The Death Star's power output confirmed!

[Jedi Master Spock]

The question is also where this energy comes from.
Hypermatter is nonsense, since it pulls energy out of nowhere; if you can do that, then you can set off a chain-reaction that can destroy all matter in the universe and cause another Big Bang. Clearly that's not in the movies, but rather the DS uses fusion, which simply breaks the mostly liquid planet up into little solid bits and moves it away from the core-- but even this is more than fusion can provide, or what the speed of the explosion requires.

Rather, moving the planet as seen on screen, would require e+5X the energy needed to vapourize it, so clearly that's a trick of hyperacceleration-- which agan, cannot create energy, but only catalyze it over greater distances than its speed in normal space would allow.

So my original hypothesis stands, that the DS simply created a hyperspace-field which catalyzed the planet's thermal energy to kinetic energy by reducing the distance from the hot core to cold space, causing the energy to shift by normal thermodyanmic radiation-differentials.

Thermal energy is much too low to fuel a mass-scattering of a planet, no matter how you catalyze it. The gravitational binding energy exceeds the thermal energy by a comfortable margin. (I'm not sure I should trust Wong's ages-old calculation of how fast the debris of Alderaan is moving, either. As we've seen in reviewing the asteroid destruction scenes, there are and were a lot of mistakes made in frame-by-frame analysis of explosions by VS debaters.)

The easy answer to the question "where does the energy come from?" is one that Alan Dean Foster, writing under the pen name of "George Lucas," has already provided within what is known as the "lesser canon" on ST-v-SW and "G canon" elsewhere:

"Theoretically, no weapon could penetrate the exceptionally dense stone of the ancient temple, but Luke had seen the shattered remains of Alderaan and knew that for those in the incredible battle station the entire moon would present simple another abstract problem in mass-energy conversion."

Generally, Saxtonites, when paying attention to the novelization at all (which often escapes their notice entirely), have held that the novelization quote refers to mass-energy annihilation within the Death Star's own reactor. There are problems with this; the sensible way to interpret the quote is that it refers to some partial mass-energy conversion of the target, some chain reaction the superlaser sets off. The Death Star novel fits with that. You have to get a certain amount of superlaser energy into the target in order for the reaction to spiral out of control.

[Mr. Oragahn]

"Dark Apprentice" shows that the provoked explosion of an hyperspace-based device can release much more energy than a large starship does normally.
It's like in Stargate when they say that when a ZPM goes wonky, it will release enough energy to destroy a planet or even a star system. Yet we've never seen a ZPM capable of spitting supernova wattages.

So why not just have a hypermatter-bomb, and destroy anything you want-- a star, a galaxy, the universe?

Price and time. And a bomb that blast planets would logically have to be of the size of a Death Star core. Is that even interesting? No. That they managed to fuse a normal superlaser (see Saxton's veiled suggestion regarding the ore melter on Geonosis, in the "Inside the Worlds of AOTC") to a hyperspace phenomenon that's barely controlled is the breakthrough imho.

[Mr. Oragahn]

I believe the four hours charge was related to the initial tests. Tenn said it took the best part of a day to get a complete charge.

Other point: Yavin either was too large to be destroyed, or the Death Star was too close to blast it and survive.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Thermal energy is much too low to fuel a mass-scattering of a planet, no matter how you catalyze it. The gravitational binding energy exceeds the thermal energy by a comfortable margin. (I'm not sure I should trust Wong's ages-old calculation of how fast the debris of Alderaan is moving, either. As we've seen in reviewing the asteroid destruction scenes, there are and were a lot of mistakes made in frame-by-frame analysis of explosions by VS debaters.)

To move from e32 to e38 by only playing with the speed, you'd need to move from the 11-12 km/s (escape vel.) to 11,000-12,000 km/s. Some parts of the expanding material do fly away that fast. However, since he never considered any technobabble effects and other physics oddities, we'd have to admit that not all the matter could have been expanding that fast, otherwise Han's ship and the TIE fighter would have never flown through a storm of rocks: they'd all be already gone a long time ago. Those rocks, btw, certainly didn't even fly past the Millennium Falcon at speeds measured in kilometers per second, but per hour at best.

And of course, he completely disregarded the fact that it's the secondary explosion that's the most violent. We all know the song, they never acknowledged that, no matter how plain to see it was.

[The Dude]

Price and time. And a bomb that blast planets would logically have to be of the size of a Death Star core. Is that even interesting? No. That they managed to fuse a normal superlaser (see Saxton's veiled suggestion regarding the ore melter on Geonosis, in the "Inside the Worlds of AOTC") to a hyperspace phenomenon that's barely controlled is the breakthrough imho.

Theres that. The DS was probably designed to fill a number of secondary roles as well; fleet HQ, logistics base, troop transport, maintenance facility, etc.

And of course its far more intimidating to have a massive spaceship jump into your system.

[Who is like God arbour]

Price and time. And a bomb that blast planets would logically have to be of the size of a Death Star core.

No.

I agree in that point with UniveralNetguru:

• • • • Then why couldn't they just use a hypermatter-bomb, and blow up anything they wanted?

        Given the size of the DS-I's reactor that would be rather wasteful.
        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtJpg4d93-w

        That's like comparing an H-bomb to a fusion-generator; obviously it's going to be bigger for a controlled reaction; that's not "waste" it's simply the cost of CONTROL. [...]

A hyper-matter-bomb would probably be significantly smaller than the size of a Death Star Core.

[StarWarsStarTrek]

You're mixing watts and joules. The Death Star's reactor had to charge up for hours in order to be ready to fire a superlaser shot. (A number of EU sources specify at least a full day, in fact.) Power is energy per unit time. That means e27-e28, not e32, watts is the correct calculation for your interpretation - using, generously, Sunlike, non-red dwarf stars as the benchmark.

Semantics are not really relevant in this debate. I understand the difference between joules and watts. As for power generation, assuming that the recharge time involves actually powering the superlaser and not cooling it, then yes, I concede that the actual power output is about e28 watts. The ability of the Death Star to even deliver that much energy without vaporizing itself is quite impressive into itself, right? The superlaser would have to have extremely high heat capacity and/or extremely advanced cooling systems in order to not get vaporized, and the Death Star would have have to be able to withstand an enormous amount of recoil. That being said, such a power output supports the AOTC and ROTS ICS figures for star destroyers quite well, because if you scale them linearly it works out to be "realistic". The Death Star's reactor is 16 kms; a star destroyer's is 140 meters, both in diameters. A e24+ watt reactor therefore makes complete sense.

1e32 joules would be more energy than the entire human race has produced to date; however, it is far less than the quantity of energy unleashed by humans in the whole of Star Trek. Genesis created and then detonated a planet. A trilithium missile can explode a star.

Both superweapons of which are nearly impossible to calculate due to being chain reaction weapons. Based off of standard power output the Death Star exceeds the power output of the Federation, and likely the entire Alpha Quadrant.

Now, let me tell you what the calculation would be if I used a couple median main-sequence stars, and the more common EU recharge time of 24 hours for the Death Star: About 2e30 joules (1% of the energy required to mass scatter a planet), and about 2e25 watts of power. This is what Saxton believes an ISD can fire downrange. Or, in other words, a small fleet of ICS Acclamators.

Where did you get that information for median main-sequence stars? You're suggesting that a median main sequence star is about 100 times less powerful than our sun, even though out sun isn't particularly large.

Problematically, that level of energy would still be multiple orders of magnitude higher than the apparent strength of the first "one third power" shot from the Death Star in the novel. This is what the other posters in this thread have been pointing out to you; if they seem frustrated, it's because after the novel came out, we had a fairly lengthy discussion here on the subject.

(BTW, our email debate; yes, that's me; is it still going on?) The power percentiles seemed to have been completely messed up in Star Wars Death Star. A 1/3 power shot should still have destroyed the planet. Another shot was able to be fired about an hour, despite the fact that a full powered shot took about 24 hours to recharge. If you want to take the power percentage as linear though, note that a 4% power shot destroyed a Rebel Alliance cruiser. The fact that they put the power at 4% and not 3% implies that 4% power is needed as a somewhat upper end to destroy a Rebel cruiser...even with the lower end calculations of e30 joules, 4% of that is e28-e29 joules.

That said, you're still missing the point. The ICS are carefully constructed. Saxton has, or had, in his mind a fairly coherent model of what Star Wars looks like. It bears little relation to Lucas's Star Wars, but it is intended to be internally consistent. Saxton's model of Star Wars relies in no small part on the Death Star's beam being more or less an actual laser, and that's totally incompatible with the Death Star novel, including the quote you're focusing on.

How so? The quotes that supposedly prove a chain reaction are often misinterpreted. The quotes mention that the hypermatter reactor exceed mass-energy conversion. Trekkies take the quotes to mean that the reactors do not produce as much energy as assumed, and that they use a chain reaction to do it with less energy. However, in reality, it's reversed; the hypermatter reactors use sort of a chain reaction to get more energy!

If you compare my model of Star Wars with Saxton's model of Star Wars, it's pretty clear which one of us is describing something closer to what the Death Star novel describes, and it's still clear even when you decide to ignore 90% of the novel to focus on pulling a single quote out of context.

Out of context? The quote about the weekly output of several main sequence stars vs the Death Star is quite direct and blatant. What is the power output of the Death Star in your model?

Now, I don't go ignoring the context to focus on a single quote, as a general rule. I'll start by looking at the single quote, but you have to look at it in the larger context, and the larger context, here, pretty clearly indicates that the reactor managing to explode itself is projected to release a lot more energy than the Death Star's superlaser requires. Which makes a lot of sense; if your reactor is operating within normal output parameters, it's not going to overload the safeties and blow everybody to kingdom come.

Uh, what? Are you actually implying that a misfire is more powerful than an actual regular blast? Where is your evidence?

[Lucky]

A hyper-matter-bomb would probably be significantly smaller than the size of a Death Star Core.

Then why are they never used. It seems that the reactor needs to be the size of the Death Star-I's just not be a bomb.

[Who is like God arbour]

A hyper-matter-bomb would probably be significantly smaller than the size of a Death Star Core.

Then why are they never used. It seems that the reactor needs to be the size of the Death Star-I's just not be a bomb.

Maybe because the whole concept of a hyper-matter reactor is ludicrous. Saxton envisioned that hyper-space is nothing more than real-space seen from a velocity higher than light-speed and that hyper-matter is nothing more than tachyonic matter. This whole concept is scientifical nonsense. Now suddenly hyper-matter seems to be able to draw energy out of hyper-space and thus would be able to provide limitless energy. Again a ludicrous idea which violates several physical laws at once. And creating a hyper-matter-bomb, what would be only logical if hyper-matter-reactors worked indeed as explained, would only make it obviously, how stupid the whole concept is. But that also means that the fact that there are no such hyper-matter-bombs allows the conclusion that the hyper-matter-reactor does not work as explained - or that the people of the Star Wars Galaxy are too stupid to recognize an opportunity when it bites them in the arse.

[User1462]

Hypermatter obviously pulls energy out of nowhere, so there's no limit to the size of the explosion-- you simply can't CONTROL it; but if it's a bomb, then there's no need to control it, is there? Then, losing control is the whole damn point of a warhead, right?
(Except to keep it from blowing up the whole damn universe, Force and all-- and this "no limits fallacy" is indeed become a no-limits HYPOCRISY).

For example, you could have a bomb the size of your thumbnail; such a "hypermatter" chain-reaction would create an explosion in which 1 hyperwank-particle, elicits 2 hyperwank particles, and so forth-- until every particle in the universe is converted to energy.... and so it doesn't MATTER that you fail physics forever, the SDN-jerk has come full circle with the Kurt Vonnegut School of Science.

Considering the planets/moons right next to the Death Star were unharmed by them exploding/imploding it is clearly not a case of what you claim, and they clearly can't be used in the manner you suggest, or they would be.

Or maybe it simply was simply fusion-powered, not hyperwank.

[User1462]

Maybe because the whole concept of a hyper-matter reactor is ludicrous. Saxton envisioned that hyper-space is nothing more than real-space seen from a velocity higher than light-speed and that hyper-matter is nothing more than tachyonic matter. This whole concept is scientifical nonsense. Now suddenly hyper-matter seems to be able to draw energy out of hyper-space and thus would be able to provide limitless energy. Again a ludicrous idea which violates several physical laws at once. And creating a hyper-matter-bomb, what would be only logical if hyper-matter-reactors worked indeed as explained, would only make it obviously, how stupid the whole concept is. But that also means that the fact that there are no such hyper-matter-bombs allows the conclusion that the hyper-matter-reactor does not work as explained - or that the people of the Star Wars Galaxy are too stupid to recognize an opportunity when it bites them in the arse.

And this is why the whole EU is ludicrous, since they'll look at this and say "PROVE that it contradicts."
Sure, prove that a trilithium-type "Sun Crusher" contradicts technology which requires a Death Star to dstroy a single planet-- it's a pure "proving a negative" fallacy.

Sure, they can make bomb that can blow up anything-- they just don't WANT to.

[User1462]

The question is also where this energy comes from.
Hypermatter is nonsense, since it pulls energy out of nowhere; if you can do that, then you can set off a chain-reaction that can destroy all matter in the universe and cause another Big Bang. Clearly that's not in the movies, but rather the DS uses fusion, which simply breaks the mostly liquid planet up into little solid bits and moves it away from the core-- but even this is more than fusion can provide, or what the speed of the explosion requires.

Rather, moving the planet as seen on screen, would require e+5X the energy needed to vapourize it, so clearly that's a trick of hyperacceleration-- which agan, cannot create energy, but only catalyze it over greater distances than its speed in normal space would allow.

So my original hypothesis stands, that the DS simply created a hyperspace-field which catalyzed the planet's thermal energy to kinetic energy by reducing the distance from the hot core to cold space, causing the energy to shift by normal thermodyanmic radiation-differentials.

Thermal energy is much too low to fuel a mass-scattering of a planet, no matter how you catalyze it. The gravitational binding energy exceeds the thermal energy by a comfortable margin.

The binding-energy of an Earth-sized planet is 11J/g (the energy required to accelerate something to escape-velocity)-- while the planet is made mostly of Silicon, the specific heat of which is 0.71 J/g per degree Celsius.
This requires as shift of less than 8 degrees Celsius in order to shatter it (frightening, I know); and so the "comfortable margin" is the other way around, since space is much colder than that in Earth-orbit, being around -200C.

Now, given that the average temperature of the planet's mass is more than 2000 degrees C, then I'd have to say that a hyperspace-conduit from the core to a single planetary diameter could easily do it; as I mentioned previously, it's only the insulating effect of space which keeps the planet from shattering in the first place, and so shortening the distance by a factor of 1500-1 could do that.

(I'm not sure I should trust Wong's ages-old calculation of how fast the debris of Alderaan is moving, either. As we've seen in reviewing the asteroid destruction scenes, there are and were a lot of mistakes made in frame-by-frame analysis of explosions by VS debaters.)

It's moving a lot faster than enough to vaporize the planet; but the planet isn't vaporized, leaving only a hyperspace conclusion.

The easy answer to the question "where does the energy come from?" is one that Alan Dean Foster, writing under the pen name of "George Lucas," has already provided within what is known as the "lesser canon" on ST-v-SW and "G canon" elsewhere:

"Theoretically, no weapon could penetrate the exceptionally dense stone of the ancient temple, but Luke had seen the shattered remains of Alderaan and knew that for those in the incredible battle station the entire moon would present simple another abstract problem in mass-energy conversion."


Generally, Saxtonites, when paying attention to the novelization at all (which often escapes their notice entirely), have held that the novelization quote refers to mass-energy annihilation within the Death Star's own reactor. There are problems with this; the sensible way to interpret the quote is that it refers to some partial mass-energy conversion of the target, some chain reaction the superlaser sets off. The Death Star novel fits with that. You have to get a certain amount of superlaser energy into the target in order for the reaction to spiral out of control.

And anyone who's studied physics beyond high school, knows that matter can't be converted to energy at will: it's a negative-sum game, unless you've got some anti-matter handy, or you're dealing with something heavier than iron.
"Abstract" doesn't mean "mysterious," it means generalized, as in applying a general principle to a non-specific incidence. Here, the mass of hydrogen in the Death Star's reactor is converted to energy via fusion, which is a mass-energy conversion; what they do with it afterward is secondary.
Now perhaps some 1950's-style sci-fi wankery in the novel believes that matter can be converted to energy at will; however you can throw that out entirely since it's debunked and defunct-- not to mention that it would render fusion obsolete as well.
Furthermore, there would be no need to blow up the whole planet, when all life on it can be destroyed by just by mass-converting a bit of its surface.
In contrast, the surface simply wouldn't be HOT enough for thermal-conversion; meanwhile the core is the hottest part..

If you're talking about a chain-fusion reaction, meanwhile, then ST-v-SW's thrown that out as well.

[StarWarsStarTrek]

Hypermatter obviously pulls energy out of nowhere, so there's no limit to the size of the explosion-- you simply can't CONTROL it; but if it's a bomb, then there's no need to control it, is there? Then, losing control is the whole damn point of a warhead, right?
(Except to keep it from blowing up the whole damn universe, Force and all-- and this "no limits fallacy" is indeed become a no-limits HYPOCRISY).

For example, you could have a bomb the size of your thumbnail; such a "hypermatter" chain-reaction would create an explosion in which 1 hyperwank-particle, elicits 2 hyperwank particles, and so forth-- until every particle in the universe is converted to energy.... and so it doesn't MATTER that you fail physics forever, the SDN-jerk has come full circle with the Kurt Vonnegut School of Science.

Considering the planets/moons right next to the Death Star were unharmed by them exploding/imploding it is clearly not a case of what you claim, and they clearly can't be used in the manner you suggest, or they would be.

Or maybe it simply was simply fusion-powered, not hyperwank.

It is a canon fact that hypermatter exists. I really don't care if you think that it's hyperwank, or if you disagree with the realism of hypermatter. Also, the quote that you quoted was arguably even more ridiculous than yours, because Star Wars Death Star specifically stated that power was not infinite, not even with a hypermatter reactor. It does not get energy from nowhere, it gets it largely from charged tachyonic particles, but those are not infinite in quantity in Star Wars, despite what Lucky said without ANY reason to believe it to be so. Lucky, where did you get this ridiculous idea from? Huh?

[Lucky]

It is a canon fact that hypermatter exists. I really don't care if you think that it's hyperwank, or if you disagree with the realism of hypermatter. Also, the quote that you quoted was arguably even more ridiculous than yours, because Star Wars Death Star specifically stated that power was not infinite, not even with a hypermatter reactor. It does not get energy from nowhere, it gets it largely from charged tachyonic particles, but those are not infinite in quantity in Star Wars, despite what Lucky said without ANY reason to believe it to be so. Lucky, where did you get this ridiculous idea from? Huh?

It's canon the planets/moons that were right next to the Death Stars were unharmed when the Death Stars exploded/imploded. The Rebels would not have been partying on them if they had been damaged, and there's even a story about an old storm trooper who had been stationed on Endor, and how he was saddened to hear the Ewoks were fine, and the Endor holocaust was a myth.

There are no hypermatter bombs in Star Wars.

The only ship smaller then a Death Star that we know of to get a Hypermatter reactor blew up, and we have no reason to think they ever fixed the problem.

So what are these ridiculous ideas I have?

[User1462]

And if hypermatter existed, then there would be hypermatter bombs-- but there aren't, so it doesn't. It's pure EU-wank.