious). Your 3.2 GW could only fit with this by claiming long exposures and a shielding efficiency close to Swiss cheese.

That factor was if this energy was delivered via the protons.

And as far as all light is concerned, I already went there, looking at each wavelength, including UV-A/B/C, to see how much energy would be required for each of them, considering their respective irradiance/insolation factors, and more. Sunlight already required 2.8335 e19 J for 500 Sv, and that with each sqaure meter equally illuminated.
For UVB, I pointed out that "for example, a constant increase by 9% over 40km (1.09^40) would correspond to a final difference of 31.41."
For sunlight, all radiations amount to 342 W/m², all surface and all angles counted. If you count exposed surface, that's an average of 684 W/m² with the angles taken into account. Around the half of the usual total that is 1.366 kW/m², at the top of the atmosphere. As for sunlight and solar irradiance, 120 W/m² is the threshold, on the ground, used to define what corresponds to a bright sunshine, as measured in France and defined by the WMO. Values can be verified there.
I also pointed to a rate for UV underwater absorption, showing that the whales would have not been worried.

Yes and all this is for normal sunlight which of which only a tiny fraction is UV radiation and above and you keep ignoring that fact.

No, you really have an issue with that. Again, in simpler words: I DID take each wavelength separatedly, to know which percentage of each wavelength reaches the surface. It doesn't matter what percentage of the overall sunlight UV represent, because they're treated independently.
Even the wavelengths for which the atmosphere is most permissive bring back factor that bring the required energy value at least one order of magnitude up.
There's little reason to go for weaker photonic energies since strong CME and other powerful solar events are noticed for their release of copious amounts of already highly ionizing radiations that sit in the ranges closer to gamma-rays than sunlight.

High energy event would emit a more concentrated and higher percentage of it's radiation in UV and above. Not to mention that this entire discussion cannot somehow retroactively change the upper limit on the energy and power densities of a star. All that it can affect is McKay's credibility.

OK, what's that new trick?

Just estimate the density of the space environment where the Daedalus was and we'll see if your figure makes sense there.

All I can possibly know is that the density is somewhere between deep interplanetary space and density of a corona near the photosphere. How exactly wouldn't it make sense?

Of course it's going to be somewhere between both, but is it hard to guess? What you did is arbitrarily pick a value without verifying if it even matched the typical coronal density found at the distance which the ship was from the star.

Perhaps, but why would we have to believe that the jet formed before the collapse, when the model was that the collapse would trigger the eruption?

We don't have to believe it. We've seen it. The relative speed between Daedalus and the jet was nowhere near the speed that would've been required if the jet only erupted after the collapse was finished.

I suppose that's part of the observation you made when trying to estimate how far from the star the ship was, right?
Also, I'm tired of your constant accusation of dishonesty and what have you, but perhaps you should be remined that you completely ignored a crucial part of the visual evidence, that is, the speed of the stream itself.

Oh, how kind of you to be so nice as to use McKay's estimated speed instead of what is seen.
Why couldn't you be honest with yourself and use the observed speed to obtain the real kinetic energy?
You know, the one you clearly don't want to calc because it will just look that stupid.

The damn thing takes at least one frame to cover a Daedalus length (450 m). KE for 0.4 grams? 2.5313 e4 joules per second.
No, wait.

• • • • • • • • • 25 KILOWATTS !!! ZOMG !!!1!

Mmm yes, much better.

Your methodology is backwards: you make an assumption about the exact time the jet erupted and then when visual evidence about the speed of the jet contradicts with your assumption you claim the visuals are contradictory and furthermore ask me to prove that your assumption about the time of origin is incorrect.
Your assumption contradicts the visuals, my doesn't that's all there is to it.

Not really no.

If you are not going to bother to make an argument then what's the point of responding at all?

I was just waiting to see what kind of visual evidence you were thinking of, and if you'd try to correct yourself. Which you didn't, alas.

It doesn't matter. Since it happened in the past (Rodney wouldn't make such an asine suggestion if he had no reason to do so), it can happen again, and thus dismissing higher figures because of the stream's width, when former streams proved to kill life where Atlantis' shield didn't go, means that the whole argument about how it can't be because science says no doesn't work here.

Do you even read what you write? You admit that it can happen again therefore there is no evidence that it definitely certainly 100% will happen again. And then you don't seem capable of understanding how observed non expansion of the jet overrides a prediction of what could but doesn't necessarily has to happen again.

I don't care, because the sole basis of your refutation of higher energies is because of the existence of a narrow stream. Again, this has not prevented past super-CMEs from being much more powerful than what you calculated.

It is really that simple. You cannot dismiss greater energies, because by canon, it is a fact that a stream can be that powerful and narrow. Period.
So your alleged "by virtue of physics" upper limit is mmot.
Now try to understand that once and for all.
I'm quite getting tired of repeating the same shit again and again.

Since there is no evidence that they have other weapons, there, it's done. Hard, eh?
So again, do you have evidence that they have other weapons they can fire from orbit?

Since they can land their large capital ships and since they are clearly a space capable civilization then they obviously have a capability to build a large nuclear device (say 4 times larger than Tsar bomba) and then drop it from orbit onto a city. Are you disputing that they have this capability?

Why should I dispute a capacity to fire the equivalent of MIRVs that's never been proved to exist?

What you haven't proven is that they have the capability of feeding such energy to their "bolt" weapons they use in ship to ship combat.

One example would be Ha'taks firing at the Ori shield in Beachhead, and delivering, along Prometheus' missiles, the remaining necessary energy to close the gap that was left from the moment the shield expanded after absorbing a portion of a mark IX's explosion.

• • • • 

Now, of course, an easier response would be to point out Stargate:Continuum in which Ha'Tak fleet bombards Washington in the attempt to exterminate the human race and the explosions are comparable to 2000lb JDAM bombs. This however wouldn't deal with the peculiar logic you use.

You realize, of course, that if they wanted to destroy Earth fast, they had easier and faster methods, one of them being tugging asteroids from the distant asteroid belts. After all, if a Tel'tak and its damaged hyperdrive can carry on a 137 km long asteroid through Earth... or throw a couple of empty Ha'taks, filled with naqahdah, at the planet after accelerating to half the speed of light.

Wrong on both fronts sir, if only for the fact that said stellar phonemena include EMR, and in case of CMEs and solar flares, these EMRs tend to border on the x-ray/gamma-ray region.
So a Ha'tak that can stand close to a blue giant is a very good indicator.
And a Ha'tak that can withstand a sort of bizarro bolt that contains matter and can rank up to 200 MT, even if only once, counts as a good indicator on shields vs. particles.

How does any of this change my point? Nothing you have said changes the fact that TW level radiation is dangerous to the ships which is what my point is. You calculated the power for Ha'Tak sitting next to the blue giant yourself. It's in TW range and would overwhelm the shields after 10 hours. Therefore the reradiation capacity of the shields is also in TW range.

Who spoke of reradiation only?
Shields for such ships are rated in such a way that each hit brings them down by x% immediately.

That, and Carter, up to season 6, which is years after gathering intel about Goa'uld forces and working with the Tok'ra and rebel Jaffa, was still craving for naqahdria, stuff she deemed utmost necessary in order to provide enough power to feed shields and weapons against the Goa'uld.
On a similar note, obviously, if Goa'uld ships couldn't withstand more than gigawatts or terawatts, Earth would be smoking them left and right with mere volleys of regular "tactical" nukes.

That's a reason for Star Trek, not Stargate. Naqahdah is so ridiculously powerful that the equivalent of a French fry of raw naqahdah would rate in the several megatons.

Source?

Goa'uld buster. You can appreciate the volume of the raw naqahdah ore put into the warhead. This alone would provide the thousand of megatons of energy, as stated by Samuels.
Ha'taks are powered by weapon grade naqahda.

That Daedalus was receiving damage is meaningless since it also works with my figures. As for the Ha'tak, it's a low end because it assumes a distance that appears to be greater than how close the ship was to the blue giant, and it's based on the weakest blue giant type. The medium and strong cases would bring the rate +1OoM above the figure in question.

Your figures, based on McKay's infallibility, can't change the upper limit calculated from directly observed events and application of gas laws. If you use a more powerful blue giant then it's no longer a lower limit.

No, really? I mean, didn't I just say that I picked the lowest blue giant possible? You, on the other hand, posited that 3.2 GW was the upper limit.
And I have largely demonstrated that this limit doesn't exist in Stargateverse.

Not to mention there are other cases like Stargate: Continuum and "First Strike" which further prove TW and GW numbers.

First Strike nowhere proves TW nor GW power.

Well that clearly doesn't even begin to answer my questions.
Besides, there's no frame-hidden to duck behind:

You haven't posed any questions but claimed that there is something strange with the beam since at certain frames we can't make out the vaporized material. I already pointed out that those few frames proves nothing.

Yes, another absurd claim. How could a beam that passes through a hull for four frames, and said to have wastes of energy to spend, yet generate not a single explosion whatsoever during any of those frames? I'm all ears out.

That's rather absurd. It is a continuous beam. It generates an explosion. It HAS to get into the fireball and feed it. Ergo, it touches it.
If you want to call the white ball a flare or glare, it doesn't matter, because perspective dictactes that there's no way the beam could suddenly tapper within the fraction of the pixel that's left before it links with the explosion effect. The beam should have become invisibly small waay before.
After all, the Shadow Battlecrab is 1~3 km wide, and if that planet is anywhere near Earth-sized, the explosion would be of the size of a country. There is simply no way the beam could still be seen just before it gets into the explosion.

Again, the picture:
http://www.b5tech.com/science/weapons/d ... an1_bg.jpg

And this, because I can't afford loosing patience over such basic and petty matters, nor go down to the basics of why the world we live in is in three dimensions and looks the way it does.

Of course the beam ultimately touches fireball but what I'm saying it's not touching it at the apparent point of contact seen on the image. This is merely perspective. Also the beam could not be perfectly cylindrical but slightly conical.
Finally, it's your claim, you better have the patience to construct a logical objective argument around it. I won't do your homework. I backed up my claims about jet with laws of physics, calculations and numbers. I expect you to do the same.

Obviously your understanding of anything about perspective is equivalent to absolute void. I'm literally losing neurons reading your asinine crap. Just spend $40 and get a month of drawing basics, and come back to me after that.

Aside from the fact that we don't see balls to be launched prior to this, and aside the fact that the slow moving balls which have barely left the cruisers' launching ramps suspiciously disappear right where explosions occur, at the very same moment. When it gets that inane!

What is your evidence that we cut in to the very start of the bombardment?

What is your evidence that it started beforehand? Zero.
What is your evidence that the bombs that are seen to explode are not actually those that explode? Zero.

Hell, if I really wanted to piss all over that sequence beyond the numerous flaws I already pointed out, I'd add the fact that the explosion effects scroll over the planet.
After all, when the effects already suck that much, why not make them suck even more at this point?

Understand that you wish to declare the entire scene as a VFX error which is the worst possible explanation therefore the burden of proof lies with you.

Whatever. Obviously with someone who has no clue of distance gauging and perspective, I'm not surprised that your defense mounts to such desperate wavings.
Just like you pretended the projectiles didn't change course all of sudden. Yet the video says you're wrong.

Oh yes there is. See the ship on the right, that shoots one of these semi-glowing balls. Follow the projectile, and see how it suddenly changes its course down at a ~20° angle.

"On their own" being the key in my statement. The ships mass driver (magnetic or gravity field) could still be controlling the rock.

Who gives? You said they don't change course. I take that as a concession, at least.

And there is no law that would say Lantea's magnetic field couldn't be extremely stronger either.
Since we don't know either, and since the planet appears to mimic Earth's properties, more or less, with just more water, it's basic safety to work on the premise that it's close enough.
The magnetic field of a planet is related to its active geology, and Lantea has one, since the Lanteans used a mobile geothermal power plant to feed the city.

So you admit that we don't know? And you pit your numbers based on something you admit "we don't know" against the upper limit on jet's density which we do know must be low. Just like I said many times: you pit your own unsupported assumptions against clear cut evidence and when it doesn't match declare your assumption to carry more weight.

The protons will be stopped by the oxygen and nitrogen of the atmosphere. Unless you want to pretend that the planet has no air, along lacking a moderately sufficient magnetic field, of course...

That is, again, makes no sense. He considered they'd be hit by 50,000 rems. If he couldn't know the power, then he couldn't know the time, since they go hand in hand.
As I said, there was no certainty that the power itself would be constant, and that's without suggesting that McKay perhaps estimated they'd get at least 50,000 rems, as a guaranteed minimal ionizating radiation.

What makes no sense is your insistence that McKay must have known the total energy even though he didn't know the time and then declare that you assumption somehow overrides clearly observed events. It doesn't. McKay was wrong and you are wrong.

Well, all that is fine, but in the department of observed events, you actually suck hard, both on Echoes and B5. I don't think I need any lecturing on this from you.

Huh. Don't you think Rodney would have more than doubts about the success of the mission if they wanted to intercept a super-CME which, for some reason, was concentrated into a jet, and yet the ship, with a ZPM, couldn't do more than take some gigawatts of protons to the face?

You assume that power would change greatly instead of the total duration. If McKay didn't know whether it would last for seconds or hours it's easily possible it could've lasted for days for all he knew.

Or perhaps centuries.

It is not an upper limit.
I have proved, by looking at both EMR and protons that your value was a gross underestimation of the necessary energy to kill life to that extent, so that your number was below a low end, and I have proved in that post and in others in fact, that this star has the capacity to concentrate powerful flares that kill life on a planet, and that applying your reasoning to the former events would be met with the same cold welcome, because your conclusion would be "it can't be" while in the show, it did. Twice, at least.
In simpler words, this star is capable of singularities that make your claim moot.

You cannot disprove the upper limit derived from direct observation and application of the laws of physics with your assumptions that McKay is right. Don't you understand this?

I can, yes, for the simple fact that it did happen and we have to consider that McKay isn't as dumb as you make him to be. There's a point credibility has a certain value, and he's not making shit up just for the sake of it.

Of course the only time we can gauge a torp for sure is when it hits an inert target that doesn't rely on technobabble shields, on bizarre alloys and isn't running on an AM/fusion/blackhole power plant.
Although there's room to wiggle when dealing with the Groumall case (you can always bump the thread and gives your 2c), the case of Rise wouldn't be arguable. They clearly expected the asteroid to be pulverized to tiny bits, even the low end measurements of the asteroid, as made by vivftp, give yields in the one digit megaton range.
They fired, with no evidence that they went down to the store room to alter the warheads.
When they did this, it was to destroy very specific bizarre particles, which required specific warheads. It was a very rare kind of mission.

You yourself calculate sub kiloton energies for fragmentation of those asteroids. Again where is the evidence for megaton range?

I didn't calc Rise and I gave a link for the Groumall thread.

In Rise their expectations can't override other observed events and the fact the episode doesn't show them modify their warheads doesn't prove they didn't.

Their expectations completely contradict the other observed events. You can't have characters honestly believe a torp would have pulverized an asteroid debris less than 1 cm wide if their torps would rate in the measly kiloton range.

Unfortunately your explanation requires the assumption that different conventional AM warheads exist and that they use the better ones against asteroids.
It puts it on equal groud with the one that acknowledges inconsistencies.

Existence of various warhead is not an "inconsistency" but an explanation that doesn't require the breaking of suspension of disbelief.

You broke my suspension of disbelief.

An open mockery of your suggestion about them gutting out torps to cram more AM for their tests against asteroids.

We've seen them gut photon torpedoes to put a person inside and launch it at warp. What's your point?

Sure, a male is about 80 kg on the average. Count the spandex and perhaps a piece of cake, that's probably close to 80.5~81 kg. With a torpedo travelling at 100 m/s, those added 405 kilojoules would prove most useful!
Never underestimate the value of a human warhead (sic).

To fragment an asteroid into 10 meters wide pieces. Not dust-to 1 cm debris.
And the values are obtained from centrally buried explosives, which immensely increases the efficiency of a nuke.
Also the Golevka sophisticated simulation has shown that planting a 10 MT nuke into a 500 x 600 x 700 meters asteroid results in the core being vaporized within a 200 meters wide sphere, the intermediary shell being molten and the outer layer being fragmented.
In other words, there couldn't be more energy input into the rock of the asteroid than in such a scenario. However Wong's calculator returns a value that's between 3 to 6 times inferior to what you'd get for a 200 meters wide asteroid being entirely vaporized.
Take this as an introduction to a possibly new discussion in the Groumall thread, as I don't intend to continue this one here.

But asteroid wasn't dusted to 1cm pieces was it? So again we have a statement from a character deemed to override clearly established upper limit. Also you still haven't explained why we shouldn't use a clearly established precedent of varying warheads instead of declaring some kind of inconsistency. I already dealt with Groumall.

Did you watch Rise or even read RSA's page once in your life?
The asteroid was rigged to fragment in case someone attempted to vaporize it. It was full of some artificial bits and bobs.

Every franchise is wanked out to some extent. Even if you look at BDZ for Star Wars the initial mistake was that the assault must be executed with turbolasers which were fed by reactor as opposed to high yeal antimatter or "hypermatter" warheads similar to how Ohio would launch a multimegaton assault against enemy cities.
When you examine most of franchises more closely (beginning with Stargate here) you see that all the talk about gigatons and teratons being exchanged in regular ship to ship battles is bullshit and one needs to concoct more and more excuses as to why battles don't look nearly as damaging.

The bullshit is that no one pretended that ships exchanged gigatons, lest teratons of firepower. Only very high ended estimations put some firepower figures in the one digit gigaton and they're hardly accepted, largely criticized, and kinda silly.
However, much contrary to a good number of universes, devices with yields in gigatons are much real in Stargate, and rather small.

Obviously when one takes 500MT destroying Shadow battlecrab without question but concocts excuse after excuse about events in "Echoes" and "First Strike" and takes off hand description about 200MT blasts hitting cities without bothering to check what kind of weapons were they he will arrive at a conclusion that Stargate races could easily destroy the Shadows.

First Strike? All is shows is a technobabble beam that drains a ZPM and the Tau'ri launching six mark IXs at Asuras, make big explosions, which based on the other observed use of such weapons, and statements by characters, put the devices at 812 GT a piece.

Like the 1000MT nukes they shoot at a ha'tak in the beginning of season 2

They stated they should yield in 1000MT. Did they actually have the time to test the new naquadah warhead design? We see the missiles approaching the ships at perhaps 1km/s both missiles have the same speed as they approach the ships. The first missile struck about 35 frames before the second one meaning the other missile was perhaps 5km away when the first one detonated. The second missile would thus receive the energy of 13GJ/m2. That is the 32 times the energy of Iowa battleship main guns per square meter. No US missile can withstand such energies. Thus that entire event is suspect and certainly can't stand up to clear cut evidence from "Echoes" and "First Strike".

There's actually enough evidence from the episode that the nukes were destroyed before they could properly detonate. The naqahdah barely reacted at all. It was enough to send some EM that messed up with satellites, but nothing to threaten the ship. The US staff even thought the ships wouldn't se the missiles coming. Least to say, they would have never expected a battle shield, and it's much likely that the warheads were using proxy fuses.
The yield itself shall suffer no dispute, as it's been proved at several occasions by the fielding of warheads rated at 1.2 GT which were man sized or less.

No, sounds to me like someone with an agenda, cherry picking evidence to favor his chosen franchise. Although I must admit this is the first time I've seen a fiver decide to make everyone else weaker, rather than just wanking up what is seen in B5.

You are welcome to provide objective reasoning as to how examples like "Echoes", "First Strike" and "Stargate Continuum" attack against Washington can be reconciled with supposed gigaton level firepower and shields.

The yields in Continuum were obviously capped.
Reason: Teal'c shielded Al'kesh could take as many shots as we've seen a Ha'tak take from another Ha'tak, and there's no way such a small ship can have a power generation that comes anywhere close to that of a Ha'tak, if only for the fact that it's way bigger and Goa'uld tend to keep the best stuff for them and their motherships.

[User1356]

They stated they should yield in 1000MT. Did they actually have the time to test the new naquadah warhead design? We see the missiles approaching the ships at perhaps 1km/s both missiles have the same speed as they approach the ships. The first missile struck about 35 frames before the second one meaning the other missile was perhaps 5km away when the first one detonated. The second missile would thus receive the energy of 13GJ/m2. That is the 32 times the energy of Iowa battleship main guns per square meter. No US missile can withstand such energies. Thus that entire event is suspect and certainly can't stand up to clear cut evidence from "Echoes" and "First Strike".

Still doesnt change the fact its rated at 1000MT, and they didnt kill the ha'tak

You are welcome to provide objective reasoning as to how examples like "Echoes", "First Strike" and "Stargate Continuum" attack against Washington can be reconciled with supposed gigaton level firepower and shields.

Echoes dialog is consistant with mass extinction level energies(GT+),Fireball size and dialog put Mk IXs at double digit GT at a minimum, continuum was a terror bombarment, like the narn/drazi bombarment of centauri prime

I made no claims based on the size of a ship. What is the firepower of a Starfury? Is it greater than a Russian MiG or US F-15 which we know can easily take out Goa'uld Death Gliders?

Ahh but the starfury kamikazes from ITB and the starfuries finishing off the primus in fall of night, and destroying a vorchan in movements of fire and shadow would indicate that B5s most advanced younger races ships are severely vulnerable to the tiny guns on a starfury. Which would cast much doubt on the commonly accepted yields for B5

[Mike DiCenso]

And I thought just trekkies were bad, when it comes to blatantly ignoring everything that doesnt support their preconceived notions.

Funny, every franchise has it's FAN-atics, but some Warsies and WH40kers, among others are really bad.
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

Who says they are unmodified? To fragment an asteroid 390m wide (even accepting the size based on "photon torpedo glow growth") takes 50kt-100kt. We never saw it being vaporized.

That is because the assumption the Voyager crew was working under was that what they had before them was a natural, fairly normal nickel-iron asteroid, and that when they vaporized it, there would not be any significant debris. However, when the asteroid fragmented rather than vaporized, they launched a major investigation that later in the episode showed that the thing was actually an artificial construct built from olivine (highly prone to fragmentation) as well as at least two different technobabble alloys, which probably have high melt points well above that for nickel and iron, and the thing was able to hide it's true nature by spoofing sensors.

So 50-100 kt is a very, very lower limit here, Kane. One that can only be the result, if you ignore the entire rest of the episode.
-Mike