ZOMG the E-D can drill a 3000km hole in 19 seconds!!!!!!!!!!

[Serafina]

You mean this one where they clearly point out visually and verbally that the pockets are just short of the molten CORE........

That would not be the core - that would be the inner mantle. Learn some geophyics - i learned that in school when i was about 16.

Sorry, but you only have two options:
-they are actually correct. Which would proove that they can somehow withstand thouands of degrees C
-they are wrong. This is consistent with what we see (the drilled tunnel), other firepower calculations and the simple fact that they were not roasted alive.

The depth is canon and confirmed visually and verbally.

It is also contradicted visually.

Unless contradicted by the movie, the movie clearly shows no shield.......so no shield.

The movie shows a diagram. A military diagram only has to show what's important to the mission. It does not have to be to scale, it does not have to show every detail.
And the book clearly says that it IS a complete shield. Stop ignoring canon.

The dark spots continue to grow after the beam has hit and that is contrary to a DET effect.

And not only that but YOU are not talking about a blowtorch baking off layers of paint.

With your debunked theory you are talking about the virtually instant effect of that much energy hitting the planet (1E38 is the absurd figure you use i believe) and as such it does not matter if it hits land sea or ice.

And this is inconsitent with my explanation how?

Furthermore - we clearly SEE that AT LEAST 2.4E32 joules of energy are released - that's the binding energy of the damn planet. If no such amount of energy is released, the planet would NOT be blown up. Wether it is achieved by DET or chain reaction - you have AT LEAST that amount of energy. Simple physics.

My chain reaction relies on no such thing.

Instead using...what exactly? The incrediby long timeframe of 1/10th of a second? Already explained darker spots in the explosion? Come on, tell me, so that i can debunk your chickenshit.

I know enough about planets and Thermodynamics does not explain the second explosion if a DET weapon was used.

You clearly do not understand the thermodynamic differences between partially molten (mostly silicate) rock and solid iron.

AGAIN - consession accepted.

Bzzt. See the rest of my post. Stop being so trigger-happy with a word you can't even spell right after repeated corrections.

I is not the existance of a "single piece of tech" it is the existance of the ability to have such tech available, the calcs in half a life were used to modify a photon torpedo within hours or sooner.

Photon torps are common and by that example easily modified.

And that particular example is one of several available.

You still have to establish the actual effect of the device, along with it's employability towards normal suns.

Bcause they were worthless considering the circumstances.

You know what? You are actually right - if they truly can modify it on the fly in "half an hour" (unproven, but i'll accept it for now) - then yes, i was wrong. Come on, brag - lucky for you that i am not as dense as you and are actually capable of admitting error, instead of just ignoring the part where i am prooven wrong.


Which does not refute my point that you have NOT prooven that that torpedoe works on normal stars.

Whatever dude the fact is that 2 nickel-iron asteroids so tiny and moving so slowly would not cause a explosion like we saw and nor would one burn/combust like it did.

By all means link me a image of 2 REAL roids the same size going the same speed that behave in the same way.

I performed calculations. Refute them.
You did no such thing. Therefore i do not have to refute anything.

Combustable materials can explode or burn depending the the energy they are subjected to amoung other things, that would be consistant with the fact that larger roids having low but greater impacts just exploded.

Yes, that is, basically, correct.
However, it does not adress the problem that, IF SOMETHING EXPLODES, the whole damn thing does so.
Furthermore, we see how TIEs fire on the giant asteroid (while chasing the falcon) - outside a crater. No explosion is observed - why, if they just hit a pile of explosives?
Heck, the asteroids do not look differently - one would assume that something coated with explosives would look slightly different...

While with these 2 smaller roids only one was destroyed while the other combusted/burned.

Which is readily explainable by kintetic energy. No explosives are required.

I explained your silly nito bit above...and yay...

No comment....except LoL

Oh so they were burning then......consession accepted.

I already said that they might burn. Such a thing is not impossible, at least to my knowledge. The energy to start such a reaction can be provided by heat produced by KE.
This does not constiture a conCession of the whole argument.

NO LIMIT FALLACY!!!!.....woooopie!!!!!.

Nobody ever claimed they were made entirely of combustable material, in fact it would be absurd to do so as very very few things are 100% pure of any single material if any.

You made no statement to the contrary. Uniform composition would be logical, and is constantly observed in asteroids.
(I hope you understand the word "uniform).

The fact that they CONTAIN combustable/explosive material cannot be denied as our observation shows but i would argue AGAINST anybody trying to claim they were made entirely out of ANY single material combustable or otherwise.

You continue to ignore my calculations. Along with the principle of parsimony.

Who cares?, it would still pretty much screw anybody living on a planet orbiting it, and if i remember generations correctly doing so caused a "shockwave" that destroyed the planets. I do not remember them being refered to as nova or looking like any examples of nova or supernovas i have seen in sci-fi or factual science programs.

Actually, no, it wouldn't.
Don't you know that the energy produced by the fusion at the core of a star takes millionshundreds of thousands of years to reach the surface? (thanks for the correction, sis).
Therefore, stopping the fusion NOW leaves..well, ample time to live on the planet and eventually evacuate.

Oh, and suddenly, you are talking about generations? Can't you stay consistent?

Im sorry but where does it say that the dying star is a requirement?.

It is the REASON they are doing what they are doing but in no way is it stated or even implied that it is requirement. In fact the only issue that was mentioned was initialy the guidance system before the test oh and they were heating it to increase the helium fusion rate.

Quoting from the epsiode description from Memory Alpha now:

"Captain's log, stardate 44805.7. For generations, the people of Kaelon II have been working to revitalize their dying sun. The Federation has offered to assist in testing what may be a solution to this problem."

On the Kaelon sun:

The Kaelon sun was unstable, leading 24th century Kaelon scientists to research various methods of stabilizing stellar energy reactions. (TNG: "Half a Life")

Describing that the star they tested it on was highly similar:

The Enterprise is on its way to an empty star system with a sun almost perfectly identical to the Kaelon sun, in order to test the modified photon torpedoes.

So...who's ignoring canon again? This outright states that the sun was instable. You have to show why it would work on any other star.

They nedded to stabilise at 220 million K, they hit the mark and it stops rising (yay thinks them all)........for a few seconds then the temperature starts increasing again and they bugger off at warp just before the star goes boom....(lots of sad puppy faces).

So...they already OVERHEATED the damn thing? Because a typical star like our sun only has a core temperature of 15 million degree celsius (and in case you don't know, that's pretty much the same in Kelvin).
How does that constitute proov that the star was, in any way, normal?

Here is a image of it BEFORE the process begins:

This is not a normal star. This is at least a Red giant. No vital planets in the SW-galaxy orbit a red giant. Further proof that it was NOT a normal star.



Soo, let's see:
I challenged you to provide proof that KE is not enough to provide for the visual effects of the asteroids. Nope, you did not do it, just repeating that it doesn't.
I challenged you to explain what an explosion is. You ignored that part - even tough it would have taken about one or two sentences.
I challenged you to provide proof that the Star in "Half a life" is a normal star. You did not do so, and the episode itself describes it as "unstable", while the star is clearly a Red Giant.
You continue to ignore the existance of planetary shields, despite it being G-canon (you ignored RotS, a G-canon example for a full planetary shield).

Yep - no proof for anything, despit it being pittyfully easy.

[Serafina]

Ok so 1.2 tons, that is roughly the same as a car depending on the type and 43m/s converts to 96.2mph.

Yay, a calculation
Not that this is a shocking conclusion or anything.

Now while i would not like to be standing in the way of a 1.2 ton lump of anything traveling at almost 100mph i have to say that i am unwilling to accept that such a impact would do anything past causing some fragmenting and splintering to the two roids and deflecting them and the fragments.

Which is EXACTLY what happened to the parts of the asteroids. The lightflash is explained later.

I admire your tenacity by trying to include the lightbulb example but it is hardly applicable in this situation.

You point out that the bulbs only convert 3% of their energy into light but then try to say that 2 rocks bumping together would do so with their KE with 100% effeciency?. Now in sure that would require that as they collide all thier momentum is stopped, they do not fragment or deflect or do anything apart from turn the KE from the colissioninto light.

I INCLUDED the 3% figure. It IS entirely arbirtray - but i did NOT claim that they release 100% of their KE in the form of visible light! They release radiation - some of it (i took the low 3% figure) in the form of visible light.
However, they DO have to release the energy of the impact somehow. Heat is the only way to do so, along with accelerating the fragments.
However, you will note that i only calculated the KE of ONE asteroid - more than enough left to explain any additional momentum.

The impact at such speeds would shatter them or fragment them and also deflect both and all the bits into other and multiple directions, THAT is where the energy would go or stay depending on your perspective i suppose.

FAIL.
At physics.
See above.

Honestly - if that's all you can do, you merely demonstrate your ignorance of basic physics.

[bz249]

Then again, i had to ask myself: Heck, why not?
So, here i am, doing pittyfull calculations. You are free to refute them, i do not claim that they are that accurate. And i might have made an error - however, if i did you have to show where i made it. Just saying that they are wrong without doing your own work doesn't count.

Here is how i did it:
I assumed that the asteroids are a mere shiplenght away from the falcon (in other words, really, really close). They hence had to travel a distance of 86 meters (a pittyfully small distance, most likely much higher). They take no more than a second to do so. I gave them the small diameter of 1 meter.
I had to made all these assumptions, since there are no points of reference in the video, and i simply lack the equipment (such as a DVD) to make a frame-by-frame analysis. However, i was extremely conversative with my assumptions.
Oh, and i also assumed that they are actually made of mere silicon - less than a third of the density of nickel-iron. Just to make sure that you don't complain about it, kid.

Either way:
The asteroids travels a distance of 86 meters in 1 second. That gives us a speed of....43 meters per seconds (since every asteroids moves only over half the screen).
A sphere with a diameter of 1 meter has an radius of...half a meter.
4/3*pi*r³=0,523598 m³ about 0.525m³
At a density of 2330 kg/m³ (for silicone), that gives us a mass of:
2330 kg/m³*0.525m³=1220 kg or about 1.2 tons

An object with a speed of 43 meters per second and a mass of 1.2 tons has a kinetic energy of:
0,5*1220 kg*43m/s²=1127890 joules or 1.12 megajoules

Now, how much of that energy is converted into heat?
Well, since there is nothing else to convert it into (the gravitational binding energy of such a small object is negligible, there is no medium for soundwaves) - about all of it?
What do you think - sufficient to produce a short flash of light? If you want to deny it - how about you doing the next part and showing that it is NOT enough energy? Furthermore, how about establishing an amount of energy that would be required for the observed phenomenon?


A conventional lightbulb (100 watts) uses 100 joules per second. Therefore, we could power the equivalent of 11.278 100-watt lightbulbs. Those only convert about 3% of their energy into light - the rest is in non-visible spectrums. That is likely also the case here - giving us about 339 conventional lightbulbs of visible light.


I was quite generous with that calculation. These asteroids had most likely way more distance to the Falcon (given it's speed) - which would increase their speed AND mass (since they would appear smaller and would therefore scale to a larger size, and would have to cross a larger distance in the same amount of time). I am also pretty sure that it takes less than a second - and those are, according to astrophysicics, nickel-iron asteroids - trippling their mass and KE.
Numerous other things are also taken at low values - there is far more room for them to be bigger than smaller.
All in all, this is likely an extremely LOW-fetched calculation.

Edit:
By the way, the whole thing took less than half an hour - about half of that was spent digging out my old physics textbook and watching the video over and over again for estaminations.

Comparing to light bulbs is not a physically honest way to do so, since light bulbs are hot, so a good portion of the radiated heat is in the visible range.

To emit in the visible the material have to be heated up to about 200°C. Then it would glow reddish. Let's take 500K for the sake of simplicity.

Specific heat quartz: 0.8 kJ/kg*K

So around 400kJ required for every kilogram. This is equal to roughly 800m/s collision velocity. Multiply it by a factor of two and the stuff gets 1700°C white hot (indeed its over melting point, but let's forget it, it will change nothing).

This is the very upper limit to produce flashes: at 1.6 km/s collosion velocity and perfect heat conductivity (since the total amount of material is heated up to 1700°C). Heating up the rock only partially requires only a fraction of that speed.

So the energy has the required density to produce flashes.

[Serafina]

Comparing to light bulbs is not a physically honest way to do so, since light bulbs are hot, so a good portion of the radiated heat is in the visible range.

To emit in the visible the material have to be heated up to about 200°C. Then it would glow reddish. Let's take 500K for the sake of simplicity.

Specific heat quartz: 0.8 kJ/kg*K

So around 400kJ required for every kilogram. This is equal to roughly 800m/s collision velocity. Multiply it by a factor of two and the stuff gets 1700°C white hot (indeed its over melting point, but let's forget it, it will change nothing).

This is the very upper limit to produce flashes: at 1.6 km/s collosion velocity and perfect heat conductivity (since the total amount of material is heated up to 1700°C). Heating up the rock only partially requires only a fraction of that speed.

So the energy has the required density to produce flashes.

Thanks.
I knew that lightbulbs were not the best comparision, but i had no idea how to do it any better.

[Serafina]

Did you learn to read as well?.

What comes after the inner mantle?, oh thats right the outer molten core........did i say they were drilling to pockets that were just short of the molten core....yup.

Congratulations for confirming what i said.

Yeah, except that they point at the upper end of the lower mantle...at the border to the upper mantle.
Your own picture shows that it is, in fact, not anywhere close to the outer core. Even if we ignore the layering seen in it and just go by size.
Hence, dialogue and visuals are incompatible no matter what.

You really need to watch these episodes dude it would make things a lot easier because you would not post pointless arguments.

So should you. Or perhaps reading a geology textbook would be more usefull.

Incorrect.

As i just explained, contradicted in the diagram itself.
Furthermore, we do NOT see red-hot glowing walls (as we would see near the core), nor do we see the crew getting baked, AND we see (sun)light at the end of the tunnel.
All that indictates that they are, in fact, not very deep down.

You do not think that getting through what you say was a planetary shield with the clearance codes was a important NO essential part of the mission?....

Since the mission was to take out the Death Star - yes, that's kinda not the critical point.
Look at it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWXVUJfSvDs
You see - basically, a powerpoint presentation where, when saying "it (Death Star) is protected by an energy shield", he showed that it IS.
Showing the planetary shield would be waste of effects and would distract from what he said. The landing itself is not covered in detail.

Well sorry but it was so if the military diagram did not show it then guess what?, your own rules just screwed you dude.

Well...evidently, not.

If no such amount of energy is released, the planet would NOT be blown up. Wether it is achieved by DET or chain reaction - you have AT LEAST that amount of energy. Simple physics.

It is interesting to note that according to the novel the DS is what 75,000km from the planet and the suspension of disbelief rule says that visuals are just that ie: like looking through a window. And we see the DS beam come from behind us and hit the planet meaning the window/camera is closer to the planet than the DS.

Are you saying that Alderaan did NOT blow up? Are you on drugs?

Now if the above comments are right then we do not actually see the explosion reach our position so the DS is either father away (and if you look how big the planet appears that is not a impossability as it should look much larger if we are only 75000km away) or the chain reaction used planetary material to fuel it and because of that some of the planets material was turned into energy and thus less energy was needed to shift the remaining mass because less mass = less binding energy.

The planet blew up. Which means that AT LEAST 2.4E32 joules are necessary. You get more when properly scaling the explosion (which is not based on any POV from the DS, but rather simply the planetary diameter of Alderaan itself).

I am not sure what you want from me?, the chain reaction effect works with or without a shields it is not disproved like the DET effect is by the delay, ejected material after the beam has hit or the second explosion.....in fact those things confirm it.

Shields explain all the visual "inconsistencies" that form the basis of your argument. Planetary shields are G-canon. Parsimony tells us that no chain reaction is required.

I may or may not but it is not required due to the DET effect and power rit would hit the planet with making the differances irrelavant.

Assuming an unknonwm unsubstantiated variable to explain an already explained mechanism is a violation of the principle of parismony.
Hence, it is not required.

You made no statement to the contrary. Uniform composition would be logical, and is constantly observed in asteroids.

Uniform composition

Sorry, was that supposed to be an answer?

You were the one who mentioned "Stopping the fusion in a normal star" (what sorins torp did in generations) so that is what i replied to, maybe you got trek WMD's confused as they do have a lot....

And yet, we never see them used as WMDs by anyone, nor do we see their political effects, EVER.
Which is kind of a big gap requiring explanation, dont'ycha think? I already explained what kind of effects we would see, all you have done is repeadeately saying that we do not

Im not ignoring anything and certainly not canon.

Yet you refuse to admit that that sun was clearly not normal.

Why do you keep sayng that im claiming the star was normal?, i said from the start the star was old ect ect and i have never claimed otherwise.

Simple: You keep insisting that that trick would work on any star. You have not provided explanation of how that is supposed to work. Hence, you must assume that the star was, in fact, normal.
Oh, and:

Im sorry but where does it say that the dying star is a requirement?.

Your own words. Denying what the episode clearly said.

But then i do not see the ability to heat a star to 220 million K and then even hotter so it goes boom as exclusive to a single type and while certian types would likely be immune like Neutron Stars i do not see it being a issue for Main Sequence Stars.

Any heating would clearly be the result of processes in the star itself, unless you want to claim that single torpedoe can carry many teratons of energy.
A normal star would not heat up like that, nor would it require such a high temperature as their goal.

I never said it was normal alhough a red giant is part of our suns life cycle.

Yes, in a couple of billion years.
Brilliant strategy right there: Wait until SW-planets orbit red giants, and then blow them up!

I have explained it.

Your premise was always that we should see no flash of light.
You did NOT provide any evidence OR explanation for this, instead merely parroting yourself and saying that it would not look like that.

An explosion is a rapid increase in volume and release of energy, sometimes with the generation of high temperatures and relese of gases.

Gee, you can quote Wikipedia. At least quote the whole damn thing:

An explosion is a rapid increase in volume and release of energy in an extreme manner, usually with the generation of high temperatures and the release of gases. An explosion creates a shock wave. If the shock wave is a supersonic detonation, then the source of the blast is called a "high explosive". Subsonic shock waves are created by low explosives through the slower burning process known as deflagration.

Do you see a shockwave? Would there be a visisble shockwave?

Happy?.

Yes, indeed. Thanks for showing us that you have to go to Wikipedia to define what an explosion is.

I never said it was a normal star, i did say it was old ect ect, and considering you confirm it is a red giant then i can now say it is a version of our sun when it gets old......so meh.

You denied that being old and instable was a requirement. Yet they explicitly say so in that episode. Which, by your definition, means that you ignored canon.

Thats why i initially ignored them but as you started expanding a few silly questions into exhagerated claims of comments ive made (like the one about the half a life sun) i figured id correct you before you end up placing me on the grassy null.........

You never provided proof for your basic claims either.

Look i can get a couple of 1.2 ton blocks of silicon and whack them together at 100 mph in a direct head on collision to maximise the effect, now without preamble is this the effect i will see including the flame/burning/whatever.

Do it then, and so so in space. A hot atmosphere is not comparable to a vacuum without temperature.

YES or NO.

Now i know the answer and so do you but as you said in your last post you are capable of admitting a error so lets see if you are capable of a bit more honesty.

I provided an answer (tough it was a crude one, thanks to bz249 for elaboration). You...apparently choose to ignore it.

[Serafina]

Another poster, who also "contributed" earlier.

Just a quick point here. There is no mention of a planetary shield anywhere in any of the movie novelizations, much less any of the movies themselves.

Wrong on nearly all counts, according to Wookiepedia and my own memories of several books.

Star Wars - Episode I:

Naboo was not protected by a planetary shield. Nor is there mention that such thing exists much less a reason given as to why the Naboo do not have one.

Correct.
However, Naboo was a peacefull planet in a time of, well, peace. Is it really that much of a surprise that they do not have a giant, expensive shield to maintain?

Star Wars - Episode II:

Geonosis was not protected by a planetary shield - although there was a meeting of representatives of important members of the Confederacy of Independent Systems and a rather significant droid factory. Furthermore the Geonosians wanted to build the Ultimate Weapon, a rather ambitious project. Nevertheless Republic ships were able to land without anyone noticing anything, and certainly no shield to prevent even a local area landing.

They were obviously not prepared for an attack. This (plus eventually long build times) readily explains the lack of a shield.

Star Wars - Episode III:

Coruscant was not protected by a planetary shield - although there was a huge battle in low orbit and falling debris caused the death of thousands, what could have been prevented with shields. There is no mention in either the movie, nor the novelization about layered shielding as some Warsies and the EU have attempted to retcon to explain it's conspicuous absence.

Wrong according to the novel. The shield was explicitly sabotaged - hardly a feat if the Supreme Chancellor want's it to hapen.

Star Wars - Episode IV:

Alderaan was not protected by a planetary shield. Neither the movie nor the novel are showing a planetary shield.

IIRC, the novel mentions it. (It does, according to Wookiepedia).
Other sources definately do - and we see the effects of the shield.
However, the fact that it is not mentioned is hardly relevant. By the same token, we could deny the existance of shield on starships if they are not explicitly mentioned .

Star Wars - Episode V:

Hoth was not protected by a planetary shield. Only the rebel base was protected by a theater shield of perhaps a few tens of kilometers diameter based on the speed of the Imperial Walkers.

Yet the shield was strong enough to resist bombardment of an Eclipse-class SSD.
That the rebels had only a theater shield is no surprise - they were resource-strapped and did not need a whole planetary shield.

Star Wars - Episode VI:

Endor was not protected by a planetary shield. The novel as well as the movie show that the shield was projected from the forest moon, encompassing the second Death Star, but not the moon itself.

Wrong, the novel does say otherwise.
Furthermore, if Endor was NOT proteced, landing near the generator would have been trivial. Yet they explicitly had to steal codes do bypass...what? Oh, right, the shields.

The calculations for how much surface area the Endor-projected DS2 shield could have covered if spread out over the surface of a planet is covered in this thread here and here. In the best-case scenario it takes only 25 Endor-class shield generators to cover a planet the size of the Earth, and on the more realistic end of things over 2,300 of them.

Which, if we take you at face value, is harldy impossible for Star Wars, given that they could build 60% of a Death Star within 6 months.


Planetary shields are canon. From the movie-novelisations, they are G-canon. From the visual effects in ANH, they are G-canon. There are multiple lesser-canon sources for them as well, which would be sufficient on it's own, since the movies never explicitly contradict it.

[Serafina]

Aaah, ignorance - remember, kids, it's bliss!

This keeps getting more and more 'LOL' worthy.

Two metal objects weighing a ton, colliding at say 150 km/h producing a (massive) explosion and a (huge) flash of light? Is that seriously something these people are trying to defend?

So thats why collisions between cars or even better, trains, always end with huge explosions and blinding flashes of light (especially at night)!

Err, waidaminute... THEY DON'T!

Remember kids, hollywood 'science' does not translate into the real world
/massive sigh

Yep, because cars collide in space all the time
And an object in space can totally dump the (transformed) kinetic energy the same way as it as it can on earth

Note bz249's correction about black body radiation (again, thanks a lot). Also note that i made VERY generous assumptions - given the high speed of the falcon, these asteroids could have easily been far further away. That would give them greater mass (due to scaling) and also higher velocities.
You have NO proof that the collision is not strong enough to release a short flash of light and partially shatter the asteroids.
Claiming "collisions do not produce explosions" is ignorant and stupid - it's clearly not an explosion, and i already showed that collisions in space do, in fact, produce flashes of light.

[Serafina]

Actually if you watch that bit the screen shot given is a little inaccurate as the dialog during it is discussing the drilling to the pockets and he moves his finger down the image while talking. He finishes saying that and turns away but his finger is clearly at a depth of over 2 thousand km and as he has finished explaining the drilling part he turns and starts going on about the plasma infusion they are gonna use.

It is actually perfectly consistant with the change in conversational dialog and quite natural looking if you actually watch the episode.

Well, it is STILL not consitent with the other visuals - or did that cave look like it was 2000°C hot (the lower mantle has temperatures from ~500°C to 4000°C).

Due to whatever mechanism they use to cool the pocket, they mention after the drilling that it would take a few hours to get the pocket to a temp they could work in.

Energy has to go somewhere - it can't just disappear. Where did it go?

Meaning the tunnel is likely simular to this (not to scale before you nitpick):

Ah, so you just claim that most of the tunnel was very wide, as evidenced by...what exactly?

The phaser power adjustments mentioned during the drilling are consistant with it although i would say the holes would be more conical but it does show a result fully consistant with the drilling, diagram and dialog, cooling required, phaser str adjustments during the drilling.

Again, baseless speculation.

But come on, go ahead - perform a calculation for your szenario.
However, keep the NDF-reaction in mind - phaser clearly do not vaporize anything.

I have watched it have you?, and while text books are good and sometimes useful canon material is better and takes precedence.

So you prefer watching a Star Trek episode over reading a science book?
Gee, what a surprise

So the squad that was to take out the shield generator, the KEY to the entire ability to achieve the goal of the mission.......is "not the critical point"...

Watch that szene again. Ackbar basically said "we take out the shield projector, then blow up the damn thing".
Virtually NO details were given.
Is it really that surprising that the accompanying graphics were not accurate?

The fighters only needed to fly in and shoot a few weapons at the reactor but the main thing that allowed the whole damn thing to work you consider to be "not the critical point"...

Yea right lol, the diagram would have shown it, it did not so it did not exist, your rules pal.

Ignorance still does not constitute an argument.

Nope but id like to try the ones that make ppl leap to stupid conclusions like you seem to be on, what are they called?.

6-Chlor-17-hydroxy- 1α,2α-cycloprop
and 1,3,5(10)-Estratrien- 3,17β-diol
Oh, wait...eh, i'll let you figure that out on your own.

Im pretty sure i was talking about suspension of disbelief planetary scaling using Movie level G canon material.

So was i. However, i can refer you to calculations - can you do the same?

Perhaps, but that does not mean the 2.4E32 joules (i was always ok with DET theorists using 1E38 tbh considering it is debunked anyway) came from the DS

And....where does it come from, then? Planets are not giant bombs that blow up on their own, you know? Dismantling any binding energies takes energy either way. And silicone and iron are hardly known for their combustability.

I do not remember hearing how large alderaan was in the movie, however the G canon visuals take precedence so either the DS was farther away than 75000km when it fired or alderaan was smaller than you claim.

Alderaan clearly has earth-like gravity. That set's pretty harsh limits for it's size.
Other canon sources give us a diameter of 12,500 kilometers.

I do not care enough to pick one so you can if you like.

LO and behold!
Not mine, of course.

Shields (if they exist) are a inconsistancy as they are not like seperate panes of glass, this means that the moment we see a dark spot during the beams impact that they have failed, the second/main explosion that destroys alderaan is long after the beam has hit.

Say, where do you even get that "panes of glass" idea?
Besides - why can't you have multiple layers of shields?
Either way, the shield FAILED. And your "long after" is again not even a second away.

Thus shields or no shields the dual explosions and the delay after the beam has hit between the planet exploding clearly disproves the DET theory.

Thermodynamics.
Unlike gravity, it doesn't suck. However, you apparently do (at it).

The principle of parismony does not apply to disproved theories and regardless the chain reaction effect requires considerably less technobabble to make available and work than a DET theory.

"Shorter explanation"≠"better by parsimony".
A chain reaction requires:
-an unknown process, somehow releasing enough energy to blow up a planet violently.
-sufficient energy to punch trough the canonic planetary shield
-an unknown energy source
DET requires:
-an unknown energy source, enough to blow up a planet violently.
-enough energy to punch trough the canonic planetary shield. However, this is already covered by the first point.

DET requires LESS terms. It requires only ONE unknown - the reactor of the Death Star.
Your theory still requires that, plus an additional unknown reaction.
Since there are no unexplained observations that your theory covers better than DET, there is no need for additional terms.
Basic parsimony.

Yes or at least the start of one but we have a new member of the house hold (a now 10wk old yorkshire terrier puppy) and distractions are inevitable...apologies.

Anyway, while a uniform number of materials inthe roids making up the belt would be reasonable to sayclaiming that every roid would have the same amount of each material is not plausable.

It is not like slicing through a cake with equal lavers of jam, sponge ect and the bigger the slice the larger % of each you get.

You do not understand what uniform mean then. Try again.

That is a bit of a leap tbh and inconsistant with the fat i mentioned on many times that the star was old and needed sorting...its the reason for the mission for gods sake lol.

But i suppose it could be argued that it is a normal star, just a old normal star as you point out by saying its a red giant.

A red giant is NOT like our sun (and similar stars).
That's equivalent to claiming that lead is equal to uranium, just because one is the result of the other.

Consider you have kindly confirmed that is in act a normal star all be it a old one we can in fact say that it would work and end in a simular rather explosive result.

I did no such thing.
Of course, you just have to wait a couple of billion years - then yes, a "normal" (main sequence, sun-like) star would indeed be similar to your star. As i said - great strategy right there.

The fact the star is old is not a requirement of the process, the fact the star is old and going to wipe out a civilisation is the reason why they are doing it....the star is in fact mearly a older version of our own confirmed by yourself.

Soo...why do they try it on a SIMILAR star, which happens to be just as old (roughly, of course)?
Why did they try to heat it up far further than the core temperature of our sun - more consistent with a red giant?
What is your justification for claiming that it would work on any star? Where is your evidence for that?

NO IT WAS NOT YOU ARE ASSIGNING IT THINGS YOU KNOW YOU CAN REFUTE BECAUSE THE TRUTH SCREWS YOU.

I said that it would not show what we see on screen.

You said that a normal kinetic impact is not enough to produce the flash of light. Therefore, we should NOT see it if it was a normal kinetic impact. That's what you said, isn't it? Or do you conceed that KE alone can explain what we see?

I never really looked, we see a huge flash, we see expanding and burning gasses we see one of the roids catch fire and continue to combust.

No answer to my question. Gee, perhaps i should make a drinking game out of that - but i doubt that i would survive the day if i did.
Oh, and it's nice that you admit that you "never really looked". Honesty suits you, really. Here, have some chocolate.

I did not choose to ignore it i went to bed although it really said nothing of consequense considering the discussion.

Yet you do not adress my (and bz249's) calculation. Not even now. If you have time to type any sort of reply, make sure it has quality.

You claim is no better than saying "the energy may/can produce light" then you say nothing because you know if you expand on it you are screwed in regards to what we see on screen, but every time you are asked if it is consistant you vaguely wave towards that comment still giving no definitive answer.

Odd...i could have sworn you did that...
Either way - there is a detailed explanation for the flash of light. Simple KE-impact and black body radiation.

You are a disgrace to the methods you claim to use....but that is hardly news is it.

At least i DID use math and physics. The only calculation you did was transforming m/s into mi/h. That's...yeah, that's absouletly trivial.

All of that and more is disregarded by G canon movie material.

As per you saying so.
The mere fact that they do not explicitly mention the shield prooves nothing. We SEE it.
By that logic, we can assume that the Enterprise does not have shields if they do not explicitly mention it in every episode



______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Reply to another user, whom i adressed here.
However, he apparently choose to drop his previous argument. Kudos for that and for forming a good, coherent post.

A good example of a real-life space collison that did create a bright flash on impact was NASA's Deep Impact mission, which hit 9P/Tempel at 37,000 km/hour relative velocity and a KE energy equivalent to 4.7 tons (about 20 gigajoules) of TNT. The colliding asteroids in TESB are going thousands of times slower, so the bright flash and subsequent blue burning is left unexplained by KE alone.
-Mike

That WOULD be a good argument.
However, another user and me already performed calculations that show that it is, indeed, possible to explain the flash of light with KE alone.
Note that the Deep Impact impactor was vaporized. The asteroids in question clearly were not. That does not preclude vaporization (along with massive heat in the vapour, of course) of parts of the asteroids. Indeed, assuming that they absorb the energy uniformly is quite a leap in logic.

Furthermore - in laymans terms, the apparent low speed can easily be explained by greater distance to the Falcon (distant objects appear smaller and slower).
Given the Falcons high speed, this is hardly an unjustified assumption.

Hardly matters. As you can read for yourself here, there is no mention whatsoever of any planetary shields, much less of them being sabotaged by anyone in the RoTS novelization. The RoTS entry at Wookiepedia has no mention of shields being sabotaged, either.
-Mike

While you are correct about the sabotage, you are wrong about the existance of a planetary shield over Coruscant:

The reinforcements and the beleaguered Home Fleet trapped the Separatist ships in Coruscant's upper atmosphere, under the planetary shields. Falling ships from both sides struck the planet's surface, the impacts destroying large sections of the city.

While this is not G-canon, it's still canon. The sabotage of these shields is hardly a leap in logic (or equivalent, such as the Seperatists having codes for them or launching a surprise attack - indeed, the latter IS G-canon).
The mere fact that they could launch a surprise attack (that was indeed a strategic blunder) does not constitute proof for lack of planetary shields. Indeed, since Coruscants is visited by millions of ship each day, having the shields on all the time would be a bad idea.

[Serafina]

Apparently, doing math oversimplifies the matter

I already pointed that out but they havev done the usual SDN method of crapping out a bit if math ignoring the original question and then claiming to have solved a oversiplified version of it.

Hey, shithead:
My oversimplified version is GENEROUS. It's (close to) a lower limit. I assume that they were made of silicates (rather than the heavier nickel-iron), i assumed that they were extremely close to the Falcon (extremely unlikely, given it's speed) and therefore that they were small and slow.
Heck, i even only calculated ONE asteroid - but you have the KE of TWO asteroids.
Unless you can produce an actual, detailed calculation that shows that these assumptions were wrong in MY favor (that i overinflated the number), shut your sillyhole.

Its like this:

Step one, Do the math and show that some light maybe or even will be created.

The energy has to go somewhere. Radiation and momentum are the ONLY ways to do so in space.
And guess what - there is a black body radiation calculation soon after my original calculation.

Step two, change and over simplify the question.

IE: From "will a indirect collision of two 1.2 ton rocks going 100mph cause the flash, explosion and flamng asteroid we see in the scene" now they change that question to "Your premise was always that we should see no flash of light".......

It WAS.
If the flash of light can be explained by KE, you have NO reason to assume that anything but KE is involved.

Syep three, hope the do not notice and if the subject is refered to make a vague hand wave comment towads the math ect and mumble about it being disproved by "science"....

You see the tactic a lot on SDN, noticably by those who preach about "logic and science" being the determining factors in their theories, its very dishonest and quite disgraceful actually.

You are obviously too uneducated to understand the simplest of math and physics and the concept of lower limits and too stupid top understand what your hypothesis assumed. That does not translate into any dishonesty on my part.

But hey, kiddo - perform a calculation on your own. That's at least the third time i challenged you to do so.
Or admit that you can not do so, and that you never had a clue - conceeding that these are, in fact, normal asteroids.
Your "asteroids made out of explodium"-shit has been toroughly trashcanned.

[Serafina]

TRANSLATION:

Not consistant with one INTERPRETATION (a warsie one that ignores canon materail as usual) of ONE visual.

Oh, so you think that it is an interpreation that that cave is NOT glowing red-how, and that it should if it was indeed that deep? Not to mention that such a cave should not even exist so far down?
Again - go read a bloody textbook.

Not important considering that canon says they cooled it some how.

And how did they prevent the heat from flowing back in? Especially when the damn thing began to cave in and their equipment broke down.

Caonon dialog.

Cite it. Oh, and it's CaNon.

Caonon material > contemporary science.

Real life applications>Star Trek

Ignorance + wishful thinking has even less.

Indeed. You make this quite obvious.

It was mentioned by some body who considers himself a expert the the Empire has the ability to induce fusion in heavy metals, liquid reactants, or with a considerable net gain of energy.

Hey, mister "i prefer Trek to science":
Fusion of heavy metals TAKES energy. It doesn't PRODUCE any.
Besides, that would mean that you have to make the whole planet like the center of the sun. Which takes even MORE energy than what DET would take.

Thus using this persons science as a weapon makes the chain reaction a very effectrive weapon, thus the DS superlaser chain reaction effect.

This person is a moron that got toroughly debunked my Mike Wong here.

HEY, do not blame me im just using the suspension of disbelief and looking at the size of alderaan from the view we get as the superlaser is fired and the chain reaction effect is begun.

Fine then.
Concession accepted.

G canon example of multilayered shields and how the substantiate your DET debunked theory pls.

One of the two main types of planetary shields, encasing shields (like the second Death Star's), prohibited friendly fire from beneath the shield except through small gaps. Encasing shields could be curved to protect orbiting objects and seriously damaged the systems of craft that passed through them. The second type of planetary shield, a shutter shield, was more versatile in that segments could be moved to overlap others for increased defense, but shutter shields did less damage to craft passing through them and could not be oriented in a curve.

Not exactly multiple solid lasers - but their technology would clearly permit it.

Quantum theory!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.

Has no bearing on large-scale objects and/or reactions.

Batman and robin!!!!!!!!!!!.

Would be beaten by Darth Vader. Besides, Robin is a looney.

Fish and chips!!!!!!.

Are delicious, but less so than Sushi. Hmmm...Sushi!

Sorry but that does not work with anybody who has a dozen or so brain cells.

Indeed, a person with at least two braincells should be able to remember that i was referring to an earlier post. I simply got fed up with repeating myself to adress your ongoing ignorance.

"Shorter explanation"≠"better by parsimony".

DET requires:

1. An unknown material capable of creating 1E38 per 24 hours.

2. A reactor capable of turning the above material into 1E38 per 24 hours.

3. Capacitors constructed within a 160km diameter sphere capable of storing up to a minimum of 1E38 over a 24 hour period.

4. The ability to create 1E38 per 24 hours without refueling during its operational life time..

You are aware that these four tings are required just to fire the DS1 superlaser?.

1 and 2 are identical, and 3 might easily be covered by 1 as well.
Oh, and 4 too.
If you have a reactor capable of doing that, the rest is given (due to it being a necessity).

A chain reaction requires:

1. The ability to bypass the Lawson criterion, or create a fusion net energy gain in virtually any substance.

Which, as explained above, would require more energy than simple DET and would result in a net LOSS of energy.
But kudos on looking up the Lawson criterion - can you do more than just spout that word tough?

I think you mean MEANS...considering you wish a "NITPICK" competition il play.

But if you wish to discuss the issue (although if you did not know you were gonna lose you would not nitpick so i doubt it) lets go on.

Not understanding a simple concept kinda invalidates your argument.

Actually its like you saying a Old age pensioner is not a human being......

Well...close.
You are basically assuming that, if i am capable of outrunning/killing (not that i would do the latter) an 95-year old, then i am also capable of doing that with an 20-year old.
Or, as a closer analogy - you assume that 20-year olds are as likely to get cancer as a 95-year old, or is equally vulnerable to pathogens.

And i never denied that it was still a star. I just pointed out that a red giant has VASTLY different properties than a main sequence star. Stop being so bloody stupid - even you should be able to understand that.

Because the civilisation they are trying to save live on a planet that is orbiting one...........wtf are you smoking?.

If the process would work on any star, why pick that particular one?
Furthermore - you still haver NO proof that it would work on every type of star.

I said that the speed and composition of the roids impact was inconsistant with the effect of what we see.

Which...means that it is not enough to procude the flash of light. You specifically named the flash of light. Stop lying.

YOU played the usual math and word games to try and ignore the fact i was correct...you disgrace the science you claim to use.

I used simple (read: high-school) math to show that, in fact, the collision CAN produce the visual effects we see.

Here is a newsflash: You can't just claim that you are correct. You have to SHOW it.
You did no such thing. You did not even use a coherent argument, much less actual proof. All you did was repeating "it's inconsistent".
That's not even a moronic argument - that's no argument at all!

HMMM so a calculation that came to the a relative conclusion that if you hit flint to a bit of steel you get a spark?.When you can conclusivly say that the roids we see traveling at the speeds we see wil cause the effect we see get back to me, until then stop playing word games................in fact scrap my last comment KEEP playing word games because it does your cause more harm to the unbiased educated than it will ever do mine.

I already explained the flash of light (with a bit of help, but still).
What else do you want explained?

Oh - but if you actually want more explantions, formulate a concreete hypothesis. I will grant you the assumption that you are capable of doing so, despite vast evidence to the contrary.

All in all we see here a SDN warsie abusing the science and honesty that they claim to hold dear.

How is performing calculations abusing science?
How is making oversvations and establishing a lower limit abusing science?
And where did i ever lie? I can list numerous examples where you did.

Answer these points, dipshit. I can stand idiocy, but i will NOT take accusations of dishonestly kindly.
You just accused me of being a liar. Proove it in your next post, or apologize

[Serafina]

Just in case anyone is too lazy to read trough his circular bullshit - he made the following claims:


That the asteroids in TESB contained some type of highly combustible material.
He concluded this from a flash of light and "burning" of the asteroids that collided in front of the Falcon.
I showed, using simple, understandable math that these asteroids collision does, indeed, release enough energy to do so.
The assumptions i made regarding speed, size and composition of these asteroids were as generous as possible (in his favour). Shortly thereafter, another user kindly made the calculation for black body radiation based on that, showing that, indeed, the flash of light would be emitted.
He has continued to ingore the result of that calculation. Instead, he choose to claim that it "oversimplified" the matter, despite him being unable to pick out any error in the calculation.


That the Death Star blew up Alderaan with a chain reaction.
He tried to justify this with the apparent inconsistencies in the explosion. I explained those to him, which he refused to acknowledge. Hence, i pointed out that the planetary shield readily explains it - he responded to that by claiming that they are not canon. He ignored all non-G-canon sources for planetary shields and flat-out denied G-canon for their existance.
He recently tried to imply that the DS caused fusion in the planets matter, evidently ignorant that this would require even higher amounts of energy and would not produce any energy at all.
In a nutshell, the DorkStar argument(tm).


That the E-D can drill a 3000km deep hole with it's phasers within seconds.
He further claimed (without any evidence) that it was conic (instead of cylindrical). When challenged on the visual inconsistency here (the hole is clearly a cylinder), he claimed that that was only the last, short part of the hole and that most of it was OOMs wider! Again, without evidence.
The simple fact that it would be damn hot down there was handwaved away with "they dispersed it, somehow".

Oh, "Kor" - do some geometry on the hole the E-D would have to drill in order for the clear blue sky to be as clearly visible as it is in that episode, based on your previous graphic.
(And hey, a "Dahar master" is a master of bath'leth combat, a status which a Klingon named "Kor" achieved. You are apparently as good in arguments as the Klingons are in infantry combat ).


That the Federation can cause stars to go supernova.
He bases this on one single episode (i originally mistook his claims for referring to the movie ST:Generations). This episode shows how the Enterprise attempts to stabilize a single, unstable red giant with a modified torpedoe (and fails, which causes the nova). They tried to heat up the stellar core to extremely hight (compared to a main sequence star) temperatures, the energy for this HAD to come from the star itself (somehow) - since we clearly do not see petaton-firepower for photon torpedoes.
He ignores the simple fact that this star was obviously not a main sequence star, even when repedeately challenged.
He also choose to drop his claim that they tried to make the star younger - which would have done the exact opposite of what we saw.
Further, he did not proove that the star was not going to go nova in a short time (relatively, of course) anyway (which was implied by the episode), and that their meddling merely cut down the remaining time.


Based on that claim, he claims that the Federation has a great number of these weapons.
I explained how WMD(equivalents) work in reality, and that the sheer fact that the Dominion attacked the Federation on it's own territory without any mention of possible WMD-retaliaton shows that this stockpile simply doesn't exist.
He apparently choose to silently drop that claim, even tough he continues to argue for his claim that they can cause stars to go nova.



That should be, in a nutshell, all of his unfounded, arsenine, unbacked, ignorant, nonscientific, uncalculated and contradictionary claims. The typical TrekTard chickenshit. Have fun, but don't laugh to hard. And watch your brain - unlike the asteroids or "chain star", this crap might make them combustible!

[Wyrm]

I'd like to point out that such a tunnel drilled through the mantle of a real planet would not be able to support itself. The pressure at the bottom of the mantle of a typical earth-like planet is ~136 GPa. This is why the rock at that depth has such a high viscosity even though it is about 4000 °C down there. Basalt melts above 1260 °C and granite above 1260 °C at standard pressure (which they would be if there were humans breathing down there), so if that were really mantle, the walls should be liquid. Furthermore, it would be propelled inward by a pressure of ~136 GPa. In contrast, the high explosive RDX develops and overpressure of 68.9 kPa (10 psi), which reduces well-built reinforced buildings to rubble. A rough cave wall is not going to survive this, especially a liquid one.

And has been pointed out, this temperature would roast the feddies alive. It would be like getting hit with a 14 megawatt laser over each square meter of their bodies.

And contact explosive asteroids? Fucksake!

[Serafina]

Does anyone's else head spin, too? Because spinning around like that makes me kinda dizzy. Oh well, at least he's slowing down.

When text books over ride CANON i will until then....Again - go watch bloody canon.

In other words, you have no interest in real life knowledge. Get a life. And preferably repeat highschool.

When i cool things in my fridge i do not turn it off just cos the temp is reched, i keep it on so the temp i want is consistant....damn your crap is weak..lol.

And when you fridge breaks, does it still work?
Not to mention that you are incapable of even providing a citation that they even DID cool it. Do so.

Canon material > Real life applications.

Oh, sorry......that's just cracked me up for about a minute.
Do you HONESTLY try to argue that knowledge about Star Trek canon is superior to knowledge about real life?

Damn what happened to suspension of disbelief?...

Suspension of disbelief ignores neither common sense nor science. Indeed, all it ignores is authors intent, and accompanying productive results (such as saying "but X intended Y" or "the special effects just were too exensive".)
Thanks for admitting that you do not even understand SoD.

The person im refering to is talking about the Empire being able to cause FUSION In "heavy metals, liquid reactants, or virtually any substance".

He does not mention FISSION in that particular bit about energy generation.

Your link has no bearing on what i am refering to....

Did you even READ it? The second part of it is titled "the FUSION myth".
Apparently, you can't even read a quarter-page long article.

Does not give material in it any canon status at all...FAAAAIL.

Wrong. The source is given as "Hideouts & Strongholds". It's not G-canon - but since it does not contradict G-canon, it is completely viable.
Again - at least try to READ the damn thing.

Is Urainium the same as a reactor capable of using it as fuel..........yet again you disgrace the science you claim to use for the sake of your bias.

If you have a reactor capable of putting out a specific amount of power, you clearly must have a fuel capable of doing so.
Say, why do you fail to understand the obvious?

The DS1 needed 24 hours to create enough energy to fire, that energy needed to be stored some where........and the disgrace continues.

Wrong. He needed AT MOST 24 hours - no recharge time was mentioned, it could have been much shorter.
Indeed, no evidence for any recharge time exists (to my knowledge, by all means, proove me wrong).
The sheer capability to transport that power translates to the capability of storing it.

Wrong the Empire has the ability to get a net gain of energy from "virtually any substance" using fusion .

Provide evidence for such a claim.
Note that "fusion" does not necessarily refer to nuclear fusion.

The ability for the Empire to bypass the Lawson criterion or get a net energy gain via fusion from virtually any substance by other means has been part of my chain reaction effect from day one, you will not be the first rabid warsie to get owned by it.

The very same ability would give them the capabilty to produce that much energy in reactors.
Furthermore, you ignore the fact that, in order to induce nuclear fusion, they would need more energy than for DET.
Concession accepted.

Yup....a drug that accelerates the heart rate so much that the heart explodes works if you are old or young.

Nice to see that you choose to ignore my more apt comparision to an immune system.
Furthermore - just because a drug can accelerate "hearth rate" by X and an old mans heart is incapable of maintaining it, it is not necessarily capable of inducing death in a young person (whose hearth would be more resilient).

Because the one they were trying to save had simular aspects......

And....that disprooves my point how?

A flash of light is PART OF IT i dd not specifically point out any of it i require ALL of it to be explained.

You specifically mentioned it. Indeed, until i trashed that claim, you did not mention the "flames" at all.

You as per usual from a warsie you are trying to use a dishonest debate tactic by claiming that because a flash of light MAY appear (let alone at the intensity we see) that ALL the unexplained phenomenon are explained ..........YET AGAIN you disgrace the methodology you claim to use...how utterly disgraceful.

Physics does indeed dictate that it does.

Oh yes more insults with a ultimatum that you can use as a escape route now that your dishonest and disgraceful abuse of science has been exposed.......so pitifully obvious.

You unfairly accused me of dishonesty. The fact that you are incapable of providing a SINGLE example (where it was not a genuine, self-admitted error, which is not dishonesty) clearly shows that you are grasping at weak ad hominem attacks.
I do not intend to drop this debate - i am capable of withstanding way more heat than a little boy can put out - i am merely pointing out that you are a worthless piece of uneducated, dishonsest trash.


Oh, and from now on, i am officially taking any points which you do NOT respond to as concessions.
That does not refer to quoting every single line (tough i do so, mostly), but rather to dropping a point completely.
Such as the "drilled hole" - you completely ignored my answers (for two posts now), which clearly shows that you are incapable of responding.

[Batman]

Does anyone's else head spin, too? Because spinning around like that makes me kinda dizzy. Oh well, at least he's slowing down.

When text books over ride CANON i will until then....Again - go watch bloody canon.

In other words, you have no interest in real life knowledge. Get a life. And preferably repeat highschool.

When i cool things in my fridge i do not turn it off just cos the temp is reched, i keep it on so the temp i want is consistant....damn your crap is weak..lol.

And when you fridge breaks, does it still work?
Not to mention that you are incapable of even providing a citation that they even DID cool it. Do so.

Canon material > Real life applications.

Oh, sorry......that's just cracked me up for about a minute.
Do you HONESTLY try to argue that knowledge about Star Trek canon is superior to knowledge about real life?

What I THINK he's trying to say is that if canon shows something that by our knowledge of physics is impossible, canon wins. Which is of course correct. What he DOESN'T seem to understand is how canon actually WORKS. If someone says they drilled 3000km deep that does NOT mean they drilled that deep, it merely means SOMEBODY CANONICALLY SAID SO. Especially when the visuals are totally incompatible with that.
And since you repeatedly called your, for want of a better word, debate partners on their spelling, I am afraid I have to point out that there's only one o in prove

[Serafina]

You are beginning to ignore more and more of my post. That's either dishonest, lazy, a sign that you can't answer the points or a combination of those.

Your final acceptance of canon WMD's in trek helped shorten things considerably, and i suppose the head spinning is a result that most ppl posting the truth that i am showing you on SDN would have been banned by now.

WHERE did i do so?
Stop inventing things out of thin air, you liar.

Im sure the topic under discussion is sci-fi and while it is nice to be able to understand and explain aspects of each franchise within the bounds of known science your disgracful attitude regarding it and abusing it shows how much you need to debate on other forums more.

So - you are interest in science-FICTION, but not in SCIENCE. As i said, interesting.
Furthermore - never did i say that i apply the "limits of known science" to anything in analyzing sci-fi. Science is a METHOD, in case you did not know that.

MANY aspects of Sci-fi cannot be explained by science but you seem to think that when others point this out you have the right to point fingers and claim moral high ground, TOTALLY ignoring the fact that most of the franchise you support and the theories you also support rely on doing exactly that.

When science sees something that does not fit with currently known explanations, it tries to explain it.
We do the same in sci-fi. That does not mean we discard canon - but we can still try to find explanations. We can stil analyze it. That includes such things as determining the energy output of something, for instance the Death Star. From that, we can infer some properties of it's reactor (such asextremely dense reaction mass).
This is a vastly superior way of analysis as taking dialogue as absolute truth - simply because dialogue is often inconsistent with what we see. If Han Solo says "the Empire could not possibly destroy a planet", right after we SAW them do it - do we conclude that they didn't? Of course we don't, people make mistakes all the bloody time in real life, too.
If Data refers to a purse(briefcase?) that looks like a fish as an "amphibian purse"(briefcase?), do we conclude that in Star Trek, fish are amphibians? Of course not, we conclude that he is wrong. If we hear a rebel pilot say that a shot at high speed at a small target in heavy ECM (DS exhaust port) is impossible, what do we conclude when we see it later? That it is next to impossible without the assistance of the force! If we hear that they want to drill a 2000 km deep hole, but we do not see anything that prevents the tunnels from collapsing, nothing to cool it down here, a cave where it's existance is impossible and light at the end of a short tunnel - do we conclude that they have all these unseen capabilities? Assuming that they were mistaken about the depth is propably the better solution.

Quite simply you are a typical SDN hippocrite.

Translation: waah, i don't understand math, science or suspension of disbelief!

Actually it did not crack you up at all, what you saw again was a chance to misinterpret a post and you leapt at it, what the point was is this:-

In regards to a sci-fi discussion canon material>real life applications.

Yeah, yeah, i humorously misinterpretated the post. You made your point earlier (that you do not understand SoD), repeating itself was just unnecessary.

But then you knew that already and are again using the SDN tactic of distorting a question or comment because the true answer to the actual question or comment proves you wrong or does not serve your bias.

Yes, of course i did. You simply think that canon DIALOGUE trumps everything, even canon visuals.
To steal a sentence from Mike Wong: If a movie says that someone drives to Mexiko, and we see Eskimos, snow and canadian flags - do we therefore conclude that Mexiko looks like that? No, we would think "hey, that's not Mexiko!" - at least unless the film explains why in that universe, Mexiko does indeed look like that.
It's really the same here: If they SAY that they drill next to the molten core of a planet, but it looks nothing like the molten core of a planet - do we therefore conclude that they did it anyway? No, anyone with at least a bit of knowledge would think "hey, that's not the molten core of a planet"!
Does that mean that we have to ignore canon? No we don't - we just conclude that they were wrong when they said that.
Otherwise we would have to throw the visuals out of the window - which are the more reliable part of canon.
Of course, we could (and should) try to find an explanation why this is, indeed, the molten core of a planet. However, not only did Star Trek nowhere else show any ability to disintegrate so much rock at once, they never showed any technology to stabilize a 2000 km long tunnel with forcefields (since we see no support beams), they never showed the ability to move gigatons of heat remotely (since we see no heat pumps) or to do any of the other things that are necessary here.
We can not invent abilities out of thin air that flat-out contradict previously established abilities - it is much better just to conclude that their dialogue was wrong. Such as reconciling that they influence a region 2000km down, instead of being there.

If we see something that you claims breaks the known laws of physics suspension of disbelief says that it happened so the physics of it are beyond are currant understanding.

Always these people who belief that our scientific knowledge will change, rather than expand.
Newtonian mechanics will not change, ever. Perhaps we will find materials and situations where they do not apply. Perhaps we will find a way to influence them with mighty technology. But they themself will not change - they are simply too well established, have been used trillions of times sucessfully - they do not contain any inaccuracies to fill out.
A planet would have to obey newtonian mechanics. Plain and simple. We do not see equipment that could incluence millions of cubicmeters of rock the way it would be necessary. Therefore, the tunnels would collapse on their own within seconds. Therefore, they would be fried within seconds. Therefore, they should not be able to see the sky. Those are things that won't change when our scientific knowledge expands - they are simple newtonian mechanics, thermodynamics and geometry!

Simply put you cannot deny canon material.

No, we can't. Such as planetay shields, perhaps
But i never did - i merely interpretate it if it is inconsistent. Which is the whole reason for suspension of disbelief, which you claim to use.

I did not read it mostly because the article i am refering to in regards to the Empire being capable of creating fusion in "heavy metals, liquid reactants, or virtually any substance"....was written by somrbody who claims to be qualified and a expert on such matters (personally i think he is a clown but whatever).

So you did not read an article adressing FUSION because....you are referring to fusion?
What the heck? What's that supposed to mean?
And again, nuclear fusion of heavy metals would take more energy than it produces. Especially when done with a planet.

It's not G-canon

KTHANXBYE.

(Note: I was referring to a specific type of planetary shield)
Other canon-steps is ALSO canon. You can't just ignore it.
But since you stopped adressing the existance of G-canon planetary shields, i take it as a concession that they do exist.

The reactor and the material are exclusive things, yes they work together in your debunked theory but they both require a scientific justification and explanation.

So 1 + 2 apply and both require explaining.

*sigh* The mere existance of a high-density fuel explains the output of the DS-reactor.

24 hours or 2.4 hours it still means that the DS had to have had capacitors or some kind of energy storage capable of holding and storing 1E38 within its 160km shell when a entire planet exploded after it hit it (in your debunked theory).....

So 3 applies and requires explaining.

*sigh* If you can transport energy, you can use the same medium to store it. Not necessarily the most efficient thing, but definately possible.

I see you ignored 4 so il repeat that thDS did not seem to refuel and considering the 1E38 figure would require roughly 1 quintillion tons of matter and antimatter to react perfectly (PER SHOT) and create such energy please do not tell me it was in a storage locker.

I bet you made the calculation for that
And again - if they have an incredible dense fuel or energy source (such as a supermassive black hole - we know that they can use those), that readily explains the need for refills.
That's the exact same thing with nuclear powered ships - they also have a dense fuel, hence they only require refilling very rarely, compared to other ships.

I have none the person who provided the science mearly claimed the Empire had the ability and yes he did Note that "fusion" does not necessarily refer to nuclear fusion.

Link it, then. If the person in question used good sources, that is entirely sufficient.

If the reaction could be contained i agree.....FUEL TANKS!!!

I added the bit on the end to way lay your next poorly thought out post.

I already explained that an extremely dense fuel readily explains the lack of fuel tanks (which can easily be integrated into the reactor). Such as hypermatter, which is canon.

You ignore that the theory involves bypassing lawson criterion or uses a fusion that is not nuclear both mean a net energy gain without requiring a vast amount of energy input.

Do try to keep up mr science.

Even IF you bypass lawsons criterion, you still loose energy when nuclear fusion of heavy metals occurs.
If it is not nuclear fusion, it can easily refer to our extremely dense fuel.

Oh, and it's MS science - i am female. Earlier, you were aware of my gender. Stop trying to use that as a cheap shot to upset me - not that it works, i merely want to point out what a little infantile brat you are.

Apt?, a sun with a immune system?...lol.

That's why it is a COMPARISION. Can't you grasp simple english words?

Actually as you point out earlier a chain reaction weapon does not increase by X and that is why they are so powerful, the chain reaction weapon continues until summat goes boom.

Ah, so a chain reaction is automatically a no-limits fallacy.
Chain reaction simply means that the initial energy sets different reactions in motion, which are chained one after the other. It can also include an exothermic reaction, thus providing more energy - but that reaction also has to have limits, such as available fuel.

Your point was that the torps/tech involved had limits because of the sun they were going after but the fact is they were going after that sun because it matched the one that they needed to fix.

So - just repeating what you said earlier is now a new point?
How does that show that it can be used ony any sun?
Hey, they actually expected it to stop. That it did not stop could easily be explained by the fact that the sun they tried it on was too old. A younger sun would most likely have stopped (since there is simply no process to accelerate fusion in perpetuity, unless you can ignore such things as the speed of light).

You trashed nothing apart from your credability.

And please do look back to where i introduced the material and the multiple images as well as the write ups, i clearly mention the flaming......and SPLODINGASTEROIDS.

Both of these effects as well as the intensity of the light flash have yet to be explained.

I already explained the flash of light.

Oh, and you know what - i can also explain the flames.
If those are nickel-iron asteroids (and they look and behave like nickel-iron asteroids), the collision could have simply given them energy for rapid oxidisation - also known as combustion, or burning.
Look at this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk-_aiCbzI8 Burning iron.
Now, you might say (if you knew simple chemistry) that this requires oxygen. Well, guess what: Rust. Or rather, iron oxides.
They do, by definition, contain oxygen. If sufficently heated, they will decompose into iron and oxygen - which can then react anew, possibly with sufficient speed to create a flame.
Now, i am not going to perform calculations on this - but this readily explains the flame without adding any new terms.
You would have to disproove that null hypothesis.

There you go - i explained both of your "inexplicable" phenomena, and without any technobabble to boot.
Oh, and this does not constitute any reduction in the necessary energy to vaporize such an asteroid - in order for the reaction to happen, you have to vaporize (or at least melt) it first. Furthermore, the reaction takes time - clearly more than the miliseconds we saw for the turbolaser-vaporized asteroid. There is simply not enough time for the reaction to provide energy.

NO your manipulaion of sceince metodology, interpretation of results, words and events are a disgrace.....but typical of SDN so no supprises for me really.

Funny that you say that, since i used textbook science (and calculations), while you are blatantly ignorant of them.

I has visuals that also confirm the depth.

"I has" - well, your visuals clearly show us a blue sky - which is impossible at such depths, unless you widen the tunnel so much that it would be....well, so wide that you can write off the planet anyway. Oh, and we should see it from orbit, which we don't.

ONE personal INTERPRETATION of ONE visual MAY be incompatible........

The visible sky, the cave itself, the fact that it is not boiling...
Oh, and they never mention the figure "2000 km", nor that they cool it artificially, the phasers were specifically programmed to hit only a disintegrate only a small tunnel, we do not see a giant hole when we see the site from orbit, there was at least a second shot (and there could have been many more - between the first and second (we saw) were at least one afternoon). In other words, they do not even say 2000km AND we see nothing what we would see in order for that to be possible.

YEA GET IT SORTED YOU ILE..ILI..ILLET....screw it....silly bad spelly person"!"!....

I corrected you ons words that you spelled incorrectly after being corrected several times.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Jumping into this hopeless mess of a Debate, I have to say that one aspect I see time and time again is the "What they say trumps what we see" defense by many.

That in this case what they SAY is
"A 2000km hole near the planets Core"
and what we SEE is
A standard cave with cool stone walls and a shaft of light seen above.
Wym said it best:

I'd like to point out that such a tunnel drilled through the mantle of a real planet would not be able to support itself. The pressure at the bottom of the mantle of a typical earth-like planet is ~136 GPa. This is why the rock at that depth has such a high viscosity even though it is about 4000 °C down there. Basalt melts above 1260 °C and granite above 1260 °C at standard pressure (which they would be if there were humans breathing down there), so if that were really mantle, the walls should be liquid. Furthermore, it would be propelled inward by a pressure of ~136 GPa. In contrast, the high explosive RDX develops and overpressure of 68.9 kPa (10 psi), which reduces well-built reinforced buildings to rubble. A rough cave wall is not going to survive this, especially a liquid one.

It basically boils down to his "logic" being, that if someone in StarTrek said, on screen something like: "So our shields can survive being in the core of a sun and our weapons can blow up planets" that means, despite any evidence to the contrary, that it MUST be true.

[Serafina]

I am only ignoring the truely irelavant parts.

No, you are not. You are snipping out part of my rebuttals.
If you would cut out the humorous parts (which are frankly a necessity to make this debate readable at all), no one would object. However, snipping out answers to your points IS dishonest.

Well going from "my personal opinion on politics means the canon material about the tech is disporoved".

To ""my personal opinion on politics means the tech exists but they do not have stockpiles".

Bollocks.
My personal oppionion happens to match professional politics and strategies (since i am, you know, learning).
I did NOT say at any points that they do, indeed, can use these torpedoes as weapons in any form.
If i had done such a thing, it would be a sign of honesty and integrity, since accepting valid arguments is required to have these qualities. I did not do so because there is zero evidence that they are ever used, intended or even practical as a weapon.

While your opinion makes the second comment also a waste of time the fact that we have no canon material showing stockpiles is actually a better comment to make and quite accurate..........less arrogance would serve you better id say.

Any way it is unimportant considering how quickly they can modify existing weapons to cause suns to explode (well under a day).

They can cause stars that are about to go supernova soon (couple of millions years or even much less) to do it know.
That is only a usefull weapon if you enemy happens to live on a planet around such a sun. Nearly no one does.

How hum yet again you twist your own meaning out of my comment so you can attack it....

Your actual incapability to comprehend simple scientific concepts or to use any calculations is proof enough.

Thats fine but when you step outside the bounds of known science you open the door to more than just your own theories on how a effect was achieved.

Science is a tool. And merely stepping outside the knowledge we acquired with it does not invalidate with it.
You simply call for make-believe. Unless we can NOT reconcile observations with known science, it is the preferrable, better explanation

Oh, and how nice of you to snip the complete rest of this explanation, where i explain why your proposed methodology is bullshit, and furthermore explain why dialogue is not a reliable source of information.
I suppose you do not want to admit the latter, but can not rebut it - hence, you try to ignore it.

TRANSLATION:

"WAAA you understand enough math, science and suspension of disbelief to point out my misuse and abuse of it."

You did not point out any errors in either my calculations or my methodology. Claiming that you did is simply a lie.

Consession accepted.

You seem to love that word.
But think about it - what, if anything, did i conceede here?
Since your post did not actually any points i disagreed with - how can it be a concession?
You seem to think that a concession is a shamefull thing, that showing how someone conceeded something to you would give you some sort of points. This is blatantly untrue - a honest person will conceede an argument if shown to be wrong, and would indeed be happy of having learned something new.

Wrong.

1. We get a dialog describing where the pockets are as well as a visual referance.

The visual reference happens to be a diagram. I explained earlier why a diagram is not, in fact, a reliable source of information. Especially if the visuals (or other things) show that it is wrong. Further, your interpretation of the diagram happens to be based on dialogue - from the visuals alone, we can easily conclude that he points to the area they want to affect.

2. We get a direct comment regarding the temerature and that it will take time to cool down.

Since no method is mentioned, or that they do it, the most obvious explanation is that it will cool itself. Which would not happen at the depths you propose.

3. We see a light source from the top of the narrower shaft, or from a atificial light in a single shaft depending on what explanation you prefer regarding the adjustment of phaser power near the pockets.

A blatant lie. If you look at this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1o5jGOT ... re=related) at around 1.55-2.00, you will see it looks like a blue sky. Indeed, there is no reason to have an artificial source of light up there, since the shaft is not used for anything (except beaming) and would not provide light at it's bottom.
Oh, and nice switch from "extremly wide upper part of the shaft" to "artificial light". Too bad neither has sourcing of any kind.

None of this is inconsistant with a 2500-3000km shaft and all of it is consistant visually and verbally.

The fact that the cave is not crushed by the pressure that would surround it is. The fact that the cave could cool on it's own and did not reheat is. The fact that they had seismic activity is. The fact that they see the sky is.

YOU however wish to ignore point 1 visual and verbal referances.

You also wish us to ignore point 2 verbal referance.

No verbal reference for the depth of the cave is given. One ambigous visual that you interpretate with dialogue is easily trumped by half a dozen visuals.

You want us to assume that the light in the pocket and that shown from the top of the narrower shaft was not only sunlight but also blue sky......when it clearly is not blue sky and the light could easily be artificial.

Look at it. It does not illuminate the shaft itself (as an artificial light would), it looks blue and there is simply no reason to have artificial light up there.

A theory based on one visual also based pure speculation in regards to where the light is from is not a sound method especially when it contradicts other canon material.

Another lie, based on ignorance.
I mentioned several visuals, which you are ignoring.

Again you put words into my mouth......

I did not say "change" i said beyond our ability to understand and understanding can grow.....or if you prefer expand.

Newtonian mechanics would not change. The collapse of that cave would be driven by nothing else.
Thermodynamics would not change. The heat in that cave would be regulated by it.
Basic geometry certainly would not change. It (and optics) show that the cave can not be as deep as it is.
We KNOW all these things. We understand them now. "This ain't rocket science" - we are not talking about negative space wedgies, subspace, warp drives or anything like that. We are talking about things that people understood perfectly well more than a centruy ago.
Apparently, your knowledge of science is at least 150 years out of date.

Theatre shields are G canon you cannot speculate planetary shields into the same level of canon.

Endor planetary shielding is (novel) G canon. (Built after Phantom Menace) Naboo planetary shields are (novel) G canon.
Alderaan planetary shields ARE G canon.
Furthermore, C canon IS canon unless it directly contradicts G canon. No such contradiction exists.

It refers to nuclear fusion.

So you conceed that you do not refer to nuclear fusion. Hence, we are dealing with a word that could mean anything were two things are combined and their original form is altered. That can be anything from a fire to M/AM reactions.

The high density material you require and the reactor are seperate pieces both require explaining or conceeding that at out currant level of knowledge we require a more "expanded" knowledge of physics to understand them BOTH.

Simple high-density M/AM storages or the radiation of a black hole easily fit both criteria.

If you asked me to describe Urainium and a i showed you a picture of a reactor i doubt you would accept it and visa versa.

It would not be sufficient, yes. However, if you also explained the radiation emmited from the uranium, i would accept that it can be used as a reactor fuel.
Don't you know that nuclear reactors work on steam? They work on the same basic principle as coal plants (or even a camp fire): Heat is captured and used - in the case of reactors to drive turbines which transform the resulting KE into electricity.

Rubbish, if the DS could do that it could fire planet busting shots without a delay.

It had to move towards it new target (while waiting for Han Solo etc . to arrive there). That easily explains the delay.
I am not saying that it does not require time to recharge - but you apparently choose to ignore the part where i explained that a mechanism to move energy can also be crudely used to store it.

WOOP!!.

Please direct me to the movie that showed the DS parked along side a supermassive black hole getting a fillup and its tyres checked pls, or a movie verbal referance to such a event.

Wait...so i explain why it does NOT have to do that (refill), and you demand a source where it DOES do that?
What kind of messed-up logic is that?

Well at 1 quintillion tons of M/AM needing to react perfectly per shot density is a understatment, but it would take a lot of explaining along with the mass issues regarding the fact the DS was a moving space station.

Don't you understand the concept of super-dense matter? All these caluclations that show that the DS would have to annihilate more than it itself weights to fire it's superlaser once assume that it is about as dense as a modern naval ship.
We do not know the weight of the Death Star. It could easily contain thousands of solar masses in the form of collapsed (black hole like) matter. You can literaly put the mass of the whole universe into the space of one atom if your try really, really hard.

He does not give any referances he mearly claims that..... The Empire can induce fusion in "heavy metals, liquid reactants, or virtually any substance", he also says it is not nuclear fusion and works on a totally differant principal but does not say what. He does go on a bit and also says they use it as a method of fueling some of the empires ships as well.

So your claim is based entirely on an unknown person who uses no sources whatsoever. Great

The ability to create fusion in any material including heavy metals, liquid reactants, or virtually any substance with a net energy gain is a ability the Empire has aparantly but nobody said it was nuclear fusion....you just assumed it.

You moron.
You just admitted that you have no sources for this. In other words: You made it up!

Fine MS science it is.

Nice - no comment then on the fact that you either have a faulty memory or tried an incredilby cheap personal attack.

Hmm that did look a bit like a no limit fallacy did'nt it?.

I was actually refering to the fact a chain reaction effect is not limited to the energy the thing firing it can create.

HOLY CRAP you actually did not need to twist what i said into something else this time because of that poorly worded post..........are we seeing emotional growth or was it just luck?.

If there was any growth, it would not be of emotional nature (since it would have nothing to do with, you know, emotions).
Oh, and nice going there stating what i just said. Nice going there snipping that out to make it appear like you said it yourself.

I suppose it depends on what they were doing to the sun in question the episode clearly says they are increasing fusion within the sun so it heats up, it reaches 220 million K and like i said everybody is happy. But is starts rising quite rapidly after that and lshortly after the sun goes boom.

So - they did except it to stop. They must have based that expectation on something. The sun must have had different properties than expected, hence their calculations were wrong (or they were morons, your choice). Since we are specifically dealing with old stars, it's hardly a leap in logic that it was older than they tought (since novas occur when a star is old, the target temperature shows that they wanted to create the conditions in an old star and so on).

Now our sun is 15 million k ish at the core, so heating it up to at least 20 times that temperature (it rises from 220 to 251 million K in seconds and continues to rise before going boom) should have some sort of effect although i do not know what it would be.

Assuming that it would, indeed, heat up that much. You have absoultely no proof for that claim - you just made it up.

Actually you said their may be light generated, in no way have you shown that it would be the intensity we see on screen.

Wrong, sir, wrong!
Shortly after my calculation, bz249 SHOWED how it would generate the light, and how much it would be. Simple black body radiation, a basic physics concept.

You have not explained the explosions and your theory about the burning is laughable to be honest.

There is still no explosion. I mentioned that about half a dozen times now.
Further - explain why my explanation is "laughable". Start to actually back up what you say, kid!

However one thing we do know thanks to you bringing it up earlier is that the roid colissions in AOTC that are accelerated by the force of the siesmic charges to a speed comparable or greater than those in TESB do behave nothing like those in TESB.

Proove that assertion. Provide evidence. At least TRY it for once.

I'll just snip the last part of your post, since i already rebutted all of it. I will merely mention that you are again contradicting yourself (first claiming that there is a giant hole, now denying that there is).
Oh, AND you admitted that there is "stress from the surrounding magma". Well, guess what - magma tends to be HOT, and at the depth you mentioned, the stress would be so incredibly high that no hollow room could withstand it. The fact that the cave withstands the stress shows that the pressure is not that high, indicating that they are not that deep down.
The rest is just your basic Wall of Ignorance. Hey, remember to pay DorkStar for that, i think he owns that method!

[Serafina]

Responding to another user, "Who is like God arbour"

I'm not sure if I really want to participate in this exchange of insults. But I want to add my two cents.

I do not respong to intelligent debate with insults. I merely mock stupidity.

I know, that according to our theories about the structure of Earth, it would be impossible to drill a hole 3.000 km into the mantle of a planet. In the mantle, temperatures range between 500 to 900 °C (932 to 1,652 °F) at the upper boundary with the crust to over 4,000 °C (7,230 °F) at the boundary with the core. Although the higher temperatures far exceed the melting points of the mantle rocks at the surface (about 1200 °C for representative peridotite), the mantle is almost exclusively solid. The enormous lithostatic pressure exerted on the mantle prevents melting, because the temperature at which melting begins (the solidus) increases with pressure. Drilling a hole into the mantle would release that pressure at that point which would result in the melting of the over their melting point heated rocks.

This is pretty much correct.
However, the pressure would also cause any hollow rooms to collapse, since rock simply does not have the structural strenght to withstand that much pressure. This has been repedeatly been ignored by Kor.

But the problem is not really solved by assuming, that they have "only" drilled 20 km into the crust of Atrea. Because, again referring to models of Earth, the crust is between 5 km (oceanic crust) and 50 km (continental crust) thick. Insofar it could be possible to drill a 20 km deep hole into the crust of a planet without reaching the mantle. But the temperature increases by as much as 30°C (about 50°F) for every kilometer locally in the upper part of the crust. That means, that at 20 km depth, the temperature would be round about 600 °C high. No Starfleet officer in its pyjama could survive even a short stay in a cave which walls, bottom and ceiling are 600 °C hot.

Again, correct.
However, it is MUCH easier to assume that the crust of that planet happens to be thicker, than to try and reconcile all the insanities that the 2000 km figure causes. Furthermore, we already know that their planet has been cooling down internally. This would first cool the upper regions, but the lower regions would still be very hot due to pressure alone.

What does this mean? Has the episode not happened because it is not possible? Or do we have to tread it another way?

The latter, of course. Determining which is the most viable explanation is simply a question of science, hence it has to be used rather than ignored.

Those were good questions and statement, by the way.

To Serafina: Maybe you could answer the question, how you would analyse and interpret »A Journey to the Center of the Earth« It is a classic 1864 science fiction novel by Jules Verne. There are many cinematic adoptions of that novel. What is the qualitative difference between »Star Trek«, »Star Wars« and »A Journey to the Center of the Earth« regarding its ability to get analysed and interpreted as you are analysing and interpreting »Star Trek« and »Star Wars«? How are your mathematical and physical skills and knowledges helping you to analyse and interpret »A Journey to the Center of the Earth«? What would be your result if you have to analyse and interpret one of the cinematic adaptions applying the same scientific standards from your analyses and interpretations of »Star Trek« and »Star Wars«?

You don't really have to explain what that novel is all about - i own a complete (german) collection of Jules Vernes work.
We can reconcile Jules Verne in two ways:
-assume that they do not travel to the actual center of the earth. This does, however, not fit with several of the things we see, and his hence not preferable.
-assume that their earth just happens to be vastly different from our own. This is, indeed, necessary, since it is impossible to reconcile all the differences between what we know and what we observe in the novel.

However, under suspension of disbelief, we MUST assume that all of science still applies, unless something is specifically observed that requires us to do otherwise.
A simple, common example is FTL-travel. For all we know, it is impossible in real life. If, in a sci-fi universe, we observe that it IS impossible, we see that this part of science does not apply there. However, that does not invalidate the rest of science.

In our specific example, we do not see that the laws of newton, thermodynamics, geometry and optics do not apply. We see that they DO apply in many other parts of Star Trek. Since it is impossible to throw them out of the window without contradicting other parts of Star Trek, and we do not observe something that requires us to do so, we do not throw them out of the window.
In a nutshell, this method tries to find the explanation that fit's as much science as we know, without contradicting what we observe in our sci-fi universe.
This is exactly how science works - trying to explain new phenomena, while changing what we already know as little as possible. Only when that is impossible, a new theory is born.

Imagine it like this:
We get the television shows, movies, books etc. from an alien civilisation (the future/an alternate universe).
We know that they are not televised, produced shows full of special effects, but rather documentaries.
Now, if that were the case - a scientist would propably conclude the same things as i did from that episode. Because, quite frankly - dialogue is pretty damn unreliable. It's far better to assume that someone is wrong, than to assume that he is right and that fundamental things we know about phyics are wrong. In real life, observation trumps dialogue any day.
A good example is history - we often have people saying things, but if they are pretty damn unlikely or impossible, we do not take their words for granted - unless we find evidence. A perfect example for this is Atlantis - we only have one account for this, and what it describes is impossible. This is why sane people do not take it as truth - this would only change if we found evidence for it.

If you are not able to get satisfying results using your method, please consider, if your method could be flawed.

This method tends to work pretty well. Hence, i do not see the slightest need to change it.
It also has the additional benefit to teach both scientifc method and knowledge.

I think it borders on patheticness to apply too much science in the analyses and interpretation of science fiction, where the shown technology seems to violate mankind's current understanding of the world. If a in a science fiction show portrayed fraction has technology which is able to do things that can only be described as magic, it is inconsequent to assume that this fraction wouldn't use it's magical technology consequent. It is e.g. inconsequent to admit that their drive-technology has to be such magic technology because it enables - without liberating cosmic amounts of energy - their ship to go faster than light, but to insist that their weapons have to work without utilizing such magic technology.

I already explained how the method actually works, and hence adressed most of this.
However, i would like to add that i do NOT assume magic technology -for example, both hyperdrive and warp drive can be readily explained.
The first either sends the ship to "Hyperspace", where certain parts of physics do not apply, or transforms it into tachyonic matter. These are not "theories", but at least they are explanations that allow us to maintain most of our science.
Warp drive is actually a concept called Alcubierre drive - basically, you shorten the distance you travel. The ship never actually reaches FTL-speeds - it just creates a shortcut by compressing space-time. Depending on the (unknown) energy requirement for this, this could easily allow extremely hight speeds with small amounts of energy.

Beside that, one could speculate that in the TNG episode » Inheritance « the modified phaser beam has changed the structure of the mantle through which it has drilled. Maybe it has somehow crystallized the rocks or has done something else, which ensures that the shaft holds under the pressure it should be under. Or maybe they have erected forcefields from generators on the surface of the planet which are holding the shafts open. Or maybe they have adapted their SIF technology to prevent the collapse of the shaft or the melting of the rocks. But it is only a technobabble speculation. There are many different technobabble solutions conceivable. None of them is explainable with your mathematical and physical skills and knowledges. But that does not change the fact, that they could be possible in the universe of »Star Trek«.

Rocks are already crystals.
The problem is that we do not actually see any of this. We do not see equipment that appears to do so. It is not even mentioned in dialogue - they are not worried that it could fail, even when their transport enhancers were destroyed by an earthquake. Given their high willingness to discuss such things, it seems unlikely that they would not be mentioned.
At least you admit that this is speculation - and by the principle of parsimony, this is simply adding unnecessary terms to hold up your preferred explanation.
Furthermore, equipment would still not explain the visible blue sky - setting up lamps in the shaft or devices to send sunlight down there would be completely unnecessary

Batman would now object that we haven't seen it and that there is no poof for it. That is correct. But we know that there are things that have happened off-screen. And it is stupid to pretend that is not the case. And if, with what we have seen on-screen, something is not possible, it is more plausible to assume that they have made it possible with something they have done off-screen than to disqualify the whole event because assumed impossibility.

I already said that it is speculation, and you yourself admitted it.
Our explanation requires one term - that they were wrong about the depth, and actually meant the depth they wanted to affect with their equipment (which is just a slight missspeaking, which everyone present presumably understood right anyway).
Yours requires dozens of additional, unseen equipment, capabilities and other things.

Furthermore I'd like to invite you to come over here. For you it is easy to join this board while it is impossible for some of us to join SDN. And don't be scared, but you are already debating with us. That's no shame. So do us the honour and join this board for this debate. After that, nobody will force you to stay here and to continue to debate with us. It also shouldn't be detrimental to your membership at SDN. Quite the contrary: You can rightful state that you have come into close contact with the barbarians of SFJ and have made first hand experiences with their stupidity and impersuadableness.

What would be the difference?
I can easily debate this particular thread from here. Indeed, it has the advantage that no one in the debate is subject to the other forums rules - we are, in a way, on neutral ground.
Since i do not have any interest in your forum (you use miss-mannner methods of debating, no-number fallacies and debate only a very narrow field of themes) for several reasons, most important of which is that i am not that interested in SW/ST debates.
Yes, i am posting about it right now - but this is more about correcting wrong claims.
Over here, i can alread debate sci-fi (including SW/ST - and much more than just that), and also politics, videogames, science, art and many other things. I can do so in an enviroment of open, scrutinious debate where people are actually required to back up their claims. This is an intelectual, tolerant (except of stupidity and bigotry) forum. And it has a large amount of very knowledgable and/or intelligent people.

Your forum offers nothing of that. It is not necessary for me to join it for the purpose of this debate. Hence, i will not do so.

[Wyrm]

TRANSLATION:

"WAAA you understand enough math, science and suspension of disbelief to point out my misuse and abuse of it."

I see they're cargo-cult debating. He seems to think this constitutes the entire rebuttal to a point, but it's only a superficial understanding of this kind of rebuttal. In order for the point to stick, you would already have to have shown or are going to show immediately, that the indictment is indeed correct.

Used as such, it's about as effective as bringing planes carrying cargo to your island as strapping a gourd to your genitals and waving sticks about.

[Batman]

Mind you that DOES read like a pretty accurate description of what Serafina's doing

[Serafina]

Mind you that DOES read like a pretty accurate description of what Serafina's doing

It sure is

Of course, he is trying to imply that HE understands enough "math, science and suspension of disbelief" to point out that i misuse them.
Of course, he never did so - so that's a pure lie.
He also NEVER used any calculations (which are...well, all that math is about and essential to science) or even proper scientific terms (he doesn't even understand what an explosion is - quoting wikipedia does not constitute actual knowledge).

Of course, i know that his style of debating won't shape up. I would be surprised and impressed if he actually gave any actual concession. Essentially, i am trying to tire him out - watching as the level of bullshit increases and his arguments get worse and worse. It's fun (at least to me, and i hope to other readers as well) - and i am genuinely curious how long it will take for him to give up. His posts already get shorter, and he is beginning to ignore more and more of my points.

[Wyrm]

However, it is MUCH easier to assume that the crust of that planet happens to be thicker, than to try and reconcile all the insanities that the 2000 km figure causes. Furthermore, we already know that their planet has been cooling down internally. This would first cool the upper regions, but the lower regions would still be very hot due to pressure alone.

Also, we know that the cave was through continental rock, because if it were through oceanic rock, there would be water pouring down the hole.

[Batman]

However, it is MUCH easier to assume that the crust of that planet happens to be thicker, than to try and reconcile all the insanities that the 2000 km figure causes. Furthermore, we already know that their planet has been cooling down internally. This would first cool the upper regions, but the lower regions would still be very hot due to pressure alone.

Also, we know that the cave was through continental rock, because if it were through oceanic rock, there would be water pouring down the hole.

Hogwash. Since they already put up all those forcefields that keep the shaft stable, the caves from collapsing, and the people in them from being fried they OBVIOUSLY saw to it that the water would be held back too.
I mean somebody SAID they drilled down thousands of kilometres so OBVIOUSLY that must have happened and all those things needed to make that compatible with the visuals yet curiously never mentioned must have happened too because clearly the guy saying that simply being WRONG is unthinkable. I mean it's not like Starfleet personell are ever wrong about ANYTHING.

[Serafina]

A short adress to another user:

Mike's entire website is still a form of nexus of plenty of stuff a fraction of nerdom may end on one day or another.
He has countless essays, calculators and other things which outside of his own opinions about Trek and Wars, are interesting to read. He did pour a lot of efforts into this structure. It's understandable how some people may be drawn to their boards. Besides it also allows more people to remember and think about certain threads and link to them from other boards, for all sorts of topics, versus debates or not. The "gravity" draws in more stuff, although it's getting into its slow growth stage.

While i was originally stumbling upon SD.Net based on VS-debating (i just decided to do a search for it out of sheer curiosity one day), i previously stumbled across other sites about it.
What genuinely put me off there was the dishonest debating you can see in so many fields - mostly politics.
You have anti-science debaters all over the place, who do not allow their opponents to call them out on the bullshit they spount under the mantle of false politeness.
Now, i am not actually a rude person - but i had often encountered people who "respect all oppinions" - regardless on wether they are shit or not. Calling a bullshiter or an idiot such is not rude - it's accurate. Doing so out of the blue is rude - but you don't do that when you adress his arguments.
Other than that, i liked the site because it actually used science - and explained the scientific method.#

I stayed on the forums because they cover pretty much everything. This is simply not true for any other vs-forums, and on them, i would have grown tired from the inevitable repetition.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Ok, so on to the beef no Kor-Idiot-Master has out up yet another "rebuttal"
By the way, as an experiment, i am putting everything where i simply mock him into spoilertags now - simply to preserve space, and show how pointless his posts actually are.
Oh, and btw, this is much more fun while listening to Toccata and Fugue in D Minor
Spoiler

Your personal opinion is:

Bollocks

Hey, how cute. Can't even come up with your own insults, kid?
Of course, coming out with arguments, evidence and numbers would be much better - and unlike insults, they are actually required for a debate.

Not only because it is about contemporary politics but also because you think it over rides canon material.

Yeah, right - guess what, kid - politics follow the dicate of reality. They can be shaped by dogmatism - but in general, military analyts tend to be pretty damn realistic.
If the Federation does not follow these results, that simply shows that their military analysts (if they even have them, given their idiotic attitude towards war) are chock full of political bullshit.
War is a reality. Ignoring it ultimately costs the life of your own people. To quote an actual military analyst:
"Nations do not survive by setting examples for others. Nations survive by making examples of others."

Really?, so after our sun goes through its "red giant" stage you claim its gonna go supernova soon?......oh dear and this from the person who needed to reinterpret most of my posts just to make coments on learning science, geology ect ect.

Definately sooner than it is now. Our suns red giant stage will take a mere 500 million years, while it will take about 5 million to get to the red giant stage.
Furthermore, the situation was clearly urgent. You don't have to care about your sun going nova if it happens in 100 million years - them worrying at all shows that it will happen really soon.
Oh, and i am generous to Trek-scientists here - i am assuming that, if they field-test something, they are going to choose a star who is in nearly identical condition to the one they actually need the device for. If they do NOT do this - then they ar bloody idiots.
Spoiler

Your actual incapability to comprehend simple scientific concepts or to use any calculations is proof enough.

Look up......LOLOLOL.

Where to, sarge?
Honestly, now - are you going to make coherent ponints? You NEVER used a calculation - unless you want to declare "transforming m/s into mi/h" a calculation - technically, it is, but it doesn't produce anything.

Science is a tool.

And sometimes it is effective at explaining sci-fi material and sometimes it is not.

Wrong. You can always use the scientic method. Sometimes, you have to declare something unknown - but even before we knew the energy source of our sun, we could measure and analyze it's output and behaviour. Unkowns do not stop science, they encourage it.

This is not about when we cannot observations with known science this instance is about ignoringmore than one canon visual and verbal materials for one personal perspective on a single visual.

I did not ignore it. I analyzed it. It is clearly contradictionary to other observations (read: canon visuals). We have to explain this somehow. Human error is simply the best explanation.
Only ignorance can allow you to avoid explaining it.

Because i took the point you were trying to make and pointed out the flaw, after that addressing the entire long winded rant was pointless.

Except that the explanation contained points by itself, and you did not adress them.

Your method of gaining the base figures for roid speed and size seemed fine, the math calculating the roids KE seemed fine.

Sooo...you admit that the calculation is correct?

Your conclusions were vague in regards to how much light would be generated if any at all, your explanation for the flaming roids were overly simplistic representations of certain effects in conditions and unrealistic in regards to the reality of the situation. Oh and you failed to explain the explosions at all.

Wrong. I (with a bit help) showed how much light would be generated.
Besides - show how it actually fails. You can't just say "it doesn't satisify me". I took extremely low figures - the actual ones could easily be OOMs higher.
The "flaming asteroids" (you seem to have an odd fascination with that word ) can be explained by basic chemistry. You would have to show that such an reaction would not occur, since the components are clearly there.

It is a visual referance and claiming it is invalid is the same as claiming that the scematic of the DS in the movie is invalid when you cannot get much more canon than that.

I did not claim it was not canon.
Besides, that schematic of the DS we see is in the briefing is CLEARLY not to scale. It doesn't have to be - it is merely supposed to show what they are supposed to do.
Either way, as i said many times before - like the DS schematic, this does not have to be to scale, and it could simply refer to the region they want to affect - not the one they are going to drill to.

That is a misleading perspective as the visuals AND the dialog run together as they are shown and he clearly indicates the drilling path by moving his finger down while saying where he is drilling to.

You perspective is very dishonest under the circumstances.

Dialogue is falliable. Otherwise, in Star Trek, fish are amphibians according to Data.

No mention is made on how turbo lasers, warp drive, hyperspace engines and virtually every thing or effect we see in every franchise is cooled but we both know the laws of thermodynamics say they must have a FREAKING AWSOME METHOD of doing so.

Except, not. We actually have several instances of cooling mechanisms for starships in Star Wars.

It looks like light and the colour of the light is actually white it is only at the edges where the tunnel wall mingles with the pixels that it looks blue, if you do not believe me take a screenie and focus in on it.

Explain the purpose of this light. Why would you put a lamp into a tunnel that you are not going to actually use (being a path for their transporter doesn't count, that doesn't require light).

The centre is just white the upeer left and top where the light meets the shaft wall looks grey as it darkens the tunnel wall and light in the bottom right show blue.

So the vague blue you see (and now so do i) is actually at the bottom right and not from the light source but instead part of the tunnel wall reflecting the white light that it hitting it.

Sorry to burst that bubble for you.

Apparently, you also fail at simple optics.
But hey, proove me wrong - perform calculations, make a diagram. Should be quite simple, assuming that you passed high school. Spoiler

The fact is that they refer to the pockets to be within KM of the molten core and they are a natural phenomenon of this planet.

Again, dialogue is inaccurate. Or do you accept that in Star Wars, fish are amphibians?

Explained in the episode as a effect of the outer core cooling.

Explain how this would happen. Simple newtonian mechanics and thermodynamics.
Besides - didn't they try to HEAT it? Didn't the activty INCREASE after they heated it? So...ah, screw this, everyone can see the contradiction here. Spoiler

Debunked it is not a blue light, the blue is reflected light.

So they put up a blue light that can illuminate a 2000 km long shaft, which no one actually uses.
Did they also put wallpapers in that shaft?

The existance of the naturally occuring pockets and location of the pockets is given and confirmed and a considerable drilling depth towards the molten core is shown as data slides his finger down the image of the planet while referancing drilling to the pockets.

Provide evidence that such pockets can and do exist under such pressure. And no, "The Core" is not valid evidence - and even that movie was more scientificall accurate than you are. I was actually watching it yesterday to give my brain a break from your stupidity.

I am not ignoring anything it is you who is ignoring a entire plot line, verbal comments, visual referances and interpreting a few things (that admitedly without the other main plot canon material would give you a argument) to base your argument on.

The plot? The actual plot was about Data and his "mother". The B-plot was about sending plasma to restart the rotation of the molten iron core of a planet, which somehow affected the gravity of the planet. Even the B-plot does not depend on them being down there - just getting past the solid crust would give them acces to liquid material to inject their magic plasma into.

So you are saying that nothing in the known universe or a sci-fi one could cause a void in a planets mantle even though that planets are clearly mentioned to be there?.

In the known universe? No, any reasonably possible construction material would get crushed, much less naturally occuring ones. You can have solid geodes, but not hollow ones.
In a sci-fi universe? Sure - but we see nothing in Star Trek that permits this.

Unless artificcially cooled by a race that would require awsome cooling tech like both ST and SW have.

Even if you cool something, thermodynamics still apply. That's another big, damn FAIL for you.
Hey, did you know that a refrigerator (or air condition) doesn't actuall eleminate heat? It just moves it.
Likewise, they have to move the heat somewhere - so where did it go?

No you are talking about things that people understood perfectly well more than a centruy ago, the episode is talking about things that happen on a alien planet that has voids in its mantle.

The laws of physics are universal across the universe. They do not spontaneously change because you are on another planet.

You are again trying to justify what you want to believe and ignoring the canon material in the episode and the tech available to the federation.

I am not ignoring, i am explaining. Ignorance would indicate that i do not adress canonic things - instead, i did just that.

Endor planetary shielding is (novel) G canon, contradicted by visuals in rotj.

Not contradicted. I already explained that several times:
A diagram doesn't have to show everything. If i make a powerpoint presentation on how to build a robots motor, i will not include a detailed description of it's joints - even tough they are crucial to it's movement. Such detail has nothing to do with what i am trying to explain, and would just distract.
Likewise, the diagram of Endor is supposed to tell us:
"The Death Star orbits a planet (moon). From this planet, it's protected by a powerfull shield. We take out the shield, then we blow it up."
No more details are given. By your logic, this also disprooves the existance of an imperial fleet (they clearly knew that they had some ships there, they were not surpised when the strike team saw the Executor), since it was not shown on that diagram either. Spoiler

Rubbish.

Ah, so now you ignore canon - great, that's like what, the sixth time? Go read Wookiepedias page on planetary shields. Given it's history and it's defensive nature, a planetary shield makes tons of sense for Naboo.

Never even mentioned and wishful thinking doth not G canon make.

Alderaans shield is SEEN. That's more than enough.

You mean like the visuals in ROTJ?.

Explain the contradiciton?
Oh, you mean the diagram? Gee, how many times do i have to explain this to you?

Simple?, i quintillion tons per shot?, good luck with dealing with all that mass.

Mass-lightening, anyone? They clearly have anti-gravity technology - they can even use it on cheap two-person transports! Spoiler

I did not ignore it because it had nothing to really discuss because we have no idea how they moved it apart from seeing the single beam internally when it fired and as we see the internal beam start it was obviously not being used for storage already was it?.

So - instead of trying to explain it, you...well, spout rubbish, i suppose.

Well we know it would have had to fill (not refill) at least once......

Provide evidence for this assertion.
Hint: Building it does not constitute a "refill" - that's filling it the first time.

Yes i do and you cannot ignore mass.

Trek can. Star Wars can. Who was it again that was complaining about science to ignore canon?

I never assumed that because i never mentioned the DS would have to annihilate more than it itself weights to fire it's superlaser, i just pointed out how much m/am it would need to turn to energy for the DET theory to work.

A lot.
Which could be stored as compressed matter.
Problem solved, no contradiction here. Figuring out that they need a lot of energy is hardly a great feat.

Easily is not the word i would use.

It's clearly doable for the Empire. Indeed, they can use the technology for civilian ships that can be afforded by relatively average citizens!

Il need to add a few more complications to the DET theory if thats what your gonna go with though, still it maybe better than claiming it stores its matter and anti-matter by turning them into Neutrino's then turning them back on demand in planet popping portions to anhialate each other and blow stuff up.

Neutrinos? You are aware that Neutrinos are electrically neutral, and thus would be extremely different to store?
Either way - the exact nature of the storage/reactor mechanism does not matter. All that matters is performance.

Well somebody else made some of it up (the fusion in any material bit), i just read through it and adopted the idea as a very reasonable and less complicated DS laser theory than the DET one.

Again, you trusted someone who did not even use a SINGLE source?
Gee, you are even more moronic than i tought.
Spoiler

Other than when referancing your dubious methodoligy amoung other things have a resorted to any real abusive insults apart from the jokingly done spelling one?.

You have my word it was a error and not a intended one for what ever that is worth, and a apology if you did feel insulted by the error.

I will accept this as an apology.

The post is there for all to see if you feel i was trying to do what you say, il not edit it.

I corrected and admitted my flaw in my post as soon as you pointed it out but i conceed you officially said it first....yay you.

You made it in the first place. Either way, kudos for correcting it.

That was kind of the point of the episode dude, the issue was not the heating up but the stabilising of it.

Spoiler

Ah, i see your promises are as reliable as your sources.
Either way, i'll take it as a mistake.

This does not adress my point. They expected it to stabilize. They failed. This indicates that something was wrong. Most likely something about the star - unless they actually did not bother to check if they could stabilize such a thing at all. Which would make them morons.

Not wanting to try it on their own sun first and wipe out his entire race would be my guess....

Yes, that was the reason for choosing another star.
Now, what was the reason for choosing a similar star?
Getting the answer to that one should be easy, given that i already gave it to you.

Well it was explained bit im betting it will just upset you if i post what they say:-

"A rise the the hydrogen alpha emmisions caused by neutron migration"....heh.

Posting evidence is supposed to upset me?
Of course, that snippet is not actually evidence for them to try to stabilize it actively. It's merely pointless technobabble. I suggest quoting longer and/or more relevant dialogue.

I do not remember him saying exactly how bright the flash it would be.

Are you daft? Can't you add 1 and 2?
Look here: I gave you the energy. He gave us the light that would be emitted. I gave you a size estaminate for the asteroid.
Simply calculate how long the energy could sustain the necessary temperatures for emitting visible light. Take the surface of the asteroid (that is visible from our perspective). Calculate how much visible light would be given out for how long.
I can do a rough calculation in my head. However, for the sake of you learning something, i will leave it to you to do it on your own (it's trivial).

You say it but we see it after the flash, expanding burning gasses ect ect..

Which doesn't necessiate an explosion. You still do not know what an explosion actuall is.




He posted another one:

The only option in the case of jules verne A Journey to the Center of the Earth is to assume that it is a alternate reality or another planet and that the core is differant some how and MOVE ON.

The amusing thing is WE KNOW that it is another planet in "Inheritance" but regardless that is ignored by those who wish to serve their own ends.

Hey, dipshit:
That alternate universe clearly has to have other physical laws, or we would not see what we do.
Star Trek has observed instances of all the law we need. Such a planet would be impossible in Star Trek - indeed, we never see one.

This pretty much sums up the flaw in using science to disregard canon material (and not just canon material but main plot material) as well as existing/known tech instead of using science and existing/known tech to explain the anomolies.

This does not sum anything. It doesn't even say anthing. Spoiler

WE KNOW that it is another planet.
WE KNOW that the core is cooling.
WE KNOW that its core has also begun to solidify.
WE KNOW that it does have pockets/voids near its molten core.
WE KNOW that they are at a significant depth into the planets mantle due to the visual referance made along with the verbal one.
WE KNOW that they drill down to them.
WE KNOW that the phaser blast lasted roughly 19 seconds to do so.
WE KNOW that they wanted to adjust the particle beam while drilling to minimize the seismic stress.
WE KNOW that the pockets need to cool after the drilling process.
WE KNOW that if they had stopped drilling before reaching a pocket they could not start again in the same shaft.
WE KNOW that looking up the shaft, we could see light.
WE KNOW that that it is in fact not blue light and that the blue is from reflections off the shaft walls.

Yes, we know that it is another planet.
Yes, we are told that the core is cooling.
Yes, we know that this would lead the core to solidify.
No, we are just TOLD that these pockets exist at these depths. Dialogue is not a reliable source of information.
Yes, we know that they drill to some cave. That does not mean that it is at that depth - we are just told that.
Yes, we know that it lasted roughy 19 seconds.
Yes, we know that they had to use some technobabble. That would not prevent the shaft from collapsing afterwards.
Yes, we know that they need to cool for an hour.
Yes, we know that they can see light.
No, we do NOT know that it is a reflection of anything.

WE DO NOT KNOW how the pockets exist due to the pressure.
WE DO NOT KNOW the diameter of the planet.
WE DO NOT KNOW the exact depth of the shaft due to not knowing the diameter of the planet.
WE DO NOT KNOW how the pockets are cooled and kept cool.
WE DO NOT KNOW the source of the light in the pocket or the shaft.
WE DO NOT KNOW the diameter of the shaft due to not knowing how high the ceiling is.

We know that such a thing would be impossible.
We know that is has earth-like gravity and composition, therefore the diameter can not be that different.
We do not know how they are kept cool. Additional information has to be invented out of thin air in order to explain the supposed depth.
We do not know the source of light. The sky would make sense, a lmapf would not.
We DO know the diameter of the shaft, since we do know the height of the ceiling (it can be seen before and after that scene, and indeed even during the scene).

Long, pointless repetition sure is fun, eh?

So lets use the fact we are on another planet, science and available tech to explain things we do not know instead of disregarding the canon material and the main plot:

Merely being on another planet doesn't invaldiate all, or indeed any, laws of physics.

The pockets exist on this planet becauseit has a material in its mantle that can resist the pressure at those depths.

Such a material does not exist. It is indeed impossible for it to exist, outside of collapsed matter (which would suck in the whole planet.

The planet seems to be M-type in its diameter as per the visuals of the E-D in orbit, but im willing to hear other theories.

It has earth-like gravity and compositon. Therefore, it IS earth like.

The exact depth os still unknown but all indications that do not contradict the plot or canon material are that it is well into the mantle making it 2500km or more if a typical M-class is accepted.

You know what? Finally provide a quote that they even say it's 2500 km deep.

The pockets are cooled by some kind of Fed tech as the ability to VERY effectivly cool things is essential to a advanced space faring civilisation.

Yes it is essential.
We do, however, NOT see that they are capable of moving enormous quantities of heat from thousands of kilometers away.
Such an ability would sure be handy (and actually be a usefull weapon) - but they never show it.

The light is artificial just like the light created in the pocket.

Why would they put a light up there?

Job done and we did not need to disregard plot or canon material....

No such thing happened. You just invented handwaves out of thin air.



Oh, and a quick note: Due to needing sleep, i am not carefully checking formattin or spelling on this. Be warned.

[Batman]

Um-you DO know spoilerized quotes take up just as much space as ordinary quotes, right?