Tyralak

Something that came to mind; People seem to regard Alderaan as a solid, inert object. However, it's a geologically active planet with a magnetic field, much like Earth. Destroying the planet may be as simple a matter as popping a balloon. Pierce a geologically active planet, and the stored energy inside the planet causes it to explode.

It is with great sadness that I announce the passing of Sir Nitram. (Martin Kemmish). He died this morning at 11:52 am due to complications from a fall. He will be missed.

Frankly, I'm thrilled at this development. It really is the best thing that could have happened. The EU was a horrible, inconsistent hodgepodge, and George was right to ignore it. At least now, there will be no question as to what is canon. However, let's just hope the fanatics don't get their hands on this and wank up the power levels to unheard of heights. Teraton Blaster pistols and such.

When Rebel face off against the First Death star how poorly equipment was the Rebel alliance.

 

Facts each fighter armed with only two torpedoes. Only Millennium Falcon play major role came anything but one man fighter. One question what good would one them done first place. Let face Rebels gunship not able trench run might take lasers weapons. Would not very effective combat Death star laser guns try shoot down Rebel fighters. They could take on but Rebel likely limit numbers available and how effective disable laser guns question at best. Rebel used better tactics they would even need the Millennium Falcon.

I personally think they were used as distraction/cannon fodder. Fighters CAN cause damage to a capital ship for sure, but they aren't deployed with the express purpose of taking one down. They're for dividing attention and resources of the enemy, to make it easier for their capital ships to take down the enemy.

Does any canon source confirm Kamino is extragalactic?

There is a second-long delay between Leia taking the gun and shooting the grate and for almost all of that time her left hand thumb was positioned on top of a power setting slider. She could have easily ramped it up, considering the points you bring up, its likely she did. 

 

 

 

 

That's certainly a possibility, however where her thumb is sitting is a good inch and a half away from where the power slider is. Note also on the diagram, the slider is vertical. Her thumb also stays stationary. I just went through the entire scene on Blu-Ray frame by frame. Also, the shots fired from that weapon after she blew the grate out behaved no differently than any of the others. While it's conceivable that she could have turned the power back down after she blew out the grate, the next question would be why? If the blaster was that much more effective cranked up, why would she want to turn it down again when firing back at the Stormtroopers? Especially considering the predicament they were in, putting it at it's highest setting would be the best course of action. Not to mention, let's consider the mentality of the characters at the time. Highly frazzled and looking for a means of escape. It's doubtful a politician with limited weapons experience would have the forethought to crank up the power without looking at it, blast the grate then lower the power back down. Going through the entire scene frame by frame, it's interesting to notice, other than the grate, nothing was seriously damaged by the myriad of blaster bolts fired. Every time a bolt hit a surface there was a bright flash, followed by smoke/steam and a scorch mark. Even the computer consoles suffered no visual damage. I find it very difficult to believe that absolutely everything on that ship was crafted from advanced armor, except the ventilation grate, which was made of garden variety steel. This brings up a second issue.

Up until now, I was perfectly convinced that the grate was iron or steel. The reason I looked at the scene, was because I was working on research as to what blasters actually are. What type of energy do they fire? How exactly do they work? So, I decided to start doing a frame by frame of various scenes. I started with this one. Forgive me, I don't have a Blu-Ray capture device, so I will have to get creative about screencaps at a later time. Most sources talk about blasters producing a coherent energy beam that is combined with Tibanna gas then fired through the barrel. I observed that almost every shot resulted in some sort of gas being ejected from the barrel. I also noticed that whenever an object was hit, the same cloud was present at the point of impact, followed by a bright flash and a scorch mark on the object. I have begun to hypothesize that the way blasters and turbolasers work, is by containing a highly energetic plasma (charged Tibanna gas) in a magnetic bottle. When the bolt hits it's target, the containment field is ruptured and the plasma does massive thermal damage. This could partially explain why we don't see blaster bolt sized holes in things, and items like the grate were melted over a large surface area. Going by each frame, it looks as if something superheated "splashed" over the grate, melting it. That would be consistent. It would also be consistent with the large, spread out scorch marks on the walls. Not to mention the armor effects on ships. 

It does look kind of like a cast iron skillet. However, there are some nagging problems with this. They were exchanging fire back and forth for quite some time, with almost every shot missing its intended target. We saw nobody, including Leia change the power settings on their blasters. The ONLY thing that we saw that kind of reaction from was the grate. I watched the scene just now several times. Every time a shot impacted a wall or anything else, it only left a puff of smoke or steam. Even the Stormtroopers who were hit, didn't show a ton of damage. So, we have two options here (unless I'm missing something).

1. The grate is not made of iron, instead made of another cheaper material. Everything else the bolts are hitting is made of the usual materials those sort of items would be made of anywhere else.

2. The grate IS made of iron, and everything else including computer consoles, Stormtrooper armor, walls, activation panels on walls etc, is made of some sort of uber material that's orders of magnitude stronger than iron.

I don't see a third option, unless someone could point one out to me. 

In fact, this might throw a lot of energy weapon calculations into flux. Previously, Brian calculated (and most of us agreed, myself included) it would take at the very least, 60 megajoules of energy to cause the damage to the grate in "A New Hope", assuming it was iron. Well, while doing some research on modern laser weapons, I came across this article about world record breaking Free Electron Laser. The story had been repeated on a large number of other sites and news outlets. I started digging, because the first article I read, only mentioned the voltage, which doesn't tell us much. However, after reading several other articles, I find out that this type of laser - which does not use a solid state medium for gain amplification - would be able to blast through 20 feet (6.096 meters) of solid steel in a single second. At a power level of ONE MEGAWATT. (since we're dealing with a single second, the equivalent is of course, one megajoule.) A full SIXTY times less power than the calculations for the grate. Posted below are several more articles, but they basically say the same thing. Thoughts?

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2011/02/18/navy-breaks-world-record-futuristic-laser-getting-real/

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2011/04/08/navy-showboats-destructive-new-laser-gun/

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-02/navys-death-ray-laser-breaks-another-record-its-way-ripping-through-steel

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-01/navys-free-electron-laser-weapon-takes-big-leap-forward-powerful-new-electron-injector

What? No Duke Nukem?

The trailer is finally out. I really hope CBS decides to pick this up.

Transphasics may very well be powerful enough to take out Star Destroyers. However, my quibble was with the use of the Cochrane measurement. Its not an explosive yeild. It measures subspace distortion. It would be like trying to convert megawatts to PSI. It just doesn't make sense.

A Cochrane is a unit of subspace distortion, not explosive yield. The Tricobalt devices Voyager had were quasi-legal weapons that created subspace tears, but somehow weren't included in the subspace weapons ban by the Khitomer Accords.

Unless you can provide in text what is being said in those videos, I'm useless here.

Yes, I would be glad to transcribe them.

In context only to the examples in this thread this is difficult to rationalize. All of the clips which represent the kinda power the ships use seem to range from 1 terawatt peak comms output to tens or hundreds of terawatts. You'd probably need hundreds of thousands of such systems to amount to the lofty 12.75 million terawatts, so given these examples I might be more inclined to go with watt-hours.

 

I can't imagine life support or computers requiring the energy of gigaton bombs every second to run, but their sensors are pretty bloody fast; their able to simultaneously can multiple near by star systems in a matter of seconds and determine the existence of life forms, evidence of advanced planetary civilizations and even detect traces of weapon discharge in orbit! This implies their sensors are not only uber advanced in the fact they can detect pretty much anything and everything in a star system, but they are also millions of times faster than lightspeed providing near instant multi-light year range. So perhaps these sensors could be the power hungry beast which munches the exawatts. 

 

Edit: although the dialogue does state the gun is "terawatt powered" I don't necessarily think that a terajoule per second interpretation is most consistent with the effects. The volume of damage other energy weapons like 20 MJ phase pistols and the ~4GJ CRM anti-vehicle rifle produce imply the effects of the Thoron gun are probably more consistent with 40 gigajoule 1/24th second terawatt pulses (ray gun page). And thats still an order of magnitude more powerful than the CRM. 

Well, I may have jumped the gun a bit by adding the analysis before all the examples have been collected. Sometimes it's easy to get ahead of one's self. I have quite a few clips to add, and am still finding more. I will post as many as I can, and if you have any please post them. If you don't have the clips, but know where they're from, I will be glad to rustle them up for you.  

Is that you in the top picture?

As promised, this is the first ASVS collaborative research project. These projects will work by a topic being raised, video evidence being submitted in the form of clips, discussion of the examples, and conclusions drawn. This is specifically a scientific exercise, so please do your best to be objective. We all have our favorites in the debate area, but with these research projects, we need to put those aside. These topics will never be locked, because even as conclusions are drawn, the answer is not always final. New evidence and new understanding can always be brought to light in any of these projects. So, if you feel you have something to add to a project, even if it has lain dormant for a very long time, feel free to bump the thread. Now, on to the first subject.

Star Trek power generation and usage levels. This has always been a nebulous issue, due to many statements which seem on the surface to contradict each other. I began doing some independent research on my own after the success of Brian's Isoton theory. The question being raised is: How much power do ships in Star Trek generate, how much is used for various systems, the power level of starship shielding and the power of energy weapons? I have numerous examples captured, and thanks to Brian's tireless efforts with video capture, many examples I didn't have to capture on my own. All evidence should be in the form of video clips in context. Please avoid five second "gotcha" clips without any background. If you do not have video capture equipment, or do not have the source material, please provide the episode and quote, and I will locate the appropriate clip and insert it into your post. In some cases exact power levels are given. In some cases, implications are made with partial information. It will be our job to take all these examples and thread them together to form a cohesive theory.

First clip I will present is the famous scene in TNG: "True Q". In this clip, Data is asked how much power is being generated in the warp core.

OK. So, Data states the warp core is "generating 12.75 billion gigawatts per...." Then he's interrupted. The script says the sentence was supposed to end with "per second". Some people (including a certain foul tempered Canadian) assume Data is an idiot, because you don't express power as "watts per second". That is incorrect. Watt-second is a measurement of power. Watt Second.

So, if we were to take this number as stated, what sort of functions was the ship performing? Is this peak power output, or is it nominal output? Since the ship isn't burning up, it's obviously using the amount of power it's generating. These two clips taken just before and after the incident, respectively indicate that the ship is not at warp. At best, it's at impulse.

Before:

Notice the lack of warp effect.

After:

Notice in the windows, the starfield is not moving.

Also, there is no threat, so shields are down and weapons are not powered. The reactor is apparently providing power to normal ship systems. Life support, navigation, communications, computer core, navigational deflectors, sensors, lighting, artificial gravity, holodecks, etc. Impulse engines supposedly have their own fusion reactors, so they likely wouldn't be drawing from the main warp core. From the indications I see here, it leads me to conclude that 12.75 exawatts is the amount of power generated and used in normal ship operations. Essentially the equivalent of sitting at a stoplight.

But what about this clip from TNG "The Dauphin"?

It's a very strange quote. It seems to conflict the bulk of other references in Trek. The only explanation I have, is that Riker was talking about power generated for the short range communications array. Given Data's comment "Nevertheless, that is what's needed to penetrate the atmosphere."

If it was referring to the total output of the reactor, it would conflict with this quote from TNG "The Masterpiece Society"

Interestingly enough, if Geordi was talking about total reactor output, it would be contradicted by many other references. My personal theory, which seems to be supported by a quote from Voyager is that he was talking about the plasma in the power conduits.

If both of those quotes were indicative of total reactor output, then this rifle would be producing more power than a Galaxy Class starship.

These clips from Voyager indicate very high power usage for individual systems.

From VOY "Good Shepherd"

From VOY "Pathfinder"

In this clip from VOY "Revulsion", we're shown how much power is going through a standard power conduit. It also gives us an indication of what a Borg exoskeleton can handle.

I have many more examples, including ones directly related to shield and Phaser strength. However, this is a good start for the project. 

Very nice work, Vince. I'm going to be adding a section to the board soon which will have links to various sites, yours will be included.

Oh wow. So this is what they're replacing TCW with.

Cap'n Crunch. He brings yummy food, and isn't a self righteous douchebag.

With some people I know, it doesn't surprise me. It seems I've heard this theory before. It's not really a new idea. However, if life had originated on Mars, I find it odd that the rovers haven't found any trace of organisms. Living or dead.

This is one of my favorite Sci Fi series of all time.  So far neither Netflix of Amazon Prime have this available for streaming, I'll keep my fingers crossed...

One day. Netflix is gaining more and more content.

Doctor Who predates Star Trek by 3 years, but didn't become super-popular until 1974, when Tom Baker became the Fourth Doctor.  The classic Doctor Who ran from 1963 - 1989, then had a TV movie in 1996, and was rebooted in 2005.

Correction. It was not rebooted, the BBC just started making new episodes. They picked up the series basically where it left off.

I liked Hemlock Grove.