The Alderaan Graveyard and Fragments!?

[Vince 520]

How come there are relatively static asteroid belts where Alderaan used to be? The EU calls it the "Alderaan Graveyard" which became a permanent feature, and the Falcon comes out of hyperspace right into it in the films.

 

If the planet was merely fragmented at velocities less than 11kps (less than e32J) then we might expect to see something like that before the planet reformed. But the visuals suggest the planets mass was accelerated to percentiles of light-speed, an average of six million meters per second! At this velocity, I can't see fragments being caught by the stars gravity, so what happened?

I have one idea: Its been calculated that the planet blowing up so violently would mean the Death Star is hit by e32J (enough energy to blow up a planet!), perhaps besides tanking it on the shields, the seven hundred odd tractor beams intercept thousands of fragments, slowing their velocity to a near stand still, resulting in the "graveyard".

 

Or maybe, the pressure generated could have some effect on the velocity of fragments from the centre of the planet? 

 

Secondly, the gravitational binding energy of a planet is orders of magnitude higher than the energy required to vaporize the planet. And the Death Star overwhelmed Alderaans gravity a million times over, more than enough power to vape the planet. Yet we clearly see planetary fragments the size of mountains flying about. Why?

I don't know if its possible, but maybe the pressure was so very great that it forced lumps of the planet to remain solid despite the stupendous energy levels? We might be talking something like neutronium density requirements here guys. 

[Khas 12,158]

We could also go down the route proposed in "Death Star", where the superlaser worked by shunting some of Alderaan's mass into hyperspace, which caused a good chunk of Alderaan's mass to become antimatter.  It would explain why Alderaan appears to explode twice, and why we see the shockwave.

 

Note: Even though I consider a good chunk of the EU crap, I include some of it in my personal canon.  Not based on feats, but rather the quality of the work in question.  Even Tyralak, who HATES almost all of the EU, said that Death Star was a good story.  And hey, Chee said fans can pick and choose their own canon, so, nyeh!

[Vince 520]

I had considered that, but technically it still does nothing about the energy of the beam. Consider Brians composite image; before the planet was destroyed it was accelerated backward by its own radius in a fraction of a second. Iiic the energy figures to do this are more than enough to destroy the planet, and must have been dispersed by the shields (or else the planet would have just blew up, not fly backwards and then blow up). This is before the energy to mass-scatter the planet is considered, or any technobabble takes place. 

 

Shunting the planets mass into hyperspace is still work and would still require the beam to have a certain amount of energy. Personally I think the energy to accelerate something to light-speed and then past it into hyperspace would be more energetic than the energy needed to blow up the planet...  so why would they use the technobabble? This is not without precedent in the EU as one source states an (billion odd ton) ISD uses more energy than some civilizations had in their entire existence to jump to light-speed.

 

Lets be very conservative and say an average of 5 terawatts for 1,000 years, that would be 1.577845e+23J. Alderaan would be about five or so trillion times more heavy, so 9.42289034e+35J. Still enough to mass-scatter the planet one thousand times over. And vaporize it. 

 

Now for an upper limit we could use one megawatt per head. People have megajoule range blasters and fifty MW engine powered airspeeders after all . So a planet of five billion over one millennia would have consumed 1.577845e+36J! It would take an ISD with 25th watt power generation ten seconds to get that sort of energy, so might be appropriate. 
Extrapolating from that you'd need a ludicrous ~1e45 joules to throw a planets mass into hyperspace! 

 

So even if the beam transports some part of the planet to hyperspace it probably is as powerful, if not more powerful than the conventional calcs anyway.
 

[Khas 12,158]

The novel mentioned some exotic particle beam from the superlaser as well.  Probably a mix of sheer brute force and exotic particles, as it took the Death Star three shots to destroy Despayre at 30% power.  First shot vaporized the oceans and burned away the atmosphere.  Second shot super-heated the core.  Third finally blew it to bits.

[Vince 520]

To knock the planet back 6000 kilometers over one second would require ~1e38J, and this part must be DET. God knows what the figure is for a near massless beam to do this. This happens in a fraction of a second. To DET mass-scatter the planet at the velocity on screen needs a further ~1e38J, and this is the part of the process Death Star claims technobabble. But when we get to 1/3rd power vaporizing lakes, or searing continents, or anything short of blowing up the planet 300,000 times over, I consider the EU at conflict with higher canon. 1e38J impact the shields before the planet blows up, a million times the energy needed to blow up a planet. The Death Star should be capable of blowing up a planet even if the lasers fired at 0.0001% of its maximum power, let alone a significant fraction.

 

 

In that specific example, the difference in firepower between the first shot and the third stretches many orders of magnitude. Would make sense if their testing the different settings out, from "fry the oceans" to "blow up the planet".

[Vince 520]

I usually accept the EU where its logical, but the claims about Eclipses Death Stars and percentages are invariably silly.

[Khas 12,158]

Not as silly as the Seventh Battle of Rusaan.

[Tyralak 12,068]

 Even Tyralak, who HATES almost all of the EU, said that Death Star was a good story.

 

Well, I don't really hate the EU so much as I find most of it unreliable for debate. About half of it is annoying as fuck, though. *cough* Traviss *cough* KJA.

[Ted C 12]

Secondly, the gravitational binding energy of a planet is orders of magnitude higher than the energy required to vaporize the planet. And the Death Star overwhelmed Alderaans gravity a million times over, more than enough power to vape the planet. Yet we clearly see planetary fragments the size of mountains flying about. Why? 

 

Uneven distribution of the energy through the planet's mass and inefficiences of heat transfer will mean that not all of the planet's chunks will absorb enough heat to vaporize.

[Ted C 12]

How come there are relatively static asteroid belts where Alderaan used to be?

 

Possible explanations:

• As you noted, the Death Star itself may have kept some of the debris from escaping.
• Some of the debris would be naturally thrown on a trajectory to put it in orbit around the sun.
• Alderaan could have had one or more natural satellites that put some of the debris back onto a solar orbit path.
• The Death Star lingered in the vicinity. If there were other populated planets in the system, they may have been intentionally redirecting debris to keep those other planets from being affected. While willing to destroy Alderaan, other local settlements presumably still pay taxes, so having them destroyed by asteroid debris would be counterproductive. Besides, they're witnesses who can spread the word of the Death Star's power.