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Quoted from the Holonet Website:

MINISCI ARCOLOGY, CORUSCANT - A sizable grant from Republic Sienar Systems has allowed the Ministry of Science to continue its research into translational hypermatter energy applications. "Today, we use hypermatter reactos to power the largest of lightspeed drives, but there are millions of other uses just waiting to be exploited," said scientist and engineer Paldis Doxin of the Magrody Institute. "Properly harnessing this energy could handle planetary power needs and revolutionize deep space mining."

From this quote from the Prequal Era, they are considering installing Hypermatter reactor on planets. The rings look just like those seen after the Deathstar detonates. So it might be that the rings are secondary explosions, caused by a HM reactor cooking off. Maybe the rings are hypermatter escaping.

Seems far-fetched to me.

That and the fact that the rings were centered on the core of the planet weren't they? That would imply that the proposed hypermatter reacter be located at the center of the planet.

I say it's related to the magnetic field.

Spartan wrote:Quoted from the Holonet Website:

MINISCI ARCOLOGY, CORUSCANT - A sizable grant from Republic Sienar Systems has allowed the Ministry of Science to continue its research into translational hypermatter energy applications. "Today, we use hypermatter reactos to power the largest of lightspeed drives, but there are millions of other uses just waiting to be exploited," said scientist and engineer Paldis Doxin of the Magrody Institute. "Properly harnessing this energy could handle planetary power needs and revolutionize deep space mining."

From this quote from the Prequal Era, they are considering installing Hypermatter reactor on planets. The rings look just like those seen after the Deathstar detonates. So it might be that the rings are secondary explosions, caused by a HM reactor cooking off. Maybe the rings are hypermatter escaping.

You've made a leap of logic here. What they're saying could be that hypermatter might handle power sources in SW the way oil/fuel handles power sources today.

Lucas wanted something that would look cool while inflating the Death Stars firepower to even higher levels.

Sea Skimmer wrote:Lucas wanted something that would look cool while inflating the Death Stars firepower to even higher levels.

The real question of the rings is how they could slow down that rapidly. If we know the mechanism of their rapid loss in velocity, then we would be better able to speculate on the mechanism that created them. However, statements regarding potential causes that do not explain the observation are more or less worthless.

Maybe it was a side effect of the superlaser and that when the Death Stars blew up it was preparing to fire? kind a bullet exploding in the barrel of a gun?

IG-88E wrote:

You've made a leap of logic here. What they're saying could be that hypermatter might handle power sources in SW the way oil/fuel handles power sources today.

No, actually I haven't, how pray tell would they use hypermatter as a power source without a HM Reactor? Hypermatter is an annhilate according to ICS.

Any significant Planet must use Hypermatter reactors, just look at the power consumption of a typical SW world.

Planetary Defenses

Alderaan’s planetary shield withstood 7.0E37 J before collapsing, if the shield had operated for an entire second it would have been 4.8E38 W. That is a staggering amount of power and could not conceivably have come from any other power source. The solar mirrors mentioned to power Courscant in the X-wing novels are woefully inadequate; as a star such as our sun outputs a mere 3.8E26W, and radiates it in all directions to harness it all would require a Dyson sphere. Planetary defenses also contribute to the enormous power generation requirements. Since a single planetary turbolaser such as the KDY W-165 can disable an ISD with a single hit, it must generate between 1E25J and 2E25J. Look at the comic adaptions of the Thrawn trilogy, the battery on Courscant are nearly as dense as the Death stars. Before anyone mentions power cells remeber were talking many orders of magnitude beyond the capabilities of even an ISD's reactor.

Hyperwave Transceivers

(Ref: SWICS2) Hyperwave transceivers require almost stellar-scale power, yet signals can be blocked by nearby massive obstructions or by deflector shielding. Even the signal equipment installed on a warship requires than can be generated by conventional nuclear fusion.

Commuter Traffic

In TPM and ATOC we see massive commuter traffic in the skyways of Courscant. SWICS2 tells that the airspeed that Anakin use in the early moments of ATOC has an engine power of 30 megawatts. This vehicle is analogous to a terrestrial automobile which a generally rated in kilowatts. Given that the vast majority of terrestrial energy use is buy automotives, we might be able to use this figure to determine the base line energy of a typical galactic city. Landspeeders and swoop-bikes are quite commons in the films, even in backwaters such as Tatooine. It TPM Anakin's Podracer used a power cell. We can use 30 MW as the lower limit for a power cell of that size. Anybody know how much energy is used by automobiles each year? I'd like to work out a rough estimate using Anakin's airspeeder.

So there you go there is a demonstrated need form a powersource exheed the power avalible from the planets own star. Since any planetary derived power source: tides, gothermal, magnetic, grvitational etc; if insignificant compared to the planets star. Where pray tell is all this stupendous power coming from. I'm open to any alternate theories. But...

From the above quote which is set twenty years prior to ANH, it is clear to me that hypermatter reactors were being considered for planetary use. Which speak volumes for how safe such reactors must be to operate. The use of hypermatter reactors on planets is necessary to explain the tremendous power production seen on Courscant in canon and in the official literature.

What if your planetary shields work in pairs, like one big generator per hemisphere... when the planet blows, somehow a lot of energy is released at the artificial "equator" described by the line where both shield hemispheres overlap.

The solar mirrors in the X wing novels where used to keep the poles warm and melt ice, not power the planets infrastructure or defenses.

The shields of worlds could be powered just as easily by Solar Ionization reactors just as easily as Hypermeter reactors, or by the artificial black holes use for world devastators.

You do know that a Solar Ionization Reactor is a Hypermatter reactor don't you? Look at ATOC ICS page 3.

And that the implosion core of a hypermatter reactor is probably a black hole? That would be why in the ANH novelization the original Deathstar consumed itself.