stardestroyer.net — Exactly how powerful is the Death Star? With a little bit of physics and a little bit of math, we can determine just how much power you would need in order to blow up a planet.How much energy did it take to destroy Alderaan?This article gives amazingly technical details.
Jun 9, 2006 View in Crawl 4
ericandertonJun 9, 2006
Oops:"Objects larger than a few meters will impact upon the surface. Pieces which are the size of starships will land with explosions comparable to thermonuclear detonations. Pieces which are several kilometres wide will flatten vast tracts of forest, cause tremendous groundquakes, create craters up to hundreds of kilometres wide etc. Big impacts will inject vast amounts of dust and soot into the atmosphere."Kind of changes that whole ending sequence with the debris burning in the atmosphere, whlie the Ewoks party down, doesn't it?
dafunkJun 9, 2006
Well, if you really want to kill some time, check out this site:<a class="user" href="http://www.st-v-sw.net/STSWhi2.html">http://www.st-v-sw.net/STSWhi2.html</a>I think the bottom line is that Trek-lovers and Star Wars-lovers could go back and forth forever trying to figure out which is better. (Although I can honestly and unbiasedly say that Star Trek is the best :) )
tylerdurden0Jun 9, 2006
No problem. Here goes: it's really f**king powerful.Class dismissed.
xnaquadaJun 10, 2006
More importantly...Did the deathstar run Linux?
wayne606Jun 11, 2006
Back of the envelope numbers, give or take an order of magnitude or two ... Combine 1KG of matter and 1KG of antimatter = about 1e17 J. To get the required 4e32 J we need 8e15 KG (call it 1e16). That's 1e13 m3 of water and anti-water (say), or a cube about 25km on a side. Huge, but not compared to the Death Star. All you need to do is combine the water and anti-water in the span of a few seconds, and transfer all the energy along a beam to a planet. Simple ...
matthawaiiJun 15, 2006Submitter
I heard it was OSX!