Uber-powered antimatter?

[Eternal_Freedom]

Incidentally, since you are very fond of using Graham Kennedy's work, I'll point you to this page where Mike demonstrates how very flawed Mr Kennedy's calculations are (not to mention demonstrating his less-than-stellar credentials. Hell, I'm better qualified to talk about this kinda stuff and I'm employed as a sodding intern).

[Tribble]

Well, we know that "vaporization" in Star Trek means something different than converting a substance into vapour. As Dath Wong noted if that were the case every time a person was vapourized they would be turning into a large cloud of steam that would severely burn / kill anyone nearby. Instead, the person essentially disappears with practically no effect on the environment around them. The TNG TM states that the matter was basically exiting the universe, while Darth Wong suggests that the matter could be converted into neutrinos.

In Star Trek shipboard weapons are basically just larger versions of hand weapons. Is it possible that they were doing the same thing to the crust in "the Die is Cast"? We wouldn't necessarily see the crust / mantle blowing up all over the place if the material was being "vaporized".

EDIT: Btw, sorry if I'm going into a taboo subject here, I wasn't posting for a number of years (ok, I posted like maybe 20 posts, then left for school)... but what happened to some of the group like Darth Wong anyways? Too busy? Moved on to other things?

[Eternal_Freedom]

In Star Trek shipboard weapons are basically just larger versions of hand weapons. Is it possible that they were doing the same thing to the crust in "the Die is Cast"? We wouldn't necessarily see the crust / mantle blowing up all over the place if the material was being "vaporized".

Whilst that might be possible, it would only account for the beam weapons fired, not the torpedoes. And since this guy is trying to use these calcs to prove some kind of uber-antimatter can be used in weapons and the torpedoes don't use any NDF effects or chain reactions...it wouldn't help. It would in fact invalidate this guys argument since it's the beam weapons doing most of the damage not the torpedoes.

Incidentally, I find it hilarious when the handwave of "the energy gets dumped into subspace" is used, since that's even more wasteful than just radiating it as heat. You're turning a closed system (the universe) into an open one and dumping huge amounts of energy out of it. Granted, on a universal scale the energy being lost that way is trivial, but still, it seems...silly.

EDIT: Btw, sorry if I'm going into a taboo subject here, I wasn't posting for a number of years (ok, I posted like maybe 20 posts, then left for school)... but what happened to some of the group like Darth Wong anyways? Too busy? Moved on to other things?

Mostly moved on to other things. Mike is still around in Facebook but I haven't seen him on the board itself for a few years now.

[Lord Revan]

well the thing is we should still see the effects on the planet. The mantle of a terrestial planet is both molten and constantly pushing up (well technically the crust is pushing downward but for this matter the effect is the same) so if the crust got signifigantly weaker it will crack and the mantle will start to spill over the crust as lava. In fact IIRC Venus has no regular volcanic activity so it's crust will crack when it internal pressure becomes too great and the mantle will spill over then cool down to become the new crust and repeat the process (obviously this takes alot of time to happen). the fact we don't see this lava is the problem.

[Tribble]

For reference:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nU4lYIuvg58[/youtube]

Whilst that might be possible, it would only account for the beam weapons fired, not the torpedoes. And since this guy is trying to use these calcs to prove some kind of uber-antimatter can be used in weapons and the torpedoes don't use any NDF effects or chain reactions...it wouldn't help. It would in fact invalidate this guys argument since it's the beam weapons doing most of the damage not the torpedoes.

Meh, I don't think that the Feds have uber weapons hiding in secret just in case. I'm just pointing out that the visuals in "the Die is Cast" do not necessarily contradict the dialog, as the matter could be in the process of being "vapourised".

If you look at the visuals carefully, the torpedoes don't seem to be having the same effect that the disruptors were. It's possible that the disruptors were in fact doing most of the work.

Incidentally, I find it hilarious when the handwave of "the energy gets dumped into subspace" is used, since that's even more wasteful than just radiating it as heat. You're turning a closed system (the universe) into an open one and dumping huge amounts of energy out of it. Granted, on a universal scale the energy being lost that way is trivial, but still, it seems...silly.

I agree that it's rather silly, but seeing as people don't drop dead from massive burns when someone is "vapourised" right next to them, either the matter is being thrown out of their universe or as Darth Wong noted, perhaps it is being converted into neutrinos.

well the thing is we should still see the effects on the planet. The mantle of a terrestial planet is both molten and constantly pushing up (well technically the crust is pushing downward but for this matter the effect is the same) so if the crust got signifigantly weaker it will crack and the mantle will start to spill over the crust as lava. In fact IIRC Venus has no regular volcanic activity so it's crust will crack when it internal pressure becomes too great and the mantle will spill over then cool down to become the new crust and repeat the process (obviously this takes alot of time to happen). the fact we don't see this lava is the problem.

Well, the lava might have been in the process of being "vapourised" as well, in which case we wouldn't see it.

[WATCH-MAN]

I'm pretty sure that in order for the Founder planet's atmosphere to have such a dense cloud cover that it obscured any high-energy detonations on the surface, it would have to be so thick that it would be a Venusian-type "pressure cooker" atmosphere. Which, judging by the fact that Kira was able to walk around and breath unprotected in "The Search," I think we can safely say isn't the case.

The problem is: We simply do not know enough about this planet.

But what we know is, that the planet was not part of a star system. It did not orbit a sun.

It shouldn't be habitable. Kira shouldn't be »able to walk around and breath unprotected« on its surface.

Conclusion:

• • • • Either this planet is so unusual that we can not apply our standard understanding of how things are supposed to work
        
        • • • • or
        
        the planet has indeed - as you are saying - »a Venusian-type "pressure cooker" atmosphere« and the area in which Kira was »able to walk around and breath unprotected« was somehow protected from that »Venusian-type "pressure cooker" atmosphere« and somehow a habitable area (for visitors as the Vorta and the Jem'Hadar) was created.

As for the general TDIC argument, here are a few pertinent quotes from a debate that Mike had about this very subject many years ago:

In short, the problem with high-energy atmospheric detonations is that the air can only hold a certain amount of energy before it becomes plasma, and the laws of thermodynamics only allow it to expand and shed this energy to its surroundings at a limited rate due to blackbody radiation and hydrodynamics, so you invariably get a brilliant fireball with any sufficiently large release of energy in an atmosphere, and the more energy you have, the longer the fireball lasts.

Hence, we have obvious proof that these blasts are not the monster explosions you think they are (as if this isn't obvious from just looking at their dull brown glory). The fireballs which should result from, say, gigaton-level energy releases should last for many minutes, and it is simply NOT POSSIBLE for shockwaves to move at hundreds of kilometres per second without glowing far brighter than the Sun.

When the K-T mass-extinction "dino-killer" asteroid struck the Earth some 65 milion years ago, it produced a plasma jet of ionized matter which was hurled into space. This plasma jet glowed so brightly that it would blind anyone who looked at it, and when it came back down, it began to condense into liquid droplets and eventually superheated solid particles which showered down and started wildfires all over the entire planet. Yet this blast was totally inadequate to destroy 30% of the planet's crust, and you have the audacity to claim that the feeble-looking dull brown clouds in [the] pictures are far more powerful than the dino-killer was!

If you could actually destroy 30% of an Earthlike planet's crust [...] with a single volley of torpedoes (let's say it was 300 torps), then a single torp should be able to destroy 20 million km³ of crust. Yet we discover in "Rise" that it is only expected to fragment a nickel-iron asteroid which is perhaps 100 metres across at most (not even 0.01 km³)

If your objective is to destroy the planet down to its core, you do not want that your bombs are exploding in the atmosphere. You want them to penetrate the crust as deep as possible to maximize their effect on the crust and to reach even the deepest bunker in which the Founders could find shelter.

We do not know what weapons the Cardassian/Romulan attack fleet was armed with exactly. But we do know that even modified class-1 probes with torpedo casings are able to burrow beneath the surface to destroy perfectly aligned lattices of dilithium crystals, which is forming generator strata, which creates a piezoelectric effect and turn it into mechanical energy, which increases tectonic stresses, that tears the planet apart. We can assume that the weapons used - weapons specially build to destroy the planet down to its core - are able to penetrate the crust too. Underground explosion do not cause high-energy atmospheric detonations.

Insofar what this Mike has said about high-energy atmospheric detonations and asteroid impacts is totally irrelevant.

Concerning his Rise-argument: As he said himself: »A single torp [was] expected to fragment a nickel-iron asteroid which is perhaps 100 metres across at most.« According to Chakotay: »That asteroid should have been vaporized.« Furthermore is the size of that asteroid disputed.

But that is irrelevant because either way it does not give an upper limit for photon torpedoes. We know that the yield of photon torpedoes is adjustable. Their objective was to destroy the asteroid. Why should they have used a higher yield than necessary to achieve their objective by vaporizing the asteroid? (That it was not vaporized says nothing about their expectations and nothing about the yield of their photon torpedoes as this was not a normal asteroid)

[WATCH-MAN]

Incidentally, since you are very fond of using Graham Kennedy's work, I'll point you to this page where Mike demonstrates how very flawed Mr Kennedy's calculations are (not to mention demonstrating his less-than-stellar credentials. Hell, I'm better qualified to talk about this kinda stuff and I'm employed as a sodding intern).

That's nothing more than an argumentum ad hominem and a good indicator for a dishonest debater.

A honest debater wouldn't use such a genetic fallacy.

A honest debater would show where the calculations of Graham Kennedy, which were quoted by Treknobabble, are wrong.

Even if this Graham Kennedy were the most stupid person on Earth - the calculation which Treknobabble quoted could be correct nevertheless.

[WATCH-MAN]

well the thing is we should still see the effects on the planet. The mantle of a terrestial planet is both molten and constantly pushing up (well technically the crust is pushing downward but for this matter the effect is the same) so if the crust got signifigantly weaker it will crack and the mantle will start to spill over the crust as lava. In fact IIRC Venus has no regular volcanic activity so it's crust will crack when it internal pressure becomes too great and the mantle will spill over then cool down to become the new crust and repeat the process (obviously this takes alot of time to happen). the fact we don't see this lava is the problem.

Maybe you should read what was already written in that thread:

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 5#p3903255

You could save us all time.

[DaveJB]

Conclusion:

• • • • Either this planet is so unusual that we can not apply our standard understanding of how things are supposed to work
        
        • • • • or
        
        the planet has indeed - as you are saying - »a Venusian-type "pressure cooker" atmosphere« and the area in which Kira was »able to walk around and breath unprotected« was somehow protected from that »Venusian-type "pressure cooker" atmosphere« and somehow a habitable area (for visitors as the Vorta and the Jem'Hadar) was created.

If that's the route you want to go down, fine, but it's not one which is going to help you. In the lack of any nearby star, a Venusian atmosphere would not be able to exist (regardless of any M-class "safe zone" that was created), as most of it would condense on the ground, leaving just a thin wisp surrounding the planet's surface. Needless to say, this residual atmosphere wouldn't even begin to obscure any huge crust-destroying explosions.

If your objective is to destroy the planet down to its core, you do not want that your bombs are exploding in the atmosphere. You want them to penetrate the crust as deep as possible to maximize their effect on the crust and to reach even the deepest bunker in which the Founders could find shelter.

Wrong. Bearing in mind that this was a sneak attack and they believed the Founders were unaware of it until their fleet arrived, the first thing you want to do is obliterate anything on the surface, taking out the Founder lake, along with any possible weapon placements or Jem'Hadar squads on the surface, and any equipment that the Founders might use to call for help. When that's done, then you move onto destroying any installations that might be buried deeper within the planet.

We do not know what weapons the Cardassian/Romulan attack fleet was armed with exactly. But we do know that even modified class-1 probes with torpedo casings are able to burrow beneath the surface to destroy perfectly aligned lattices of dilithium crystals, which is forming generator strata, which creates a piezoelectric effect and turn it into mechanical energy, which increases tectonic stresses, that tears the planet apart. We can assume that the weapons used - weapons specially build to destroy the planet down to its core - are able to penetrate the crust too. Underground explosion do not cause high-energy atmospheric detonations.

And the purpose of destroying huge underground sections of the planet's crust while leaving the surface unaffected would be... what, exactly? Bearing in mind that there were few if any above-ground structures, not only would this likely not kill the Founders on the surface, it'd likely even leave them plenty of time to call for help.

Besides, even if the Cardassians did have torpedoes capable of drilling deep into the Founder planet (something I'm pretty sure we've never seen any evidence for), the beam weapons and the Romulan plasma torpedoes would have still directly affected the surface, we should still see the effects of those.

Concerning his Rise-argument: As he said himself: »A single torp [was] expected to fragment a nickel-iron asteroid which is perhaps 100 metres across at most.« According to Chakotay: »That asteroid should have been vaporized.«

The pertinent quote is actually Harry Kim's statement that "We shouldn't be seeing fragments more than 1cm in diameter." If the asteroid really was vapourized, there shouldn't have been any fragments left of any description.

But that is irrelevant because either way it does not give an upper limit for photon torpedoes. We know that the yield of photon torpedoes is adjustable. Their objective was to destroy the asteroid. Why should they have used a higher yield than necessary to achieve their objective by vaporizing the asteroid? (That it was not vaporized says nothing about their expectations and nothing about the yield of their photon torpedoes as this was not a normal asteroid)

To flip that argument on its head, if they had the ability to completely vapourize the asteroid, why not do that? Why not ramp up the power and make sure to completely destroy any tougher and/or more dangerous elements that their initial scans might have missed?

[WATCH-MAN]

Conclusion:

• • • • Either this planet is so unusual that we can not apply our standard understanding of how things are supposed to work
        
        • • • • or
        
        the planet has indeed - as you are saying - »a Venusian-type "pressure cooker" atmosphere« and the area in which Kira was »able to walk around and breath unprotected« was somehow protected from that »Venusian-type "pressure cooker" atmosphere« and somehow a habitable area (for visitors as the Vorta and the Jem'Hadar) was created.

If that's the route you want to go down, fine, but it's not one which is going to help you. In the lack of any nearby star, a Venusian atmosphere would not be able to exist (regardless of any M-class "safe zone" that was created), as most of it would condense on the ground, leaving just a thin wisp surrounding the planet's surface. Needless to say, this residual atmosphere wouldn't even begin to obscure any huge crust-destroying explosions.

It's not that I want to go down that route. It's the problem the episode creates: We have a planet outside a star system, not orbiting a sun. And yet it has a cloud layer dense enough that we do not see the ground. And yet Kira was »able to walk around and breath unprotected« on its surface. To say that it is not possible doesn't solve the problem as it was shown to be possible. You are free to propose another alternative. But it has to be based on the shown facts from the episode.

If your objective is to destroy the planet down to its core, you do not want that your bombs are exploding in the atmosphere. You want them to penetrate the crust as deep as possible to maximize their effect on the crust and to reach even the deepest bunker in which the Founders could find shelter.

Wrong. Bearing in mind that this was a sneak attack and they believed the Founders were unaware of it until their fleet arrived, the first thing you want to do is obliterate anything on the surface, taking out the Founder lake, along with any possible weapon placements or Jem'Hadar squads on the surface, and any equipment that the Founders might use to call for help. When that's done, then you move onto destroying any installations that might be buried deeper within the planet.

You can achieve all that with underground explosions too as the surface of the planet is affected by them even more than by atmospheric detonations (compare e.g. underwater detonations, underground detonations and atmospheric detonations of nuclear weapon tests).

We do not know what weapons the Cardassian/Romulan attack fleet was armed with exactly. But we do know that even modified class-1 probes with torpedo casings are able to burrow beneath the surface to destroy perfectly aligned lattices of dilithium crystals, which is forming generator strata, which creates a piezoelectric effect and turn it into mechanical energy, which increases tectonic stresses, that tears the planet apart. We can assume that the weapons used - weapons specially build to destroy the planet down to its core - are able to penetrate the crust too. Underground explosion do not cause high-energy atmospheric detonations.

And the purpose of destroying huge underground sections of the planet's crust while leaving the surface unaffected would be... what, exactly? Bearing in mind that there were few if any above-ground structures, not only would this likely not kill the Founders on the surface, it'd likely even leave them plenty of time to call for help.

They did not intend to leave the surface unaffected.

Underground detonations do not leave the surface unaffected as long as they do not happen too deep under the surface. Such underground detonations can have an even more detrimental affect on the surface than atmospheric detonations.

Besides, even if the Cardassians did have torpedoes capable of drilling deep into the Founder planet (something I'm pretty sure we've never seen any evidence for),

When even a modified class-1 probe with a torpedo casing is able to burrow beneath the surface of a planet (compare the TNG episode Pen Pals), there is no reason to assume that the Cardassians and the Romulans are not able to build weapons for this purpose.

the beam weapons and the Romulan plasma torpedoes would have still directly affected the surface, we should still see the effects of those.

That was already addressed by Tripple:

• • • • Well, we know that "vaporization" in Star Trek means something different than converting a substance into vapour. As Dath Wong noted if that were the case every time a person was vapourized they would be turning into a large cloud of steam that would severely burn / kill anyone nearby. Instead, the person essentially disappears with practically no effect on the environment around them. The TNG TM states that the matter was basically exiting the universe, while Darth Wong suggests that the matter could be converted into neutrinos.
        
        In Star Trek shipboard weapons are basically just larger versions of hand weapons. Is it possible that they were doing the same thing to the crust in "the Die is Cast"? We wouldn't necessarily see the crust / mantle blowing up all over the place if the material was being "vaporized".

Concerning his Rise-argument: As he said himself: »A single torp [was] expected to fragment a nickel-iron asteroid which is perhaps 100 metres across at most.« According to Chakotay: »That asteroid should have been vaporized.«

The pertinent quote is actually Harry Kim's statement that "We shouldn't be seeing fragments more than 1cm in diameter." If the asteroid really was vapourized, there shouldn't have been any fragments left of any description.

I doubt that a totally vaporization is possible as the resulting expansion will blow the parts of the asteroid, that are nor already vaporized, apart. While it may be possible to vaporize most of it, it does not seem to be a contradiction to have a few fragments that were not vaporized.

But that is irrelevant because either way it does not give an upper limit for photon torpedoes. We know that the yield of photon torpedoes is adjustable. Their objective was to destroy the asteroid. Why should they have used a higher yield than necessary to achieve their objective by vaporizing the asteroid? (That it was not vaporized says nothing about their expectations and nothing about the yield of their photon torpedoes as this was not a normal asteroid)

To flip that argument on its head, if they had the ability to completely vapourize the asteroid, why not do that? Why not ramp up the power and make sure to completely destroy any tougher and/or more dangerous elements that their initial scans might have missed?

Why should they take a sledgehammer to crack a nut? To them the asteroid appeared to be a normal asteroid. They adjusted the yield of the photon torpedo to a level from which they expected that it is enough to vaporize the asteroid. Using a higher yield was not expedient.

It's always easy to argue ex post. But why should they have assumed that their scans of the asteroid may have missed something? It looked like a normal asteroid - it behaved like a normal asteroid - at least until it was shot upon - why assume that is was not a normal asteroid?

[DaveJB]

It's not that I want to go down that route. It's the problem the episode creates: We have a planet outside a star system, not orbiting a sun. And yet it has a cloud layer dense enough that we do not see the ground. And yet Kira was »able to walk around and breath unprotected« on its surface. To say that it is not possible doesn't solve the problem as it was shown to be possible. You are free to propose another alternative. But it has to be based on the shown facts from the episode.

Fair enough then, we'll use Occam's Razor and limit ourselves to established information. Kira was able to walk about and breath unaided on the surface, that's a clear observation. In addition, we have no direct evidence that the area where she, Odo and the Founders were occupying was somehow unique, and that the planet's atmosphere elsewhere was different. Ergo, the logical conclusion is that the planet was for all intents and purposes a normal Class-M planet, whose atmosphere would not obscure teraton+ level energy blasts.

You can achieve all that with underground explosions too as the surface of the planet is affected by them even more than by atmospheric detonations (compare e.g. underwater detonations, underground detonations and atmospheric detonations of nuclear weapon tests).

You still haven't proven that there were any subterranean detonations.

When even a modified class-1 probe with a torpedo casing is able to burrow beneath the surface of a planet (compare the TNG episode Pen Pals), there is no reason to assume that the Cardassians and the Romulans are not able to build weapons for this purpose.

You know what, I'm not even going to waste time arguing this one, because it's far from the biggest problem in this discussion. As pointed out earlier, if 30% of the crust in TDIC really was destroyed, then it should mean that one torpedo is capable of destroying thirty million cubic kilometres of rock. If photon torpedoes are really that powerful, why did Riker think they'd need the E-D's entire torpedo loadout to destroy the much smaller asteroid that contained the Pegasus?

That was already addressed by Tripple:

No, it wasn't. Firstly, it would only apply to phasers, photon (and plasma) torpedoes would still just result in huge explosions. Secondly, even if 30% of the planet's crust was just magicked out of existence, not only would this result in a far more visible disruption to the planet than what we actually see, the magma in the lower crust layers and/or mantle would burst free, something that would easily be visible from orbit.

I doubt that a totally vaporization is possible as the resulting expansion will blow the parts of the asteroid, that are nor already vaporized, apart. While it may be possible to vaporize most of it, it does not seem to be a contradiction to have a few fragments that were not vaporized.

You're right, it's not possible for a photon torpedo to do that... because they're not powerful enough. If the asteroid in "Rise" were 200m wide (on the upper end of most estimates) it would take just shy of 60 megatons to cause the entire thing to vaporize fast enough that no solid fragment remains. Photon torpedoes are supposed to have a yield of around 64 megatons, but due to the explosion not being directed and inefficiencies in the M/AM annihilation process, it would never direct enough of that energy into the asteroid to result in total vapourization.

It's always easy to argue ex post. But why should they have assumed that their scans of the asteroid may have missed something? It looked like a normal asteroid - it behaved like a normal asteroid - at least until it was shot upon - why assume that is was not a normal asteroid?

Why take the risk that there was something hazardous? We've seen in TNG that harmful exotic elements can be missed in sensor scans of apparently normal asteroids.

But quite aside from all that, in order for the episode's dialogue to be consistent with TDIC, it would mean that they decided to fire their torpedo at approximately 0.00000001% of it's maximum potential yield. You really think that's a more reasonable explanation than "their torpedoes are powerful enough to blow it into small fragments, but not enough to totally vapourize it?"

[Eternal_Freedom]

Incidentally, since you are very fond of using Graham Kennedy's work, I'll point you to this page where Mike demonstrates how very flawed Mr Kennedy's calculations are (not to mention demonstrating his less-than-stellar credentials. Hell, I'm better qualified to talk about this kinda stuff and I'm employed as a sodding intern).

That's nothing more than an argumentum ad hominem and a good indicator for a dishonest debater.

A honest debater wouldn't use such a genetic fallacy.

A honest debater would show where the calculations of Graham Kennedy, which were quoted by Treknobabble, are wrong.

Even if this Graham Kennedy were the most stupid person on Earth - the calculation which Treknobabble quoted could be correct nevertheless.

Actually, if you read the page, Mike does show why the calculations are dubious at best. I mention the credentials thing as a side-note, to demonstrate that we can't just take what he's said at face value without at least checking it for consistency first.

[Treknobabble]

Sometimes you want a hand grenade, and sometimes you want an ICBM. But under normal tactical and strategic circumstances, you'll prefer the hand grenade in order to avoid collateral damage, injury to the launcher (especially at relatively short ranges), and political repercussions.

As a matter of fact, I can't think of any situation other than "we want to destroy the surface of a planet," "we want to destroy something that's already vapor," or "we want to destroy something that isn't a planet but is nonetheless as durable as one" where you would want to use more than a few milligrams of Star Trek: The Original Series (TM) brand antimatter.

Many situations int he Dominion War are decidedly not "normal tactical circumstances." The Federation is fighting a war that they were losing. They knew that massive Dominion reinforcements were arriving imminently unless they stopped them. They would have had literally nothing to lose by using one of these uber-weapons to take out the Dominion/Cardassian fleet that intercepted them prior to reaching DS9. Even if the Dominion responded in kind, well, the Federation was already facing destruction (including the elimination of Earth). Nothing to lose, everything to gain, and yet no superweapon is used. It takes a literal divine intervention to save their asses.

I disagree on the "nothing to lose" bit. Using this sort of weapon places the firing ship in nearly as much danger as the target ship. This is the "backscatter" issue.

Moreover, once the Federation starts doing it, the Dominion can see it as "fair play" to use planetary bombardment weapons as ship-to-ship weapons. And then the Federation is right back where it started, except that it's losing ships even faster.

By your logic, if a nation is losing a war against another nation with superior numbers of airplanes, they should reprogram their air-to-surface missiles and start using them as air-to-air missiles. Such a move would be understandable if the other nation were fielding, say, Trieskelion-esque flying aircraft carriers. But it doesn't make nearly as much sense when dealing with plain old airplanes.

By your logic, we should also have expected nuclear weapons development to have peaked with the Tsar Bomb, or continued in that direction. Instead, we saw a reduction of nuclear weapon yields and an increase in precision.

There are a million possible trade-offs that would make it a bad idea to use heavy weapons of this sort in anything but the most dire of circumstances - merely being outnumbered is insufficient. The use of inordinate force is always a bad idea.

For that matter, given that these supposed superweapons use only some TOS-Brand Antimatter, not some specialised, highly classified technology, why don't the Breen use them when attackign Earth? Their intent was to cause as much damage as possible. The aftermath shows San Francisco and STarfleet Headquarters heavily damaged but still recogniseable. If the Breen had used this uber-antimatter ther wouldn't even be a North America left.

Well, this brings up how much uber-antimatter can actually fit in a torpedo. The TNG manual suggests 1.5 kg, but that's not a canonical figure. It could actually be closer to 1.5 mg, bringing the maximum yield of a photon torpedo down from the petaton level to the gigaton level - which is consistent with what we see in TDIC.

There's also the question of how effectively the Breen managed to implement their attack. Sure, they wanted to do as much damage as they could, but did Star Fleet let them? According to Memory Alpha, the Breen met with stiff resistance and had most of their attack fleet destroyed. It seems entirely reasonable to think that the damage they were capable of doing far exceeded the damage that they actually managed to do.

All very interesting stuff. All of it probably impossible. All of it arbitrary. And all of it canonical, as far as I can tell.

Probably impossible? All of those are definitively impossible (or contradictory, int he case of the in-system warp or the beaming through shields). And I know what you'll say, "oh but ST clearly has different physics since they have FTL etc." Yeah they do. But travelling at infinite speed (or having a "crack" in an event horizon) is beyond physically impossible, it's mathematically impossible as well.

I never claimed that it was anything but total BS. I merely claimed it was canon.

In case my name didn't tip you off, I don't think very highly of ST when it comes to scientific/mathematical/logical accuracy. There are inaccuracies and contradictions, but they are canonical inaccuracies and contradictions, so we either attempt to harmonize or we shrug and move on. Which do you prefer?

Hence, we cannot take dialogue at face value. The accepted convention, when trying derive values from SF, is that we treat is as a "documentary" of sorts of something that happened, hence the visuals are the things that actually happen whilst dialogue is made by humans (and other creatures) which are inherently fallible, is subject to interpretation, hyperbole etc.

I suppose that therein lies our fundamental disagreement. While Mr. Kennedy offered reasons to think that, in this case, the figures reported in the dialogue can be considered accurate, there is a deeper reason to take the dialogue at face value: these aren't documentaries of an alternate universe, they are attempts at telling a story. I don't see how treating a story as a "fictional documentary" (whatever that could even mean), how treating it as something that it neither is nor was intended to be, can give us "the truth" about what it depicts (whatever that could even mean).

Um, because what we see happening is some idiot special effects technician's attempt to depict what the screenwriters put in the script in the first place?

The script is usually what the special effects people use to figure out what they're going to make. You don't have animators making stuff that "looks cool" and then have the screenwriters try and come up with episodes around that. At least, not unless the makers of Star Trek are even more incompetent than we already know that they are.

See above. We don't treat it as a TV show for the purpose of deriving numbers, but as a visual record of what actually happened.

So you're saying that treating a story as something other than a story helps us find out what the story is about?!

Smartass. You try taking a cubic metre of, say, polystyrene or wood or any solid, break it into pieces, and then try and fit it back into a cubic metre volume again. It doesn't work. We should see some evidence.

Sure, it won't fit in the same volume. But from space, you won't be able to tell much of a difference between a solid block with a volume of a cubic meter and a pile of fragments with a volume of two cubic meters.

Incidentally, if it were only shattered, not melted or vaporised, that would take less energy than melting or vaporising would. What assumptions did Mr Kennedy make for his calculations? Did he assume "destroyed" to mean "shattered, melted, vaporised?" Because that will severely effect the numbers.

The 24 giagaton figure came from the assumption that "30% of the crust was destroyed" meant "30% of the planet's surface was set on fire, and the 10 torpedoes we saw fired only did 10% of the damage."

Using Lovok's damage predictions, and assuming that "destroying the crust and mantle in six hours" means "vaproizing the crust and mantle by discharging 250 torpedoes from every ship," Mr. Kennedy calculates a figure of 20 petatons per torpedo.

You can go to his site to check his math. I think we can both agree that the former figure is probably closer to the truth than the latter figure.

Now for a rehash of some calculations I've presented.

Using what we see, and assuming that the lightly colored rings are visible shock fronts, we can be fairly certain that "widespread destruction" occurred over a radius of at least 300 km. Which gives us a value of 100 gigatons per torpedo/beam.

Using Lovok's damage predictions, and assuming that "destroying the crust in one hour" means "melting the crust in one hour, we can calculate a "middle ground" figure. It takes 7,000 petatons to melt the entire crust, and one hour is 3600 seconds, so the combined fleet has a firepower of about 2 petatons per second. There are ~20 ships in the fleet, so we get a figure of 0.1 petatons per ship per second, aka 100 teratons per ship per second. Assuming 50% of that comes from beam weapons, we get a figure of 50 teratons per ship per second from torpedoes. We'll assume that these ships have abnormally large complements of torpedoes (aka, not limited to 250 like most Federation vessels), and thus can afford to fire torpedoes at a rate of ten per second. This gives us a value of 5 teratons per torpedo.

So, using conservative calculations based on the dialogue and the images, we get figures of 24 gigatons per torpedo. Using "mid range" calculations based on the images alone, we get a figure of 100 gigatons per torpedo. And using high-end calculations based on Lovok's lines alone, we get a figure of 5 teratons per torpedo. Conclusion: ST ships have access to multiple-gigaton weaponry.

Perhaps you should write the producers and see if you can't get some kind of explanation? It would be quite entertaining to see them try and dodge the issue.

That being said, there's no reason to think that we'd be able to see the glow from kilometers in orbit during the daytime. Maybe there were clouds. Maybe the strike made clouds that fogged up our view of the ground. Maybe these are underwater strikes. Maybe a million things, but whatever the maybes may be we are explicitly and unambiguously told that 30% of the planet's crust was destroyed.

Unless the atmosphere is absurdly freaky (which it can't be, since we see Kira walking around with no pressure suit/breathing gear) we would be able to notice if 30% of the crust were suddenly melted. That much energy has to go somewhere. Since it says 30% of the crust, not just the surface, then you're talking millions of cubic km of rock suddenly becoming molten. It should surge upwards or outwards. It does not, ergo the "unambiguously stated number" is wrong.

Torpedoes, at any rate, are more than capable of penetrating deep through solid rock. The crust could be destroyed from the bottom up, and "ripples" of magma showing through a now shattered crust would be an entirely reasonable thing to expect to see - and would also be very much consistent with what we did, in fact, see. The end product would be an ocean of magma with "icebergs" of solid rock floating on top. Crust destroyed? Yes. Consistency with visuals? Yes, just like any of the dozen other conditions I've listed.

By this point, it should be obvious that the visuals are *extremely* open to interpretation. We could have ripples through the clouds, visible shock fronts scouring the surface clean, underwater explosions causing expanding rings of steam, or even ripples traveling through an ocean of magma with shattered "rockbergs" floating on top. Given the plethora of different things would could actually be seeing, why not use the dialogue as a guide to figure out what's actually being shown?

From hundreds of kilometers up? Beyond the shockwaves we already saw running through the crust/ocean surface/atmosphere?

Um, yeah, we're talking about dumping petatons worth of energy into the planet's surface. It's going to have a noticeable effect.

Realistically, we're talking weapons with high-gigaton or low-teraton yields here. 100 gigatons per strike could easily produce the effect we saw if any of the suggestions I've made thus far hold true.

I really don't have anything to say in response to the uberbeam problem, other than "there's already a long list of questions and inconsistencies."

That isn't an answer, sunshine. That long list of questions and inconsistencies is something that you, in claiming these uberweapons, have to answer or concede.

Well, "waaah, stop making me look at pictures when we're discussing visual media," is pretty tempting as well, but I want you to take the dialogue seriously so I'll do my best to grapple with the visuals.

Unfortunately, my best happens to be "concede the point with some semblance of dignity."

What are you conceding exactly?

I'm conceding that TDIC indicates that beam weapons, as well as torpedoes, can be dialed up to have multi-gigaton yields if we take the dialogue seriously. Nothing more.

Now, if the ships really run on TOS-brand antimatter, presumably they have high enough power outputs to put that much energy into the beams. And the considerations of why low-yield weapons would be preferable to high-yield weapons under most ship-to-ship combat conditions also apply to beam weapons.

First and foremost, I have already given reasons why weapons with very high yields would not be used in ordinary ship to ship combat, which in turn provides us the reason why ship shields are not made to deal with the ludicrous amounts of energy produced by even miniscule charges of Star Trek: The Original Series (TM) brand antimatter.

Except those reasons don't apply in the exceptional circumstances we see in the series. Like the batte to re-take DS9, which was a "do or die" for the Federation. Or the Breen attack on Earth. Or the final attack on Cardassia, where deploying such weapons would have won them the final battle decisively.

I'm working through Sun Tzu's The Art of War, and if anything is obvious, it's that the use of excessive force is always a very last resort. Getting your enemy to surrender without completely demolishing their infrastructure and economy is the ideal situation. Getting them to surrender without even fighting? Best of all. With that in mind, let's look at some general principles.

Using this online calculator: http://www.5596.org/cgi-bin/nuke.php

We can determine that a 5 teraton charge can cause impulsive shock damage to hull material with a 50 kJ/mol heat of fusion and a 950 kJ/mol heat of vaporization (substantially better performance than tungsten) at distances of over 1000 km, and a 40 petaton "Kirk bomb" can do so at distances of over 100,000 km. Gigaton charges would be less dangerous, but would still be nothing to be trifled with.

So, generally speaking, you don't want to use a teraton charge when dealing with anything within 1000 km, because that places your ship at risk. You also don't want to use a teraton charge when dealing with anything within 1000 km of any of the following: friendly units, enemy structures that would be valuable if taken intact, planets that you intend to colonize or control, etc. Moreover, if you use a teraton charge in a certain situation, your enemies might think, "say, why don't we start doing the same thing?" and then you're screwed as soon as the shoe ends up on the other foot. And even if you're okay with that, you probably won't be okay with being charged with war crimes, which is a legitimate possibility depending on the specifics of the situation. In short, if there is an option aside from using a teraton charge, you want to use that option.

So, in the situations you mention, we can determine the following.

If you want to take a station, you don't want to set off teraton or petaton explosive charges anywhere near it.

The Breen attack appears to have been dramatically less effective than it could have been, yes. But if their goal wasn't complete annihilation but rather demoralization, they did things exactly right.

In the final battle of Cardassia, most ship-to-ship combat was at very close range, making teraton-yield weapons as dangerous to the firing ship as they were to the target. As for the planet itself, the large numbers of friendly forces would make the use of teraton weapons in an orbital bombardment counterproductive.

So the Dominion doesn't start doing the exact same thing.

Again, the Federation were already losing the war. They had nothing to gain by holding back on using such weapons.

Save, of course, suddenly starting to lose the war even faster than before.

Sure, the first time. Every time after that, the only determining factor in a fleet engagement is "which side lands the first blow," because you can be damn sure that the dominion is capable of doing the exact same thing.

Hmm...the Dominion military strategy is "we massively outnumber them and can rapidly replace losses, the Federation can't." These weapons would be ideal for the Dominion to use since it allows them to even more massively outnumber their opponents. Hell, they should be using them on kamikaze missions to take out starbases and shipyards. We don't see them do this.

If the Dominion were the Empire, they probably would have. But it looks like the Dominion thought like Sun Tzu and figured that doing less physical damage and relying on psychological warfare would be far more beneficial for them in the long run. Just like any real-world military would.

To avoid giving the Borg good/bad ideas. You don't want an already tough to deal with enemy assimilating the idea of using weapons meant for planetary bombardment in regular old ship-to-ship combat.

As with the Dominion examples I listed above, the Federation has little to gain from holding back such powerful weapons against such threats. The Borg might start using such weapons as well. So what? If the Borg came in force the Federation would be fucked anyway. Again, they have no reason not to use such weapons.

Except, of course, to avoid being even more screwed than they already are.

For that matter, why didn't the Borg try using such uberweapons against Species 8472? We saw in Scorpion Part 1 that regular Borg weapons can damage the bioships, so logically a supertorpedo should at least do more damage. But again, no such weapon is deployed or mentioned.

Is it really so hard to see that mutually assured destruction could be just as effective a deterrent in the twenty-fourth century as it was in the twentieth? When it comes down to it, it's a damn good thing that nobody uses a tactical nuke to do what could just as easily be done with a hand grenade.

Fair enough, but seeing as the 5000 g accelerations the X-wings undergo don't result in the splattering of their pilots, it seems that Star Wars has "inertial dampeners" of some kind as well. And, from the perspective of physics, an "inertial dampener" just is a "mass lightener."

Um, no. An inertial dampener is meant to reduce the acceleration felt by the crew to tolerable levels, presumably through some application of artificial gravity. It does not affect the mass of the ship. "Mass lightening" is a distinct technology apparently using subspace fields of some form to lower the effective mass that the engines have to move, which is a different thing entirely.

There are two ways that the effective mass of a starship can be decreased: one, production of exotic matter that has negative mass; two, production of a gravitational effect that allows some portion of the ship's acceleration to feel like free fall.

Exotic matter would be effectively impossible to move with the ship (it moves in the opposite direction of whatever force is applied to it), and would require the production of an equal amount of positive matter as well (otherwise we break the law of conservation of energy). The latter, if merely dumped, would be extremely inefficient. If carried along with the ship, it undoes any advantage gained from having produced the exotic matter in the first place.

From this, we can conclude that lowering the effective mass of the starship just is producing some kind of gravitational effect, and this entails that inertial dampening and mass lightening, at the very least, share the same mechanism.

At any rate, according to modern physics, inertia = mass = energy = the stuff that makes gravity. Manipulating any one just is manipulating all of the others.

1) when it comes to power output, even a single GW would be capable of roasting a ship that size with that amount of surface area. As a matter of fact, any space ship capable of doing interesting things that lacks blatantly obvious radiators would be thus roasted.
2) In the OP, I made a point of noting that the "physically impossible" is par for the course in Trek. Is it bullshit? Yeah, pretty obviously so. The problem is that being bullshit doesn't disqualify it for being canon. This applies to everything from "Obsession" to "Warp 10" to "beaming with shields" to "12.75 billion GW" to "Hi, our spaceship is pressurized all over!"
3) Amphibians may not be fish, but it's pretty hard to define a fish clade that doesn't include everything with a backbone using methods that modern taxonomists like. Same goes for reptiles and things that have four legs. That's no excuse for Data having a complete positronic brain fart, though.
4) Finally, (and most importantly) however questionable the dialogue may be, the special effects were based on it. That means that the the special effects, far from giving us something solid to hold onto, are just yet another layer of unreliability.

1. That really doesn't answer or explain anything, it just handwaves it. Either a) the ship does not generate that much power while idling or b) it is dumping a huge amount of waste energy somewhere (subspace most likely). Option B is absurd, because no-one would build a ship that wastes so much power.

Or maybe it just takes that much energy to produce a subspace field sufficient to maintain artificial gravity throughout the ship. Generating gravitational effects is extremely energy intensive, no matter how much help you're getting from subspace.

2. Waving "wah, it's canon" doesn't help, since the visuals are also canon. One is inconsistent with the other. You chose to favour the dialogue, I (and this site) favour the visuals as something we can actually measure and derive numbers from.

The visuals are canon, but so is the dialogue. Since the visuals were, presumably, based on the dialogue, and since we can never be 100% what we're looking at (your eyes can fool you very easily, google "optical illusions"), but we can be 100% sure of what was said, it seems that dialogue should trump visuals.

3. I'm not going to comment on, since it was simply another example of the ST dialogue being utter bollocks.

No, STAR TREK ITSELF is utter bollocks. Dialogue, visuals, all of it. The same goes for Star Wars. There is no subspace, there is no hyperspace, there is no such thing as a "phaser" or a "turbolaser," Alderan and Vulcan are complete fiction, etc. We deal with it, or we spend our time debating something else.

4. Again, this goes with a different approach. But again, since the visual effects are also canon, and one disagrees with the other, we have no choice but to chose dialogue or effects to base our estimates on. This site uses effects, because it's what we "see" happening in-universe.

We can never be sure of what we're seeing. What we see is open to interpretation. What is said is far less ambiguous.

You can argue that the special effects people did a bad job depicting 30% of the planet's crust being destroyed, but you can't argue that they depicted something entirely different for the simple reason that we are told that that's precisely what they depicted. Did they do a crappy job of depicting it? Yes. Did they depict something else? No.

You also seem to have quietly ignored my comments about the dialogue being flawed since the very same scene implies their sensors are being fooled. The stated effects not only a) don't match the visual damage but b) don't match their own, unambiguously stated predictions. Ergo, what they state as happening is not what is actually occurring.

I've already dealt with these points, but I'll reiterate what Mr. Kennedy had to say:

It has been claimed by some that the damage projections made by Lovok were a lie and that the damage done to the planet was an illusion generated by the Founders. However, these claims make little sense. There seems to be no reason for Lovok to tell such a lie - it doesn't gain the Founders anything to have Tain and Garak think that the attack will be ten or a hundred times faster than it really would or could be. And even a basic knowledge of military technology on the part of Tain or Garak would have been enough to allow them to see through such a lie, putting the Founder's whole plot at risk. Simulating planetary scale damage would also be a difficult and pointless business. Immense fireball explosions and atmospheric shock waves are clearly visible on the surface of the planet; simulating these would involve holographic projections covering hundreds of millions of square kilometres! And what would it accomplish? The fleet was already in the Founder's trap at this point, the Jem'Hadar were moments away from launching their attack, so making Tain and co. think that their attack was succeeding is pointless.

You never dealt with these points, so I'll wait for your answer to Mr. Kennedy before I add anything of my own.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Many situations int he Dominion War are decidedly not "normal tactical circumstances." The Federation is fighting a war that they were losing. They knew that massive Dominion reinforcements were arriving imminently unless they stopped them. They would have had literally nothing to lose by using one of these uber-weapons to take out the Dominion/Cardassian fleet that intercepted them prior to reaching DS9. Even if the Dominion responded in kind, well, the Federation was already facing destruction (including the elimination of Earth). Nothing to lose, everything to gain, and yet no superweapon is used. It takes a literal divine intervention to save their asses.

I disagree on the "nothing to lose" bit. Using this sort of weapon places the firing ship in nearly as much danger as the target ship. This is the "backscatter" issue.

Moreover, once the Federation starts doing it, the Dominion can see it as "fair play" to use planetary bombardment weapons as ship-to-ship weapons. And then the Federation is right back where it started, except that it's losing ships even faster.

Since you are so fond of "unambiguous statements" made in dialogue, look at what Admiral Ross had to say: "Of those ships come through the wormhole, we're finished." Unambiguously, definitively, the Federation knew it would lose if they did not stop those reinforcements. There is literally no reason not to use them. Even if the Dominon responds in kind they would have obliterated a major Dominion force and bought time to shore up their defences and build more ships and weapons.

By your logic, if a nation is losing a war against another nation with superior numbers of airplanes, they should reprogram their air-to-surface missiles and start using them as air-to-air missiles. Such a move would be understandable if the other nation were fielding, say, Trieskelion-esque flying aircraft carriers. But it doesn't make nearly as much sense when dealing with plain old airplanes.

By your logic, we should also have expected nuclear weapons development to have peaked with the Tsar Bomb, or continued in that direction. Instead, we saw a reduction of nuclear weapon yields and an increase in precision.

This is an absurd analogy, but I'll run with it. If th losing nation's air to ground weapons were nukes that could be used to destroy many enemy aircraft with one proximity blast, and it would be destroyed if it did not stop those planes, then yes, I would fully expect it to take such an action.

As for the Tsar Bomba bit. Yes, we never went past that (or even came close to that ield in operational weapons) but that's because we didn't need to. If we suddenly faced an existential threat that required a 100-megaton nuke to stop, we would build one, becuase the alternative is being destroyed. Did you even watch the Dominon War episodes? Everyone involved knew that the Federation would be shattered, divided and oppressed for generations if the Dominion were triumphant. That constitutes an existential threat and it would be perfectly reasonable to break out every stashed superweapon they had. Hell, Section 31 resorted to biological warfare in order to eliminate the enemy, because it was that grave a threat.

There are a million possible trade-offs that would make it a bad idea to use heavy weapons of this sort in anything but the most dire of circumstances - merely being outnumbered is insufficient. The use of inordinate force is always a bad idea.

Again, these were the most dire of circumstances...go and watch the gods-damned episode.

For that matter, given that these supposed superweapons use only some TOS-Brand Antimatter, not some specialised, highly classified technology, why don't the Breen use them when attackign Earth? Their intent was to cause as much damage as possible. The aftermath shows San Francisco and STarfleet Headquarters heavily damaged but still recogniseable. If the Breen had used this uber-antimatter ther wouldn't even be a North America left.

Well, this brings up how much uber-antimatter can actually fit in a torpedo. The TNG manual suggests 1.5 kg, but that's not a canonical figure. It could actually be closer to 1.5 mg, bringing the maximum yield of a photon torpedo down from the petaton level to the gigaton level - which is consistent with what we see in TDIC.

There's also the question of how effectively the Breen managed to implement their attack. Sure, they wanted to do as much damage as they could, but did Star Fleet let them? According to Memory Alpha, the Breen met with stiff resistance and had most of their attack fleet destroyed. It seems entirely reasonable to think that the damage they were capable of doing far exceeded the damage that they actually managed to do.

We see the aftermath, San Francisco clearly took a hit from a nuke-equivalent weapon, probably megaton-range given the damage (depending on where it detonated), or it took a massive bombardment of conventional-explosive-equivalent weaponry. If the Breen had access to this uber-antimatter, even one hit should have caused FAR more damage than what we see. Even using a mg of your supposed uber-antimatter and a 1.5 gigaton yield, we should not still see recogniseable buildings and bridges.

And on the TM, it's canonical unless directly contradicted by the relevant series - TNG or DS9. Since neither show states how much antimatter is included (whether normal or super-duper-magic antimatter) we have no reason to discount it, especially since the figure is roughly consistent with almost every other torpedo firepower example we have.

Probably impossible? All of those are definitively impossible (or contradictory, int he case of the in-system warp or the beaming through shields). And I know what you'll say, "oh but ST clearly has different physics since they have FTL etc." Yeah they do. But travelling at infinite speed (or having a "crack" in an event horizon) is beyond physically impossible, it's mathematically impossible as well.

I never claimed that it was anything but total BS. I merely claimed it was canon.

In case my name didn't tip you off, I don't think very highly of ST when it comes to scientific/mathematical/logical accuracy. There are inaccuracies and contradictions, but they are canonical inaccuracies and contradictions, so we either attempt to harmonize or we shrug and move on. Which do you prefer?

I would prefer you employ some reason in your arguments. For the TDiC incident, we have two possibilities, either the dialogue is accurate and 30% of the crust is destroyed/melted/whatever, in which case the Romulan/Cardassian spy organisations have access to weapons far more powerful than displayed by the respective militaries and aren't used in any other situation no matter how useful they would have been or, more reasonably, we accept that their sensors etc are being fooled and the damage inflicted is substantially less than what is claimed.

Hence, we cannot take dialogue at face value. The accepted convention, when trying derive values from SF, is that we treat is as a "documentary" of sorts of something that happened, hence the visuals are the things that actually happen whilst dialogue is made by humans (and other creatures) which are inherently fallible, is subject to interpretation, hyperbole etc.

I suppose that therein lies our fundamental disagreement. While Mr. Kennedy offered reasons to think that, in this case, the figures reported in the dialogue can be considered accurate, there is a deeper reason to take the dialogue at face value: these aren't documentaries of an alternate universe, they are attempts at telling a story. I don't see how treating a story as a "fictional documentary" (whatever that could even mean), how treating it as something that it neither is nor was intended to be, can give us "the truth" about what it depicts (whatever that could even mean).

I dunno where you're getting "fictional documentary" as a term from, that isn't what I said. For the purposes of deriving numbers, we treat the visuals as, well, a visual record of an event. Exactly the same way you might watch video footage of, say, the Battle of Jutland (if such footage existed, to my knowledge it does not) and then attempt to calculate the power of the magazine explosions that totalled the British battlecruisers.

See above. We don't treat it as a TV show for the purpose of deriving numbers, but as a visual record of what actually happened.

So you're saying that treating a story as something other than a story helps us find out what the story is about?!

Since the entire purpose of these debates is to determine which fictional universe would win in a contest neither universe's creator imagined, then no, treating the series/films etc as records of events that can be measured and quantified doesn't tell us anything about "what the story is about." Because we aren't trying to delve into what the stories are about. We're trying to quantify numbers so we can see who "wins." Tell me, does the yield of a photon torpedo, or a turbolaser, in any way affect what ST or SW is "about?" Does it have impact on the themes of exploration, human development, good vs evil and so on? Of course it fucking doesn't.

But that's a very ncie red herring you have there.

Smartass. You try taking a cubic metre of, say, polystyrene or wood or any solid, break it into pieces, and then try and fit it back into a cubic metre volume again. It doesn't work. We should see some evidence.

Sure, it won't fit in the same volume. But from space, you won't be able to tell much of a difference between a solid block with a volume of a cubic meter and a pile of fragments with a volume of two cubic meters.

Actually, with modern satellite imagery, we could tell the difference between those two. But in this case, if 30% of the crust has just doubled in volume and fragmented, we'd notice that. Not least because we would see material from the mantle suddenly bursting to the surface, as the solid shell of rock is no longer holding it in place. It'd be like a supervolcano covering 30% of the planet's surface.

The 24 giagaton figure came from the assumption that "30% of the crust was destroyed" meant "30% of the planet's surface was set on fire, and the 10 torpedoes we saw fired only did 10% of the damage."

Using Lovok's damage predictions, and assuming that "destroying the crust and mantle in six hours" means "vaproizing the crust and mantle by discharging 250 torpedoes from every ship," Mr. Kennedy calculates a figure of 20 petatons per torpedo.

You can go to his site to check his math. I think we can both agree that the former figure is probably closer to the truth than the latter figure.

Now for a rehash of some calculations I've presented.

Using what we see, and assuming that the lightly colored rings are visible shock fronts, we can be fairly certain that "widespread destruction" occurred over a radius of at least 300 km. Which gives us a value of 100 gigatons per torpedo/beam.

Using Lovok's damage predictions, and assuming that "destroying the crust in one hour" means "melting the crust in one hour, we can calculate a "middle ground" figure. It takes 7,000 petatons to melt the entire crust, and one hour is 3600 seconds, so the combined fleet has a firepower of about 2 petatons per second. There are ~20 ships in the fleet, so we get a figure of 0.1 petatons per ship per second, aka 100 teratons per ship per second. Assuming 50% of that comes from beam weapons, we get a figure of 50 teratons per ship per second from torpedoes. We'll assume that these ships have abnormally large complements of torpedoes (aka, not limited to 250 like most Federation vessels), and thus can afford to fire torpedoes at a rate of ten per second. This gives us a value of 5 teratons per torpedo.

So, using conservative calculations based on the dialogue and the images, we get figures of 24 gigatons per torpedo. Using "mid range" calculations based on the images alone, we get a figure of 100 gigatons per torpedo. And using high-end calculations based on Lovok's lines alone, we get a figure of 5 teratons per torpedo. Conclusion: ST ships have access to multiple-gigaton weaponry.

What is your source for the 7,000 petatons to melt the crust in an hour figure?

And again, even if we accept this conclusion (and I, as yet, do not. But I do appreciate you using actual numbers) why aren't such weapons used elsewhere? This is what it keeps coming back to. The firepower apparently displayed here is so wildly inconsistent with what we see everywhere else (outside one one TOS example) that it boggles the mind that this is the one and only use anyone in the Alpha Quadrant could find for them.

Perhaps you should write the producers and see if you can't get some kind of explanation? It would be quite entertaining to see them try and dodge the issue.

That being said, there's no reason to think that we'd be able to see the glow from kilometers in orbit during the daytime. Maybe there were clouds. Maybe the strike made clouds that fogged up our view of the ground. Maybe these are underwater strikes. Maybe a million things, but whatever the maybes may be we are explicitly and unambiguously told that 30% of the planet's crust was destroyed.

Unless the atmosphere is absurdly freaky (which it can't be, since we see Kira walking around with no pressure suit/breathing gear) we would be able to notice if 30% of the crust were suddenly melted. That much energy has to go somewhere. Since it says 30% of the crust, not just the surface, then you're talking millions of cubic km of rock suddenly becoming molten. It should surge upwards or outwards. It does not, ergo the "unambiguously stated number" is wrong.

Torpedoes, at any rate, are more than capable of penetrating deep through solid rock. The crust could be destroyed from the bottom up, and "ripples" of magma showing through a now shattered crust would be an entirely reasonable thing to expect to see - and would also be very much consistent with what we did, in fact, see. The end product would be an ocean of magma with "icebergs" of solid rock floating on top. Crust destroyed? Yes. Consistency with visuals? Yes, just like any of the dozen other conditions I've listed.[/quote]

No, not consistent with visuals, since we don't see an ocean of magma formed. We don't see anything like "ripples" of magma. In fact, we only ever see the effects of the bombardment on the viewscreen, which is fed by sensor data, and it's clearly stated the sensors are being fooled.

By this point, it should be obvious that the visuals are *extremely* open to interpretation. We could have ripples through the clouds, visible shock fronts scouring the surface clean, underwater explosions causing expanding rings of steam, or even ripples traveling through an ocean of magma with shattered "rockbergs" floating on top. Given the plethora of different things would could actually be seeing, why not use the dialogue as a guide to figure out what's actually being shown?

Because none of those suggestions actually match the 30% figure? Seriously, look it up, those shockwaves, or whatever they are, don't cover anywhere near 30% of the surface. 10-15% at most at a rough estimate.

Um, yeah, we're talking about dumping petatons worth of energy into the planet's surface. It's going to have a noticeable effect.

Realistically, we're talking weapons with high-gigaton or low-teraton yields here. 100 gigatons per strike could easily produce the effect we saw if any of the suggestions I've made thus far hold true.

That's a big if.

What are you conceding exactly?

I'm conceding that TDIC indicates that beam weapons, as well as torpedoes, can be dialed up to have multi-gigaton yields if we take the dialogue seriously. Nothing more.

Now, if the ships really run on TOS-brand antimatter, presumably they have high enough power outputs to put that much energy into the beams. And the considerations of why low-yield weapons would be preferable to high-yield weapons under most ship-to-ship combat conditions also apply to beam weapons.

Except having the beam weapons be that powerful raises even more inconsistencies and problems. Namely, if the beam weapons can be made just as powerful as a torpedo, why bother with torpedoes and their limited ammunition at all? It also means that they would have a lot more power for their shields (they would have to, in order to survive this uberbeams) which means that the incident where the shields are exposed to easily quantifiable energies (the E-D in a star's corona for instance) would also be wrong, IF they had beams equal in power to these supertorpedoes, then they must b able to generate that much power for the beam weapons, which means they have that much power available for the shields (since they order "divert power from weapons to shields" or vice versa countless times), which means they should survive for MUCH longer in the corona then they actually can.

It also means they must either use this super-antimatter as fuel or carry a lot more conventional antimatter. Either way, when we see ships suffer containment breaches, we should see much larger explosions than we do (the various Galaxy class ships exploding for example, or the USS Saratoga at Wolf 359).

I'm working through Sun Tzu's The Art of War, and if anything is obvious, it's that the use of excessive force is always a very last resort. Getting your enemy to surrender without completely demolishing their infrastructure and economy is the ideal situation. Getting them to surrender without even fighting? Best of all.

Geuss what, the battle sen in "Sacrifice of Angels" is their fucking last resort. Admiral Ross clearly and unambiguously states that if those reinforcements arrive "we're finished." That sounds like a last resort to me. If that isn't a last resort, what is? The Jem'Hadar marching over the Golden Gate bridge?

At that point in the war, the Federation was settling for "will it let us survive a bit longer?" They weren't going for an "Ideal, win-the-war-in-one-go" battle. It was to stop them getting curbstomped.

With that in mind, let's look at some general principles.
Using this online calculator: http://www.5596.org/cgi-bin/nuke.php

We can determine that a 5 teraton charge can cause impulsive shock damage to hull material with a 50 kJ/mol heat of fusion and a 950 kJ/mol heat of vaporization (substantially better performance than tungsten) at distances of over 1000 km, and a 40 petaton "Kirk bomb" can do so at distances of over 100,000 km. Gigaton charges would be less dangerous, but would still be nothing to be trifled with.

So, generally speaking, you don't want to use a teraton charge when dealing with anything within 1000 km, because that places your ship at risk. You also don't want to use a teraton charge when dealing with anything within 1000 km of any of the following: friendly units, enemy structures that would be valuable if taken intact, planets that you intend to colonize or control, etc. Moreover, if you use a teraton charge in a certain situation, your enemies might think, "say, why don't we start doing the same thing?" and then you're screwed as soon as the shoe ends up on the other foot. And even if you're okay with that, you probably won't be okay with being charged with war crimes, which is a legitimate possibility depending on the specifics of the situation. In short, if there is an option aside from using a teraton charge, you want to use that option.

The minimum-range thing is moot given that torpedoes are supposed to have ranged well in excess of 1000 km ( the fact that we hardly ever see such ranges notwithstanding). So you'd treat them as stand-off weapons, like a nuclear-tipped cruise missile fired from hundreds of kilometers away.

As for friendly units, valuable structures etc, again, treat it as a stand-off weapon so there won't be any friendlies in range.

So, in the situations you mention, we can determine the following.

If you want to take a station, you don't want to set off teraton or petaton explosive charges anywhere near it.

Except their mission wasn't "retake the station" it was "stop the Dominion from removing the minefield and allowing their reinforcements to arrive." If that means destroying the station, so be it. At any rate, the defending fleet obligingly rode out to meet the Federation in deep space, well away from Bajor or DS9 and were in a nice tight formation, an ideal target for your teraton-level or petaton-level "Kirk bombs." And yet, it never even occurs to anyone involved.

The Breen attack appears to have been dramatically less effective than it could have been, yes. But if their goal wasn't complete annihilation but rather demoralization, they did things exactly right.

Quoting directly from Captain Sisko "Starfleet managed to destroy most of the attacking ships, but by then most of the damage had been done." Given that we don't even see the grass lawn scorched away, they clearly didn't even use photon torpedoes or equivalent weapons. Frankly I would have expected the obliteration of San Francisco to be even more demoralising than, well, a bad air raid. The point is, the Breen, logically, should have had access to similar supertorpedoes (or super-beams) and thus, if such weapons existed, should have done waaay more damage than usual.

For that matter, they have a shot at obliterating Starfleet Command completely. Why didn't they take it?

In the final battle of Cardassia, most ship-to-ship combat was at very close range, making teraton-yield weapons as dangerous to the firing ship as they were to the target. As for the planet itself, the large numbers of friendly forces would make the use of teraton weapons in an orbital bombardment counterproductive.

As with the battle in "Sacrifice of Angels" the Dominion/Cardassian fleet comes out to meet them in deep space and is then forced back to Cardassia's orbit. So, once again, a perfect target for a supertorpedo. But it isn't used.

Again, the Federation were already losing the war. They had nothing to gain by holding back on using such weapons.

Save, of course, suddenly starting to lose the war even faster than before.

They have two choices: use this weapon which might help us survive long enough to win, but might cause a retaliation or don't use this weapon, in which case, we lose anyway. In the case of the battle in Sacrifice of Angels, they knew that the Dominion reinforcements would make them lose much more quickly anyway. Everyone involved expected that that massive fleet arriving would lead to a crushing Federation defeat in a matter of days or weeks at most.

They're already facing defeat. Whether it takes a few days or a few weeks doesn't matter. But Starfleet categorically refused to consider surrender and was ready to fight to the bitter end. Sisko even says "Even if I knew we would lose for certain and nine hundred billion people will die, I could not order my people to surrender and accept Dominion occupation." Losing the war faster, or more bloodily, is clearly irrelevant to them.

Hmm...the Dominion military strategy is "we massively outnumber them and can rapidly replace losses, the Federation can't." These weapons would be ideal for the Dominion to use since it allows them to even more massively outnumber their opponents. Hell, they should be using them on kamikaze missions to take out starbases and shipyards. We don't see them do this.

If the Dominion were the Empire, they probably would have. But it looks like the Dominion thought like Sun Tzu and figured that doing less physical damage and relying on psychological warfare would be far more beneficial for them in the long run. Just like any real-world military would.

And you don't think that single ships annihilating whole fleets or bases on their own wouldn't have massive psychological value? At any rate, the Dominion clearly aren't concerned with avoiding physical damage, since his first planned act after the Federation surrender was wiping out Earth's population to avoid a rebellion that might spring up later.

As with the Dominion examples I listed above, the Federation has little to gain from holding back such powerful weapons against such threats. The Borg might start using such weapons as well. So what? If the Borg came in force the Federation would be fucked anyway. Again, they have no reason not to use such weapons.

Except, of course, to avoid being even more screwed than they already are.

And yet, they are willing to go to extreme lengths to fight the Borg. Like planning to use a sentient individual as a carrier for a biological weapon to annihilate them all, and when Picard calls them out and says "hey, we shouldn't do that, it's against our principles" they outright order him to do it if he gets the chance. Or being willing to travel back in time to stop them. They go to those lengths, but they won't use a bigass torpedo?

For that matter, why didn't the Borg try using such uberweapons against Species 8472? We saw in Scorpion Part 1 that regular Borg weapons can damage the bioships, so logically a supertorpedo should at least do more damage. But again, no such weapon is deployed or mentioned.

Is it really so hard to see that mutually assured destruction could be just as effective a deterrent in the twenty-fourth century as it was in the twentieth? When it comes down to it, it's a damn good thing that nobody uses a tactical nuke to do what could just as easily be done with a hand grenade.

Um, S8472 are already winning against Borg, to the point of blowing up whole planets. Clearly any mythical ubertorpedo isn't an effective deterrent otherwise there wouldn't be a fucking war would there. And once again, rather than using some mega-bomb, it's straight back to the bio-weapons (which ST writers seem disturbingly keen on).

Your analogy fails once again, since in this case the grenade-equivalent (regular photorps, beam weapons etc) clearly can't do the job except in huge numbers.

Um, no. An inertial dampener is meant to reduce the acceleration felt by the crew to tolerable levels, presumably through some application of artificial gravity. It does not affect the mass of the ship. "Mass lightening" is a distinct technology apparently using subspace fields of some form to lower the effective mass that the engines have to move, which is a different thing entirely.

There are two ways that the effective mass of a starship can be decreased: one, production of exotic matter that has negative mass; two, production of a gravitational effect that allows some portion of the ship's acceleration to feel like free fall.
From this, we can conclude that lowering the effective mass of the starship just is producing some kind of gravitational effect, and this entails that inertial dampening and mass lightening, at the very least, share the same mechanism.

Except that the mass-lightening stated (in the DS9 opening episode) to involve subspace fields, which involves neither of those two options. Thus, the mass-lightening effect is independent of artificial gravity.

1. That really doesn't answer or explain anything, it just handwaves it. Either a) the ship does not generate that much power while idling or b) it is dumping a huge amount of waste energy somewhere (subspace most likely). Option B is absurd, because no-one would build a ship that wastes so much power.

Or maybe it just takes that much energy to produce a subspace field sufficient to maintain artificial gravity throughout the ship. Generating gravitational effects is extremely energy intensive, no matter how much help you're getting from subspace.

Show me a source for how energy-intensive it is to create artificial gravity. Especially when the artificial gravity stays working with no warp core and no main power (TNG Disaster, Wrath of Khan, Search for Spock, Voyage Home etc). Clearly it can't be that energy intensive if the emergency batteries can keep it going, along with life support, communications and in some cases, a few phaser shots.

2. Waving "wah, it's canon" doesn't help, since the visuals are also canon. One is inconsistent with the other. You chose to favour the dialogue, I (and this site) favour the visuals as something we can actually measure and derive numbers from.

The visuals are canon, but so is the dialogue. Since the visuals were, presumably, based on the dialogue, and since we can never be 100% what we're looking at (your eyes can fool you very easily, google "optical illusions"), but we can be 100% sure of what was said, it seems that dialogue should trump visuals.

I'm well aware of optical illusions, you condescending twit. At any rate, the SFX would be based on storyboards, plot outlines, early drafts (since the effects have to be done before the live-action scenes, you can make changes after the effect are done). We can be sure of what is said by the characters on-screen, but that does not automatically translate 100% into what actually happened, since the characters do not have the same knowledge as the writer or the audience.

3. I'm not going to comment on, since it was simply another example of the ST dialogue being utter bollocks.

No, STAR TREK ITSELF is utter bollocks. Dialogue, visuals, all of it. The same goes for Star Wars. There is no subspace, there is no hyperspace, there is no such thing as a "phaser" or a "turbolaser," Alderan and Vulcan are complete fiction, etc. We deal with it, or we spend our time debating something else.

The absurdity of the setting does not excuse the absurdity of dialogue or events within it, since for the purposes of the debate we assume them to be real, self-consistent universes with technology that works the same way in the same situations. Hence, a massive inconsistency like this is a problem that must be addressed without creating further inconsistencies, which your theory singularly fails to do.

4. Again, this goes with a different approach. But again, since the visual effects are also canon, and one disagrees with the other, we have no choice but to chose dialogue or effects to base our estimates on. This site uses effects, because it's what we "see" happening in-universe.

We can never be sure of what we're seeing. What we see is open to interpretation. What is said is far less ambiguous.

You can argue that the special effects people did a bad job depicting 30% of the planet's crust being destroyed, but you can't argue that they depicted something entirely different for the simple reason that we are told that that's precisely what they depicted. Did they do a crappy job of depicting it? Yes. Did they depict something else? No.

A bit more musing (and re-watching the episode in question) revealed something interesting. As I mentioned above, we only ever see the bombardment effects on the viewscreen, which is an image created by sensor data that we know is being manipulated and fooled. The statement that "30% of the crust is destroyed" is based on yet more sensor data, which is again being manipulated and fooled. We can chalk up the inconsistency to an in-universe effects failure, which would be amusing.

You also seem to have quietly ignored my comments about the dialogue being flawed since the very same scene implies their sensors are being fooled. The stated effects not only a) don't match the visual damage but b) don't match their own, unambiguously stated predictions. Ergo, what they state as happening is not what is actually occurring.

I've already dealt with these points, but I'll reiterate what Mr. Kennedy had to say:

It has been claimed by some that the damage projections made by Lovok were a lie and that the damage done to the planet was an illusion generated by the Founders. However, these claims make little sense. There seems to be no reason for Lovok to tell such a lie - it doesn't gain the Founders anything to have Tain and Garak think that the attack will be ten or a hundred times faster than it really would or could be. And even a basic knowledge of military technology on the part of Tain or Garak would have been enough to allow them to see through such a lie, putting the Founder's whole plot at risk. Simulating planetary scale damage would also be a difficult and pointless business. Immense fireball explosions and atmospheric shock waves are clearly visible on the surface of the planet; simulating these would involve holographic projections covering hundreds of millions of square kilometres! And what would it accomplish? The fleet was already in the Founder's trap at this point, the Jem'Hadar were moments away from launching their attack, so making Tain and co. think that their attack was succeeding is pointless.

You never dealt with these points, so I'll wait for your answer to Mr. Kennedy before I add anything of my own.

Make your own damned arguments. Anyway, it does gain them something to tell such lies, it makes Tain much more likely to go along with his plan if he thinks he can pull it off quickly and decisively. Making him think the attack is succeeding means he isn't going to pay attention to what else is going on around them. Indeed, if they think it's going really well and they only need a few more salvos, the Romulans/Cardassians will be incline to stay and fire them and risk the Jem'Hadar attack rather than going "oh bollocks, leg it."

[WATCH-MAN]

It's not that I want to go down that route. It's the problem the episode creates: We have a planet outside a star system, not orbiting a sun. And yet it has a cloud layer dense enough that we do not see the ground. And yet Kira was »able to walk around and breath unprotected« on its surface. To say that it is not possible doesn't solve the problem as it was shown to be possible. You are free to propose another alternative. But it has to be based on the shown facts from the episode.

Fair enough then, we'll use Occam's Razor and limit ourselves to established information. Kira was able to walk about and breath unaided on the surface, that's a clear observation. In addition, we have no direct evidence that the area where she, Odo and the Founders were occupying was somehow unique, and that the planet's atmosphere elsewhere was different. Ergo, the logical conclusion is that the planet was for all intents and purposes a normal Class-M planet, whose atmosphere would not obscure teraton+ level energy blasts.

It has nothing to do with Occam's Razor if you ignore facts.

The facts are:

1. The Founders' homeworld was a rogue planet located in the Omarion Nebula.
2. It had a cloud layer that covered the whole planet.
3. Even the »circular shockwaves spreading through those clouds« couldn't disperse the cloud layer.
4. These »circular shockwaves spreading through those clouds« are - to quote Treknobabble - »easily 1000 kilometers wide, and reach full size in less than a second. The speed of sound is 340 m/s, so the shockwaves were traveling thousands of times the speed of sound for hundreds of kilometers.«
5. Atmospheric detonations of photon torpedoes generally can be seen from orbit (compare the TNG episode »Skin of Evil«)
   • • Even if the yield of photon torpedoes is controversial, it is uncontroversial that they have at least »a maximum yield of hundreds of kilotons« (compare the SDN wiki)
       Even if each fired torpedo has a yield of only hundred kilotons, an atmospheric detonation would be visible from the orbit.
6. We couldn't see any explosions on the surface of the planet through the cloud layer.

It was you who concluded: »In order for the Founder planet's atmosphere to have such a dense cloud cover that it obscured any high-energy detonations on the surface, it would have to be so thick that it would be a Venusian-type "pressure cooker" atmosphere.«

All this makes it impossible that the Founders' homeworld is a class-M-planet.

And yet we have seen that »Kira was able to walk around and breath unprotected.«

Logical conclusion: The planet is not a class-M-planet and the area, where »Kira was able to walk around and breath unprotected« was artificially made habitable. We couldn't see any atmospheric detonations or the surface of the planet through the cloud layer. We couldn't observe what happened beneath the cloud layer. We have no observations about the weapons effect on the surface of the planet. All we could see were the »circular shockwaves spreading through those clouds« which in itself are evidence for a high energy release beneath the cloud layer.

You can achieve all that with underground explosions too as the surface of the planet is affected by them even more than by atmospheric detonations (compare e.g. underwater detonations, underground detonations and atmospheric detonations of nuclear weapon tests).

You still haven't proven that there were any subterranean detonations.

You still haven't proven that there weren't any subterranean detonations.

Fact is that we haven't seen any atmospheric detonations although they have shot weapons that have at least »a maximum yield of hundreds of kilotons«. Even a hundred kiloton detonation should be observable from orbit. On the other side: Such a detonation can not cause »circular shockwaves spreading through those clouds« as we have observed.

When even a modified class-1 probe with a torpedo casing is able to burrow beneath the surface of a planet (compare the TNG episode Pen Pals), there is no reason to assume that the Cardassians and the Romulans are not able to build weapons for this purpose.

You know what, I'm not even going to waste time arguing this one, because it's far from the biggest problem in this discussion. As pointed out earlier, if 30% of the crust in TDIC really was destroyed, then it should mean that one torpedo is capable of destroying thirty million cubic kilometres of rock. If photon torpedoes are really that powerful, why did Riker think they'd need the E-D's entire torpedo loadout to destroy the much smaller asteroid that contained the Pegasus?

Do you know how many torpedoes Enterprise had at this moment? If I remember correctly, Enterprise just returned from a mission when it was tasked with the search for the Pegasus. Maybe it had only a few torpedoes left from its earlier mission?

Do you know if Riker only wanted to shatter the asteroid or if he wanted to vaporize it?

Do you know the composition of the asteroid that may had - according to Data - gravimetric or magnetic fluctuations inside which would overpower the engines on a shuttlecraft?

On the other side is it a little bit hypocritical to put so much value in what Riker said if this board tends to put visuals over dialogue and to ignore outliers - as was already stated in this thread. Why is it not assumed that Riker erred or that this episode is an outlier?

the beam weapons and the Romulan plasma torpedoes would have still directly affected the surface, we should still see the effects of those.

That was already addressed by Tripple:

• • • • Well, we know that "vaporization" in Star Trek means something different than converting a substance into vapour. As Dath Wong noted if that were the case every time a person was vapourized they would be turning into a large cloud of steam that would severely burn / kill anyone nearby. Instead, the person essentially disappears with practically no effect on the environment around them. The TNG TM states that the matter was basically exiting the universe, while Darth Wong suggests that the matter could be converted into neutrinos.
        
        In Star Trek shipboard weapons are basically just larger versions of hand weapons. Is it possible that they were doing the same thing to the crust in "the Die is Cast"? We wouldn't necessarily see the crust / mantle blowing up all over the place if the material was being "vaporized".

No, it wasn't. Firstly, it would only apply to phasers, photon (and plasma) torpedoes would still just result in huge explosions.

Yes it was as it is obviously that Tripple only spoke about beam weapons what becomes clear the moment he assumes that »shipboard weapons are basically just larger versions of hand weapons.« I at least haven't seen a photon torpedo hand weapon. And I haven't ever heard that it was considered that photon torpedoes can cause matter »exiting the universe« or being »converted into neutrinos« These considerations were - as far as I know - only done regarding phasers and disruptors.

Secondly, even if 30% of the planet's crust was just magicked out of existence, not only would this result in a far more visible disruption to the planet than what we actually see, the magma in the lower crust layers and/or mantle would burst free, something that would easily be visible from orbit.

That was already addressed by me:

• • • • The problem with Graham Kennedy's derivation from The Die is Cast is that we simply don't see that kind of destruction. We don't see one-third of the planet's surface being blasted away. We see shots penetrating a cloud layer, and we see roughly circular shockwaves spreading through those clouds
        
        [...]
        
        If 30% of the crust had been destroyed in the first volley, we'd be expecting to see global firestorms, vast areas of lava erupting from the now-exposed mantle. We just don't see enough.
        
        [...]
        
        but in this case, it's obvious to anyone with a lick of knowledge that if 30% of the crust had been destroyed in seconds, we should see considerably more damage on the planet. We should see firestorms, we should see vast areas of exposed lava, we should see trillions upon trillions of tons of material being ejected up out of the atmosphere (if the crust is vaporised then that vapor has to go somewhere).
        
        [...]
        
        If it was melted, we'd still be seeing a sea of molten lava. If it shattered, we'd see some sign of that as well.

        Your argument doesn't seem to be conclusive to me.
        
        As you said yourself: »We see shots penetrating a cloud layer, and we see roughly circular shockwaves spreading through those clouds.«
        
        What we do not see is what happens beneath the cloud layer.
        
        And we do know next to nothing about this cloud layer. We do not know its density, its composition, its thickness or its altitude.
        
        We only know how it looks and that it seems to cover the whole planet and that even the »circular shockwaves spreading through those clouds« couldn't disperse the cloud layer. From this we can at least conclude that this cloud layer is not similar to the naturally occurring clouds from Earth.
        
        According to the report, thirty percent of the planetary crust was destroyed.
        
        It wasn't said that the crust was »blasted away« or vaporized or melted. It was only said that it was destroyed.
        
        But it is already destroyed if it is shattered.
        
        But why are we supposed to expect to be able to see the shattered crust through the cloud layer if we couldn't see the intact crust before the attack and when even the »circular shockwaves spreading through those clouds« couldn't disperse them.

Please try to consider all that was already said in that thread. It saves us all much time if we do not have to repeat us again and again.

I doubt that a totally vaporization is possible as the resulting expansion will blow the parts of the asteroid, that are nor already vaporized, apart. While it may be possible to vaporize most of it, it does not seem to be a contradiction to have a few fragments that were not vaporized.

You're right, it's not possible for a photon torpedo to do that... because they're not powerful enough. If the asteroid in "Rise" were 200m wide (on the upper end of most estimates) it would take just shy of 60 megatons to cause the entire thing to vaporize fast enough that no solid fragment remains. Photon torpedoes are supposed to have a yield of around 64 megatons, but due to the explosion not being directed and inefficiencies in the M/AM annihilation process, it would never direct enough of that energy into the asteroid to result in total vapourization.

Even with 60 megatons you can not vaporize the whole asteroid as it is impossible to apply that energy uniformly on the whole asteroid. At the point of the detonation, mass of the asteroid will be vaporized, will expand and blow apart the parts of the asteroid that are not yet vaporized. Even if you can vaporize 99 percent of the asteroid, you will have a few fragments remaining.

It's always easy to argue ex post. But why should they have assumed that their scans of the asteroid may have missed something? It looked like a normal asteroid - it behaved like a normal asteroid - at least until it was shot upon - why assume that is was not a normal asteroid?

Why take the risk that there was something hazardous? We've seen in TNG that harmful exotic elements can be missed in sensor scans of apparently normal asteroids.

Taking a risk is part of our life. Leaving your bed means taking a risk. Crossing a street means taking a risk. Even eating and drinking means taking a risk. Shooting a photon torpedo means taking a risk. Please show that the risk they have taken by choosing a yield that would have been enough to vaporize a normal asteroid of this size was unacceptable.

But quite aside from all that, in order for the episode's dialogue to be consistent with TDIC, it would mean that they decided to fire their torpedo at approximately 0.00000001% of it's maximum potential yield. You really think that's a more reasonable explanation than "their torpedoes are powerful enough to blow it into small fragments, but not enough to totally vapourize it?"

I do not understand what you want to say with this.

[WATCH-MAN]

Incidentally, since you are very fond of using Graham Kennedy's work, I'll point you to this page where Mike demonstrates how very flawed Mr Kennedy's calculations are (not to mention demonstrating his less-than-stellar credentials. Hell, I'm better qualified to talk about this kinda stuff and I'm employed as a sodding intern).

That's nothing more than an argumentum ad hominem and a good indicator for a dishonest debater.

A honest debater wouldn't use such a genetic fallacy.

A honest debater would show where the calculations of Graham Kennedy, which were quoted by Treknobabble, are wrong.

Even if this Graham Kennedy were the most stupid person on Earth - the calculation which Treknobabble quoted could be correct nevertheless.

Actually, if you read the page, Mike does show why the calculations are dubious at best. I mention the credentials thing as a side-note, to demonstrate that we can't just take what he's said at face value without at least checking it for consistency first.

Treknobabble quotes a few calculations of Graham Kennedy.

Here Treknobabble quotes calculations from Graham Kennedy about the events from the DS9 episode »The Die Is Cast«.

Does the page of Mike really deals with these calculations?

I couldn't find on the page of Mike where he addresses this episode.

I do not see, where Mike does show on this page that the calculations of Graham Kennedy, which were quoted by Treknobabble, are wrong.

If you can not show that »Mike does show why the calculations are dubious at best«, you have tried to deceive us again.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Treknobabble quotes a few calculations of Graham Kennedy.

Here Treknobabble quotes calculations from Graham Kennedy about the events from the DS9 episode »The Die Is Cast«.

Does the page of Mike really deals with these calculations?

I couldn't find on the page of Mike where he addresses this episode.

I do not see, where Mike does show on this page that the calculations of Graham Kennedy, which were quoted by Treknobabble, are wrong.

If you can not show that »Mike does show why the calculations are dubious at best«, you have tried to deceive us again.

While Mike doesn't deal with the TDiC stuff directly, he demonstrated enough other flaws and poor assumptions to assume that Graham Kennedy's calculations in general are dubious. Yes, it is possible that he got these calcs spot-on, but given the prior evidence, it is unlikely.

[DaveJB]

It has nothing to do with Occam's Razor if you ignore facts.

The facts are:

1. The Founders' homeworld was a rogue planet located in the Omarion Nebula.
2. It had a cloud layer that covered the whole planet.
3. Even the »circular shockwaves spreading through those clouds« couldn't disperse the cloud layer.
4. These »circular shockwaves spreading through those clouds« are - to quote Treknobabble - »easily 1000 kilometers wide, and reach full size in less than a second. The speed of sound is 340 m/s, so the shockwaves were traveling thousands of times the speed of sound for hundreds of kilometers.«
5. Atmospheric detonations of photon torpedoes generally can be seen from orbit (compare the TNG episode »Skin of Evil«)
   • • Even if the yield of photon torpedoes is controversial, it is uncontroversial that they have at least »a maximum yield of hundreds of kilotons« (compare the SDN wiki)
       Even if each fired torpedo has a yield of only hundred kilotons, an atmospheric detonation would be visible from the orbit.
6. We couldn't see any explosions on the surface of the planet through the cloud layer.

It was you who concluded: »In order for the Founder planet's atmosphere to have such a dense cloud cover that it obscured any high-energy detonations on the surface, it would have to be so thick that it would be a Venusian-type "pressure cooker" atmosphere.«

All this makes it impossible that the Founders' homeworld is a class-M-planet.

And yet we have seen that »Kira was able to walk around and breath unprotected.«

Logical conclusion: The planet is not a class-M-planet and the area, where »Kira was able to walk around and breath unprotected« was artificially made habitable. We couldn't see any atmospheric detonations or the surface of the planet through the cloud layer. We couldn't observe what happened beneath the cloud layer. We have no observations about the weapons effect on the surface of the planet. All we could see were the »circular shockwaves spreading through those clouds« which in itself are evidence for a high energy release beneath the cloud layer.

Your argument is based around a circular logic fallacy; you're saying that the reason why we can't see the weapon detonations is because the planet has a Venusian atmosphere, and that the proof the planet has a Venusian atmosphere is the fact that we were unable to see the weapon detonations.

And even if your assumptions about the planet are correct, how do those rings in the atmosphere prove that 30% of the crust was destroyed? Bearing in mind that if the rings were direct results of the explosions, they should have been superheating the atmosphere and visibly glowing, which they weren't.

By the way, it's rich that you've been berating Eternal_Freedom for his supposed intellectual dishonesty, yet clinging furiously to the notion of the Founder planet having a Venusian atmosphere (something I first mentioned) and using real-world physics to claim that it's impossible for the planet to be M-class, but then turning around and using the same physics to claim it's perfectly feasible for a full Venusian atmosphere to exist in a system which doesn't even have a sun.

You still haven't proven that there weren't any subterranean detonations.

Appeal to ignorance fallacy. The onus is on you to prove that they occurred.

Fact is that we haven't seen any atmospheric detonations although they have shot weapons that have at least »a maximum yield of hundreds of kilotons«. Even a hundred kiloton detonation should be observable from orbit. On the other side: Such a detonation can not cause »circular shockwaves spreading through those clouds« as we have observed.

And a subterranean detonation can produce shockwaves that spread through the upper atmosphere at thousands of times the speed of sound? Care to explain how that works?

Do you know how many torpedoes Enterprise had at this moment? If I remember correctly, Enterprise just returned from a mission when it was tasked with the search for the Pegasus. Maybe it had only a few torpedoes left from its earlier mission?

Let me get this straight. I have to prove that the Enterprise had its full loadout, but you get to just arbitrarily assume that it only had a small handful of torpedoes? In a mission where not only did they know they might have to destroy the Pegasus, there was a serious danger of a battle with the Romulans? Do I even need to explain how absurd this is?

Do you know if Riker only wanted to shatter the asteroid or if he wanted to vaporize it?

Wouldn't matter either way. If torpedoes really are as powerful as TDIC indicates, just one of them would have been sufficient to obliterate the entire asteroid.

Do you know the composition of the asteroid that may had - according to Data - gravimetric or magnetic fluctuations inside which would overpower the engines on a shuttlecraft?

Unless you have some evidence that it's composed of materials significantly different than the nickel-iron composition of most asteroids, that's an irrelevant nitpick.

On the other side is it a little bit hypocritical to put so much value in what Riker said if this board tends to put visuals over dialogue and to ignore outliers - as was already stated in this thread. Why is it not assumed that Riker erred or that this episode is an outlier?

You're seriously suggesting that Riker is so stupid that he thinks photon torpedoes are billions of times less powerful than they actually are? Or that Worf or especially Data wouldn't immediately correct him as soon as he made such a blatantly incorrect statement?

Aside from that, the incident in "The Pegasus" is consistent with what we saw in the likes of "Rise" and Star Trek: TMP.

By the way, since you're willing to countenance the possibility of characters making mistakes, have you considered the possibility that maybe it was the Romulan in TDIC who made a mistake? Like, for instance, saying "30% of the crust" was destroyed when what he actually meant was "30% of the surface." After all, the latter actually would be consistent with the rest of Star Trek canon - hell, the original Enterprise was indicated to be able to wipe out all major population centres on a planet by itself in "A Taste of Armageddon" - while the former, to put it lightly, isn't.

That was already addressed by me:

(snip)

Please try to consider all that was already said in that thread. It saves us all much time if we do not have to repeat us again and again.

You haven't addressed a goddamn thing. All you've done is say "Well, we can't see what's happening beneath the clouds, so you can't prove that 30% of the crust wasn't destroyed," along with throwing in a bunch of nitpicking about what the word "destroyed" means in context.

Let me put it another way: are you honestly suggesting that you can somehow catastrophically disrupt a third of a planet's crust and not have any noticeable effect on its overall appearance?

Even with 60 megatons you can not vaporize the whole asteroid as it is impossible to apply that energy uniformly on the whole asteroid. At the point of the detonation, mass of the asteroid will be vaporized, will expand and blow apart the parts of the asteroid that are not yet vaporized. Even if you can vaporize 99 percent of the asteroid, you will have a few fragments remaining.

With a sufficiently high energy input - which, realistically, would probably have to be quite a bit more than the 60 megaton minimum - a 200m asteroid will be totally vaporized, before any fragments can escape. In any case, a torpedo capable of destroying 20 million cubic metres of rock should have absolutely no problem totally vaporizing a ~200m asteroid.

Taking a risk is part of our life. Leaving your bed means taking a risk. Crossing a street means taking a risk. Even eating and drinking means taking a risk. Shooting a photon torpedo means taking a risk. Please show that the risk they have taken by choosing a yield that would have been enough to vaporize a normal asteroid of this size was unacceptable.

No. You show that photon torpedoes are powerful enough to destroy 20 million cubic metres of rock, and that for some reason Voyager decided to fire its torpedoes at roughly 1 billionth the maximum power level in "Rise." Because you haven't done that.

[WATCH-MAN]

Your argument is based around a circular logic fallacy; you're saying that the reason why we can't see the weapon detonations is because the planet has a Venusian atmosphere, and that the proof the planet has a Venusian atmosphere is the fact that we were unable to see the weapon detonations.

And even if your assumptions about the planet are correct, how do those rings in the atmosphere prove that 30% of the crust was destroyed? Bearing in mind that if the rings were direct results of the explosions, they should have been superheating the atmosphere and visibly glowing, which they weren't.

By the way, it's rich that you've been berating Eternal_Freedom for his supposed intellectual dishonesty, yet clinging furiously to the notion of the Founder planet having a Venusian atmosphere (something I first mentioned) and using real-world physics to claim that it's impossible for the planet to be M-class, but then turning around and using the same physics to claim it's perfectly feasible for a full Venusian atmosphere to exist in a system which doesn't even have a sun.

To make it short: What is your explanation for the following facts:

1. The Founders' homeworld was a rogue planet located in the Omarion Nebula.
2. It did not orbit a star.
3. Kira was able to walk around and breath unprotected on a part of the surface of that planet
4. It had a cloud layer covering the whole planet.
5. Beams shot through the cloud layer caused circular shockwaves spreading through those clouds traveling thousands of times the speed of sound for hundreds of kilometers.
6. These circular shockwaves spreading through those clouds couldn't disperse the cloud layer.
7. Torpedoes shot through the cloud layer didn't affect it.
8. We didn't see one single detonation of a torpedo.

Is it possible for a rogue planet to be a class-M-planet?
What could prevent us to see the atmospheric detonation of a torpedo with a yield of 100 hundred kilotons from a orbit above the detonation?
Is it possible for a cloud layer on a class-M-planet to be so thick that not even shockwaves spreading through them with thousands of times the speed of sound for hundreds of kilometers can disperse them?
What could cause shockwaves spreading through the cloud layer with thousands of times the speed of sound for hundreds of kilometers?

I admit that my attempt at an explanation may not be the best possible explanation.

Please show me how you reconcile these facts.

You still haven't proven that there weren't any subterranean detonations.

Appeal to ignorance fallacy. The onus is on you to prove that they occurred.

To make it short: What is your explanation for the following facts:

1. We saw them firing torpedoes on the planet
2. We know that a torpedo has a yield of at least hundred kilotons.
3. We know that a hundred kiloton atmospheric detonation is observable from an orbit above the detonation.
4. We didn't see one single detonation of a torpedo.

I admit that my attempt at an explanation may not be the best possible explanation.

Please show me how you reconcile these facts.

Fact is that we haven't seen any atmospheric detonations although they have shot weapons that have at least »a maximum yield of hundreds of kilotons«. Even a hundred kiloton detonation should be observable from orbit. On the other side: Such a detonation can not cause »circular shockwaves spreading through those clouds« as we have observed.

And a subterranean detonation can produce shockwaves that spread through the upper atmosphere at thousands of times the speed of sound? Care to explain how that works?

As you may notice when you watch that episode:

1. Only Beams shot through the cloud layer caused circular shockwaves spreading through those clouds traveling thousands of times the speed of sound for hundreds of kilometers.
2. Torpedoes shot through the cloud layer didn't affect it.

That makes it possible that the torpedoes were used for deep impact detonations.

Do you know how many torpedoes Enterprise had at this moment? If I remember correctly, Enterprise just returned from a mission when it was tasked with the search for the Pegasus. Maybe it had only a few torpedoes left from its earlier mission?

Let me get this straight. I have to prove that the Enterprise had its full loadout, but you get to just arbitrarily assume that it only had a small handful of torpedoes? In a mission where not only did they know they might have to destroy the Pegasus, there was a serious danger of a battle with the Romulans? Do I even need to explain how absurd this is?

You got this wrong. I do not demand that you prove that the Enterprise had its full loadout.
And I do not assume that it only had a small handful of torpedoes.
My stand is that this is a Non sequitur. We do not know how many torpedoes Enterprise hat. It could have had its full loadout and it could have had only a a small handful of torpedoes. We do not know.

And as you may notice when you watch that episode: To find the Pegasus was a matter of time because the Romulans were trying to find it too. Enterprise war just coming from a mission when it was tasked with its new mission. At this time, it was not at a starbase. Even if Enterprise had only a a small handful of torpedoes there simply was no time and no opportunity to restock the torpedoes.

Do you know if Riker only wanted to shatter the asteroid or if he wanted to vaporize it?

Wouldn't matter either way. If torpedoes really are as powerful as TDIC indicates, just one of them would have been sufficient to obliterate the entire asteroid.

That's getting tiresome.

• • • • Why are we supposed to expect that a Starfleet ship is armed with the most powerful weapons the UFP have or is able to build?
        
        The combined Romulan/Cardassian fleet was build for only one purpose: To attack and destroy the Founders planet. Insofar it suggests itself that they are armed with weapons to enable them to do this - maybe weapons that are not routinely distributed to all ships.
        
        (According to Chakotey, Federation Starships normally do not even carry tricobalt devices. It was unusual that the USS Voyager had two of such devices.)
        
        Maybe the weapons used at the attack on the founders planet were specially built for this long prepared mission.
        
        Maybe the Federation has the technology and knowledge to build similar powerful weapons - but has decided to not build them as they do not want to start an armament race.
        
        Maybe there are treaties - as the Treaty of Algeron, the second Khitomer Accords or the Jankata Accords - which are outlawing such weapons - as metagenic weapons or subspace weapons are outlawed by such treaties.

Thus my argument is: Photon torpedoes from the TNG episode Pegasus ≠ torpedoes from the DS9 episode The die is cast.

Do you know the composition of the asteroid that may had - according to Data - gravimetric or magnetic fluctuations inside which would overpower the engines on a shuttlecraft?

Unless you have some evidence that it's composed of materials significantly different than the nickel-iron composition of most asteroids, that's an irrelevant nitpick.

To make it short: What is your explanation for the following fact:

1. The asteroid may had gravimetric or magnetic fluctuations inside which would overpower the engines on a shuttlecraft?
2. Enterprise had problems scanning the asteroid.

When a shuttlecraft is able to start from and land on a whole planet, is it possible that a asteroid with a nickel-iron composition could have gravimetric or magnetic fluctuations inside which could overpower the engines on a shuttlecraft?

Did Enterprise ever had problems with scanning something so mundane as an asteroid with a simple nickel-iron composition?

On the other side is it a little bit hypocritical to put so much value in what Riker said if this board tends to put visuals over dialogue and to ignore outliers - as was already stated in this thread. Why is it not assumed that Riker erred or that this episode is an outlier?

You're seriously suggesting that Riker is so stupid that he thinks photon torpedoes are billions of times less powerful than they actually are? Or that Worf or especially Data wouldn't immediately correct him as soon as he made such a blatantly incorrect statement?

Usually that's your tactic.

I'd try to reconcile all this facts with the following explanation: The asteroid was unusual. It did not have a simple nickel-iron composition but consisted of something else. That's why it could have gravimetric or magnetic fluctuations inside which could overpower the engines on a shuttlecraft. And that's why almost all of Enterprises photon torpedoes were necessary to destroy this peculiar asteroid.

Aside from that, the incident in "The Pegasus" is consistent with what we saw in the likes of "Rise" and Star Trek: TMP.

Elaborate.

By the way, since you're willing to countenance the possibility of characters making mistakes, have you considered the possibility that maybe it was the Romulan in TDIC who made a mistake? Like, for instance, saying "30% of the crust" was destroyed when what he actually meant was "30% of the surface." After all, the latter actually would be consistent with the rest of Star Trek canon - hell, the original Enterprise was indicated to be able to wipe out all major population centres on a planet by itself in "A Taste of Armageddon" - while the former, to put it lightly, isn't.

Of course have I considered this possibility.

That was already addressed by me:

(snip)

Please try to consider all that was already said in that thread. It saves us all much time if we do not have to repeat us again and again.

You haven't addressed a goddamn thing. All you've done is say "Well, we can't see what's happening beneath the clouds, so you can't prove that 30% of the crust wasn't destroyed," along with throwing in a bunch of nitpicking about what the word "destroyed" means in context.

Exactly

Let me put it another way: are you honestly suggesting that you can somehow catastrophically disrupt a third of a planet's crust and not have any noticeable effect on its overall appearance?

Yes I am honestly suggesting that you can somehow catastrophically disrupt a third of a planet's crust and not have any noticeable effect to be seen from orbit through a thick cloud-layer that obscures not only the surface of the planet but all effects the weapons have on the surface too.

It's a simple fact that we did not see the surface of the planet and did not see only one single detonation. All we saw was the circular shockwaves spreading through those clouds traveling thousands of times the speed of sound for hundreds of kilometers.

Try to explain this.

Even with 60 megatons you can not vaporize the whole asteroid as it is impossible to apply that energy uniformly on the whole asteroid. At the point of the detonation, mass of the asteroid will be vaporized, will expand and blow apart the parts of the asteroid that are not yet vaporized. Even if you can vaporize 99 percent of the asteroid, you will have a few fragments remaining.

With a sufficiently high energy input - which, realistically, would probably have to be quite a bit more than the 60 megaton minimum - a 200m asteroid will be totally vaporized, before any fragments can escape.

Prove it.

In any case, a torpedo capable of destroying 20 million cubic metres of rock should have absolutely no problem totally vaporizing a ~200m asteroid.

Prove it.

Taking a risk is part of our life. Leaving your bed means taking a risk. Crossing a street means taking a risk. Even eating and drinking means taking a risk. Shooting a photon torpedo means taking a risk. Please show that the risk they have taken by choosing a yield that would have been enough to vaporize a normal asteroid of this size was unacceptable.

No. You show that photon torpedoes are powerful enough to destroy 20 million cubic metres of rock, and that for some reason Voyager decided to fire its torpedoes at roughly 1 billionth the maximum power level in "Rise." Because you haven't done that.

Again: Photon torpedoes from the Voyager episode Rise ≠ torpedoes from the DS9 episode The die is cast.

[WATCH-MAN]

While Mike doesn't deal with the TDiC stuff directly, he demonstrated enough other flaws and poor assumptions to assume that Graham Kennedy's calculations in general are dubious. Yes, it is possible that he got these calcs spot-on, but given the prior evidence, it is unlikely.

With other words: You used an argumentum ad hominem.

Because some of Graham Kennedy's calculations were shown to be wrong, you assume that all of Graham Kennedy's calculations are wrong simply because they are coming from him and thus you do not deal with the specific calculations because you think it is unlikely that they could be correct.

You do not deal with the argument.

You do not deal with the calculation.

The only thing you are doing is attacking Graham Kennedy and indirectly Treknobabble for using his calculations.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I assume they are suspect, not outright wrong. Or rather, the actual calculations themselves are, as best I can tell fine. It's the underlying assumptions and repeated leaps of logic that make the conclusions suspect.

[DaveJB]

To make it short: What is your explanation for the following facts:

(snip)

I admit that my attempt at an explanation may not be the best possible explanation.

Please show me how you reconcile these facts.

I asked you for proof that what we saw in the episode represents 30% of the planetary crust being destroyed, and you respond with this?

Firstly, the big issue isn't so much where the explosions occurred (even though you're insisting that the Cardassians and Romulans both used a technology that we've never seen either faction use, and wouldn't even begin to be compatible with the Romulan plasma torpedo design), it's the strength of them. You are suggesting that what we saw represented 30% of the planet's crust being destroyed. Regardless of whether they occurred on the surface or underneath it, a catastrophic disruption of those proportions should be FAR more noticeable than what we see in the episode.

Secondly, there IS an explanation for why we didn't see any explosions on the planet's surface, but it's not one you're going to like. Namely, that the explosive yield of the torpedoes was actually so small that the blasts weren't visible from orbit.

To make it short: What is your explanation for the following facts:

1. We saw them firing torpedoes on the planet
2. We know that a torpedo has a yield of at least hundred kilotons.
3. We know that a hundred kiloton atmospheric detonation is observable from an orbit above the detonation.
4. We didn't see one single detonation of a torpedo.

I admit that my attempt at an explanation may not be the best possible explanation.

Please show me how you reconcile these facts.

See above. Bringing up a bunch of issues with Theory A doesn't automatically mean that Theory B suddenly becomes the correct one.

As you may notice when you watch that episode:

1. Only Beams shot through the cloud layer caused circular shockwaves spreading through those clouds traveling thousands of times the speed of sound for hundreds of kilometers.
2. Torpedoes shot through the cloud layer didn't affect it.

That makes it possible that the torpedoes were used for deep impact detonations.

So what were these rings, then? And how do they prove that 30% of the crust was destroyed?

You got this wrong. I do not demand that you prove that the Enterprise had its full loadout.
And I do not assume that it only had a small handful of torpedoes.
My stand is that this is a Non sequitur. We do not know how many torpedoes Enterprise hat. It could have had its full loadout and it could have had only a a small handful of torpedoes. We do not know.

Then why did you even bring this up? If you can't prove one way or the other what the Enterprise's torpedo count was, it has no bearing on the argument.

And as you may notice when you watch that episode: To find the Pegasus was a matter of time because the Romulans were trying to find it too. Enterprise war just coming from a mission when it was tasked with its new mission. At this time, it was not at a starbase. Even if Enterprise had only a a small handful of torpedoes there simply was no time and no opportunity to restock the torpedoes.

Actually, they rendezvoused with the USS Crazy Horse to pick up Admiral Pressman. If the Enterprise's torpedo count really was severely depleted, Starfleet would likely have had the Crazy Horse bring a fresh supply of torpedoes for the Enterprise, considering the nature of the mission. Or, you know, chosen a ship that could actually defend itself against the Romulans.

That's getting tiresome.

• • • • Why are we supposed to expect that a Starfleet ship is armed with the most powerful weapons the UFP have or is able to build?
        
        The combined Romulan/Cardassian fleet was build for only one purpose: To attack and destroy the Founders planet. Insofar it suggests itself that they are armed with weapons to enable them to do this - maybe weapons that are not routinely distributed to all ships.
        
        (According to Chakotey, Federation Starships normally do not even carry tricobalt devices. It was unusual that the USS Voyager had two of such devices.)
        
        Maybe the weapons used at the attack on the founders planet were specially built for this long prepared mission.
        
        Maybe the Federation has the technology and knowledge to build similar powerful weapons - but has decided to not build them as they do not want to start an armament race.
        
        Maybe there are treaties - as the Treaty of Algeron, the second Khitomer Accords or the Jankata Accords - which are outlawing such weapons - as metagenic weapons or subspace weapons are outlawed by such treaties.

Thus my argument is: Photon torpedoes from the TNG episode Pegasus ≠ torpedoes from the DS9 episode The die is cast.

Do you even understand how a debate works? You don't just get to throw out "Maybe this! Maybe that!" and then demand that the person you're arguing with prove you wrong. If you want to claim that the torpedoes used in the TDIC bombardment were vastly more powerful than those seen elsewhere in Trek, you have to prove it!

To make it short: What is your explanation for the following fact:

1. The asteroid may had gravimetric or magnetic fluctuations inside which would overpower the engines on a shuttlecraft?
2. Enterprise had problems scanning the asteroid.

When a shuttlecraft is able to start from and land on a whole planet, is it possible that a asteroid with a nickel-iron composition could have gravimetric or magnetic fluctuations inside which could overpower the engines on a shuttlecraft?

Did Enterprise ever had problems with scanning something so mundane as an asteroid with a simple nickel-iron composition?

Without knowledge of exactly what the asteroid was made of and how it would effect the Enterprise's weapons, this is just more irrelevant nitpicking.

I'd try to reconcile all this facts with the following explanation: The asteroid was unusual. It did not have a simple nickel-iron composition but consisted of something else. That's why it could have gravimetric or magnetic fluctuations inside which could overpower the engines on a shuttlecraft. And that's why almost all of Enterprises photon torpedoes were necessary to destroy this peculiar asteroid.

Excuse me? Just now you claimed that the TDIC torpedoes were doomsday devices that were vastly more powerful than the usual photon torpedoes seen in Star Trek. And now you're claiming that no, all photons actually are that powerful, it was just that the asteroid in The Pegasus was billions of times tougher than any currently known material. Can you please try to maintain a consistent argument?

Elaborate.

It's consistent in as much as they all imply torpedo yields in the low megaton range.

Of course have I considered this possibility.

Right. You just consider the possibility of an officer mis-speaking in the heat of an important and dangerous mission to be less likely than the Cardassians and Romulans being armed with doomsday weapons that were never seen or mentioned again, or Federation captains routinely using their weapons at a billionth of their usual capacity.

Exactly

Wow. I can't remember the last time I saw someone pull such a brazen Appeal to Ignorance fallacy.

Okay, since you're evidently in need of a refresher on the board rules, allow me to present Debating Rule 5:

Back Up Your Claims. If you make a contentious statement of fact and someone asks for evidence, you must either provide it or withdraw the claim. Do not call it "self evident", restate it in different words, force the other person to prove your claim is not true, or use other weasel techniques to avoid backing up your claims.

Therefore, I formally demand that you present evidence that what we saw in The Die is Cast represented 30% of the Founder planet's crust being destroyed.

Yes I am honestly suggesting that you can somehow catastrophically disrupt a third of a planet's crust and not have any noticeable effect to be seen from orbit through a thick cloud-layer that obscures not only the surface of the planet but all effects the weapons have on the surface too.

Okay then. Describe how this happened. What is your evidence for supposing that a third of the crust was somehow significantly disrupted?

Prove it.

Simple physics. Put enough energy into any object to overcome anything (structural and material irregularities, etc) that might impede energy transfer throughout the object, it will be vaporized with no surviving fragments. Or are you honestly claiming that, for instance, even a Death Star blast couldn't fully vaporize a 200m-wide asteroid?

Again: Photon torpedoes from the Voyager episode Rise ≠ torpedoes from the DS9 episode The die is cast.

Of course. Starfleet go around arming their ships with pea shooters when all their rivals are packing tactical nukes.

[Eternal_Freedom]

It has occurred to me that this entire debate is utterly pointless (within the ST vs SW context that is, not in general). We are asked to accept from Treknobabble and Watchman that the Federation and other AQ powers have access to massively powerful weapons that could potentially pose a threat to Imperial vessels.

However, if this theory is correct, then the AQ powers have only deployed these weapons twice, one of which was a short-notice mashup to deal with one specific threat. They are not deployed against the many severe and/ore existential threats the federation et al face. No such weapons are used against the Doomsday Machine, or against V'Ger, or against the Borg (on the two occasions they directly assault Earth) despite the two attacks coming incredibly close to succeeding. They are not used against the Dominion fleets, even when high-ranking Admirals state that if the reinforcements arrive, they're finished. They aren't used against Species 8472, which wanted to purge all other life from the galaxy. They aren't even used for demolitions of large objects (they had to invent another high-yield weapon, Tricobalt devices, to destroy the Caretaker's Array).

So, the Federation won't use it's very powerful weapons against threats that variously want to assimilate all life, purge all life by force, convert all life into energy patterns, or shatter every planet in it's path. It won't even use them to prevent generations of oppression and occupation by the Dominion.

So why would they use them on the Empire? Since in the vast majority of cases the Empire merely occupies the Federation but in a less-brutal fashion than the Dominion planned (no annihilating Earth's population, for instance). In those terms, the Empire is actually a far less serious threat than things that appear for one episode, so why would Starfleet and it's allies be willing to break out the mega-antimatter weapons for this foe?

[WATCH-MAN]

To make it short: What is your explanation for the following facts:

1. The Founders' homeworld was a rogue planet located in the Omarion Nebula.
2. It did not orbit a star.
3. Kira was able to walk around and breath unprotected on a part of the surface of that planet
4. It had a cloud layer covering the whole planet.
5. Beams shot through the cloud layer caused circular shockwaves spreading through those clouds traveling thousands of times the speed of sound for hundreds of kilometers.
6. These circular shockwaves spreading through those clouds couldn't disperse the cloud layer.
7. Torpedoes shot through the cloud layer didn't affect it.
8. We didn't see one single detonation of a torpedo.

Is it possible for a rogue planet to be a class-M-planet?
What could prevent us to see the atmospheric detonation of a torpedo with a yield of 100 hundred kilotons from a orbit above the detonation?
Is it possible for a cloud layer on a class-M-planet to be so thick that not even shockwaves spreading through them with thousands of times the speed of sound for hundreds of kilometers can disperse them?
What could cause shockwaves spreading through the cloud layer with thousands of times the speed of sound for hundreds of kilometers?

I admit that my attempt at an explanation may not be the best possible explanation.

Please show me how you reconcile these facts.

I asked you for proof that what we saw in the episode represents 30% of the planetary crust being destroyed, and you respond with this?

Please show me where you asked in the quoted part for proof that what we saw in the episode represents 30% of the planetary crust being destroyed:

• • • • Your argument is based around a circular logic fallacy; you're saying that the reason why we can't see the weapon detonations is because the planet has a Venusian atmosphere, and that the proof the planet has a Venusian atmosphere is the fact that we were unable to see the weapon detonations.
        
        And even if your assumptions about the planet are correct, how do those rings in the atmosphere prove that 30% of the crust was destroyed? Bearing in mind that if the rings were direct results of the explosions, they should have been superheating the atmosphere and visibly glowing, which they weren't.
        
        By the way, it's rich that you've been berating Eternal_Freedom for his supposed intellectual dishonesty, yet clinging furiously to the notion of the Founder planet having a Venusian atmosphere (something I first mentioned) and using real-world physics to claim that it's impossible for the planet to be M-class, but then turning around and using the same physics to claim it's perfectly feasible for a full Venusian atmosphere to exist in a system which doesn't even have a sun.

Furthermore it seems that you are suffering under the misconception about the burden of proof.

The dialogue says that thirty percent of the crust was destroyed. That's a proof.

Maybe it is not the strongest and most reliable evidence - as witness statements are never - but nevertheless it is an admissible evidence.

This evidence is even more convincing as nobody on the bridge has questioned this statement. If it were totally absurd, someone would have noticed the impossibility of what was stated and would have said something. Insofar the other witnesses regarded what was stated as laying in the realm of possibility.

You want to refute it.

Please prove that it is wrong.

Prove that not thirty percent of the crust was destroyed.

I think you will have a hard time trying it because we do not see the crust as it was covered by the cloud layer.

Firstly, the big issue isn't so much where the explosions occurred

With that I can agree. As we did not see through the cloud layer, we can not know if the torpedoes detonated in the atmosphere or underground. I have no problem with assuming atmospheric detonations - although it means that then the torpedoes must be even stronger to be able to destroy thirty percent of the crust. Underground detonations are more efficient if your objective is to damage the crust as most as possible.

(even though you're insisting that the Cardassians and Romulans both used a technology that we've never seen either faction use, and wouldn't even begin to be compatible with the Romulan plasma torpedo design),

How often have you seen the Cardassians or the Romulans trying to destroy a planet?
In which event you have seen do you think they should have used such weapons?

it's the strength of them.

Why?

You are suggesting that what we saw represented 30% of the planet's crust being destroyed.

No. I have said several times that we did not see what happened beneath the cloud layer.
I have said several time that we did not see the surface of the planet and did not see what the weapons did beneath the cloud layer.

Regardless of whether they occurred on the surface or underneath it, a catastrophic disruption of those proportions should be FAR more noticeable than what we see in the episode.

Prove that we should be able to see what would happen beneath the cloud layer.

The simple fact is that we could not see through it, we couldn't see the surface of the planet and we couldn't see the effects of the weapons on the crust.

Why again should we be able to notice what happens beneath the cloud layer?

Secondly, there IS an explanation for why we didn't see any explosions on the planet's surface, but it's not one you're going to like. Namely, that the explosive yield of the torpedoes was actually so small that the blasts weren't visible from orbit.

Let me be sure I do understand your argument: Not the cloud layer obscured the detonations of the weapons but the torpedoes were so weak that we couldn't see their unobscured but too small detonations from orbit.

Is that your argument?

Then let me ask another question: How weak have the used torpedoes to be that it is impossible to see their unobscured detonations from orbit?

Do you really think that this argumentation will get you any credibility?

You still haven't proven that there weren't any subterranean detonations.

Appeal to ignorance fallacy. The onus is on you to prove that they occurred.

To make it short: What is your explanation for the following facts:

1. We saw them firing torpedoes on the planet
2. We know that a torpedo has a yield of at least hundred kilotons.
3. We know that a hundred kiloton atmospheric detonation is observable from an orbit above the detonation.
4. We didn't see one single detonation of a torpedo.

I admit that my attempt at an explanation may not be the best possible explanation.

Please show me how you reconcile these facts.

See above. Bringing up a bunch of issues with Theory A doesn't automatically mean that Theory B suddenly becomes the correct one.

I can't see how this answer makes any sense.

I mean I try to reconcile all the facts in theory A. You have issues with my theory - only because you do not like the conclusion - but that does not makes your theory B correct.

Quite apart from the fact that you do not even present a theory B.

Your only argument is that we did not see what you expected to see although what happened was obscured by a cloud layer and couldn't be seen.

Maybe it comes as a surprise to you: But only because you can't see something does not mean that this something isn't there. And if there is evidence for something being there - here in the form of a witness statement - you have to prove that the witness statement is wrong.

Fact is that we haven't seen any atmospheric detonations although they have shot weapons that have at least »a maximum yield of hundreds of kilotons«. Even a hundred kiloton detonation should be observable from orbit. On the other side: Such a detonation can not cause »circular shockwaves spreading through those clouds« as we have observed.

And a subterranean detonation can produce shockwaves that spread through the upper atmosphere at thousands of times the speed of sound? Care to explain how that works?

As you may notice when you watch that episode:

1. Only Beams shot through the cloud layer caused circular shockwaves spreading through those clouds traveling thousands of times the speed of sound for hundreds of kilometers.
2. Torpedoes shot through the cloud layer didn't affect it.

That makes it possible that the torpedoes were used for deep impact detonations.

So what were these rings, then?

Shockwaves

And how do they prove that 30% of the crust was destroyed?

They do not.

If photon torpedoes are really that powerful, why did Riker think they'd need the E-D's entire torpedo loadout to destroy the much smaller asteroid that contained the Pegasus?

Do you know how many torpedoes Enterprise had at this moment? If I remember correctly, Enterprise just returned from a mission when it was tasked with the search for the Pegasus. Maybe it had only a few torpedoes left from its earlier mission?

Let me get this straight. I have to prove that the Enterprise had its full loadout, but you get to just arbitrarily assume that it only had a small handful of torpedoes? In a mission where not only did they know they might have to destroy the Pegasus, there was a serious danger of a battle with the Romulans? Do I even need to explain how absurd this is?

You got this wrong. I do not demand that you prove that the Enterprise had its full loadout.
And I do not assume that it only had a small handful of torpedoes.
My stand is that this is a Non sequitur. We do not know how many torpedoes Enterprise hat. It could have had its full loadout and it could have had only a a small handful of torpedoes. We do not know.

Then why did you even bring this up? If you can't prove one way or the other what the Enterprise's torpedo count was, it has no bearing on the argument.

You brought it up.

And as you may notice when you watch that episode: To find the Pegasus was a matter of time because the Romulans were trying to find it too. Enterprise war just coming from a mission when it was tasked with its new mission. At this time, it was not at a starbase. Even if Enterprise had only a a small handful of torpedoes there simply was no time and no opportunity to restock the torpedoes.

Actually, they rendezvoused with the USS Crazy Horse to pick up Admiral Pressman. If the Enterprise's torpedo count really was severely depleted, Starfleet would likely have had the Crazy Horse bring a fresh supply of torpedoes for the Enterprise, considering the nature of the mission. Or, you know, chosen a ship that could actually defend itself against the Romulans.

Can you prove that this was possible, that the Crazy Horse had enough torpedoes or that there was enough time to transfer enough torpedoes to the Crazy Horse before that ship departed to rendezvous with the Enterprise or that there was enough time to transfer any torpedoes to the Enterprise?

Do you know how quickly the Crazy Horse had to leave?

Do you know how many other ships were available?

Do you know that Pressman didn't choose the Enterprise because Riker - who knew what was on the Pegasus - was onboard of the Enterprise.

You have a theory - and I admit that it is not implausible. But you have nothing to prove it.

That's getting tiresome.

• • • • Why are we supposed to expect that a Starfleet ship is armed with the most powerful weapons the UFP have or is able to build?
        
        The combined Romulan/Cardassian fleet was build for only one purpose: To attack and destroy the Founders planet. Insofar it suggests itself that they are armed with weapons to enable them to do this - maybe weapons that are not routinely distributed to all ships.
        
        (According to Chakotey, Federation Starships normally do not even carry tricobalt devices. It was unusual that the USS Voyager had two of such devices.)
        
        Maybe the weapons used at the attack on the founders planet were specially built for this long prepared mission.
        
        Maybe the Federation has the technology and knowledge to build similar powerful weapons - but has decided to not build them as they do not want to start an armament race.
        
        Maybe there are treaties - as the Treaty of Algeron, the second Khitomer Accords or the Jankata Accords - which are outlawing such weapons - as metagenic weapons or subspace weapons are outlawed by such treaties.

Thus my argument is: Photon torpedoes from the TNG episode Pegasus ≠ torpedoes from the DS9 episode The die is cast.

Do you even understand how a debate works? You don't just get to throw out "Maybe this! Maybe that!" and then demand that the person you're arguing with prove you wrong.

You are absolutely correct. But it seems that you are suffering under the misconception about the burden of proof.

The dialogue says that thirty percent of the crust was destroyed. That's a proof.

Maybe it is not the strongest and most reliable evidence - as witness statements are never - but nevertheless it is an admissible evidence.

This evidence is even more convincing as nobody on the bridge has questioned this statement. If it were totally absurd, someone would have noticed the impossibility of what was stated and would have said something. Insofar the other witnesses regarded what was stated as laying in the realm of possibility.

You want to refute it.

Please prove that it is wrong.

Prove that not thirty percent of the crust was destroyed.

If you want to claim that the torpedoes used in the TDIC bombardment were vastly more powerful than those seen elsewhere in Trek, you have to prove it!

That's very simple as you are saying it yourself.

You are saying that the torpedoes seen elsewhere in Trek are not powerful enough to do what was stated what the torpedoes in TDIC have done.

As long as you can not prove that the torpedoes in TDIC haven't done what was stated, it is only a logical conclusion.

If photon torpedoes are really that powerful, why did Riker think they'd need the E-D's entire torpedo loadout to destroy the much smaller asteroid that contained the Pegasus?

Do you know the composition of the asteroid that may had - according to Data - gravimetric or magnetic fluctuations inside which would overpower the engines on a shuttlecraft?

Unless you have some evidence that it's composed of materials significantly different than the nickel-iron composition of most asteroids, that's an irrelevant nitpick.

To make it short: What is your explanation for the following fact:

1. The asteroid may had gravimetric or magnetic fluctuations inside which would overpower the engines on a shuttlecraft?
2. Enterprise had problems scanning the asteroid.

When a shuttlecraft is able to start from and land on a whole planet, is it possible that a asteroid with a nickel-iron composition could have gravimetric or magnetic fluctuations inside which could overpower the engines on a shuttlecraft?

Did Enterprise ever had problems with scanning something so mundane as an asteroid with a simple nickel-iron composition?

Without knowledge of exactly what the asteroid was made of and how it would effect the Enterprise's weapons, this is just more irrelevant nitpicking.

That's exactly my argument.

We do not know the composition of the asteroid in the TNG epsiode Pegasus and can not simply assume - as you have done - that it is not significantly different than the nickel-iron composition of most asteroids.

That's why we can not know what is necessary to destroy that asteroid.

And that is the reason why we can not derive anything meaningful from the TNG episode Pegasus concerning the yield of the photon torpedoes the Enterprise was armed with then.

I'd try to reconcile all this facts with the following explanation: The asteroid was unusual. It did not have a simple nickel-iron composition but consisted of something else. That's why it could have gravimetric or magnetic fluctuations inside which could overpower the engines on a shuttlecraft. And that's why almost all of Enterprises photon torpedoes were necessary to destroy this peculiar asteroid.

Excuse me? Just now you claimed that the TDIC torpedoes were doomsday devices that were vastly more powerful than the usual photon torpedoes seen in Star Trek.

I regarded this as possible.

And now you're claiming that no, all photons actually are that powerful, it was just that the asteroid in The Pegasus was billions of times tougher than any currently known material. Can you please try to maintain a consistent argument?

Please show where I have stated that all photon torpedoes are as powerful as the torpedoes used at the attack on the Founder's planet.

Please show me where I have stated that he asteroid in the TNG episode Pegasus was billions of times tougher than any currently known material.

The only statement I have made is that almost all of Enterprises photon torpedoes were necessary to destroy this peculiar asteroid.

Only if you know how tough the asteroid is and know how many photon torpedoes Enterprise was armed with can you calculate anything meaningful.

But as we do know neither, we can not derive anything meaningful from the TNG episode Pegasus concerning the yield of the photon torpedoes the Enterprise was armed with then.

Aside from that, the incident in "The Pegasus" is consistent with what we saw in the likes of "Rise" and Star Trek: TMP.

Elaborate.

It's consistent in as much as they all imply torpedo yields in the low megaton range.

We had this already - as far as it concerns the Voyager episode Rise. You have no evidence that their photon torpedo was set on a maximum yield. They thought that their setting is enough to vaporize it. Insofar we can not derive anything meaningful for a maximum yield of photon torpedoes from that episode.

It's the same with Star Trek: TMP.

By the way, since you're willing to countenance the possibility of characters making mistakes, have you considered the possibility that maybe it was the Romulan in TDIC who made a mistake? Like, for instance, saying "30% of the crust" was destroyed when what he actually meant was "30% of the surface." After all, the latter actually would be consistent with the rest of Star Trek canon - hell, the original Enterprise was indicated to be able to wipe out all major population centres on a planet by itself in "A Taste of Armageddon" - while the former, to put it lightly, isn't.

Of course have I considered this possibility.

Right. You just consider the possibility of an officer mis-speaking in the heat of an important and dangerous mission to be less likely than the Cardassians and Romulans being armed with doomsday weapons that were never seen or mentioned again, or Federation captains routinely using their weapons at a billionth of their usual capacity.

We have never seen a planetary attack from the Romulans or Cardasssians but their attack on the Founder's planet. Insofar that we haven't seen this weapons again doesn't say anything - unless you count the TOS episode Balance of Terror, where a Romulan ship used very one plasma torpedo against a Federation outpost that was constructed a mile deep on an asteroid of almost solid iron.

We have never seen the Federation making a planetary attack. We do not know what specialized weapons they have for such a purpose.

And let us assume for the sake of the argument, that the Romulan office mis-spoke. Then why did nobody on the bridge questioned this statement?

Exactly

Wow. I can't remember the last time I saw someone pull such a brazen Appeal to Ignorance fallacy.

Okay, since you're evidently in need of a refresher on the board rules, allow me to present Debating Rule 5:

• • • • Back Up Your Claims. If you make a contentious statement of fact and someone asks for evidence, you must either provide it or withdraw the claim. Do not call it "self evident", restate it in different words, force the other person to prove your claim is not true, or use other weasel techniques to avoid backing up your claims.

Therefore, I formally demand that you present evidence that what we saw in The Die is Cast represented 30% of the Founder planet's crust being destroyed.

I can not as we have not seen what happened beneath the cloud layer.

But now I formally demand that you present evidence that what was stated by the Romulan officer was wrong.

Yes I am honestly suggesting that you can somehow catastrophically disrupt a third of a planet's crust and not have any noticeable effect to be seen from orbit through a thick cloud-layer that obscures not only the surface of the planet but all effects the weapons have on the surface too.

Okay then. Describe how this happened.

The Cardassian/Romulan attack fleet shot torpedoes they brought with them to destroy the planet. These torpedoes passed through the could layer and detonated. Maybe they detonated in the atmosphere. Maybe they penetrated the crust first and detonated then. The explosion shattered thirty percent of the crust.

What is your evidence for supposing that a third of the crust was somehow significantly disrupted?

The dialogue says that thirty percent of the crust was destroyed. That's a proof.

Maybe it is not the strongest and most reliable evidence - as witness statements are never - but nevertheless it is an admissible evidence.

This evidence is even more convincing as nobody on the bridge has questioned this statement. If it were totally absurd, someone would have noticed the impossibility of what was stated and would have said something. Insofar the other witnesses regarded what was stated as laying in the realm of possibility.

You want to refute it.

Please prove that it is wrong.

Prove that not thirty percent of the crust was destroyed.

I doubt that a totally vaporization is possible as the resulting expansion will blow the parts of the asteroid, that are nor already vaporized, apart. While it may be possible to vaporize most of it, it does not seem to be a contradiction to have a few fragments that were not vaporized.

You're right, it's not possible for a photon torpedo to do that... because they're not powerful enough. If the asteroid in "Rise" were 200m wide (on the upper end of most estimates) it would take just shy of 60 megatons to cause the entire thing to vaporize fast enough that no solid fragment remains. Photon torpedoes are supposed to have a yield of around 64 megatons, but due to the explosion not being directed and inefficiencies in the M/AM annihilation process, it would never direct enough of that energy into the asteroid to result in total vapourization.

Even with 60 megatons you can not vaporize the whole asteroid as it is impossible to apply that energy uniformly on the whole asteroid. At the point of the detonation, mass of the asteroid will be vaporized, will expand and blow apart the parts of the asteroid that are not yet vaporized. Even if you can vaporize 99 percent of the asteroid, you will have a few fragments remaining.

With a sufficiently high energy input - which, realistically, would probably have to be quite a bit more than the 60 megaton minimum - a 200m asteroid will be totally vaporized, before any fragments can escape.

Prove it.

Simple physics. Put enough energy into any object to overcome anything (structural and material irregularities, etc) that might impede energy transfer throughout the object, it will be vaporized with no surviving fragments.

My fault - I was not clear enough in what you are supposed to prove.

Prove that this also happens if the energy is not applied uniformly to the object.

Prove that in such a case the energy will not simply cut through the object or pierce it.

Or are you honestly claiming that, for instance, even a Death Star blast couldn't fully vaporize a 200m-wide asteroid?

I am honestly claiming that the energy of the Death Star, if it is concentrated on a small spot of a 200m-wide asteroid, will not vaporize the asteroid. It leaves the asteroid with a hole that the beam has burned.

But if the beam is broad enough to encompass the whole asteroid, than the asteroid may be vaporized without any fragments remaining.

Again: Photon torpedoes from the Voyager episode Rise ≠ torpedoes from the DS9 episode The die is cast.

Of course. Starfleet go around arming their ships with pea shooters when all their rivals are packing tactical nukes.

We had this already:

• • • • How many aircrafts in the US armed forces are routinely armed with the most powerful weapons (nuclear weapons) the US have?
        
        Even in war time, how many aircrafts in the US armed forces are routinely armed with the most powerful weapons (nuclear weapons) the US have? While flying their attacks in Iraq or Afghanistan, how many aircrafts in the US armed forces were armed with the most powerful weapons (nuclear weapons) the US has? Since the development of nuclear weapons, the US was involved in many wars and warlike operations. How often did they deploy their most powerful weapons (nuclear weapons)?
        
        
        
        Why are we supposed to expect that a Starfleet ship is armed with the most powerful weapons the UFP have or is able to build?
        
        The combined Romulan/Cardassian fleet was build for only one purpose: To attack and destroy the Founders planet. Insofar it suggests itself that they are armed with weapons to enable them to do this - maybe weapons that are not routinely distributed to all ships
        
        (According to Chakotey, Federation Starships normally do not even carry tricobalt devices. It was unusual that the USS Voyager had two of such devices.)
        
        Maybe the weapons used at the attack on the founders planet were specially built for this long prepared mission.
        
        Maybe the Federation has the technology and knowledge to build similar powerful weapons - but has decided to not build them as they do not want to start an armament race.
        
        Maybe there are treaties - as the Treaty of Algeron, the second Khitomer Accords or the Jankata Accords - which are outlawing such weapons - as metagenic weapons or subspace weapons are outlawed by such treaties.

Furthermore:

Prove that all the rivals of the Federation have their ships armed with the same torpedoes which were used by an illegal build and armed fleet to attack and destroy a planet.

Prove that there is no difference between the common photon torpedoes and torpedoes specially built to attack and destroy a planet.

Prove that torpedoes specially built to attack and destroy a planet can be used as well to attack ships.

Another way to put it:

• • • • Photon torpedoes intended primarily for ship to ship combat              Air to Air missiles intended primarily for aircraft to aircraft combat
        ____________________________________________________   =   ___________________________________________________________
        Weapons intended primarily to attack and destroy planets                Nuclear weapons intended primarily to attack and destroy cities

[WATCH-MAN]

It has occurred to me that this entire debate is utterly pointless (within the ST vs SW context that is, not in general). We are asked to accept from Treknobabble and Watchman that the Federation and other AQ powers have access to massively powerful weapons that could potentially pose a threat to Imperial vessels.

However, if this theory is correct, then the AQ powers have only deployed these weapons twice, one of which was a short-notice mashup to deal with one specific threat. They are not deployed against the many severe and/ore existential threats the federation et al face. No such weapons are used against the Doomsday Machine, or against V'Ger, or against the Borg (on the two occasions they directly assault Earth) despite the two attacks coming incredibly close to succeeding. They are not used against the Dominion fleets, even when high-ranking Admirals state that if the reinforcements arrive, they're finished. They aren't used against Species 8472, which wanted to purge all other life from the galaxy. They aren't even used for demolitions of large objects (they had to invent another high-yield weapon, Tricobalt devices, to destroy the Caretaker's Array).

So, the Federation won't use it's very powerful weapons against threats that variously want to assimilate all life, purge all life by force, convert all life into energy patterns, or shatter every planet in it's path. It won't even use them to prevent generations of oppression and occupation by the Dominion.

So why would they use them on the Empire? Since in the vast majority of cases the Empire merely occupies the Federation but in a less-brutal fashion than the Dominion planned (no annihilating Earth's population, for instance). In those terms, the Empire is actually a far less serious threat than things that appear for one episode, so why would Starfleet and it's allies be willing to break out the mega-antimatter weapons for this foe?

This thread is in the »Star Trek« section and not in the »Star Wars vs Star Trek«.

As fas as I am aware, nobody in this thread has talked about »Star Wars vs Star Trek«.

Is a debate that is not a »Star Wars vs Star Trek« debate pointless?



On another note: I agree that the Federation would probably not use certain weapons we know they could use against the Empire.

But ...

... concerning the Doomsday Machine:

• • • • It could deactivate anti-matter => this event has no relevance in this thread

... concerning the Borg:

• • • • How do you know what was shot on them off-screen?
        How do you know that planetary-attack-weapons could be used against ships?
        How do you know that the three weapons shot from the Mars at the Borg weren't such weapons?

... concerning Species 8472:

• • • • How do you know that planetary-attack-weapons could be used against ships?

... concerning the Dominion:

• • • • Using such weapons against the Dominion would result in them using such weapons against the Federation/Klingons/Romulans
        This is a good reason to not use them. The Domino was not - as far as the Federation/Klingons/Romulans knew - bend to exterminate the Federation/Klingon/Romulan population.
        If the Federation/Klingon/Romulan military can not hold the Dominion military off, it may be considered better for the population to life under a new management than to be exterminated.
        
        For the same reason the Federation would probably not use certain weapons we know they could use against the Empire.