Trek fanboys arguments make Death Star more impresive?

[Darth Ruinus]

I think the Death Star novel mentions something about the Death Star's superlaser shunting matter into hyperspace (or something along those lines) which was then turned into "The Death Star is weaker because it simply moves the planet into hyperspace." However, someone (I think it was Darth Wong) mentioned that moving an entire planet into hyperspace must take stupendous amounts of energy to accomplish, something which bz249 may hae been referencing.

[Batman]

As per ANH a lot of Alderaan was pretty much still evident in real space, you know.

[bz249]

I think the Death Star novel mentions something about the Death Star's superlaser shunting matter into hyperspace (or something along those lines) which was then turned into "The Death Star is weaker because it simply moves the planet into hyperspace." However, someone (I think it was Darth Wong) mentioned that moving an entire planet into hyperspace must take stupendous amounts of energy to accomplish, something which bz249 may hae been referencing.

No, I simply said that the debris was reached quite a large subligth velocity... since it travelled distances larger than planetary diameter in seconds, thus E(kinetic)>>-E(grav field)... so the energy required to negate the planetary gravitational field is negligible compared to the final kinetic energy of the debris (which has the same mass as the former planet).

Also the planetary core can not provide the energy because it is mostly made of iron, from which it is impossible to gain energy (maybe M/AM reaction, but for this one should do something with the conservation of barionic number... for which magic is the only tested way ).

[Darth Ruinus]

As per ANH a lot of Alderaan was pretty much still evident in real space, you know.

I probably shouldn't have said "moving an entire planet ito hyperspace" but more like "most of the planet into hyperspace."

Actually, here is the thread in question. Connor MacLeod quotes the actual passage from the book dealing with the destruction of Alderaan on page 4, near the bottom of the page. One page 1 I actually brought up the very same Trek argument I did here.

[bz249]

... and reactor efficiency is all that fucking matters, that's the point. Yeah, the reaction is 100 % efficient, but how do you propose you are supposed to harness the large proportion of energy that gets released as neutrinos, for example? Antimatter is good, but it isn't so implausible to suppose that another process could have a better reactor efficiency because it doesn't waste as much energy in unusable forms, or is easier to react properly, and is thus for all practical purposes a more efficient way to produce useful energy than antimatter.

You'd think this would be obvious.

And why do you think M/AM reaction should emit neutrinos?

The time I learnt in university, particle physics was the following:

- an antimatter particle has the same mass, but inverse charges (electric, leptonic, barionic) of a matter particle
- energy, momentum and charges are conserved in ANY reaction

So if you have a matter particle and its antimatter counterpart (for the sake of simplicity let them be static ones so momentum is zero) than you have zero charge (electric, leptonic and barionic) and pure energy in form of the particles mass.

After the reaction you should have zero charges (in most cases that means boson: gamma photons in much more than 99% of the cases) and the appropriate masses. To fulfill the conservation of momentum two gamma photons emitted in the opposite directions...

If phyisics have changed in the time (particle physics isn't my field, so i do not know) please give me a link. My university is a poor one, but we have subscribed for APS journals, so Phys. Rev. Lett. will be fine.

[Wyrm]

And why do you think M/AM reaction should emit neutrinos?

Because particle interactions are much more messy than you describe in your simplistic treatment.

Whenever you have an energetic reaction, even in the relatively unenergetic positron/electron anihilation, the reaction products are rarely this clean cut. The only absolute requirements for the reaction products is that the momenta, energies, and charges must match the reactants. While gammas are the most common product of the positron/electron reaction, any spray of particles conserving those quantities is possible. This will include a large amount of sprays that have neutrino/antineutrino pairs. A neutrino/antineutrino pair will also have zero net charge, and with the neutrino mass of a few eV at most, a few are quite within the realm of a reaction upwards of 1 MeV and greater.

The other thing is that you are assuming that a particle will only react with its associated antiparticle. Not so. Baryon-lepton reactions are also possible, and those reactions inevidably result in energy-sapping neutrinos. Furthermore, baryon-antibaryon reactions are quite invariably messy events. Indeed, you're most likely to get a spray of mesons, the decay paths of which have been painstakingly cataloged, and include many paths involving neutrinos. Since baryon reactions involve almost all of the mass to be converted into energy, a large chunk of the energy is likely to be in neutrinos.

[harbringer]

While I may be a little slow, we a) know the DS was powered by a hypermatter reactor, a useful fusion reactor to power the superlaser would likely be bigger then the death star since it would require the output of a star released in a fraction of a second (well after what 10 seconds of charging capacitors or what ever the wars universe uses) to destroy a planet, ergo said trekkie claims cannot be true as they cannot fulfill the needs of canon. b) understand that there is no way some super-science can turn a planet into a bomb waiting to be triggered (though as a fear weapon blowing up your planet at our leisure at any time after radiating your world somehow could be fun).

If they can actually prove that within a) realms of real world physics or b) within some clearly available in universe proof that these assumptions are incorrect then you have an argument. Otherwise your down to magic and as a point of argument it is pretty silly you may as well say that Harry Potter would rule wars and trek as he is a magician.