I think these are meant as a rebuttal of my and possibly Ender's posts.
Tim1965 wrote:1.Laser beams diverge slowly with distance. If a laser beam
is fired at a target 10,000,000 kilometers away it will gradually
expand with increasing distance .It will resemble a flak burst only when there some dust or something around to scatter the light. Otherwise a laser beam is invisible in space.
The flak burst especial effect occurrs solely because goerge
lucas made no special effort to reconcile his special effects
with the laws of physics.
High energy particle beam beam weapons can be seen in space because they are made of luminous plasma gas
which emmitts light and other ems from its excited electrons.
2. High explosive and nuclear warheads create glowing fireballs
of expanding plasma gas when they detonate..
3. There is a way to deliver a gigaton or more of energy
to a target in a space battle other then a nuclear or a chemical explosive. The answer is to use a kkv (kinetic kill vehicle). If for example a missile fires a 1000 kilogram warhead
at 5 km/sec from a starship that is moving at a large fraction
of light velocity, or if an artillary piece like a cannon does
this then the kinetic energy of the projectile can be calculated by the kinetic energy formula in physics.
The velocity of the projectile or kkv is the sum of the ships velocity + the velocity imparted by the projectiles launch.
Example 5 km/sec + 150,000 km/sec is 150,005 km/sec
: Kinetic energy then equals 1000 kg * 150,000,500 meters
per second sqaured/ 2 * y ( the relatavistic gamma factor).
= 1.1 * 10 to the 16 power joules * 1000 which equals
1.1 * 10 to the 19 power joules. This is the about the amount of energy that would released by a 1 gigaton Thermonuclear explosion.
Tim
I made the point that lasers/turbolasers/superlasers are not LASERs and gave the reasons, so there's point one of his. I think 2 is meant as a rationalization of the flakbursting TLs. The purpose of 3 completely eludes me.
Tim1965 wrote:1. Tractor beams: If an object is made of a feromagnetic material such as iron or steel, or it contains even a small amount of such material , it can be attracted across an indefinite distance in space by a high power electromagnetic
field generator.
2. The star wars tech manuel that some fans are familiar
with does not apply the laws of physics to anything it says,
and it therefore can not be canon for star wars technologies.
3. The fusion main sequance:
In nature all natural elements including all the heavy ones can be produced by nuclear fusion during the life cycle of the stars. They can also undergo nuclear fusion to build still heavier natural elements.
Here is the fusion main sequance briefly described:
p + p + p +p = he3 + 0n1 + energy + neutrino
Then he3 + he3 + he 3 + he3 = carbon 12
Then the carbons fuse to form heavier elements such as
iron,lithium gold silver et/el. Then the heavier elements
fuse to form still heavier natural elemnents such as lead, polonium uranium et/el. At present humans are capable of
fusing only heavy hydrogen atoms into helium on a large scale, such as in the H-bomb for example.
We can also make all the heavier elents fuse to form other
elements by colliding them inside particle accelerators in tiny
but not large amounts at high velocitys if we wish it.
Theorecticly any main sequance fusion reaction can used to generate large amounts of nuclear energy if your fusion technology is advanced enough.So yes a technical,
nuclear age /space age civilization like the one portrayed
in star wars could thereticly do this. .
Star wars science fiction portays a hypothetical starfaring human civilization of the remote future that is 1000 generations old (which is about 33,000 years )
Tim
1. I posted an excerpt from ICS about gravitic technologies in response to something he said about exotic matter explaining repulsorlifts and such. The excerpt mentioned tractors, but how he got to this from that...
2. .....
3. He said SW ships use nuclear fusion, and I pointed out that it cannot be nuclear fusion because they are stated as being able to use heavy metals as fuel. He apparently interpreted that as meaning they can produce heavy metals with fusion.
I must admit that I am at something of a loss as to how to respond to this.
