Death Star vs. Dyson Sphere question

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chitoryu12
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Death Star vs. Dyson Sphere question

Post by chitoryu12 »

I was thinking about what would happen if the Death Star fired at a Dyson Sphere? It's size is around 1.33 AUs, which is said to be about 250 million Earth-size planets. Exactly how much damage could a Death Star (let's make it the first, as we saw what happened when it fired at a planet of similar size) do if it fired? My guess, judging from the destruction of Alderaan and the speed of the explosion, it could put a rather large hole in it. However, I'm no science guy, and I know most of you could debate me five miles into the ground, so can someone more experienced give a possibility?
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Post by chitoryu12 »

Well shit. Can someone lock this thing?
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Post by SyntaxVorlon »

It would cause a gigantic section of the sphere to explode. This depends on what the Sphere is made of but if you go with the average density of the material being ~iron and the thickness of the sphere being 1000 km then:

1 m^2 of surface to ground ~ 1000 m^3 with density of iron at 8*10^3 kg/m^3 -> 8*10^6 kg per square meter of sphere.

Mass of earth 6*10^24 so 7.5*10^17 square meters of sphere

Which means a hole with a radius of about 500000 km.

Thus assuming the DS was firing a volley that was of Alderaan/Earth destructive power and that the sphere had similarly powered shielding. Then the hole that would explode out of the sphere would be 1 million kilometers across, ~ 8 Jupiters wide. The inhabitants of the sphere, assuming earthlike conditions over the entire thing would be killed by the hypersonic winds caused by the depressurization of the sphere or the resultant lack of atmosphere, if not the immediate concussion wave through the structure. The depressurization could take as much as month, by my guess.
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