Turbolaser energy requirements

[Locutus_8472]

From: This Site

One “ton” equals energy release of 1,000kg of TNT (4 * 10^109 Joules)

Based on this, a 500 gigaton turbolaser would equal (2*10^121) Joules

Now lets visit the famous E=mc^2, which can predict the energy release of anti-matter. (THE most potent conceivable fuel for anything, as it is pure matter-energy conversion)

I will solve the equation for the mass in kilos of antimatter needed to fuel ONE turbolaser blast, assuming the turbolaser mechanism is totally efficient. (Canon about cooling systems makes this very conservative)


(2*10^121) =m(299 792 458 m / s)^2
(2*10^121) =M(8.98755179 × 10^16)
(2 * (10^121)) / (8.98755179 × (10^16)) = 2.22530011 × 10^104

That is 10^104 Kilograms, or 5*10^101 Metric tons. In normal numbers:

500,000,000,000, 000,000,000, 000,000,000, 000,000,000, 000,000,000, 000,000,000, 000,000,000, 000,000,000, 000,000,000, 000,000,000, 000,000,000, 000,000,000, Metric tons of antimatter for ONE STINKIN SHOT!!!!!!!!!!!

Dare I inject math into the sacred world of turbolaser yields?

If you try to argue that “hypermatter” produces more energy per kilo then anti-matter, see this statement “You can’t have a more efficient reaction then pure matter-energy conversion”

Also the second law of thermodynamics states that increase in entropy is always greater than or equal to zero. This means you CAN’T get more energy out of a reaction than you put into it.

If the antimatter was in the form of water you would need 1.11111111 × 10^92 cubic kilometers of anti-water for ONE SHOT

Need I say more?

[Darth Wong]

You're one of those imbeciles who thinks that every single shot from an ISD must be a full-power HTL blast, right? They rarely use these things for a reason; you have done nothing to show why the power rating is impossible.

BTW, your math is horrible and you're a raving moron. You only need 23 tons of matter/antimatter to produce 500 gigatons. How old are you? Do you know how to operate a calculator? Do you even understand how exponents work?

[Batman]

FYI, I just checked the site that moron is supposedly working from, and they rate a ton of TNT at
"One “ton” equals energy release of 1,000kg of TNT (4 * 109 Joules)"
which to any rational person reads as 4x10E9 joules, which is reasonably in line with the official 4.3E15 J definition for a MT.
Not that that site seems particularly reliable in the first place.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

One “ton” equals energy release of 1,000kg of TNT (4 * 10^109 Joules)

Actually, it said "4*109". What happened here is that the superscript had not been transferred over into the cached HTML copy. The real ton of TNT only has 4.186*10^9 joules.

And from that, the rest of your argument dies...

[Kuroneko]

The bomb on Hiroshima was around 15Kt, which is more than one-billonth of the 500Gt yield given, meaning, if the above calculatin were correct, the Little Boy had at minimum 1e95kg mass. This is so patently ludicrous as to have the mass of at least 10^53 Milky Way galaxies delivered on a plane. There is only one purely theoretical limit to the power generation that even magic-tech would not overcome, that being around 1e52W, with anything attempting to saturate it turning into a black hole, the horizon preventing further the delivery of the energy output. No physical process can surpass this limit, but neither Death Star even comes close to it--one would have to destroy billions of Alderaans per second to do so. Hypermatter cannot solve this, as it is still only a pseudomagic storage device, and has to be converted to 'real' mass-energy at some point. Any problems with Star Wars weapons yields are not found through relativity (as the OP attempted to do), but rather engineering and materials science. With suspention of disbelief in those areas, the problem disappears.

[Junghalli]

If you try to argue that “hypermatter” produces more energy per kilo then anti-matter, see this statement “You can’t have a more efficient reaction then pure matter-energy conversion”

Hypermatter supposedly draws energy from hyperspace. A hypermatter reactor doesn't generate the power, just channels it from a naturally occuring source (apparently hyperspace is very rich in energy).

[SirNitram]

If you try to argue that “hypermatter” produces more energy per kilo then anti-matter, see this statement “You can’t have a more efficient reaction then pure matter-energy conversion”

Hypermatter supposedly draws energy from hyperspace. A hypermatter reactor doesn't generate the power, just channels it from a naturally occuring source (apparently hyperspace is very rich in energy).

Where's that come from?

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

There is only one purely theoretical limit to the power generation that even magic-tech would not overcome, that being around 1e52W, with anything attempting to saturate it turning into a black hole

Question. Is that for a certain unit area, or would this hold true even if the theoretical power generation device is the size of the entire universe? Just curious.

[Praxis]

If you try to argue that “hypermatter” produces more energy per kilo then anti-matter, see this statement “You can’t have a more efficient reaction then pure matter-energy conversion”

1) This is violated in Star Trek repeatedly- see DS9, where a couple mines are able to self-replicate themselves almost indefinitely. Calculate the amount of energy by E=MC^2 it takes to create that much mass, and you realize it shouldn't be able to replicate itself ONCE.

2) Look up hyper in the dictionary. One of the definitions is multi-dimensional. So, multidimensional matter. That'd let you generate vastly more power than antimatter, since antimatter gives you the most energy you can get in ONE dimension.

[Kuroneko]

Question. Is that for a certain unit area, or would this hold true even if the theoretical power generation device is the size of the entire universe? Just curious.

It is the absolute power limit as measured locally by realistic observers. If a certain part of the universe, no matter how large, attempted to dump energy faster than this to the rest of the universe, a horizon would form. The only real caveat is how a positive cosmological constant would change this. A region in such a universe could indeed be emitting energy at a rate surpassing this, but it would not be a 'device' in any reasonable sense, since parts of it would be causally disconnected from one another. Proving this limit is a bit involved in the general case, but it can be seen intuitively by trying to surpass it with imaginary pseudomagic technology--suppose there is a sphere of radius R and mass M which is instantly converted to energy and sent outwards at the speed of light, thus having power Mc³/R. (Sphere because deviation from spherical symmetry for a given power would mean that the energy density at some point would be higher than it would otherwise be, which helps horizon formation.) However, any such sphere would need to be at least the Schwarzschild radius in size or else be a black hole, thus R>2GM/c², which means P < c^5/(4G) ~ 9e51W. The reason why this should be is actually not too suprising. To exert a force on anything, there needs to be a counter-balancing force; to deliver momentum somewhere, there needs to be a balance of momentum in the opposite direction. All energy has momentum; its most efficient form is that of light, p = E/c. These two balanced flows of energy-momentum gravitationally attract each other, just as they should, and this gravity slows their propagation. Eventually, gravity wins no matter how cleverly constructed the device is or how exotic the materials involved are.

There is a related effect in special relativity called acceleration horizon. If an point-particle undergoes acceleration a, a horizon forms a distance c²/a from it. This is obviously a problem for real objects, which have spatial extent, if the acceleration is large enough so that its length along the axis it is accelerated on is larger than c²/a. Unfortunately, this length must also be at least the Schwarzschild diameter, which gives the maximum acceleration of a mass m as F/m = c^4/(4Gm), the upper limit achieved only when the object is nearly a black hole. Surpassing this limit breaks the object no matter how tough the materials involved are or how uniformly it is accelerated (to minimize internal stress, as in Newtonian physics, there is no theoretical reason why all parts of an object could not be accelerated at exactly the same rate, which would normally keep it from breaking). The relationship between force and power gives the same power limit as above.

[Crazedwraith]

If you try to argue that “hypermatter” produces more energy per kilo then anti-matter, see this statement “You can’t have a more efficient reaction then pure matter-energy conversion”

1) This is violated in Star Trek repeatedly- see DS9, where a couple mines are able to self-replicate themselves almost indefinitely. Calculate the amount of energy by E=MC^2 it takes to create that much mass, and you realize it shouldn't be able to replicate itself ONCE.

2) Look up hyper in the dictionary. One of the definitions is multi-dimensional. So, multidimensional matter. That'd let you generate vastly more power than antimatter, since antimatter gives you the most energy you can get in ONE dimension.

Ummm Antimatter is 3d if it isn't its just a line....

[Praxis]

If you try to argue that “hypermatter” produces more energy per kilo then anti-matter, see this statement “You can’t have a more efficient reaction then pure matter-energy conversion”

1) This is violated in Star Trek repeatedly- see DS9, where a couple mines are able to self-replicate themselves almost indefinitely. Calculate the amount of energy by E=MC^2 it takes to create that much mass, and you realize it shouldn't be able to replicate itself ONCE.

2) Look up hyper in the dictionary. One of the definitions is multi-dimensional. So, multidimensional matter. That'd let you generate vastly more power than antimatter, since antimatter gives you the most energy you can get in ONE dimension.

Ummm Antimatter is 3d if it isn't its just a line....

Sorry, I meant this universe, not dimension.

[NecronLord]

Let's not mention that the hypermatter makes up the majority of the ship's mass. The stuff is nearly as dense as neutronium. 23 tons would be far less than a centimeter cubed in volume. If you had a tank full of hypermatter the size of my leg, you could run a turbolaser for a very long time.

A star destroyer has tanks vastly bigger than my entire house.

[HyperionX]

Let's not mention that the hypermatter makes up the majority of the ship's mass. The stuff is nearly as dense as neutronium. 23 tons would be far less than a centimeter cubed in volume. If you had a tank full of hypermatter the size of my leg, you could run a turbolaser for a very long time.

A star destroyer has tanks vastly bigger than my entire house.

Uh, a cubic centimeter of neutronium weighs about 100 million - 1 billion metric tons, so it's not even close.

[Star-Blighter]

Let's not mention that the hypermatter makes up the majority of the ship's mass. The stuff is nearly as dense as neutronium. 23 tons would be far less than a centimeter cubed in volume. If you had a tank full of hypermatter the size of my leg, you could run a turbolaser for a very long time.

A star destroyer has tanks vastly bigger than my entire house.

Uh, a cubic centimeter of neutronium weighs about 100 million - 1 billion metric tons, so it's not even close.

You missed his fucking point completly in favor of a very obvious nitpick. I SHOULD assume that you did that intentionally and flame the living shit out of you for it, but I'm a nice person.

Don't do it again.

[Batman]

Let's not mention that the hypermatter makes up the majority of the ship's mass. The stuff is nearly as dense as neutronium. 23 tons would be far less than a centimeter cubed in volume. If you had a tank full of hypermatter the size of my leg, you could run a turbolaser for a very long time.
A star destroyer has tanks vastly bigger than my entire house.

Uh, a cubic centimeter of neutronium weighs about 100 million - 1 billion metric tons, so it's not even close.

Which might be the reason he said far less than a centimeter cubed, you know...

[NecronLord]

Uh, a cubic centimeter of neutronium weighs about 100 million - 1 billion metric tons, so it's not even close.

Nevertheless, the point remains, that the silos that store the fuel are many orders of magnitude denser than the Accy, including it's Neutronium impregnated armour.

Here's a theory: Hypermatter as a contraction for hyper-dense-matter. Hence, a hypermatter annihalation reactor is simply E=MC² with some really dense M.

[NecronLord]

Moved.