1. What is hypermatter and what are its properties?
Hypermatter serves as fuel for the reactors annihilation processes and serves as ballast for the hyperdrive. A vessels hypermatter is tachyonic matter with an imaginary mass which manipulated and contained locally within the vessel. It circulates at greater than c velocities within the hyperdrive core/reactor core, similar to the fuel rods
of a nuclear reactor. Hypermatter does not take up much volume or even mass under normal circumstances, as it almost massless while in storage, and only becomes massive within the reactor, which subsequently converts that mass into energy. Hypermatter is most likely refined from exotic stellar sources. At the very least the raw energy must be acquired from such sources. Star Wars hypermatter is produced at huge fueling stations where the requisite amount of energy is poured into the process in the first place. How the hypermatter is itself created is unknown. Any vessel that does not appear to carry the mass of its fuel when considering its power, most likely
uses hypermatter. Tachyons circulate through the ships normally but do not contribute to the inertia of the starship. Therefore they're only changed back into normal matter for annihilation for energy at the last minute, therefore the ship does not need to worry about accelerating against the inertia of its energy source in addition to the rest of its mass. The idea of hypermatter is a complex-mass "ballast" that circulates around the ship in hyperspace. It's not an infinite source; each ship carries a finite amount. But it's where the ship gets all of its energy from without being enormous. It doesn't really explain exactly how it's converted into energy; for all we know, it's already used in an annihilation process.
Starship possess complex mass. In other words, a the ship's mass is not described with a real number X. Instead, it is described with a number X + Yi. Where X is the vessels true mass and Yi represents its hypermatter fuel supply. A ship with a mass in tons of 5E7+(1.0E9)(i); has a "real" mass would be 50 million tons. The magnitude
of its complex mass would be 1 billion tons. The phase angle would be roughly 87.1 degrees; so the inertial mass that must be propelled is only 50 million tons. By manipulation the vessels complex mass to a phase angle of 90 degrees; the magnitude of its complex mass remains unchanged, but its real mass becomes zero. Conversely, by altering the complex mass to a phase angle of 0 degrees: its real mass suddenly skyrockets to nearly 1.001 billion tons. Hypermatter is a complex-mass "ballast" that circulates around the ship in hyperspace. It's not an infinite source; each ship carries a finite amount. However this reservoir allows a starship to possess tremendous power generation capabilities without maintaining an enormous amount of mass.
2. Are there hypermatter reactors smaller than in the DS?
Yes, most starships civilian and military employ hypermatter reactor. Most starships implies that nearly all hyperspace capable vessels, use hypermatter reactors. The primary power supply of any large starship is its hypermatter reactor. Relatively small fusion reactors are employed to create and maintain the conditions under which hypermatter annihilation can occur. In other words, the smaller fusion reactors power the larger exotic reactor. Most fighter craft and small starships employ simple deuterium fusion reaction for power and mobility in real space. Hypermatter annihilation reactors are employed only by the most powerful of starships, Star Corvettes all the way up to the Deathstar.
AOTC: ICS - page 3:
Power Sources:
Most starships use fusion systems that confine more-powerful hypermatter annihilation cores. The interiors of the mightiest war vessels are dominated by huge reactors cores and ultra-dense fuel silos, which enable them to perform massive planetary bombardments and sustain hours of thousand-G accelerations before refueling."
3. What are the power outputs of such reactors?
Hypermatter reactors appear to be scalable from fighter size up to the Deathstar. With power outputs ranging from 1.0E15 - 1.0E34 W. The larger reactors output more power than stars.
SWTC: Power
It's noteworthy that the maximum power output of a star destroyer is of a stellar magnitude. The power requirements of a ship's life-support etc are utterly insignificant compared to the power demonstrated by the weapons and propulsion systems. There are serious thermodynamic implications to using such power. If stellar-scale power were consumed and dissipated inside the ship then the waste heat would make the ship glow like a stellar object, and soon evaporate. Since an intact star destroyer does not tend to vaporise, we can infer that its most powerful components must be of a nature that dumps energy externally. Thrusters and weapons fit that description. Ion drives eject streams of charged particles at near light speeds; they inevitably carry their heat away with them. Ion cannons are somewhat similar to ion drives, but they eject plasma for destructive effect. Turbolasers and laser cannons fire concentrated beams of massless energy, which inherently carries power outwards. The beams may be non-thermal anyway. If only a tiny fraction of the reactor's maximum output were to leak into the ship's interior then the sudden, catastrophic heating could damage the reactor enough to cut the power, or (at worst) turn the entire vessel to vapour.
The largest warships and battle stations are considerably more powerful than steadily burning, main-sequence stars. This may seem surprising, but a star is actually an extremely slow producer of energy: the nuclear reaction rates at the core are just sufficient to provide pressure support against gravity. A normal star is in almost an equilibrium state, burning its fuel slowly and lasting for millions or billions of years. An artificial nuclear (or antimatter or hypermatter) reactor is designed to sustain higher reaction rates per particle, and consumes fuel rapidly for its size. For its mass, even a primitive nuclear explosive releases its energy much faster than the power generation in the core of a star. Although starships and battle stations can attain stellar power levels, their small size limits the fuel they can carry, and thus the lifetime of a ship is far less than astronomical in duration. The sun's immense mass enables it to last ten billion years or more. A star battlecruiser operating continuously at the same power may exhaust its more limited fuel within hours. Peak performance involving thousand-G accelerations and heavy fighting may last a few hours, while relatively sedate coasting (continuous accelerations of a few G) between the active episodes means that a few years elapse between refuelling stops (depending on the ship's ratio of fuel to structural mass).
4. How does the reaction work?
Hypermatter reactors are annhilation reactors, which convert mass directly into energy be some yet undescribed process.
SWTC: Power
The mighty warships of the Galactic Empire/Republic and its enemies (typically star destroyers or greater in scale) generate and deliver power at stellar rates. Reactor and power distribution systems are the most fundamental components of these vessels. The primary weapons, engines and other systems are designed to draw and expend the maximum output of the available reactor. Support and containment of the power systems is one of the most fundamental requirements guiding the ship's design.
The reactor is usually a spherical device. Such a shape provides a minimum surface area for its interior volume, and may be an easy way to bear the structural and force-field burden of containment. The deepest interior of the reactor is a realm of exotic physics, where phenomenal energy densities are maintained. Outer layers or subsidiary systems may involve nuclear fusion reactions but the scale of power generation requires that the core process is direct and total annihilation of mass. Possible fuels might include:
* hypermatter, consisting of intrinsically faster-than-light subatomic particles, which must release all of their mass-energy as they accelerate towards infinite speed;
* antimatter, which annihilates in contact with an equivalent amount of ordinary matter (leaks can be dangerous);
* matter, if a sufficiently exotic [presently unknown] physical mechanism could be found to catalyse direct annihilation.
μ-blackhole catalysed annihilation
Consider a hypothetical reactor containing a lattice of mini-black holes held in a constant heat-bath. In normal operation they radiate away mass-energy [by “ Hawking radiation”], which can be replenished by a continuous fuel mass injection. Such a system could in principle provide total mass annihilation without the potential hazzards of antimatter.
In a mishap, disruption of the reactor vessel starves the holes of fuel. At worst, they subsequently decay and vanish in a flash of radiation. Although this is destructive to the surrounding ship and immediate environs, this explosion is merely equivalent to the holes' present mass-energy, which is much less than the ship's fuel reserves. The reservoir fuels are dispersed in the fireball along with the ship's ordinary structure and contents.
It is not yet known whether such technologies are possible [in STAR WARS], nor whether they form part of hypermatter reactors. Nonetheless the idea is an encouraging analogy or thought-experiment, illustrating how destructive chain reactions could limit their final yields to a minority of the fuel present.
5. Where is hypermatter mentioned and is there any mention on movies or novelization level of canon?
Hypermatter was an invention of the expanded universe, and first made its apperance in the original SW: Incredible Crossections. None of the 'G' canon sources mention it.
6. Any other information.
Energy Density -
The characteristics of hypermatter, other than huge energy density and tachyonic nature have not been stated. The exact energy density of hypermatter, for all we know it exceeds that of neutronium. Hypermatter is tachyonic, which is characterized as being 'faster than light', and having a complex mass. This makes measuring it's rest mass all but impossible. However, we can determine an effective lower limit for its density. The energy content of a single Deathstar superlaser shot is 1.0E38 J, the mass equivalent of which is nearly 1.0E19 kg of matter. Confined within the Deathstar's 16 km^3 hypermatter reactor equates to a material density of roughly 1E17-18 J/m^3.
Power Generation -
As to ISD's mounting Solar Ionization reactors. Well the operating principles of the SIR have never been describe in official sources, but the SW2ICS tell us that hypermatter reactor cores are confined with in a larger reactor. A SIR must be a specific type hypermatter reactor. It might be the case that a SIR adds on to the basic hypermatter annihilation process, allowing the designers to call it a Solar Ionization Reactor. Ionization could be the mechanism by which the reactor extracts usable energy. Ionization refers to the act of stripping the electrons off the nuclei, and this requires energy rather than generating energy. The energy generated by the annihilation process it then used to ionize stellar gases into plasma. This plasma could then used to carry energy out of the reactor and into energy conversion facilities where it can be used to power the ship. Induction power generators then use the plasma to create electrical currents that are then fed to transformers and power stabilizing systems before the electrical power is distributed throughout the vessel.
For more information go here:
http://www.theforce.net/swtc/power.html
Great post.