From: MLINDROOS@finabo.abo.fi (Marcus Lindroos INF)
Subject: Re: I've been wondering about this for ages...
Organization: Abo Akademi University, Finland
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 12:29:34 GMT
X-News-Reader: VMS NEWS 1.20

In <25AUG199216061172@utkvx4.utk.edu> jtodd@utkvx4.utk.edu writes:

> Two answers, one I've come up with myself and one that is in a SW:TRPG
> supplement:
> 1) The superlaser only works against terrestrial planetoids, like Alderaan and
> Yavin's moon (or the Earth for that matter), but not Jovian gas giants like
> Yavin itself was.

Uh, oh . . . West End Games' sourcebooks might be EXCELLENT for
analyzing/ interpreting social, political or military issues in the SW universe
but they know NOTHING about science. The "superlaser" theory is dead in the
water. Just imagine the amount of energy needed to blast an Earth-size planet
into oblivion. We are talking about a space station about 160km/100miles across
annihilating a planet that is a million times more massive, hurling
asteroid-sized "splinters" through space at tremendous velocities (at least 
10000km/s - examine the Alderaan scene on your VCR) in the process! The only
explanation is that the death ray produced by the planet-busting weapon
acts as a powerful bomb when it hits the planet. The likeliest candidate for
that seems to be antimatter - probably in the form of a superheated cloud of
plasma manufactured by a particle accelerator-like device inside the DS and 
then accelerated towards the target by a magnetic field. If they have enough
power to accelerate it to perhaps 100000km/s (33% of the speed of light), the
kinetic energy alone would do a lot of damage (five tons of ordinary matter
hitting the Earth at 300,000km/s would annihilate the entire North American
continent and blast most of the atmosphere into space) How much antimatter
would be needed for the task? I only know that about 75kg would be enough to
blast the entire state of Maine from the surface of the Earth. Any scientists
out there? 
 
> 2) According to the Death Star Technical Companion, at its highest energy
> setting, ie the planet-busting settinng, the superlaser can only fire once a
> day.  Thus, if the Empire used the superlaser to destroy Yavin, it would have
> had to do a mundane bombardment of the moon, which would have been less
> impressive to the rest of the galaxy than destroying the Alliance in one huge
> fireball.

While I don't know what would happen if you fired a beam of antimatter through
a planet, precisely aiming for it to detonate right in the middle of its core
(which is what the DS presumably does), I can imagine that a massive gas giant
would turn into a sun! Temperatures near the core might become so high that 
nuclear reactions would start. Clearly, flying as close to the surface as the
DS did would not be advisable. And let's not forget about the ejecta from the
explosion had Yavin IV been blown to pieces. Chunks of rock about 100km across
moving at 10000km/s would not exactly be good to the Death Star's health if
they hit it. If it fires while partially behind Yavin, it would be protected
by the gas giant.
 
> Besides, it's more dramatically appropriate for the Death Star to have to orbit
> the planet, giving the rebels time to respond! ;)
> 
>