Asimov power generation: The Stars, Like Dust.

[Murazor]

Other parts of the same book they were impressed by Spacer data storage tech (it was said to be very dense-which is something when you consider how fast computers are advancing today and that those data storage modules were 20,000+ years old)

Daneel's last brain (the roughly 500 years old one) was a hundred thousand times faster/more sensitive and with ten million times the memory of his original one. It is obvious that there was some improvement here since the Spacer era.

And the data storage units weren't created by Spacers, but by Settlers and Calvinians attempting to fight the memory loss.

and the Ktlinians thought the Spacer archive would contain a lot of useful new tech.

I remember Sybil mentioning that the tech was quite primitive, but there were some surprisingly new perspectives (hardly surprising as there were at least a couple of fields were the Empire never bothered to research for long, namely Spacer medical technology and advanced robotics). Gornon was more interested with the history and the art.

That certainly SEEMS to suggest there was a tech loss between Spacer era and late Imperial era. Not surprising, I imagine a lot of stuff would have been lost when Earth got nuked and the Fifty Worlds collapsed.

The Fifty Worlds didn't collapse. Solaria survived until the Foundation era and the other died slowly, but the Settlers never bothered to attack them. And the Settlers had more or less ten thousand years to get any useful technology out of Earth.

BTW how big was the Weinis? As I remember Galactic Empire vessels were about the size of an Acclamator (900 meters).

With quick practiced motions, he moved the little levers that opened all communications, so that every part of the two-mile-long ship was within reach of his voice and his image.

Roughly 3 km. And considering that this was a battlecruiser, it is obvious that they had bigger guns somewhere.

Verisof stating that an Imperial battlecruiser has "atom blasts that can blow a planet"

Wow! That puts an Imperial battlecruiser on a par with the Death Star! And that's an AVERAGE ship!

Actual quote:

"It's a ship! They could build in those days. Its cubic capacity is half again that of the entire Anacreonian navy. It's got nuclear blasts capable of blowing up a planet, and a shield that could take a Q-beam without working up radiation. Too much of a good thing, Hardin --"

I ought to mention that Verisof was an actual scientist, the "high priest" of the religion of Scientism in Anacreon, and he seems to be trying to make an accurate description of the ship's capabilities.

Not quite as impressive as the first observation, but suggests a pretty powerful beam if it can disassociate matter at the atomic level.

Actual quote:

"It's about the same thing. You surrendered your ship when you might have decided to waste our ammunition and have yourself blown to electron-dust. It could result in good treatment for you, if you continue that sort of outlook on life."

Riose is an experienced soldier (oddly enough he seems to have been part of the Navy since the start of his career) and he should know what his weapons can do. This idea is supported by:

There were two noiseless flares that pinpointed space as two of the tiny gnats shriveled in atomic disintegration, and the rest were gone.

Doesn't say much about power level, all it says is that they can destroy another ship with one shot (a modern H-bomb does that fairly effectively).

Actually, the quote supports vaporization. Even if we use the melting (mentioned in other edition, although the description still supports vaporization), forget energy shielding (and all Trader ships were shielded) and consider the ships to be made of iron and of very small size, we still get kilotons per shot.

Just a thought though, if that's the case how is it that Trantor was still there and habitable after being sacked by the Mule?

Trantor was not sacked by the Mule. It was sacked by Gilmer the Usurper, a rebel against one of the Dagoberts, who claimed Trantor for himself. The fact that the word "sack" is used makes it pretty clear that his forces looted Trantor when they conquered it. It is hard to find something valuable when you melt the planetary surface and even harder to claim the Imperial palace for yourself if you blow the planet to smithereens. You might add as well that lack of maintenance and civil strife had at this point very much destroyed the former Imperial Navy and Gilmer probably didn't have true warships. Also, you are right about the Second Foundation: they used their powers to save the Galactic Library (although they used weapons, too) and later signed an agreement with Gilmer. Last, but not least, there was some actual damage done as a result of the sack.

Spires were truncated, smooth walls gouted and twisted, and just for an instant there was the glimpse of a shaven area of earth – perhaps several hundred acres in extent – dark and plowed.

[Connor MacLeod]

"It's a ship! They could build in those days. Its cubic capacity is half again that of the entire Anacreonian navy. It's got nuclear blasts capable of blowing up a planet, and a shield that could take a Q-beam without working up radiation. Too much of a good thing, Hardin --"

I ought to mention that Verisof was an actual scientist, the "high priest" of the religion of Scientism in Anacreon, and he seems to be trying to make an accurate description of the ship's capabilities.

And while we're at it, lets ignore the logical and physics-implied problems with a hurling around planet-destroying energy bursts (recoil and momentum for one, power generation/fuel consumption, etc.)

I suppose that battlecruiser masses far more than Mars' moons AND can accelerate to near-lightspeed instantly, right? Because thats's whats going to be required.

Actual quote:

"It's about the same thing. You surrendered your ship when you might have decided to waste our ammunition and have yourself blown to electron-dust. It could result in good treatment for you, if you continue that sort of outlook on life."

IIRC the handheld weapons work on the same principles as the capital scale one (because I remember vaguely nonsensical references to "nuclear forces" among other goofy things.) and what I remember tended to argue against DET weapons (particularily sincec I remember examples of blasters being fired at huuman targets - see phasers.)

There were two noiseless flares that pinpointed space as two of the tiny gnats shriveled in atomic disintegration, and the rest were gone.

So they're "disintegrated" without any apparent side effects?

Actually, the quote supports vaporization. Even if we use the melting (mentioned in other edition, although the description still supports vaporization), forget energy shielding (and all Trader ships were shielded) and consider the ships to be made of iron and of very small size, we still get kilotons per shot.

Which is a far cry from the "planet destroying blasts" claim. (and far less problematic.)

[Murazor]

And while we're at it, lets ignore the logical and physics-implied problems with a hurling around planet-destroying energy bursts (recoil and momentum for one, power generation/fuel consumption, etc.)

I suppose that battlecruiser masses far more than Mars' moons AND can accelerate to near-lightspeed instantly, right? Because thats's whats going to be required.

Other than its size, its shielding (worthless without knowing WTF a Q-beam is) and the description of its firepower, there are no descriptions of its capabilities. So its accelerative capabilities and its mass are unknown quantities and unknown quantities vs known canon statements supporting planetary destructive firepower = known canon statement wins. About how it does deal with the problems linked with planet-destroying energy bursts... the same way the Eclipse does, I suppose.

IIRC the handheld weapons work on the same principles as the capital scale one (because I remember vaguely nonsensical references to "nuclear forces" among other goofy things.) and what I remember tended to argue against DET weapons (particularily sincec I remember examples of blasters being fired at huuman targets - see phasers.)

You don't remember correctly. The few existing descriptions of capital scale weapons don't match the description of the "eraser" blasters.

The pale continuous beam impinged upon the force-field that surrounded the mayor of Terminus and was sucked harmlessly to neutralization. Wienis pressed harder and laughed tearingly.

Hardin still smiled and his force-field aura scarcely brightened as it absorbed the energies of the nuclear blast. From his comer Lepold covered his eyes and moaned.

And, with a yell of despair, Wienis changed his aim and shot again -- and toppled to the floor with his head blown into nothingness.

There was a glitteringly efficient blast-gun in his fist as he smiled. "There are greater men than you under arrest this day. It is a hornet's nest we are cleaning up."

Devers snarled and reached slowly for his own gun. The lieutenant of police smiled more broadly and squeezed the contacts. The blasting line of force struck Devers' chest in an accurate blaze of destruction – that bounced harmlessly off his personal shield in sparkling spicules of light.

Devers shot in turn, and the lieutenant's head fell from off an upper torso that had disappeared. It was still smiling as it lay in the jag of sunshine which entered through the new-made hole in the wall.

Bayta, face frozen white, lifted her blaster and shot, with an echoing clap of noise. From the waist upward, Mis was not, and a ragged hole was in the wall behind. From numb fingers, Bayta's blaster dropped to the floor.

As you can see in this three descriptions, there is no residue left. The target is "blown into nothingness", "disappears" or "is not" after impact. The fact that unshielded and unprotected civilians survive being next to the destruction of a human torso is proof enough against vaporization or some energy. Non interactive particles (like neutrinos) seem the clearest option to explain where the mass goes to, but -at least- I understand this as an in-built safety as this weird phenomena is instantaneous (hence not a chain reaction) and not material-dependent (metal walls are broken as well). In conclussion, the "erasers" are hardly phaser like and the only similarity is the mysterious disappareance of mass, whereas capital scale weapons don't produce this effect. Not only does Riose mention "electron dust", but:

There were two noiseless flares that pinpointed space as two of the tiny gnats shriveled in atomic disintegration, and the rest were gone.

Meaning that there were two extremely bright flashes when the destroyed ships were hit. The "erasers" don't produce such flares and I find very interesting the similarities between this description and that of the superlaser in Endor as per the ROTJ novelization.

Luke watched with impotent horror, as the unbelievably huge laser beam radiated out from the muzzle of the Death Star. It touched- for only an instant- one of the Rebel Star Cruisers surging in the midst of the heaviest fighting. And in the next instant, the Star Cruiser was vaporized. Blown to dust. Returned to its most elemental particles, in a single burst of light.

So they're "disintegrated" without any apparent side effects?

What side effects? The description is painfully brief, but those ships were in empty space, not in a planetary surface that might have been glassed as a result. Those hit by Imperial fire were destroyed and the remaining left the area. We don't know if either Imperial or Foundation vessels were damaged as a result of the battle. There were no asteroids that might have been destroyed as a result of missed shots. Nothing but the destruction of two Foundation ships to work with.

And perhaps I have missed something, but disintegration in English doesn't mean necessarily "chain reaction".

Main Entry: dis·in·te·grate
Pronunciation: (")di-'sin-t&-"grAt
Function: verb
transitive senses
1 : to break or decompose into constituent elements, parts, or small particles
2 : to destroy the unity or integrity of
intransitive senses
1 : to break or separate into constituent elements or parts
2 : to lose unity or integrity by or as if by breaking into parts
3 : to undergo a change in composition <an atomic nucleus that disintegrates because of radioactivity>

Meaning that Asimov, who wrote this novels way before the existence of Star Trek or Star Wars might have used disintegration as a synonym for "destruction" without weird technical connotations.

Which is a far cry from the "planet destroying blasts" claim (and far less problematic.)

It is a far cry, of course. But considering all the extremely conservative assumptions I have made the kilotons per shot figure is nothing but the lowest of the low ends for those weapons.

[Diamedes]

Whatever the energy requirements, it sort of makes sense that generating gravity on a ship takes about as much energy as that of a small town, particularly if the people are pampered with gadgets. Just think of the old folks home, with gravity generators cancelling the effect of gravity, or athletes who train at higher gravity. Or perhaps the sci-fi cliche of zero-g beds. If the technology has some infilitration of the civilian market it pretty much requires that a small town and a star ship are using the same amount of energy to fiddle with gravity.

Been awhile since I read Asimove though. The last run through the Foundation Trilogy left a bad taste in my mouth.

[Junghalli]

Daneel's last brain (the roughly 500 years old one) was a hundred thousand times faster/more sensitive and with ten million times the memory of his original one. It is obvious that there was some improvement here since the Spacer era.

OK. Although Daneel may not be representative of Imperial Era tech. Unlike Imperial Era humanity Daneel's kind wouldn't have suffered from a severe tech loss if there was one.

I remember Sybil mentioning that the tech was quite primitive, but there were some surprisingly new perspectives (hardly surprising as there were at least a couple of fields were the Empire never bothered to research for long, namely Spacer medical technology and advanced robotics).

Impression I got was the Spacers basically had more toys if you would, but Imperial Era tech was more efficient because they'd had tens of thousands of years to knock all the rough edges off. It kind of makes sense to me that there'd be a tech loss. Daneel's race engineered humanity to forget all about their origins. Wouldn't there logically have been a lot of technical data lost in that process as a side effect?

The Fifty Worlds didn't collapse. Solaria survived until the Foundation era and the other died slowly, but the Settlers never bothered to attack them.

Solaria survived until the Foundation Era, but most of the worlds did collapse. And Solaria was isolated from the rest of the galaxy. So the knowledge their civilization possessed would have been lost.

Trantor was not sacked by the Mule. It was sacked by Gilmer the Usurper, a rebel against one of the Dagoberts, who claimed Trantor for himself.

In Foundation and Empire (or was it the one after that?) it definitely talked about the Mule capturing Trantor.
Oh well, the Foundationverse contradicts itself over and over. Generally it's a pretty interesting universe but Jesus it really sucks when it comes to internal continuity. Asimov seems to change his mind about stuff every time he writes a new book, and it only gets worse with the novels written after his death.

The fact that the word "sack" is used makes it pretty clear that his forces looted Trantor when they conquered it. It is hard to find something valuable when you melt the planetary surface and even harder to claim the Imperial palace for yourself if you blow the planet to smithereens.

Well, the Mule established his capitol at Kalgan instead. And whether it was him or someone else who sacked Trantor they nuked all the cities. They certainly weren't interested in setting up shop in the glorious imperial capitol.
BTW they'd have needed a pretty damn huge fleet to actually plunder a planet Mongol-style .

And while we're at it, lets ignore the logical and physics-implied problems with a hurling around planet-destroying energy bursts (recoil and momentum for one, power generation/fuel consumption, etc.)

It didn't seem to bother the guys who built the Death Star . Seriously, if they have weapons like that it's presumed that they would have ways of dealing with those problems. If Wars can do it I don't see why Foundationverse can't.

[Batman]

Daneel's race engineered humanity to forget all about their origins. Wouldn't there logically have been a lot of technical data lost in that process as a side effect?

Why?

Trantor was not sacked by the Mule. It was sacked by Gilmer the Usurper, a rebel against one of the Dagoberts, who claimed Trantor for himself.

In Foundation and Empire (or was it the one after that?) it definitely talked about the Mule capturing Trantor.
Oh well, the Foundationverse contradicts itself over and over.

And why, pray tell, is that a contradiction? How about the Mule captured Trantor long after Gilmer sacked it? Which IIRc is the way it happened.

Generally it's a pretty interesting universe but Jesus it really sucks when it comes to internal continuity.

Wether or not that is correct (and given the vagueness of the information we get in the first place I doubt it's possible to safely conclude so in most situations) the above is not an example of that.

Asimov seems to change his mind about stuff every time he writes a new book, and it only gets worse with the novels written after his death.

Propably because most if not all of those books were written by complete hacks.

The fact that the word "sack" is used makes it pretty clear that his forces looted Trantor when they conquered it. It is hard to find something valuable when you melt the planetary surface and even harder to claim the Imperial palace for yourself if you blow the planet to smithereens.

Well, the Mule established his capitol at Kalgan instead. And whether it was him or someone else who sacked Trantor they nuked all the cities.

What cities? Trantor was city all over. It was ONE GIANT CITY!!!
Evidence for the nuking, please, as you apparently can't remember what Trantor was like in the first place.

They certainly weren't interested in setting up shop in the glorious imperial capitol.

Evidence.

BTW they'd have needed a pretty damn huge fleet to actually plunder a planet Mongol-style .

Huge fleet, yes. Warships, no. Actually warships would hinder in the plundering as they are typically scrimpy on cargo space.

And while we're at it, lets ignore the logical and physics-implied problems with a hurling around planet-destroying energy bursts (recoil and momentum for one, power generation/fuel consumption, etc.)

It didn't seem to bother the guys who built the Death Star .

Which is a wee bit more massive than the Wienis (like, several million times?)

Seriously, if they have weapons like that it's presumed that they would have ways of dealing with those problems.

And why do we presuppose they have weapons like that when the one statement to that effect is unquantifiable like nobody's business and there's no reason why it can't be non-DET?

If Wars can do it I don't see why Foundationverse can't.

Because Wars has been seen to do it, with a weapons platform that can handle the consequences. Foundationverse has one single statement that is totally unquantifiable, may simply be hyperbole, does not require it to be DET, and would require several billion fucktons of technobabble to be able to handle the consequences.

[Murazor]

Which is a wee bit more massive than the Wienis (like, several million times?)

A volume 1,5 million times greater if we suppose for simplicity's sake that the Wienis is a cylinder 3 km long and 0.5 km wide (the volume might be somewhat different, but certainly within an order of magnitude). However, the Death Star I had a firepower a million times greater than what was needed to overcome Alderaan's planetary binding energy and the superlaser weapon and hypermatter reactor were only a portion of the station volume. The Hutt's Darksaber and the Tarkin superlaser had enough firepower to obliterate planets, yet they were far smaller than the Death Stars.

And why do we presuppose they have weapons like that when the one statement to that effect is unquantifiable like nobody's business and there's no reason why it can't be non-DET?

1) There is a descriptive statement of the effects of the battlecruiser weaponry made by a qualified technician who is explaining his boss exactly why it is a bad idea to give such a ship to the guy that wants them dead. The statement is preceded by a descriptive and seemingly accurate assessment of the ship's volume and followed by a description of its shielding that evidently has some in-universe meaning.

2) There are statements that can, at least, be interpreted as references to planetary destruction. Mainly, the Comodora's threat to her husband and the public broadcast of the Kalgan warlord, who threatened to destroy his capital planet rather than losing it.

3) There are references to "wiping out" planets or destroying whole planetary populations in Peeble in the Sky (Procurator Ennius) and Foundation (Onum Barr). In the Empire novels, many characters believe that Earth's irradiated crust might be a result of a war, so such a result is not beyond their means, although very unusual. While a far cry from the 1E32 J benchmark, we are still talking about non negligible firepower.

4) The few known examples of capital weapons have been seen to operate in a very different way from the "eraser" blasters. The description made by Bel Riose of their effects and the battle scene support a DET interpretation. "Nuclear" explosives are also used in the space battles of this universe, although the only weapon of this family described in some detail was Pritcher's tiny homemade bomb in Foundation and Empire.

5) In spite of the previous points, we lack a good description of planetary destruction (other than some mentions made in the non-Asimov written novels) that might allow us to settle this topic once and for all. Without it, we can argue, we can digress, but we can't solve it. Evidence suggests DET weaponry used in capital scale weapons, but considering that planetary binding energy is in all likelyhood far higher than that needed to destroy Foundationverse ships, the weapons used for this purpose might be some kind of chain reaction (or something even more exotic).

[Junghalli]

And why, pray tell, is that a contradiction? How about the Mule captured Trantor long after Gilmer sacked it? Which IIRc is the way it happened.

I remember reading a short story about the fall of Trantor and it was definitely the Empire in charge right up to the Mule's takeover. Then again, it wasn't written by Asimov so we could write it up to hack writers.

What cities? Trantor was city all over. It was ONE GIANT CITY!!!
Evidence for the nuking, please, as you apparently can't remember what Trantor was like in the first place.

In Foundation's Edge it says that Trantor's cities (well, one giant megacity really ) were destroyed. Trantor went from having a population of 400 billion (or 40 billion depending on which estimate you use) to 100 million. It says the Trantorian population was "slaughtered by the millions and left to starve by the billions." Doesn't get very specific about exactly how this was done, but a limited orbital bombardment sounds fairly likely from that.

Evidence.

We KNOW the Mule wasn't, since he set up his capitol at Kalgan. As for evidence that he didn't seem to value ruling Trantor very much, see above.

Huge fleet, yes. Warships, no. Actually warships would hinder in the plundering as they are typically scrimpy on cargo space.

My point was that sacking a planet Mongol-style strikes me as not very feasible or sensible. Sure, I could see them taking the contents of the treasury (which would likely be digital anyway), but for that to account for the degree of damage we saw in Foundation's Edge they'd have had to clear out virtually every dwelling on the planet, rip out the copper wire and scaffolding for scrap metal, load that into their giant looting fleet, and drag it light years back to their home planet. Does that not strike you as being somewhat less than economical? A limited orbital is a much more reasonable supposition IMO.

Which is a wee bit more massive than the Wienis (like, several million times?)

Hey, I'm not trying to claim that Foundationverse ships have Death Star level firepower, all I was saying was that was one way of interpreting the evidence. If you want a debate on this talk to Murazor.

Because Wars has been seen to do it, with a weapons platform that can handle the consequences. Foundationverse has one single statement that is totally unquantifiable, may simply be hyperbole, does not require it to be DET, and would require several billion fucktons of technobabble to be able to handle the consequences.

Good point. But like I said, I'm not arguing with you. I just said that was one way of interpreting the evidence. Nowhere did I claim "OMG the Foundation has Death Star level firepower!"

[Connor MacLeod]

Other than its size, its shielding (worthless without knowing WTF a Q-beam is) and the description of its firepower, there are no descriptions of its capabilities. So its accelerative capabilities and its mass are unknown quantities and unknown quantities vs known canon statements supporting planetary destructive firepower = known canon statement wins. About how it does deal with the problems linked with planet-destroying energy bursts... the same way the Eclipse does, I suppose.

ROFLMAO. Well if youo're going to play the "we don't know so we can't say for sure" game, we can also claim that we don't know whether or not the "atom blasts" actually scatter the masses of planets either. Basically you're taking each and every piece of dialogue and treating it as if it were a specific, literal, and basic statement of fact (and ignoring the underlying problems and/or complications.). Particularily when there are other reasons to disbelieve it.

But just to burst your bubble, I'd point out that Trevize's gravitic starship in "Foundation's Edge" was considered faster than other vessels - a fact that would be ultimately pointless if these ships could in fact accelerate to near-lightspeed instantly.

You don't remember correctly. The few existing descriptions of capital scale weapons don't match the description of the "eraser" blasters.

Proof please. Considering that in Foundation both personal AND capital scale "nuclear blasts" are witnessed (and the effects most certainly ARE witnessed.) is proof enough. Moreover, we know that in "Foundation" that the blaster that struck Mallow's shield induced "atomic disruption" that tore air molecules apart - an ability that is attributed to capital scale weapons as well (such as in Foundation and Empire and proven in quotes you yourself provided.)

In other words, I think you're bullshitting.

The pale continuous beam impinged upon the force-field that surrounded the mayor of Terminus and was sucked harmlessly to neutralization. Wienis pressed harder and laughed tearingly.

Hardin still smiled and his force-field aura scarcely brightened as it absorbed the energies of the nuclear blast. From his comer Lepold covered his eyes and moaned.

And, with a yell of despair, Wienis changed his aim and shot again -- and toppled to the floor with his head blown into nothingness.[/quote]

You obviously have no concept of the effects we should witness with the large-scale vaporization of a human body, much less "atomic disintegration":

Vapourization into invisible gas. Gaseous matter is often invisible. However, more than three quarters of the human body is composed of water, and the volume of water vapour at boiling point and atmospheric pressure is more than three thousand times as large as the volume of liquid water at the same temperature and pressure. So what would we expect if the water vapour in a human body vapourizes? Try putting your hand directly over the spout of a kettle full of boiling water which is venting steam at high speed, preferably in the region where it has not yet become visible (meaning that your hand must be within a centimetre of the spout). Once you recover from the burns, picture a cloud of steam at this temperature and pressure, more than 8 metres wide, filling the room from the floor to the ceiling. If you were in a room full of such steam, would you notice? Frankly, I can't see how someone would fail to notice such a cloud unless he or she were dead.[i/]

Disruption into subatomic particles. There would be little point in even discussing this possibility, except that some Federation cultists have advanced it as a possible explanation. However, if a human body were disintegrated into all of its component subatomic nucleons and electrons, the result would be a huge cloud of ionized hydrogen plasma and a large neutron radiation flux. Picture the deadly cloud of water vapour described in the previous section, multiplied in volume by several orders of magnitude and heated to many thousands of K. Furthermore, assume that this gas cloud is accompanied by dangerous levels of neutron radiation. And finally, remember that as the plasma cools and becomes ordinary hydrogen gas, it will be highly flammable! This explanation is not better than the vapourization explanation- in fact, it is much worse.

Emphasis mine. Note that while vaporizing/"disintegrating"'s someone's head is not hte same as disintegrating the whoel body, a simple google search will reveal that the human head accounts for about 8-10% of the mass of the human body - more than enough to produce noticable and in fact harmful side effects. Put succintly we see NONE of the above in the references, even though such effects should be blatantly obivous to the people involved.

Furthermore, there are other examples in the foundation novels of people being hit by such weapons (the Mule forces Bayta to kill Ebling Mis in Foundation and Empire, and IIRC Cleon II is also killed by his gardner in a similar fashion and in neither case are the requisite side effects even remotely apparent.) I might ALSO point out that in the case of the Mis killing, a substantially greater portion of the body is "disintegrated" than just the head, and the side effects described above would be even MORE apparent.

Clearly the weapons are not purely DET weapons, even if you don't understand the underlying facts.

There was a glitteringly efficient blast-gun in his fist as he smiled. "There are greater men than you under arrest this day. It is a hornet's nest we are cleaning up."

Devers snarled and reached slowly for his own gun. The lieutenant of police smiled more broadly and squeezed the contacts. The blasting line of force struck Devers' chest in an accurate blaze of destruction – that bounced harmlessly off his personal shield in sparkling spicules of light.

Devers shot in turn, and the lieutenant's head fell from off an upper torso that had disappeared. It was still smiling as it lay in the jag of sunshine which entered through the new-made hole in the wall.

Note the reference to "force" - many of the descriptions for blasters refer to "nuclear forcecs" or something absurd to that effect, which definitely tends to put the weapon into the technobabble category.

Bayta, face frozen white, lifted her blaster and shot, with an echoing clap of noise. From the waist upward, Mis was not, and a ragged hole was in the wall behind. From numb fingers, Bayta's blaster dropped to the floor.

And yet, Bayta is not bathed in a massive cloud of high temperature plasma, nor any radiation flux.. hell she's not even burned by the massive steam cloud that should result. Nice try.

As you can see in this three descriptions, there is no residue left. The target is "blown into nothingness", "disappears" or "is not" after impact. The fact that unshielded and unprotected civilians survive being next to the destruction of a human torso is proof enough against vaporization or some energy. Non interactive particles (like neutrinos) seem the clearest option to explain where the mass goes to, but -at least-

Which if true only proves it is a non-DET weapon, like a phaser. Which in turn casts substantial doubt on the capital scale weapons being purely DET.

I understand this as an in-built safety as this weird phenomena is instantaneous (hence not a chain reaction) and not material-dependent (metal walls are broken as well). In conclussion, the "erasers" are hardly phaser like and the only similarity is the mysterious disappareance of mass, whereas capital scale weapons don't produce this effect. Not only does Riose mention "electron dust", but:

Fine then, you tell me where all these side effects magically disappear to, since you're insisting that they're "safely" disposed of by some unknown and ridiculous mechnaism (and keeping in mind that bullshit like "alternate dimensions" didn't work for phasers.) Oh yes, and lets not forget Occam's Razor, since that makes the liklihood of them being DET even less so.

Meaning that there were two extremely bright flashes when the destroyed ships were hit. The "erasers" don't produce such flares and I find very interesting the similarities between this description and that of the superlaser in Endor as per the ROTJ novelization.

A similarity which is irrelevant, except as proof that you'll take ANY offhand bit of dialogue and treat it as canon fact.

Luke watched with impotent horror, as the unbelievably huge laser beam radiated out from the muzzle of the Death Star. It touched- for only an instant- one of the Rebel Star Cruisers surging in the midst of the heaviest fighting. And in the next instant, the Star Cruiser was vaporized. Blown to dust. Returned to its most elemental particles, in a single burst of light.

Which is supposed to mean what in this case exactly? Oh wait, I know, we're pulling the "Evil Warsies are pulling a mean double standard on our side" excuse to cover up one's own ignorance! Gee, I haven't seen that before...

And perhaps I have missed something, but disintegration in English doesn't mean necessarily "chain reaction".



Meaning that Asimov, who wrote this novels way before the existence of Star Trek or Star Wars might have used disintegration as a synonym for "destruction" without weird technical connotations.

Meaning you don't fucking know what you're talking about, so you're attempting to bluff through by over literal interpretation of dialogue and semantics nitpicks. The "definition" matters fuck-all in this case - its the OBSERVED EFFECTS (or lack thereof) that matter in proving whether or not its DET. Which, ,as I have demonstrated, ,they clearly are not (and no you don't get to ignore the side effects by claiming some ludicrous "safety feature", since that would require violating CoE and/or symmetry - again read the phaser descriptions.)

It is a far cry, of course. But considering all the extremely conservative assumptions I have made the kilotons per shot figure is nothing but the lowest of the low ends for those weapons.

And I'm goign to point otu that STarships are not inert objects and thus not the best sources for making weapons calcs off of (since they tend to be mostly empty space, have fuel supplies and other possible volatiles, etc.)

[Murazor]

ROFLMAO. Well if youo're going to play the "we don't know so we can't say for sure" game, we can also claim that we don't know whether or not the "atom blasts" actually scatter the masses of planets either. Basically you're taking each and every piece of dialogue and treating it as if it were a specific, literal, and basic statement of fact (and ignoring the underlying problems and/or complications.). Particularily when there are other reasons to disbelieve it.

It is your position that dialogue has no validity, unless directly supported by descriptions or images? If so, you might be interested in reading my previous post (in reply to Batman), where I confirm that there is no description of an actual planetary destruction in any of the books written by Asimov.

I don't consider every piece of dialogue as a fact, but I consider those made by a qualified character as Verisof to be accurate unless contradicted. Not only I am not aware of such contradictions, but there is a decent ammount of evidence that can, at least, be interpreted as supporting. Starting with the fate of Gamma Andromeda V as described by Lord Dorwin in Foundation (old editions).

Gamma Andromeda is a star system in which a nuclear meltdown occurred in 50 F.E, in Foundation by Isaac Asimov. The meltdown killed several million people and destroyed at least half the planet. It was caused by ill-done repairs and shoddy-made replacement parts done several decades before. Following the incident on Gamma Andromeda V, the Galactic Empire considered severly limiting the use of nuclear power.

But just to burst your bubble, I'd point out that Trevize's gravitic starship in "Foundation's Edge" was considered faster than other vessels - a fact that would be ultimately pointless if these ships could in fact accelerate to near-lightspeed instantly.

Do you truly believe that the Death Star is as heavy as Mars? Just for the fun of it, I did run a few calculations and the results were surprising. Something like a thousand Earth gravities in its surface. This without mentioning that it most certainly doesn't accelerate to lightspeed instantly. And just in the event you are interested, you might want to know that an Mars-sized object moving at light speed would have a KE energy eleven (11) orders of magnitude greater than that needed to destroy an Earth-like planeet.

About the Far Star II, there is a lot to say.

1) The Far Star was completely unarmed and lacked any kind of military equipment, including the screens or armour that would have allowed them to survive cosmic rays moving at light speed. Trevize states this when they leave Comporellon system in Foundation and Earth. In other words: had they used their full acceleration, they would have died.

2) The Far Star never was in a position to use its full speed.

Foundation's edge:

-Leaving Terminus system. Several days, they are in no hurry and at first, Trevize was looking for a hyper-relay hidden in the ship.
-Landing in Shaysell. IIRC, they used a short hyperjump to get near the planet and the ammount of time is never stated. Again, they are in no hurry and when they land, they find that Compor using a similar gravitic ship has arrived before them.
-Leaving Shaysell. Certainly they were in no hurry, considering that they were heading for what Trevize believed to be the Second Foundation.
-Approaching Gaia. At least three days in an extremely cautious approach that includes several micro jumps. When they attempt to leave (an instance were they might had used their full acceleration), they find that the computer is being remotely operated by Gaia.

Foundation and Earth:

-Leaving Gaia. No hurry. Again.
-Approaching Comporellon. They follow standard procedure and lenghty bureaucratic protocols. Again, they don't seem to be in any hurry.
-Leaving Comporellon. No hurry.
-Aurora, Solaria, Melpomenia. They approach uncharted and unknown planets, devoting a great deal of time to the study of the systems. They have to leave Solaria in a hurry, but they are not followed into space.
-Alpha. Their approach is slow and they leave in a hurry, although the Alphans have no means to pursue them.
-Earth. A completely unknown system that doesn't even appear in star maps. A system that they believe to be the home of a potentially dangerous force with Trevize keeping a safe distance to ensure that Earth doesn't pull the same trick as Gaia. When Trevize finds that Earth is radiactive, they stop dead on their tracks for a day or so before very, very slowly approaching the Moon, until Daneel starts to influence their minds.

Now, there is proof that Foundationverse ships can achieve non-negligible accelerations. Namely, the trip of the Wienis and the Anacreontian fleet to Anacreon.

1) In order to make an accurate long distance hyper space jump, an spaceship needs to move far away from any object with intense gravity. In Comporellon, Trevize had to move the far more advanced Far Star to a position 1500 million kilometers away from any large mass.

2) The Anacreontian fleet needed about thirteen hours to reach Terminus. At least half that time should have been spent moving to the edge of Anacreon's system.

"If you're really interested, the ships of the fleet left Anacreon exactly fifty minutes ago, at eleven, and the first shot will be fired as soon as they sight Terminus, which should be at noon tomorrow. You may consider yourself a prisoner of war."

If we suppose that the "edge of the system" is somewhere about as far from Anacreon's star as Saturn (conservative) and subtract the distance from Anacreon the planet (supposing an Earth-like distance to its Sun), the Anacreontian fleet would have needed to cross roughly 1250 million kilometers in six and a half hours (let's say seven for the sake of being conservative). Supposing that they needed the full time accelerationg to reach this point, we are talking of

A = Vf-Vi/t = 101571-0/t ~= 4 km/s2 = 411 g.

Vf = 2Vaverage (as Vi is supposed to be 0).

Vaverage= 50785 km/s

The energy needed to move a metal object three km long with a constant acceleration of at least 400 g is beyond my knowledge to calculate, but I am fairly sure that it will be quite significative.

[Murazor]

Proof please. Considering that in Foundation both personal AND capital scale "nuclear blasts" are witnessed (and the effects most certainly ARE witnessed.) is proof enough. Moreover, we know that in "Foundation" that the blaster that struck Mallow's shield induced "atomic disruption" that tore air molecules apart - an ability that is attributed to capital scale weapons as well (such as in Foundation and Empire and proven in quotes you yourself provided.)

Do you mean "Foundation" the book? First of the original trilogy? Where is that capital scale "nuclear blast" witnessed. Where in the quotes I provided is atomic disruption mentioned as an element of capital scale weapons?

1) The psychohistorians? No, here there is no violence at all, other than the arrest of Seldon and Gaal Dornick.
2) The encyclopedists? There is no violence in all this part, other than Hardin's takeover, who mentions siege weapons with "bombs into it", while Dorwin describes quite a devastating incident at Gamma Andromeda. Hardin even goes to great lengths to avoid attacking the Anacreontians.
3) The mayors? No. The Anacreontian fleet never attacked Terminus. There is the description of the Wienis' atom blasts, but little else. The only weapon other than that Wienis used to end his life is the "needle gun" used to hunt the Nyakbird.
4) The traders? Again, not. Askone had nothing but "holdovers" of the Empire and they rejected nucleic science. Sport cruisers, actually. And the Foundation is involved here only with two traders. One does think that he can deal with the Askonian ships in a whim, but there is no violence used in this part of the story. Nothing at all.
5) The merchant princes? Nothing that I can see. The loss of three trader ships in Korellian territory.

He said methodically, "In a moment. You see, three ships lost in the same sector in the same year can't be accident, and nuclear power can be conquered only by more nuclear power. The question automatically arises: if Korell has nuclear weapons, where is it getting them?"

Vague threats made by the Commdora.

"You wouldn't dare, you little pug-dog. My father would pulverize your toy nation to meteoric dust. In fact, he might do it in any case, if I told him you were treating with these barbarians."

Onum Barr describing the fate of Siwenna in very vague terms and saying that "half a planet would be wiped out" before damaging the smallest power stations. More very vague descriptions made by the Commdora (hardly qualified).

"But one – just one – can blast that Foundation into stinking rubble. Just one! One, to sweep their little pygmy boats out of space."

The Dark Nebula finds a Imperial warship that is a lot bigger, but there is no combat description. Vague descriptions of Mallow about a war that mentions half a mile deep caves under enemy bombardment, but he can't be considered knowledgeable in this topic, when the Foundation doesn't seem to have fought a serious war in about a century (and it actually avoided fighting against Korell).

So, where is that fucking description of capital scale beam weapons?

You obviously have no concept of the effects we should witness with the large-scale vaporization of a human body, much less "atomic disintegration":

You obviously didn't bother to read my whole post before writing this. Quoting myself.

As you can see in this three descriptions, there is no residue left. The target is "blown into nothingness", "disappears" or "is not" after impact. The fact that unshielded and unprotected civilians survive being next to the destruction of a human torso is proof enough against vaporization or some energy. Non interactive particles (like neutrinos) seem the clearest option to explain where the mass goes to

So, yes I do have some idea about the effects produced by the vaporization of a human body or parts of it.

Emphasis mine. Note that while vaporizing/"disintegrating"'s someone's head is not hte same as disintegrating the whoel body, a simple google search will reveal that the human head accounts for about 8-10% of the mass of the human body - more than enough to produce noticable and in fact harmful side effects. Put succintly we see NONE of the above in the references, even though such effects should be blatantly obivous to the people involved.

Something I am perfectly aware of and is the reason for proposing the theory of an in-built safety system.

Furthermore, there are other examples in the foundation novels of people being hit by such weapons (the Mule forces Bayta to kill Ebling Mis in Foundation and Empire, and IIRC Cleon II is also killed by his gardner in a similar fashion and in neither case are the requisite side effects even remotely apparent.) I might ALSO point out that in the case of the Mis killing, a substantially greater portion of the body is "disintegrated" than just the head, and the side effects described above would be even MORE apparent.

Would you, please, stop mentioning this? I am aware of it. However, there are at least two other different kinds of blasters.

The "imploder blasters" used in Prelude and Forward the Foundation.

"A blaster, despite its name, does not 'blast' in the proper sense of the term. It vaporizes and blows out an interior and - if anything - it causes an implosion. There's a soft sighing sound, leaving what appears to be a 'blasted' object".

Such a weapon was used against Cleon II by the way.

And the microwave laser blaster used by Trevize.

"The dog must have felt the initial surge of heat, and made the smallest motion as though it were about to leap. And then it exploded, as a portion of its blood an cellular contents vaporized".

The pre imperial tyrannians used this kind of weapons as well, so it is not a matter of Foundation improved technology, but a matter of choice, as clearly the "eraser" and "imploder" kinds are far safer for close range combat.

Clearly the weapons are not purely DET weapons, even if you don't understand the underlying facts.

See above.

Note the reference to "force" - many of the descriptions for blasters refer to "nuclear forcecs" or something absurd to that effect, which definitely tends to put the weapon into the technobabble category.

Ok. Repeating yet again: I know that there is technobabble involved and that the phenomena can't be explained neither as a chain reaction or pure DET. The point is that the behaviour of this weapons is different from that of the few know examples of capital scale weapons.

And yet, Bayta is not bathed in a massive cloud of high temperature plasma, nor any radiation flux.. hell she's not even burned by the massive steam cloud that should result. Nice try.

That is the sound of the point going over your head. I will just repeat it once again: blasters can be of different kinds and purely DET weapons are possible. There is no relation whatsoever between the hand weapons chosen by their safety advantages and

Which if true only proves it is a non-DET weapon, like a phaser. Which in turn casts substantial doubt on the capital scale weapons being purely DET.

1) We don't know if the technobabble part of the weapon adds energy to the end result (considering that there is no chain reaction, it is unlikely), so it might be a DET weapon with a technobabble in-built safety.

2) Observed effects of capital scale weapons are far different.

3) Description of capital scale weapons suggests DET.

Fine then, you tell me where all these side effects magically disappear to, since you're insisting that they're "safely" disposed of by some unknown and ridiculous mechnaism (and keeping in mind that bullshit like "alternate dimensions" didn't work for phasers.) Oh yes, and lets not forget Occam's Razor, since that makes the liklihood of them being DET even less so.

Neutrinos is the most clear option. The one I mentioned above, so there is no need for weird "alternate dimensions". It is obvious that there is an unknown mechanism that transforms energy and matter in some kind of non interactive particle. There is no support for the idea of this mechanism being a material-dependant chain reaction, as the mass not directly affected by the blaster beam doesn't disappear.

A similarity which is irrelevant, except as proof that you'll take ANY offhand bit of dialogue and treat it as canon fact.

When did description become dialogue? The quote is description of the events made by the narrator, not any character and my interpretation is supported by dialogue.

Which is supposed to mean what in this case exactly? Oh wait, I know, we're pulling the "Evil Warsies are pulling a mean double standard on our side" excuse to cover up one's own ignorance! Gee, I haven't seen that before...

Just a convenient example of a different source using Bel Riose's description for an event that matches my interpretation.

Meaning you don't fucking know what you're talking about, so you're attempting to bluff through by over literal interpretation of dialogue and semantics nitpicks. The "definition" matters fuck-all in this case - its the OBSERVED EFFECTS (or lack thereof) that matter in proving whether or not its DET. Which, ,as I have demonstrated, ,they clearly are not (and no you don't get to ignore the side effects by claiming some ludicrous "safety feature", since that would require violating CoE and/or symmetry - again read the phaser descriptions.)

Observed effects:

There were two noiseless flares that pinpointed space as two of the tiny gnats shriveled in atomic disintegration, and the rest were gone.

1) Weapons hit.

2) Targeted ships explode in a "noiseless flare" that completely destroys them.

Now, please tell me where in this description do you find something that fits the "non-DET" bill.

And I'm goign to point otu that STarships are not inert objects and thus not the best sources for making weapons calcs off of (since they tend to be mostly empty space, have fuel supplies and other possible volatiles, etc.)

Very true. My only considerations here are that there is little else for making calculations and that Foundationverse ships are never mentioned to carry any kind of volatile fuel.

[Murazor]

Just as a last post, I will add the last point I made in my reply to Batman.

5) In spite of the previous points, we lack a good description of planetary destruction (other than some mentions made in the non-Asimov written novels) that might allow us to settle this topic once and for all. Without it, we can argue, we can digress, but we can't solve it. Evidence suggests DET weaponry used in capital scale weapons, but considering that planetary binding energy is in all likelyhood far higher than that needed to destroy Foundationverse ships, the weapons used for this purpose might be some kind of chain reaction (or something even more exotic).

I acknowledge that perhaps things are not as I interpret them. This thread had the purpose of providing an interesting tech tidbit about the Asimoverse and this purpose has been fulfilled. I didn't want to start a full blown analysis of Foundation fictional technology and with several incoming exams, time is at a premium for me, so I won't appear in the forum for several days.

[The Kernel]

But just to burst your bubble, I'd point out that Trevize's gravitic starship in "Foundation's Edge" was considered faster than other vessels - a fact that would be ultimately pointless if these ships could in fact accelerate to near-lightspeed instantly.

Just thought I'd comment on this for a sec. Trevize's gravitic ship was NOT faster then the conventional Foundation vessels, all ships using Imperial/Foundation hyperdrive technology travel instantly from one location to the next. The only time lag between systems is involved in computing the next leg of the jumps, as they have to be extremely precise. The big revolution in the Far Star as far as FTL goes was in the computer's accuracy in determining jump headings, it could calculate a path to the other side of the galaxy (all 20 jumps at a time) whereas a conventional ship would have to stop and recalculate after each jump.

[Diamedes]

But just to burst your bubble, I'd point out that Trevize's gravitic starship in "Foundation's Edge" was considered faster than other vessels - a fact that would be ultimately pointless if these ships could in fact accelerate to near-lightspeed instantly.

Just thought I'd comment on this for a sec. Trevize's gravitic ship was NOT faster then the conventional Foundation vessels, all ships using Imperial/Foundation hyperdrive technology travel instantly from one location to the next. The only time lag between systems is involved in computing the next leg of the jumps, as they have to be extremely precise. The big revolution in the Far Star as far as FTL goes was in the computer's accuracy in determining jump headings, it could calculate a path to the other side of the galaxy (all 20 jumps at a time) whereas a conventional ship would have to stop and recalculate after each jump.

Pretty sure they're talking about local, real space transit, not-hyperspace jumps.

[Connor MacLeod]

Do you mean "Foundation" the book? First of the original trilogy? Where is that capital scale "nuclear blast" witnessed. Where in the quotes I provided is atomic disruption mentioned as an element of capital scale weapons?

Stop the fucking semantics games. I outlined the comparison between the weapons, and you're blatantly ignoring them. Concession accepted. (and by "witnessed" I mean observed. Or are you saying that the battlecruiser, and the Anacreonian fleet for that matter, weren't armed with "nuclear blasts"?)

1) The psychohistorians? No, here there is no violence at all, other than the arrest of Seldon and Gaal Dornick.
2) The encyclopedists? There is no violence in all this part, other than Hardin's takeover, who mentions siege weapons with "bombs into it", while Dorwin describes quite a devastating incident at Gamma Andromeda. Hardin even goes to great lengths to avoid attacking the Anacreontians.
3) The mayors? No. The Anacreontian fleet never attacked Terminus. There is the description of the Wienis' atom blasts, but little else. The only weapon other than that Wienis used to end his life is the "needle gun" used to hunt the Nyakbird.

Actually there's several mention of "nuclear blasts" referring to both personal and capital scale (when the Mayor is fired on by Wienis, the description of the Battlecruiser, and a mention by Wienis to the Mayor IIRC.). The only mention of "atom blasts" is when the battlecruiser is disabled . Thus far I have proven a connection exists (two actually) - so you must prove they are dissimilar.

4) The traders? Again, not. Askone had nothing but "holdovers" of the Empire and they rejected nucleic science. Sport cruisers, actually. And the Foundation is involved here only with two traders. One does think that he can deal with the Askonian ships in a whim, but there is no violence used in this part of the story. Nothing at all.
5) The merchant princes? Nothing that I can see. The loss of three trader ships in Korellian territory.

I already went over this, and you ignored it.

So, where is that fucking description of capital scale beam weapons?

Nice dodge. Now disprove that capital scale "nuclear blasts" are in fact different from personal scale "nuclear blasts". I've proven that a conncetion exists, a fact your semantical nitpicking has not changed one iota.

Something I am perfectly aware of and is the reason for proposing the theory of an in-built safety system.

Prove the existence of this safety system, and explain how is not a violation of CoE.

Would you, please, stop mentioning this? I am aware of it. However, there are at least two other different kinds of blasters.

The "imploder blasters" used in Prelude and Forward the Foundation.

Yes, and so?

"A blaster, despite its name, does not 'blast' in the proper sense of the term. It vaporizes and blows out an interior and - if anything - it causes an implosion. There's a soft sighing sound, leaving what appears to be a 'blasted' object".

Yes I am familiar with this, despite the fact it is saying that the weapon causes the target to explode AND implode simultaneously. (which is nonsensical in the extreme.)

Such a weapon was used against Cleon II by the way.

Yes, and so?

And the microwave laser blaster used by Trevize.

Yes, and so?

Ok. Repeating yet again: I know that there is technobabble involved and that the phenomena can't be explained neither as a chain reaction or pure DET. The point is that the behaviour of this weapons is different from that of the few know examples of capital scale weapons.

There's no evidence of any noticable difference between a personal nuclear blast and a capital one. So why whould we assume one existS? If anything, the evidence points to them operating on similar principles.

That is the sound of the point going over your head. I will just repeat it once again: blasters can be of different kinds and purely DET weapons are possible. There is no relation whatsoever between the hand weapons chosen by their safety advantages and

I don't even NEED the Bayta referencec - the "Wienis blowing his head off" example proves my point succintly all by itself. he used a nuclear blast remember? Concession accepted.

1) We don't know if the technobabble part of the weapon adds energy to the end result (considering that there is no chain reaction, it is unlikely), so it might be a DET weapon with a technobabble in-built safety.

"adds energy to the end result?" What the fuck kind of bullshit is this? Now you're claiming that these weapons create energy from thin air??

Moreover, ,you're still appealing to some nonsensical and nonexistent "safety feature" that apparently can ignore CoE at whim. Which is even more stupid than "pulling the energy from thin air" idea.

And lastly, you have YET to prove that the "nuclear blast" on the battlecruiser is intrinsically different from the "nuclear blast" used by Wienis to blow his own head off. Instead you continually construct an increasingly complex (and idiotic) fabrication ot justify what is essentially a bullshit claim. Concession accepted.

2) Observed effects of capital scale weapons are far different.

Prove it, since as I recall you just got done saying we never saw a capital scale "nuclear blast" in action. In fact the only observed "effect" of capital scale weapons I can recall was the atomic disintegration of two tiny starships by Imperial Ships of the Line in Foundation and Empire.. Which would make them similar to nuclear blasts we see in foundation, if we go by observed effects and known Imperial warship armaments[/i]

3) Description of capital scale weapons suggests DET.

See above.

Neutrinos is the most clear option.

Guess what? If the target is converted into neutrinos it is by definition a non-DET "technobabble" effect. You don't get to claim vaporization and then a sudden and instantaneous conversion into neutrinos any more than Trekkie fanboys can claim it occurs for phasers. For one thing, its unproven and for the second, its needlessly complex.

The one I mentioned above, so there is no need for weird "alternate dimensions". It is obvious that there is an unknown mechanism that transforms energy and matter in some kind of non interactive particle.

Oh a "mysterious unknown mechanism" - where have we heard that before?

There is no support for the idea of this mechanism being a material-dependant chain reaction, as the mass not directly affected by the blaster beam doesn't disappear.

Except for the fact Wienis's head was not converted into a gigantic cloud of plasma. PS it doesn't necceesasrily have to be "material dependent", ,although that neccesarily isn't ruled out either. At most, the chain reaction is far more "limited" in scope than what a phaser does, thats all.

When did description become dialogue? The quote is description of the events made by the narrator, not any character and my interpretation is supported by dialogue.

Being a "description" does not make it any more reliable than any other bit of dialogue. "Dialogue" suggests the Eclipse superlaser is 2/3 the power of the original DS superlaser, and this is presented in a straightforward, believable, factual manner, yet its no less absurd or untrrue.

Just a convenient example of a different source using Bel Riose's description for an event that matches my interpretation.

Convenient to whom exactly? So far you've had to rely on some mythical and technobabble "mysterious unknown mechanism" safety device to bolster your argument.

There were two noiseless flares that pinpointed space as two of the tiny gnats shriveled in atomic disintegration, and the rest were gone.

1) Weapons hit.

How observant.

2) Targeted ships explode in a "noiseless flare" that completely destroys them.

Which is to be expected, ,since there is no atmosphere in outer space.

Now, please tell me where in this description do you find something that fits the "non-DET" bill.

When Wienis' head is not converted into a giant ball of plasma when it was hit by a nuclear blast. Like I said, concession accepted.

Don't even bother replying unless you have some concrete evidence to use next time, rather than this meaningless semantics BS.

[Connor MacLeod]

But just to burst your bubble, I'd point out that Trevize's gravitic starship in "Foundation's Edge" was considered faster than other vessels - a fact that would be ultimately pointless if these ships could in fact accelerate to near-lightspeed instantly.

Just thought I'd comment on this for a sec. Trevize's gravitic ship was NOT faster then the conventional Foundation vessels, all ships using Imperial/Foundation hyperdrive technology travel instantly from one location to the next. The only time lag between systems is involved in computing the next leg of the jumps, as they have to be extremely precise. The big revolution in the Far Star as far as FTL goes was in the computer's accuracy in determining jump headings, it could calculate a path to the other side of the galaxy (all 20 jumps at a time) whereas a conventional ship would have to stop and recalculate after each jump.

What Diamedes said.

[Murazor]

Stop the fucking semantics games. I outlined the comparison between the weapons, and you're blatantly ignoring them.

May you please redo the comparison between the weapons? I don't find it other than you saying: "hand held weapons = capital weapons" and me: "No, they aren't". I am deeply interested in your opinion and I would be thankful if you wrote your points in a format clear enough to allow me to fully understand your position.

(and by "witnessed" I mean observed. Or are you saying that the battlecruiser, and the Anacreonian fleet for that matter, weren't armed with "nuclear blasts"?)

Actually there's several mention of "nuclear blasts" referring to both personal and capital scale (when the Mayor is fired on by Wienis, the description of the Battlecruiser, and a mention by Wienis to the Mayor IIRC.). The only mention of "atom blasts" is when the battlecruiser is disabled . Thus far I have proven a connection exists (two actually) - so you must prove they are dissimilar.

OK. I was sincerely puzzled when you said that we "witness" capital atom blasts in Foundation, as I understood that you meant an example of weapons in action that I had somehow missed.

About your first point: Yes, the Anacreontian fleet most certainly was armed with "nuclear blasts".

About your second point: Yes, you have a point here. The same name is used for both hand held and capital scale weapons, but this piece of evidence is more circumstantial than conclusive considering the existence of at least other two different kinds of weapons with the same name that operate differently. However, I still continue to acknowledge that planet destroyers might be chain reaction weapons, particularly now that after rereading the relevant paragraphs I consider that "erasers" are in all likelyhood chain reaction weapons.

Nice dodge. Now disprove that capital scale "nuclear blasts" are in fact different from personal scale "nuclear blasts". I've proven that a conncetion exists, a fact your semantical nitpicking has not changed one iota.

You have proven that the same name is used for different weapons, but when there are even different groups of hand held weapons using the same name, this means very little. The targets hit by capital scale weapons are "blown to electron dust" and disappear in the midst of a fireball. Targets hit by hand held nuclear blasts disappear when its mass is changed into neutrinos or some other kind of non interactive particle, without explosions of any kind.

Prove the existence of this safety system, and explain how is not a violation of CoE.

Upon rereading the relevant parts of the books, I have reached a conclusion. My theory about the "safety system" is contrived and doesn't fit avalaible evidence. Although it does explain why unprotected people can stand right next to the target of such weapons it fails to explain the beam's effect (of lack of) in air. The mass that disappears is not that directly touched by the beam, as in order to instantly destroy a human torso the beam would need to be extremely wide and it is never mentioned to have this characteristic.

Moreover, such a wide beam would create a void of "neutrined" gases and the effects of even a short lived vacuum should be noticed. Such effects are not mentioned and hence I must accept that they don't exist. In conclusion, the "eraser" kind of nuclear blast triggers a short lived (as the full body doesn't disappear), density-dependent (while it seems to work fine with metals, the volume of "neutrined" air is negligible) chain reaction and I was completely wrong about it being some kind of DET with exotic technobabble safety system.

"A blaster, despite its name, does not 'blast' in the proper sense of the term. It vaporizes and blows out an interior and - if anything - it causes an implosion. There's a soft sighing sound, leaving what appears to be a 'blasted' object".

Yes I am familiar with this, despite the fact it is saying that the weapon causes the target to explode AND implode simultaneously. (which is nonsensical in the extreme.)

While I agree with you in this to be a contrived explanation, it is nonetheless a canon example of a different weapon being given the same name. This is the point.

Such a weapon was used against Cleon II by the way.

Yes, and so?

You mentioned it before, I thought that you might find it mildly interesting.

And the microwave laser blaster used by Trevize.

Yes, and so?

Another example of a different weapon being given the same name. And this one is, interestingly enough, very clearly described as a DET weapon.

There's no evidence of any noticable difference between a personal nuclear blast and a capital one. So why whould we assume one exists? If anything, the evidence points to them operating on similar principles.

Imperial shipboard weapons (in Bel Riose's fleet) are seen to operate in a different way from the "eraser" blasters. Otherwise, I would agree with you about evidence pointing towards similar principles of operation.

"adds energy to the end result?" What the fuck kind of bullshit is this? Now you're claiming that these weapons create energy from thin air??

Moreover, ,you're still appealing to some nonsensical and nonexistent "safety feature" that apparently can ignore CoE at whim. Which is even more stupid than "pulling the energy from thin air" idea.

See above. I accept this to be a contrived explanation and one that doesn't correctly explains the evidence to boot.

And lastly, you have YET to prove that the "nuclear blast" on the battlecruiser is intrinsically different from the "nuclear blast" used by Wienis to blow his own head off. Instead you continually construct an increasingly complex (and idiotic) fabrication ot justify what is essentially a bullshit claim.

Bel Riose's fleet uses weapons that seem to operate under DET principles and it has been seen that different weapons use the same name. It is however completely possible that Imperial ships use both DET weapons for standard combat and chain reaction weapons for planetary destruction purposes (I have mentioned that I accept this possibility several times in the thread and now that I accept that "erasers" are chain reaction weapons, it seems even more likely).

Prove it, since as I recall you just got done saying we never saw a capital scale "nuclear blast" in action.

I said that we don't see them in action in Foundation (other than Verisof's description of them as planet destroyers), but in Foundation and Empire we see shipboard weapons in action.

Guess what? If the target is converted into neutrinos it is by definition a non-DET "technobabble" effect. You don't get to claim vaporization and then a sudden and instantaneous conversion into neutrinos any more than Trekkie fanboys can claim it occurs for phasers. For one thing, its unproven and for the second, its needlessly complex.

I already accepted this.

Except for the fact Wienis's head was not converted into a gigantic cloud of plasma. PS it doesn't necceesasrily have to be "material dependent", ,although that neccesarily isn't ruled out either. At most, the chain reaction is far more "limited" in scope than what a phaser does, thats all.

OK. It seems to be a very fast and short lived chain reaction that has been seen to operate with solid materials with density between 1 g/cm^3 (human bodies) and 7 g/cm^3 (supposing that the metal walls are made of some steel alloy that is by far and large the most likely option), but fails to affect gases. Do you agree with this?

[Connor MacLeod]

May you please redo the comparison between the weapons? I don't find it other than you saying: "hand held weapons = capital weapons" and me: "No, they aren't". I am deeply interested in your opinion and I would be thankful if you wrote your points in a format clear enough to allow me to fully understand your position.

What's so complicated about it? We have no reason to believe capital scale "nuclear blasts" are different from personal scale weapons, and at best, the implied "effects" of the two weapons are similar (disregarding obvious semantics nitpicks. The latter is relevant in comparisons of the blaster mallow was hit with vs the "atomic disintegration" Bel Riose fleet caused to those two starships in the quote you provided.)

I might point out that it works either way. If the Bel Riose/Mallow example IS comparable/related to the "Nuclear blasts" of the Wienis/Battlecruiser example, then there is a connection. If the Mallow/Bel riose exmaples are of different weapons, then there is no direct evidence suggesting a capital-scale "Nuclear blast" is any different from a personal scale "nuclear blast".

About your second point: Yes, you have a point here. The same name is used for both hand held and capital scale weapons, but this piece of evidence is more circumstantial than conclusive considering the existence of at least other two different kinds of weapons with the same name that operate differently.

What does it matter? At the most, its the ONLY evidence regarding a comparison of the weapons, and it suggests they are similar. I went over this above. Both the personal scale and capital scale weapons are called "nuclear blasts", and in the absence of dialogue or "observed" effects suggesting they are in fact different, there is no reason to believe they are. Hence, because a personal "nuclear blast" operates on non-DET principles, a capital scale one does as well.

However, I still continue to acknowledge that planet destroyers might be chain reaction weapons, particularly now that after rereading the relevant paragraphs I consider that "erasers" are in all likelyhood chain reaction weapons.

The burden of proof is on you to prove that personal "nuclear blasts" are dissimilar to capital scale nuclear blasts in the absence of direct proof. You're the one who was claiming they are DET weapons and that personal nuclear blasts were different from "capital" scale.

You have proven that the same name is used for different weapons, but when there are even different groups of hand held weapons using the same name, this means very little. The targets hit by capital scale weapons are "blown to electron dust" and disappear in the midst of a fireball. Targets hit by hand held nuclear blasts disappear when its mass is changed into neutrinos or some other kind of non interactive particle, without explosions of any kind.

1.) "Electron dust" is not neccesarily a technical term (and in the context of the quote, its more of a boast or offhand comment.) The second refers to atomic disintegration, which is not neccesarily referring to a DET-effect (neither is the "electron dust" technically. One could certainly argue that the "reaction" might very well leave electrons behind. without the associated energy release or protons to recombine with or any neutron flux, there's not much of a secondary danger, I suspect.)

2.) Even treating it literally, what about the bit where the blaster hits Mallow's shield? The beam is described as inducing atomic disruption to the atmosphere - and thats a personal-scale weapon.

3.) neither of which is specifically called a "nuclear/atomic blast" or "nuclear blaster" per se. One could indeed argue they are separate weapons, in which case the comparison is irrelevant.

While I agree with you in this to be a contrived explanation, it is nonetheless a canon example of a different weapon being given the same name. This is the point.

Which really doesn't help your argument, since if you want to be partticular about it, we're talking about nuclear/atomic "blasts/blasters".)

Another example of a different weapon being given the same name. And this one is, interestingly enough, very clearly described as a DET weapon.

Microwaves aren't nuclear forces btw. Not much to really connect it to a "nuclear blaster" (capital or personal scale.) And a "microwave" weapon doesn't need to reduce its targets to subatomic particles to be lethal, either.

Imperial shipboard weapons (in Bel Riose's fleet) are seen to operate in a different way from the "eraser" blasters. Otherwise, I would agree with you about evidence pointing towards similar principles of operation.

Again, I could argue this either way. If we go by "examples" I can point out that Mallow was hit by a weapon that caused "atomic disruption" to the air it passed through. In this cae disruption and disintegrration are essentially the same thing (you're taking apart the atom.) In which case there is still a comparison between hand weapons and capital scale ones.

And if the examples aren't comparable, I can point out there's no evidence that the ships in Bel Riose's fleet were equipped with "Nuclear blasts" or that those weapons could in fact "blow up a planet". In which case the only comparison we have is that of the "personal" and "capital" scale nuclear blasts, and no evidence suggesting the two are dissimilar.

Bel Riose's fleet uses weapons that seem to operate under DET principles and it has been seen that different weapons use the same name. It is however completely possible that Imperial ships use both DET weapons for standard combat and chain reaction weapons for planetary destruction purposes (I have mentioned that I accept this possibility several times in the thread and now that I accept that "erasers" are chain reaction weapons, it seems even more likely).

Read above. I can make an arguemnt either way (workign with or against this evidence, and it still doesn't help you.)

OK. It seems to be a very fast and short lived chain reaction that has been seen to operate with solid materials with density between 1 g/cm^3 (human bodies) and 7 g/cm^3 (supposing that the metal walls are made of some steel alloy that is by far and large the most likely option), but fails to affect gases. Do you agree with this?

Regarding the chain reaction/ I suppose.