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I'm asking this because I found something interesting when looking at the wookieepedia page for a venator class star destroyer. It says that a venator's reactor can produce a peak power output of 3.6E24 watts by annihilating 40,000 tons of hypermatter per second. We can see that annihilating 40,000 tons of hypermatter produces 3.6E24 joules of energy. Converting this to joules/kg, we get 9E16joules/kg of hypermatter. This happens to be the exact same energy per unit mass of antimatter, and the amount of energy you would get in a matter-antimatter annihilation reaction when accounting for neutrino based energy loss. The fact that they use an annihilation reactor seems to further support this. So I was wondering if 'hypermatter' is simply what Star Wars people call antimatter. Any thoughts?

I would say it is not. We haven't seen much of it, but the size of the explosion of the Death Star seems too large for antimatter to achieve, given that the reactor chamber seemed to have very little going on inside, and it doesn't seem to resemble any sort of matter/antimatter reaction, especially given that the reactor is quite peaceful (or even serene) during operation as seen in Episode VI, during the attack.

[speculation]And given that half of the energy in a m/am reaction comes from the matter side, wouldn't the energy per kg of antimatter be 4.5E+16 instead?[/speculation]

Not to mention that hypermatter is described as tachyonic in nature, and that it is only found in hyperspace. Unlike antimatter, which in SW has been found in the deep core of the galaxy and is considered a navigational hazard, and it isn't mentioned since.

Considering that Antimatter has been listed in the Star Wars universe seperately from hypermatter, i would say no.

Zor

[speculation]And given that half of the energy in a m/am reaction comes from the matter side, wouldn't the energy per kg of antimatter be 4.5E+16 instead?[/speculation]

No. The total energy from a matter antimatter annihilation reaction is 1.8E17J, eg: 9E16 J from the matter and 9E16 from the antimatter. However up to half of this energy is lost due neutrinos, leaving 9E16J. If you want to learn more, just go to wikipedia and look up antimatter.

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Considering that Antimatter has been listed in the Star Wars universe seperately from hypermatter, i would say no.

I guess it is listed differently. Strange coincidence though.

Yeah. Couldn't POSSIBLY a deliberate move by Saxton to see that hypermatter reactors obey e=mc^2

the main site: Imperial power generation wrote:Furthermore, the Death Star must consume more than 1E21 kg of fuel with each full-power shot, even with perfect mass/energy conversion. If the Death Star has any fuel tanks at all, they must be huge. If it carries matter/antimatter fuel at the density of uranium, it would drain a spherical fuel tank with a diameter of nearly five hundred kilometres, just to fire one shot! This is several times the size of the entire battle station!

Make of it what you will.

Junghalli wrote:

the main site: Imperial power generation wrote:Furthermore, the Death Star must consume more than 1E21 kg of fuel with each full-power shot, even with perfect mass/energy conversion. If the Death Star has any fuel tanks at all, they must be huge. If it carries matter/antimatter fuel at the density of uranium, it would drain a spherical fuel tank with a diameter of nearly five hundred kilometres, just to fire one shot! This is several times the size of the entire battle station!

Make of it what you will.

This is clearly proof that the DS is a chain reaction weapon

adam_grif wrote:

Junghalli wrote:

the main site: Imperial power generation wrote:Furthermore, the Death Star must consume more than 1E21 kg of fuel with each full-power shot, even with perfect mass/energy conversion. If the Death Star has any fuel tanks at all, they must be huge. If it carries matter/antimatter fuel at the density of uranium, it would drain a spherical fuel tank with a diameter of nearly five hundred kilometres, just to fire one shot! This is several times the size of the entire battle station!

Make of it what you will.

This is clearly proof that the DS is a chain reaction weapon

Or that the Empire has developed a way to pack 10 kg of kickass into a 1 kg container. It could also explain why the thing freaking exploded with one from one strategically placed shot.

Palpatine: I want you to build me a weapon that can annihilate and entire planet!

Engineer: Yes sir, that should be perfectly doable.

Palpatine: And by annialate, I mean blow the whole thing into billions of tiny piece until there is only an asteroid belt to mark where the world once stood.

Engineer: Um... okay... thats feasable if we really...

Palpatine: And it has to blow it up with a really huge laser, and it needs to be capable of hyperspace travel.

Engineer: Yeah... um... I suppose if we really...

Palpatine: Also, it should have lots and lots of hanger bays on it and empty space and bottomless pits with bridges that people have to swing over if the bridge goes out.

Engineer: ...

Palpatine: And it should be completely indestructible from absolutely anything and everything in perpetuity throughout the universe forever.

Engineer: *looks at the list, figuring that most of the specifications might be within the realm of physical possibility if he really...*

Palpatine: Also, I want it done and finished in less than one year from now... and it has to be able to blow up two or three planets within a days time without massive refueling.

Engineer: *tries to discretely back out of the room before he gets anything more*

Palpatine: Annnd... make it look like a giant sphere... with a laser on one side so people mistake it for a moon at first and think "Holy crap! That's no moon!" Yeah, that's totally the best shape for a weapon to be. But paints it black, a sort of darkish grey color so people know its evil. But call it the Death Star, even though it looks like a moon and doesn't shine like a star actually does.

Engineer: Sir... exactly how much support with the Death Star be getting from nearby ships? These specifications would make it... very expensive and volatile. Perhaps a fleet of star destroyers and other ships nearby should be on hand to deal with any attack...

Palpatine: None whatsoever! I want this giant spherical superweapon ship... station... thing to be devastating, intimidating, able to blow up lots of planets quickly, made up mostly of empty space and horribly unsafe walkways with no railing to keep people from falling to their death, and have the surface covered with lots and lots of smaller guns instead of just having our actual fleet defending it. Also, trenches... trenches are good, put a whole bunch of trenches and stuff all over my big spherical death station so that it looks all cool from a distance. No fleet will ever be used to defend this thing because its going to be completely invincible to everything whatsoever forever.

Engineer: Yeah... okay... sure, I'll... I'll get right on it.

Palpatine: *poking his head out from the door* Also, no shields! Don't put any of the shield systems on my Death Star. I know we have shields to protect our Star Destroyers and planets and stuff but this Death Star will be totally invincible so no need putting any expensive shields around it.

The Death Star had shields. It also was mostly solid corridors and whatnot; that shaft Luke swung across was, IIRC, part of the ventilation system.

It would explain the rather bizarre lack of safety rails though, cost cutting.

I want to argue that not having railings as a cost-cutting measure on something like the Death Star is ridiculous. Then I remember the real world.

Batman wrote:I want to argue that not having railings as a cost-cutting measure on something like the Death Star is ridiculous. Then I remember the real world.

On a project the size of the Death Star, the little things add up into a lot of money, when you do the math.

LionElJonson wrote:

Batman wrote:I want to argue that not having railings as a cost-cutting measure on something like the Death Star is ridiculous. Then I remember the real world.

On a project the size of the Death Star, the little things add up into a lot of money, when you do the math.

Not when you compare it to the overall cost of the entire project, but as I said, penny-pinching like that is all too common in the real world.

I think the main advantage hypermatter has over antimatter isn't its energy density, but its space efficiency. In IC:AotC the Acclamator is said to store many times the starship's ship-yard mass in fuel reactants within 5 (visible) spherical silos roughly 30-40 meters in diameter. So that's at least several hundred million metric tons within 70,000-160,000 cubic meters total.


EDIT: removed stupid redundant statement that was stupid, also grammar.

Batman wrote: Not when you compare it to the overall cost of the entire project, but as I said, penny-pinching like that is all too common in the real world.

They might have no railing because a railing would block access for certain kinds of equipment that need to pass through the superlaser tunnels for maintenance activity. Cost cutting isn’t the only possible answer in this instance. Now why not have a removable railing... who knows. It may be that little station is only manned when the superlaser is in action, and not the other 99.9999% of the time while the other equipment is in the tunnel 99.9999% of the time.

Hypermatter supposedly has mathematically imaginary mass (and please, no asking me to explain how that works in practical terms; I have no idea, myself), which is the reason it is used to power starships. Not only is it space efficient, but given that its mass is somehow not "real" it does not incur the heinous penalties (e.g., huge momentum) that X trillion monstertons of conventional fuel would impose on a ship. Essentially it "cheats" by having a fuel that adheres to e equals emm cee squared in theory (and thus adheres to conservation of energy) while jumping some of the practical effects of that.

Imaginary mass, eh? I guess fairy dust certainly has an advantage over antimatter. I keed, I keed, but I also assume it's a lot safer to handle than AM i.e. hypermatter reactants don't seem to react too much with normal matter, I think I remember one of the ICSs saying something about minute amounts of HM reactants being mixed in with fighter fuel to give it a bit more oomph when catalyzed.

I think hypermatter is partial stored in some pocket dimension or possibly in hyperspace itself, but I'm not 100% on that.

Hypermatter is nothing less or more than matter which is tachyonic relative to the rest-frame of the real-mass starship and its humdrum complex organic molecule crew; it is a compact form of matter which travels faster than the speed of light relative to the observer, likely confined into toroidal or otherwise gyrating or supralight circulating forms. As tachyons (with complex mass-energy) accelerate to infinite speed, the limit of their mass-energy approaches zero. In this fashion, by allowing complex mass to accelerate to infinite speed, it will undergo full matter-to-energy annhiliation. The hypermatter is also used as "ballast" to fix the net complex mass-energy of the starship plus its fuel during transitions accross the lightspeed barrier (as mass-energy must be conserved, and this transition involves the total conversion of the normal, dry mass-energy of the starship to tachyonic matter with complex mass-energy relative to a casual observer).