Questor

I do that all the time. Oh wait, you're not talking about the voices in my head...

Which part? The part where I'm making fun of him by doing what he did... Or the part where once again Star Trek TNG science dialog makes no sense? If you are going to try to use this in vs. well ok, but the whole debate is pointless, as I've pointed out in other places. I use the debate in the same way I do puzzles, as mental exercise.

I assume you are referring to the line from Shelby. Thats an ambiguous line, at best. She could be referring to any kind of energy. I note that you completely ignored my question about why you are so sure that she is talking about heat energy. Especially as vacuum transmits heat energy very badly. I can, the difference is that I understand it. Do you? It loses about half of what? Its thermal energy? And is that rule for in the atmosphere. Lets check out Glasstone's The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, 3rd Edition. Yup, it looks like its a standard spherical radiation pattern, so lets work the numbers. What is your number for the surface area of the Enterprise D battle section? I'm going to assume that it takes up roughly a third the space occupied by a square of the same dimensions as the battle section. According to the The INTERTUBES, the stardrive section is 306.1 m wide by 117.4 m tall. This gives the square an area of 35936.14 m2, divide that by three and you get roughly 11978.713 m2. The surface area of the sphere with a radius of 4E7 m (using the number you cited above, rather than the one below) is about 2.01E11. The Enterprise, as we calculated above, represents 1.1978713E4/2.01E11 or 5.9595587E-8 of that, so it will receive 0.0000059595587% of the thermal energy emitted by the "blast" Working backwards from your number of 4.428E6 degrees C (which is a nonsensical way to represent this energy anyway, but that is a different argument), the Enterprise receives 0.26 degrees heating, assuming a perfect heat transmission medium, which space is not. Working forwards from 12000 degrees C, as you tried to do, you find that in order for the Enterprise to receive 12000 degrees C of heat from a point source 40000Km away in a perfect transmission medium, the point source needs to be emitting 2.013572E11 degrees of heat. There's just a small problem with that, as its well above the point at which your dealing with charged plasma. I guess what I was asking was why you are multiplying by two, and especially where you get 720,000. I am also not sure where you get 4.428e6 Working backwards: 4.428E6/7.2E5=6.15E0 6.15E0/2E0=3.075E0 Can you please show the equations you are using and define your variables? Your math is not working. I don't necessarily think you did the math wrong, I think you did the wrong math. I think you did math you got by googling and tried to compare it to a dissimilar situation without looking at alternative explanations. You assumed heat transfer, although that makes very little sense in a vacuum. You also assumed that because Riker orders the Enterprise to 40000 Km, then that must be suicide distance, even though that information is not provided in the dialog.

Where are you getting this number? A) Heat is not the only factor. No one that I can see is arguing anything about heat other than you. As far as I can tell, there is nothing to argue about because you have yet to provide a source for your numbers. You incorrectly applied the inverse square law, taking no account for the fact that a directed beam does not dissipate at the same rate as a spherical blast wave. Also, where did you get the numbers for the amount of heat necessary to destroy a borg cube? Why are you assuming that the energy transfer mechanism is heat rather than either NDF or DET? Have you calculated the mass of the borg cube? Have you calculated the high end of power output by taking the full output of the E-D's reactor and multiplying over the period of time used to charge the beam? Also, I seem to recall that the cube was not destroyed by this attack.

Wait... what? Unless we are postulating that physics work differently, in which case we can just pack up and go home, as any kind of numbers based discussion is pointless, there will be some inefficiency. At the levels we are talking about, ANY inefficiency will have to be dealt with somehow. If you are suggesting that the beam becomes more energetic as it travels from the ship, I would kindly ask you to provide a mechanism by which that happens. Extraordinary claims and all that...

Tyralak hits on the crux of the matter, and the reason I despise dialog when analyzing sci-fi. Unless the characters are specific, have the training to know what they are talking about, and are in a position to actually use that training, it means about as much as when anyone speaks... I.E. nothing. Of course, I'll be honest and admit that my own feelings regarding the unreliability of dialog tend to apply to all mediums. I know where I sit on the whole "show or tell" debate. What weapons are being show in TDiC? I haven't seen it in a while, but I have an idea.

I love the position they just put Eli in. No, he's not the audience avatar at all!

Tyralak shows himself to be a man of discerning taste. I think Universe is starting out on a high note. There was more character development in that one episode (albeit a three parter) than in any season I can think of. I think that this show is going in a more character-oriented direction than other Stargate shows have previously. I will be interested to see if the network allows them to keep up the emphasis on character development over action in subsequent episodes. I loved the whole "Chemistry saves the day" thing, too. I hope their problems continue to be solved in such ways.

Sounds almost like religious fundamentalism, in fact. And we all know what Wong thinks of fundamentalism...

Are you a fucking idiot, or did you just forget to plug in whatever defective random word generator you use for a brain? Seriously, if you're going to troll someone, do it fucking right, actually know my history, along with the history of a lot of the others here on this board. Enigma and I even use the exact same fucking handles on SDNet.

Going back on topic here, this is an interesting discussion in and of itself, "What genre do different shows fall into?" Science Fiction, as it is used in the popular parlance is a very broad genre, encompassing all other genres, and even having a few specific sub-genres. The Sci-Fi/Fantasy genre encompasses almost every traditional genre from romance to mystery, and has its own highly specific sub-genres like military sci-fi, horror, high fantasy, space opera, alternate history, and world building. Just about the only other "genre" that is as broad is historical fiction. Other literary groupings that large are considered categories, like "Young Adult." One of the problems is that when many people in the vs community start talking about Sci-Fi, they only think of the Space Opera genre, and this leads to the argument that ST and SW are not in the same genre. They are in the same overbroad genre, but they are in very different sub-genres, one being for the most part television (encompassing whatever genre the writers felt like writing in that week), and the other being straight space opera. If you want to compare STI-VI and SW from a literary standpoint, your much closer.

Yeah, I had some real life issues that kept me from participating in anything online for a while, but I eventually came back to SDNet and ASVS. I saw ASVS was pretty dead, and came here when I saw your announcement. Looks good, although I wonder if you can really capture the charm of the old STGODS without branching threads. It used to really suck when Free Agent would eat the start post, then they'd all show up all over the place.

I'm here...