I just had to share this silly Death Star argument

[Lord Poe]

Ah, now he's getting closer to Darkstar's Mysterious Unknown Mechanism™ which lies at the heart of his Solarmonite Theory for Alderann's destruction.

Again, no surprise. Its Darkstar's sandbox. Or circlejerk, more correctly.

[Vympel]

This fucking clown just won't let it die

Come on, boys and girls. Get on the GStone train, while I untangle the latest mess Mr. Vympel has made of my latest post.

[kids climb aboard

train whistle blows

wheels start turnin', train pickin' up speed

children cheer]

In essence, Mario, he has no theory, he just says it a complex chain reaction. Why? Well, because he doesn't want it to be brute force- or, as the opening crawl of ANH says: "enough firepower to destroy an entire planet". Simple. He simply went backwards from there. The rebel ship explosions claim is especially stupid- even if he was right and they didn't simply explode (as we see- twice)- they're shielded.

Now, Mr Vympel is a fibbermigee. The crawl says "...an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet." Mr. Vympel, you really need to stop your fibbing and rewatch the DVD opening crawl again. Mr. Vympel shows he's a lying whore because I have explained all the evidence, but he says all I did was start at the idea of a complex chain reaction and worked backwards.

Bad, Mr. Vympel. Very bad Mr. Vympel. And in front of the children.

And, as if the rebel ships couldn't have had weaken shields from the fight that the SL couldn't have punched its was through and hit the ship.

Strawman, what I said is that you were treating the energy as a positive rather than a negative. I never said anything about "on their own". Pay attention. Indeed- I don't see "on their own" anywhere in my post. So it's quite clear that yes, you can't read.

See kids? Mr. Vympel is a fibber again. He said "Nuclear binding energy is negative, not positive. It hold atoms together, it doesn't blow them apart." Now, What he said was true. It is binding energy in atoms. Because he said it holds atoms together, that gives the reader a context that the atom is not interacting with an outside energy beam, brute force or a chain reaction beam. It's going along, minding its own business. Now, I then said "Of course it doesn't make atoms blow up on their." I didn't change the meaning of what he wrote, nor the context. I just used different words to say the same thing. You understand sentences can be said differently without changing their meanings or contexts, don't you?

[kids cheer 'Yeah!!!!!']

Good to hear!!

Okay, Mr. Vympel says I was trying to attack a different argument, a weaker argument, than his own, but you get that it is the same argument, right?

[kids cheer 'Yeah!!!!!']

Good to hear!!

And it's quite clear that Mr. Vympel is a lying whore, which he has proven again and I'm sure will continue to do so faaaar in the future.

Backpedalling. This is what you said:
You said here, that strong nuclear force is the strongest, and releasing energy "of that magnitude" is "powerful shit"- let's just ignore how moronic this sounds (very scientifc, that "powerful shit" ... ). Basically, you went from "look how strong it is! Fear the release!" to this rubbish:

I know all you kids saw where I said releasing was aka "keep it from working on the other bits". But, Mr. Vympel goes on to proclaim my saying "powerful shit" is intended to be something scientific, when everyone knows that not even scientists use scientific language all the time, especially in an informal setting and conversing with rabid warsies. Don't you think so, kids?

[kids cheer 'Yeah!!!!!']

Good to hear!!

Oh, Mr. Vympel, you should go to comedy clubs with this act of your's. You are just gonna slay them.

Which is even WORSE.*Some kind of negating effect*! This is like saying that a planet will blow apart from centrifugal forces if you can just "negate" gravity temporarily, and ignore the laws of thermodyamics and the negative gravitational potential energy problem. Negative energy must be *equalled* you can't just "turn it off". It can't be *released*, the attacking platform must supply a positive. You're back to square one.

Uh oo, kids. Mr. Vympel is trying to blurry up what's being said here.

[kids groan with upset disappointment]

I said that when you "negate", meaning keeping that force from doing its job, the other forces will do what they would do to the parts of the atom, if the strong force wasn't present and Mr. Vympel want you to think that "negating" must mean that you turn off a force. I even said that the strong force had no inverse square law, that it worked over only short distances and that negating the strong force would require something exotic. Mr. Vympel is leaving out parts of my posts. Now, kids, I ask you. Is that right?

[kids cheer 'No!!!!!']

Good to hear!!

Mr. Vympel has continued with the line of thinking that I mean "release" taking something away, even though I gave an "aka" and said strong force's range was short and then, did it again. Now, kids. I ask you again. Is...that...right?

[kids cheer 'No!!!!!']

Good to hear!!

The "other bits" and the "other fundamental forces". Is this those years of empirical analysis you referred to, you poser?

Look at that, kids. He had even put a laughing emoticon in front of that. He whines about me being thorough. He whines about me being brief. He tries to make fun of me by calling me a poser. Now, kids, I ask you. Is that right?

[kids cheer 'No!!!!!'

Tiny girl's voice in the back -- "meanie."]

Good to hear!!

So by "release", you mean "somehow turn it off". Do you realze that it's a gigantic violation of thermodynamics to make the negative potential energy simply vanish without producing an equal amount of positive energy to cancel it out? You're back where you started

Mr. Vympel shows again he is a lying whore because he must have read that I said the method of temporarily negative the strong force would be exotic, which doesn't mean brute force. I even addressed the idea of a strong enough brute force method wouldn't be used because you already have that kind of energy and don't need to waste it trying to cancel out the strength of the strong force. He even put a laughing emoticon at the end, though to be fair, Mr. Vympel is very busy and doesn't feel he needs to be truthful about what other people write. I hope Mr Vympel stops this kind of behavior, don't you kids?

[kids cheer 'Yeah!!!!!'

Tiny boy's voice in the back -- "you big bully"]

Good to hear!!

Utter nonsense. It has a lot of energy that is required for it to be destroyed. It's clear you don't know just what "negative" means. Next time you jump in and try and defend such patent ignorance, check first.

Now, here, Mr. Vympel continues with thinking that I mean "somehow turn it off". He even shows that he has trouble taking things to their fullest extent. Don't you think, kids, that Mr. Vympel should try to use his imagination more?

[kids cheer 'Yeah!!!!!']

Good to hear!!

It's obvious you wouldn't know what's often used if it was drilled through your skull, seeing as how you don't know what "negative" means.

And lastly, this is the final statement Mr. Vympel has made on his quest to try to destroy my argument, while screwing up often.

Well, kids, the train ride is almost finished.

[kids make unhappy groans

A girl in the back asks "Will there be more train rides?"]

Oh, don't you worry your little head, Suzie. If I know Mr. Vympel, and I know enough, there will be plenty of train rides in the future.

[kids cheer 'Yeah!!!!!']

Old school fucking ignorance.

From the end of my response:

I'll summarize your idiocy:

1. Put forth an utterly absurd "mechanism" (in the loosest sense of the word) that misunderstands the fundamental nature of his "powerful shit".

2. When called on this fundamental misunderstanding, he modifies his position into one even *more* stupid- i.e. somehow *negate* this energy to let the nebulously defined "other bits" and "other forces" to do the job of blowing up Alderaan- misunderstanding that in order to negate it, the energy must be equalled or exceeded by the attacking platform. Which defeats his entire exercise in backwards thinking.

3. In response to this, he then is reduced to "nuh uh! I meant to negate it by ... doing .... uhm ... something exotic! I don't how it does it, but it does! Even though I've posed extensively about being some sort of scientist, I respond to Vympel's criticisms by asking him to ingore that pesky energy requirement and just use his imagination to dream up some mysterious, unknown load of bullshit which doesn't require the energy you're talking about! And you're a dirty liar for telling me the consequences of my stupidity!"

[Darth Wong]

The increasingly theatrical arm-waving in his responses indicates pure desperation. Keep putting the screws to him. The imbecile obviously doesn't understand that simply saying "exotic" does not absolve him of the need to supply enough energy to overcome the negative nuclear binding energy.

He claims it is "brute force" to simply pump in enough energy to blow up the atoms; what he is too stupid to realize is that thermodynamics demands this level of "brute force". This is like saying it's "brute force" to use energy to heat something up rather than simply turning off the physics principles that keep things from heating up on their own.

He obviously figures that the word "exotic" is some kind of magic talisman, which instantaneously destroys any and all rebuttals to his gloriously impossible argument.

[Patrick Degan]

Hmm... the imbecile's certainly learned Darkstar's brand of "reasoning" almost line for line. However, as has been observed before: always two there are —a master and an apprentice.

[Glimmervoid]

Just out of curiosity how would a planet destroying chain relation weapon work. Weapons like the galaxy gun and the zindey sphere how do they get round the huge energy needs.

[Lord Poe]

Hmm... the imbecile's certainly learned Darkstar's brand of "reasoning" almost line for line. However, as has been observed before: always two there are —a master and an apprentice.

If I tightened my tin foil hat enough, I'd surmise that Darkstar is just ENOUGH of a loser to actually be TJhairball, and Gstone as well. Nah..even he's not that certifiable. Hmm...

[Terr Fangbite]

Ugh reading that dribble just lowered my IQ by a few points. Whats with the kid show routine? Does he have some deepsetted psychological problem? Or is he admitting to where he gets science knowledge from?

[Vympel]

GStone's idiocy has gotten boring (i.e. "you're a liar because I say so and it can't be DET because fire rings and it's an exotic chain reaction and you have to disprove that blah blah blah")

But here's more fun from hairball!

Extracts:

A stationary planet the mass of the Earth has 5.3x10^43 J of energy lying around. E=mc^2 for a stationary object, and the Earth has a mass of ~5.9x10^24 kg, with c being roughly 3x10^8. This is quite enough energy to blow lots of crap up.

Proof complete.

That was in response to a question as to how a planet could blow itself up.

And what's with your inaccuracy on the issue of nuclear potential energy? Nuclear potential energy not only exists, but is useable... Hiroshima demonstrated that quite well. By shifting final nuclear configurations around, everything but iron-56 has potential energy. If you can cause the nuclei to all dissassociate and then reassemble later in their lowest energy state, then you can squeeze plenty of energy out of matter.

Unfortunately, rocky planets tend to have iron cores, which make that a bit iffy geometrically.

Is it just me, or is he trying a blatantly obvious shell game here? Hiroshima- erm ... FISSION?!

[Darth Wong]

A stationary planet the mass of the Earth has 5.3x10^43 J of energy lying around. E=mc^2 for a stationary object, and the Earth has a mass of ~5.9x10^24 kg, with c being roughly 3x10^8. This is quite enough energy to blow lots of crap up.

If the Earth was made of half matter and half antimatter, this would be a great argument (leaving aside the fact that he's so fucking stupid that he can't even do simple multiplication, since 6E24 x 9E16 is 5.4E41, not 5.4E43).

And what's with your inaccuracy on the issue of nuclear potential energy? Nuclear potential energy not only exists, but is useable... Hiroshima demonstrated that quite well. By shifting final nuclear configurations around, everything but iron-56 has potential energy. If you can cause the nuclei to all dissassociate and then reassemble later in their lowest energy state, then you can squeeze plenty of energy out of matter.

Yes, he's clearly an imbecile. Hiroshima did not release nuclear binding energy. Nuclear fission works by imparting enough energy to the nucleus to overcome binding energy in order to produce byproducts whose total mass is slightly less than that of the original nucleus (the difference being released as E=mc^2), not by finding a way to magically turn negative energy into positive energy. That's why you have to bombard the nucleus with fucking neutrons in order to make it fission! I can't believe this imbecile is still trying to carry on with this cretinous "release the binding energy" nonsense.

Is it just me, or is he trying a blatantly obvious shell game here? Hiroshima- erm ... FISSION?!

He thinks that nuclear fission works by releasing the locked-up binding energy. He still doesn't get that whole concept of how a negative quantity is different from a positive quantity. Honestly, this guy is rapidly working himself up to a Hall of Fame performance which shall live forever in the annals of idiocy.

[Patrick Degan]

A stationary planet the mass of the Earth has 5.3x10^43 J of energy lying around. E=mc^2 for a stationary object, and the Earth has a mass of ~5.9x10^24 kg, with c being roughly 3x10^8. This is quite enough energy to blow lots of crap up.

Proof complete.

And what's with your inaccuracy on the issue of nuclear potential energy? Nuclear potential energy not only exists, but is useable... Hiroshima demonstrated that quite well. By shifting final nuclear configurations around, everything but iron-56 has potential energy. If you can cause the nuclei to all dissassociate and then reassemble later in their lowest energy state, then you can squeeze plenty of energy out of matter.

Unfortunately, rocky planets tend to have iron cores, which make that a bit iffy geometrically.

BWAHA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

[Vympel]

After pointing out his maths mistake and matter/anti-matter-

*shrug* I dropped the wrong decimal. It happens on occasion... 5.3x10^41 is indeed the correct figure... and quite enough to come up with the necessary energy to blow apart selfsame planet. You will find this is typically the case with non-exotic bodies of matter.

The energy content of the planet holds regardless of what is matter or antimatter. Mass is energy. Very basic, very simple, and very true.

He just won't let it go! Just how the hell does he propose to accomplish the feat? Translation: "somehow ... in a very exotic, erm ... low power ... way!"

His response to my response to his idiotic referencing of fusion:

No nuclear particles are truly destroyed in fusion or fission; they are simply rearranged into a form with a lower nuclear potential. This energy is expressed as mass due to the equivalence of energy and mass - they are perfectly equivalent. Similarly, any proposed chain reaction adds some critical energy to the system in order to cause a reaction that reduces the rest mass of the system, liberating net energy.

Tell me if I got it right- he's simply mumbling in general terms to get out of looking like a complete twat, correct? Fission had nothing to do with the topic, and never did.

Potential is very simple. Normal matter has chemical, electrical, and nuclear potential; potential is always relative to some arbitrary point. You're the one claiming red herrings all about the place.

Actually, what I said here was that he was either an idiot for thinking fission was relevant, or was merely tossing out red herrings to try and distract the issue from his stupidity (which GStoner originally referenced).


And just for fun, the most novel author's intent idiot argument, EVER:

Lucas wrote at a time when the conversion of matter into energy and the rhetoric of destroying planets was fresh in everybody's mind. The Death Star is a very clear analogue in SW to the nuke... that mysterious chain reaction based mass-energy conversion weapon capable of wiping out cities in less time than one can hold one's breath

[Darth Wong]

After pointing out his maths mistake and matter/anti-matter-

*shrug* I dropped the wrong decimal. It happens on occasion... 5.3x10^41 is indeed the correct figure... and quite enough to come up with the necessary energy to blow apart selfsame planet. You will find this is typically the case with non-exotic bodies of matter.

The energy content of the planet holds regardless of what is matter or antimatter. Mass is energy. Very basic, very simple, and very true.

He just won't let it go! Just how the hell does he propose to accomplish the feat? Translation: "somehow ... in a very exotic, erm ... low power ... way!"

In other words, he's seriously arguing that the Death Star has this incredible weapon that can instantly transform anything it touches turn into pure energy? And which mysteriously stops short of the atmosphere and then whips around the planet at relativistic speed for no reason since he thinks there's no shield?

His response to my response to his idiotic referencing of fusion:

No nuclear particles are truly destroyed in fusion or fission; they are simply rearranged into a form with a lower nuclear potential. This energy is expressed as mass due to the equivalence of energy and mass - they are perfectly equivalent. Similarly, any proposed chain reaction adds some critical energy to the system in order to cause a reaction that reduces the rest mass of the system, liberating net energy.

Tell me if I got it right- he's simply mumbling in general terms to get out of looking like a complete twat, correct? Fission had nothing to do with the topic, and never did.

Actually, what he's doing is correcting his earlier statement so that it says the same thing I said, and desperately trying to pretend that this is actually what he meant all along even though he previously said that the binding energy is liberated.

Potential is very simple. Normal matter has chemical, electrical, and nuclear potential; potential is always relative to some arbitrary point. You're the one claiming red herrings all about the place.

Actually, what I said here was that he was either an idiot for thinking fission was relevant, or was merely tossing out red herrings to try and distract the issue from his stupidity (which GStoner originally referenced).

He's simply tried to quietly morph his argument from "the nuclear binding energy is incredibly powerful, and you can use it" to "you can just turn the matter directly into energy" and hoping you won't notice.

And just for fun, the most novel author's intent idiot argument, EVER:

Lucas wrote at a time when the conversion of matter into energy and the rhetoric of destroying planets was fresh in everybody's mind. The Death Star is a very clear analogue in SW to the nuke... that mysterious chain reaction based mass-energy conversion weapon capable of wiping out cities in less time than one can hold one's breath

Lucas wrote at a time when Einstein's theory of relativity was fresh and new? I think this guy needs to check his history book

[Vympel]

*rubs forehead*. I appreciate the assistance, this guy seems to be a master in the verbose bullshitting department. I'm reminded now of the point that we're supposed to believe the Empire can magically turn matter into pure energy-but it's still powered by nuclear fusion. Because of "sun".

[Patrick Degan]

This is what this loony bullshit sounds like:

Can you see or measure an atom? Yet you can explode one. A ray of sunlight is made up of many atoms.

...

Take a can of your gasoline. Say this can of gasoline is the sun. Now, you spread a thin line of it to a ball, representing the Earth. Now, the gasoline represents the sunlight, the sun particles. Here we saturate the ball with the gasoline, the sunlight. Then we put a flame to the ball. The flame will speedily travel around the earth, back along the line of gasoline to the can, or the sun itself. It will explode this source and spread to every place that gasoline, our sunlight, touches. Explode the sunlight here, gentlemen, you explode the universe. Explode the sunlight here and a chain reaction will occur direct to the sun itself and to all the planets that sunlight touches, to every planet in the universe.

From Ed Wood's immortal "masterpiece", Plan 9 From Outer Space. And yet, Wood's hilarously nonsensical spew somehow makes more sense than what GStoned and co. are putting forth.

[SPOOFE]

I guess you simply need to stress that he needs a mechanism... he needs to explain HOW that mass magically turns to energy. "It's negated somehow!" How? "By the Death Star's beam, stupid!" What did the beam do to negate the binding energy? "It shot Alderaan! Jeez, didn't you even watch the movies?!?"

In fact, nevermind. I'd advocate activities such as slicing your own wrists or listening to John Tesh music before I'd send a fellow brother in arms off to suffer cruelly at the hands of a monstrous fate that would beget such a stupid Trekkie.

[Ted C]

A telling moment was when BigHairyMountainMan said that if he rolled a stone up a hill and then lett it roll back down, it would gain more kinetic energy rolling down than he used to roll it up.

How wrong can you be in one sentence?

[Lord Pounder]

TJHairball is a TK and TBBS regular IIRC, what do you expect from a guy who hangs out in this places.

[Vympel]

More gloruious abject ignorance from GStone!

Watch as he mangles the concepts of force, power and energy:

Force is strength or energy exerted or brought to bear. Energy is a vigorous exertion of power; usable power. Gravitational force comes from gravitational energy. Each of the 4 fundamental forces in the universe are energy, which the strong force is the strongest. They are related.

All in one compact paragraph!

Force is energy!

Gravitational force comes from gravitational energy!

Energy is the exertion of power!



Twit. I swear, I think he was getting this horribly fucking backwards on PURPOSE.

[Meest]

More gloruious abject ignorance from GStone!

Watch as he mangles the concepts of force, power and energy:

Force is strength or energy exerted or brought to bear. Energy is a vigorous exertion of power; usable power. Gravitational force comes from gravitational energy. Each of the 4 fundamental forces in the universe are energy, which the strong force is the strongest. They are related.

All in one compact paragraph!

Force is energy!

Gravitational force comes from gravitational energy!

Energy is the exertion of power!



Twit. I swear, I think he was getting this horribly fucking backwards on PURPOSE.

How can even a "google scientist" be so dumb? I mean honestly, opening chapters in grade 9 science books give explainations in laymans terms that are impossible to butcher into Gstonian.

[Lord Poe]

How can even a "google scientist" be so dumb? I mean honestly, opening chapters in grade 9 science books give explainations in laymans terms that are impossible to butcher into Gstonian.

The greatest thing about these Trekkies is that I no longer get emails accusing me of making the Trekkies on my web pages look stupid on purpose. Darkstar is the den mother of a dozen Trektard idiots. I love it!

[Connor MacLeod]

*rubs forehead*. I appreciate the assistance, this guy seems to be a master in the verbose bullshitting department. I'm reminded now of the point that we're supposed to believe the Empire can magically turn matter into pure energy-but it's still powered by nuclear fusion. Because of "sun".

I'd be VERY careful about this. If he's even somewhat intelligent and has access to the novelization, he might refer to that as proof (it DOES mention "mass energy conversion" IIRC).. it sounds like he's using the "DS reactor comparable to a sun" argument.

Best response is that in the case of the former, it doesn't really affect anything - they can generate prodigious amounts of energy in a second or less (If he uses the nuclear argument, one could point out that nuclear weapons and nuclear power are closely intertwined.)

What's more, the Death Star is STILL required to withstand this energy - and not only now is there the tremendous amount of debris, there is a tremendous amount of radiation as well.

As for the "sun-reactor" comment frrom the novel, point out that it doesn't say whether the energy release is equivalent to what a star produces in a second, or what it produces over its lifetime. It could be argued either way (and the interpretation heavily favors total output.)

[Vympel]

I'd be VERY careful about this. If he's even somewhat intelligent and has access to the novelization, he might refer to that as proof (it DOES mention "mass energy conversion" IIRC).. it sounds like he's using the "DS reactor comparable to a sun" argument.

Already happened and already rebutted- I said that such conversion could easily refer to the processes of the Death Star's reactor. He had no real response other than to argue that his was the correct interpretation with a vague hand wave towards "convention" (of what, god knows)- a typical practice for him. This is tjhairball I mean, not GStone.

As for the "sun-reactor" comment frrom the novel, point out that it doesn't say whether the energy release is equivalent to what a star produces in a second, or what it produces over its lifetime. It could be argued either way (and the interpretation heavily favors total output.)

That's a good point- I've largely stuck to the point that it's a vague quantifier and using it as indicative of "fusion" is a hasty generalization. I also brought up the script's (higher canon) descrption of the destruction as being equivalent to a supernova- when taking both into account, any argument that its being literal is destined to fail.

I also borrowed Mike's earlier point that they're simply employing the common Trekkie paradigm of assuming that the reactor must release it's energy in some sort of uncontrolled titanic explosion simply because it got damaged:

They're committing the classic Trekkie geek sin: assuming that Star Trek sets the rules and paradigms for all of sci-fi (and sometimes they even think this is true of real life). In Star Trek, a ship releases a vast amount of stored energy when it explodes, because for some asinine reason the system is designed to be super-volatile that way. In real-life, a nuclear fission reactor, a nuclear fusion reactor, and any other kind of reactor we have ever built will not release its entire stored energy in one titanic blast when it's destroyed. So there's no reason to assume that a SW reactor must do so, unless (as mentioned previously) you're one of these numb-skulled Trekkies who makes assumptions about other sci-fi series based on Trek.

[Connor MacLeod]

Well, the matter-energy conversion argument doesn't really affect things as much as I suspect he hopes. Even if all the energy comes from the planet (liek he's trying to claim), the fact that the Death Star needs to be able to survive proximity to as violent a planet-destruction as that is telling (no way in hell it could outrun it before the debris impacts!) - the amount of energy being absorbed is going to be well into the e30 range for a 1e38 joule superlaser blast.

And arguably, if they can withstand that much energy externally, they should logically be able to contain a comparable amount... and by the same methods they should be able to generate power (especialyl since the s uperlaser would demonstrate the process is near-instantaneous.)

In other words, the power generation capabilites are going to be roughly comparable to what they are by DET. Not all that big a difference between the two, really.

[Vympel]

tjhairball:

Incorrect. Fission and fusion processes overcome particular forces - the nuclear binding force aka the "strong nuclear force" in the former case - and release the nuclear binding energy. You may, of course, choose to continue not to take me at my word... I recommend you educate yourself on the matter by reading a few articles on nuclear binding energy and fission before continuing to disagree, however. You may note the frequent iteration of how fission releases nuclear binding energy.

Now, leaving aside the fact that as a matter of definition binding energy is negative, and that some of these links *contradict* him and most don't support his claim of "frequent iteration" whatsoever- Wikipedia and astronomy.com do indeed make the claim that binding energy is "released". Are they just being sloppy?

[Darth Wong]

tjhairball:

Incorrect. Fission and fusion processes overcome particular forces - the nuclear binding force aka the "strong nuclear force" in the former case - and release the nuclear binding energy.
You may, of course, choose to continue not to take me at my word... I recommend you educate yourself on the matter by reading a few articles on nuclear binding energy and fission before continuing to disagree, however. You may note the frequent iteration of how fission releases nuclear binding energy.

Now, leaving aside the fact that as a matter of definition binding energy is negative, and that some of these links *contradict* him and most don't support his claim of "frequent iteration" whatsoever- Wikipedia and astronomy.com do indeed make the claim that binding energy is "released". Are they just being sloppy?

Since there is no dispute that the binding energy is negative in quantity, I don't see what he's trying to drive at except hoping to use vaguely defined terminology in order to support a mathematically absurd position. Real scientists deal in equations, not semantics. Binding energy is negative; you cannot "release" it into positive energy.

If someone talks of utilizing binding energy, he is obviously being extremely oversimplistic with his terminology (the fact that he appeals to Google rather than explaining the physics himself indicates his pitiful level of knowledge, since anyone with real technical expertise would not need to resort to a Google link list for such a simple principle).

The binding energy for two small nuclei will generally have a greater magnitude than the binding energy for one large nuclei. The difference comes from the nuclei being in a lower potential energy state, which makes the binding energy larger (but in a negative direction). In other words, just as an object converts gravitational potential energy to kinetic energy as it falls, nuclei can convert potential energy to kinetic energy as they move to lower energy states. Unfortunately for IgnorantHairball's Google-based science skills, it is incorrect to describe this as a "release of binding energy", since binding energy is always negative. However, those concepts are often too difficult for laypeople to grasp, so people will state something that is technically incorrect in order to gloss over it for the rubes.

The distinction between binding energy and potential energy is not a small one however, since any notion of "releasing the binding energy" implies that if a nucleus has, say, 200 MeV binding energy, you can actually use that. In reality, if a nucleus has 200 MeV binding energy and it is possible to convert it into two nuclei whose combined binding energy is 230MeV, 30MeV of potential energy will be released. You will never use the atom's 200 MeV of binding energy because that 200MeV was already released a long time ago; that's why binding energy is negative! As I've said before, this is exactly like saying that you can spend your debt; it's idiotic. You can potentially drive yourself even deeper into debt, up to certain limits, but there is no way to spend your debt; it is money you already spent.

These energies are related to the same force, but equating potential energy to binding energy is simply wrong; potential energy is positive, binding energy is negative. However, how many laypeople understand that? Probably as few as the people who would understand that nuclear fission is usually not caused by actually overcoming binding forces, but rather, by quantum tunneling.