New page I banged together

[Brian Young]

!
Why? We know the Replicators intended to destroy Atlantis. This requires large scale physical damage. It therefore must be their best shot.

Except the Replicators do not want to destroy Atlantis. We see how the Replicator's weapon satellite is aimed very close to the command tower, but isn't directly hitting it.

Atlantis was moving at the time.
And the beam did hit the command tower. I seem to recall Dr Weir being injured. That usually doesn't happen from a miss.

[Brian Young]

The relatively poor performance on the asteroid might be because the beam was out of focus at such a short distance. It'd still have the same energy, but it'd be spread out over a bigger area and thus may conduct or radiate away quickly enough to slow the melting process.

My gut suspects that such is unlikely to change the order of magnitude though.

Well, a beam is coherent, so focus is not an issue. Being coherent, it is in focus for the duration.
To illustrate, a laser pointer places a nice, fine dot on the target, whether at arm's length, or hundreds of meters away.

[Batman]

Small problem-there isn't one. Even accepting the unusual clarity of the ocean water (I don't think you'd get that much ambient light at a depth of a couple hundred metres anywhere in Earth's oceans) there should have been a lot more noticeable interaction between the beam and the seawater in its path.
The beam is pretty much instantly and continuously vapourizing a couple hundred cubic metres of water. I'd expect something decidedly more noticeable than what we saw in the episode.

How do you frequently put it? Ah, yes: "As per your say-so"?
I couldn't resist

I wouldn't want you to
And, err, yes there should, at least with an ordinary DET weapon, accepting Brian's beam diameter and assuming Atlantis is actually that deep.
As I said before, they must be deep enough for the tips of the towers to be underwater but ambient lighting, at least to me, suggests it wasn't all that more than that.

As briefly as we see that beam interacting with the ocean, I think it's hasty to say not enough seawater was vaporized, especially based on unquantifiables like "I think we should see more steam."

That's a fair enough criticism especially as I'm working from memory. I stand by it but freely admit that at least at this time, it's little more than a gut feeling.

Guys,
No reason to get hostile with each other.
I think it was...Batman...who brought up the great images of nukes exploding. Good job.

Indeed, but not on my part. You're praising the wrong party. That was adama-grif. I'M the guy with the unquantifyables Sean rightly complained about.

But it doesn't really relate to the use of a beam, which has different effects than an explosion. Quite right about the amount of energy involved. But *for whatever reason*, the water didn't absorb much of the beam. Therefore, we don't have a lot of steam.

Or maybe the beam wasn't all that powerful to begin with due to working on magic advanced technology rather than brute force. Note that I don't particularly like this explanation as SG, while known to do it on occasion, is far less prone to resort to technobabble weapons than Trek is.

We could debate about the specific nature of the beam all week, but I'm willing to concede that it is some form of superphysics, because it obviously isn't a laser, like most other SciFi beam weapons.
But the nature of the beam isn't really relevant.
Why? We know the Replicators intended to destroy Atlantis. This requires large scale physical damage. It therefore must be their best shot.
If the beam were designed to just drain shields, and was not DET, as you said, what would they do once the shields are down?

Keep the beam firing? It being primarily geared to taking the shields down doesn't mean it can't also do DET damage (or even, Valen forbid, do something NDFish to matter).

How would they know when the shields were down?

They wouldn't need to assuming the beam has a DET/NDF component.

Why would a beam that drains shields NOT affect the asteroid more?

A pure shield drainer would by definition have little to no effect on the asteroid (but also do beans about destroying Atlantis so that's something of a wash). But as Atlantis is also routinely damaged by modern day chemical explosives or reasonably small scale kinetic impactors (Sheppard crashing a Jumper into the command tower in s5, I'd have to look up the episode number) the DET component needn't necessarily be all that impressive.

I'm sorry, but I really see no valid reason to assume the beam was NOT intended to destroy Atlantis, as the Replicators said. That requires a weapon that does physical damage. Period.

Absolutely. But not necessarily through DET, nor all that much of it.

Was there any reason given why they didn't just move Atlantis laterally to get out of the beam's field of fire? I don't remember the episode all that well but I don't think anybody ever even mentioned the possibility only to be smacked down by McKay saying 'You think this isn't the first thing we tried' or some such.

And frankly, for something needing an infinite number of ZPMs or a Black Hole as a power source, for a DET weapon your firepower numbers are pretty pathetic. You can't blame the discrepancy on the power draw of the Gate itself, SGC managed to keep intragalactic wormholes open for the full 38 minutes on external power before they ever heard of Naquada generators (if memory serves).

[Brian Young]

Out of curiousity, in your analysis of the asteroid, why'd you pick a sphere 60 meters across, when none of the dimensions that you marked out were 60 meters? You could have picked a sphere 54m across, which was the largest dimension, and still have been generous. After all, the beam cut through the edge of the thing in your image.

Just rounding up. I always like to round up when calculating an upper limit. Makes it harder to dispute.

[Batman]

Well, a beam is coherent, so focus is not an issue. Being coherent, it is in focus for the duration.
To illustrate, a laser pointer places a nice, fine dot on the target, whether at arm's length, or hundreds of meters away.

That is, to be blunt, not true. The beam is as focused as we can make it. It will be a nice fine dot at arm's length. Assuming a sufficiently powerful laser pointer, it will still be visible and a dot at a couple hundred metres, but it's going to be a larger dot.
Conversely, the beam may not start out in focus, but may need a certain distance to get there (sun-magnifying glass-target of your choice).

[adam_grif]

*Why would the Replicators use a weak beam to destroy Atlantis, if they have all this "supernova" firepower in reserve?

Why would the replicators have used a KT level beam when regular nuclear weapons can reach the MT range easily, and Naquadah enhanced devices can reach Gigatonne range, and pure Naquadah weapons can be as powerful as you want them to be as long as you keep cramming more Naquadah into them?

If the total value of the shield was as you say on the order of Megatonnes, human beings could have bombarded the city and destroyed it in like 15 seconds flat. The replicators are obviously far beyond this capability, so they could have bombarded with nukes anyway.

If they could use Zero Point Modules offensively, by sabotaging them and bursting them in close proximity to the city, should not that at least match the total output of the single ZPM powering the city? You seem to think ZPM's do some funky voodoo to make them boom much more energy than they could extract under controlled release, but even if they boom with less and we ignore the higher estimates of their yield when under such uncontrolled release, then the "unlimited" number of ZPM's they had on hand still should have been sufficient to overwhelm the shields nearly instantaneously.

It doesn't matter which way you cut it here, the Replicators did have the firepower to overwhelm the shields and destroy the city VERY quickly, but chose not to for whatever reason. Either we assume they held back, or we assume that every single enemy in the series could have been defeated by detonating a single nuclear weapon close to them, but despite having easy access and a very open willingness to use them (especially in space), the Tau'ri simply chose not to destroy their enemies.

Frankly, I find it easier to believe that the Replicators didn't want to use excessive force and destroy the planet's ecosystem than that the main characters of the series have been bumbling through idiot ball after idiot ball and just conveniently forgot that they had a solution to every challenging problem, including this one.

*If ZPMs have this "supernova" power, why was it *not sufficient* to make the ship lift off the planet?

It was, they just had to modify Atlantis to accept flight with only one since it was designed to fly with 3 in sequence. Also, the fact that it can unleash the power to destroy a planet when you crack one open doesn't mean that under normal use you will be drawing a level of power anywhere close to that per second.

Why would the Replicators use a beam specially designed to drain the shields *that can't drain the shields*? It was going to take 19 hours!

ZPM's output reasonable levels of power for tens of thousands of years. Draining one in 19 hours is shockingly fast. It was going to take a fleet of 10 hive ships with their smaller cruiser escorts constantly firing on Atlantis several days to drain the ZPM. The comparative firepower of this one beam then was far higher.

*If ZPMs have "supernova" power, why could "an unlimited number" of them not blast through an asteroid?

It's not DET.

*If the beam can't take out a small asteroid, how was it supposed to destroy the city? Was it going to take another 19 hours after the shields failed? They were trying to eliminate the Atlantis personnel, because they were now a threat! That is an awful lot of time in which to get away in the Apollo.

If anybody tried to escape in the Apollo they could have turned the beam on the Apollo and destroyed it in very short order. It may be that they would destroy it slowly, or it may be that they didn't want to destroy it, or they may have switched to a different kind of beam once the shield was down and the ZPM was drained. It's also possible they wanted to salvage something from the city before they destroyed it and killed the Atlantis crew.

The Replicators made it clear they intended to destroy Atlantis and kill the personnel stationed there. They had become a threat. If this beam is not their best shot, you really must answer the above questions logically. Otherwise, you have no workable hypothesis.

Your preposterously low estimates of ZPM power leave you with a lot more to explain, sir.

[Brian Young]

Batman,

Yeah, I can't keep up with all the posts, or who made them. I type really slowly. I read slowly too.
*Big man to admit you are using gut feelings. And true. But there is no reason to operate from hazy years-old memory. That is why I post videos on these webpages.
*So, now this magic beam drains shields (over 19 freaking hours??? ), then uses special NDF-like effects on matter? Wasn't it the SAME beam that did jack shit to an asteroid the size of Serenity?
*Yes, the power level is low, comparatively. It is actually very high, just not when compared to other SciFi technologies.

See, not one of you guys debating this topic has answered the critical questions.
*Why can't a special shield-draining beam drain the shields? Nineteen hours???
*Why use a special shield-draining weapon that isn't effective at doing so, when a regular old beam, that happens to carry this "supernova"-level power, would blow the city to subatomic particles in a fraction of a second?
*Why does it take less power to defend from the beam than to lift off? This is an intergalactic starship.


This whole argument is based on the lack of steam. Has anyone stopped to think that the effect on the asteroid and the effect on the water represent similar magnitude firepower?
Objections such as an unrelated explosion are indirect and based on statements made by characters. But this example is a direct observation of firepower, thereby trumping the other examples.

The simple fact is, this weapon, *whatever its nature*, was powered by "an unlimited number of ZPMs." In over 2 minutes, it could not penetrate an asteroid that a single turbolaser bolt from the smallest turbolaser would vaporize in a fraction of a second. That Excalibur could fragment easily. That a single photon torpedo would fragment easily.
If that works out to less power than one expects, deal with it.

[Brian Young]

Well, a beam is coherent, so focus is not an issue. Being coherent, it is in focus for the duration.
To illustrate, a laser pointer places a nice, fine dot on the target, whether at arm's length, or hundreds of meters away.

That is, to be blunt, not true. The beam is as focused as we can make it. It will be a nice fine dot at arm's length. Assuming a sufficiently powerful laser pointer, it will still be visible and a dot at a couple hundred metres, but it's going to be a larger dot.
Conversely, the beam may not start out in focus, but may need a certain distance to get there (sun-magnifying glass-target of your choice).

Nitpick, and not relevant. Focus is not an issue.

[Brian Young]

Adam_grif,

Your entire reply is based on what I dub "The Holding Back Fallacy."
Okay, maybe the Replicators could have sent bombs through. But they chose to use a beam instead.
Fortunately, it allows a power calculation.
I see nowhere in any of your posts a valid objection. It is simply a "wall of ignorance," stating your previous stance over and over.
You don't address the question of why, if this beam is not DET, and specially designed to drain shields, it takes 19 hours to do so!
No, the ZPM was not enough to allow liftoff. They had to tap the power from an adjacent station, and it almost wasn't enough.
And when did a ZPM demonstrate the ability to destroy a planet?
Even when they have a ZPM, all they do is complain about the lack of power to do anything.

Oh, Atlantis...Atlantis...you are so...BIG...[squirt]

[adam_grif]

Adam_grif,

Your entire reply is based on what I dub "The Holding Back Fallacy."

You mean the same thing you're saying about every faction in the entire Gate universe? To make your calculation make sense, everybody has to be a complete idiot. To make the competing hypothesis work, the Asurans had to hold back for unclear reasons.

You don't address the question of why, if this beam is not DET, and specially designed to drain shields, it takes 19 hours to do so!

WTF? I addressed exactly that! This shield drain happens extremely quickly compared to conventional weapons. If it was a shield drainer, how fast are you expecting it to operate? I'd like to see you show your working on this one.

No, the ZPM was not enough to allow liftoff. They had to tap the power from an adjacent station, and it almost wasn't enough.

NecronLord calculated the minimum power requirements to get Atlantis to lift off, and came up with a figure of ~14 MT/second. Based on the assumption that one ZPM is not enough to lift off and you need 2, that makes 7 MT/s the expected output of a single ZPM.

Look, numbers!

But I'll just let you continue to parrot the same points about how burning through an asteroid means that ZPMs output on the order of low KT/s, and continuously straw-manning my position as saying that I think ZPM's can output energies on the order of a supernova under a controlled release.

And when did a ZPM demonstrate the ability to destroy a planet?

Camulus' sabotaged ZPM is expected to destroy the Earth when plugged into a current by an SGC scientist in early Season 8. At the end of the episode, Carter says that he drastically underestimated the explosive power and that it would actually may have been enough to "Take out the solar system". Whatever that means. I've already stated that I'm willing to take this as hyperbole, but the idea that Carter and the other scientists whose name I have forgotten actually meant "it would have been a MT level explosion" is too stupid to even consider as a possibility.

Xon said something about Project Arcturus being equal to 24 ZPM's, and it canonically blew up 3/4 of a Solar system when it went up. I can't actually speak for that episode though as I haven't seen it in several years and I'm just going off what he said with regards to the ZPM equivalence.

Oh, Atlantis...Atlantis...you are so...BIG...[squirt]

Weren't you asking us to keep things civil a few posts ago?

[Brian Young]

Adam,
I apologize for that last comment. Wasn't very nice.

[Brian Young]

I just watched Trinity.
Has nothing to do with ZPMs. That was a different technology, which even the Ancients couldn't figure out. It involved drawing zero point energy from our own space-time. That is why the system exploded. Had nothing to do with the usable power that could be generated from it.
Had nothing little to do with ZPMs.
Has nothing to do with the Replicators' beam at all.

That is the indirect calculation you guys were pitting against my direct calculation. And it turns out it isn't really related.

I stand by my calculations. They do represent an upper limit on the firepower of the beam. And I still say there is no reason to assume it is not DET.

Gonna look at those liftoff calculations now.

[Batman]

Batman,
Yeah, I can't keep up with all the posts, or who made them. I type really slowly. I read slowly too.
*Big man to admit you are using gut feelings. And true. But there is no reason to operate from hazy years-old memory. That is why I post videos on these webpages.
*So, now this magic beam drains shields (over 19 freaking hours??? ),

Nobody ever said their shield draining magic works fast. Assuming it works that way, it definitely works faster than a dozen hive ships trying to take down the shield the old fashioned way.

then uses special NDF-like effects on matter? Wasn't it the SAME beam that did jack shit to an asteroid the size of Serenity?

I was just throwing that in as a possibility to show that 'not DET' does not equal 'does no physical damage'.

*Yes, the power level is low, comparatively. It is actually very high, just not when compared to other SciFi technologies.

Compared to what is allegedly required to power this beam as per Meredith, it is pretty much inexistant.

See, not one of you guys debating this topic has answered the critical questions.
*Why can't a special shield-draining beam drain the shields? Nineteen hours???

Um-it did? It just took 19 hours to do so? At this point, you are presupposing that just because it is shield-draining, it has to be able to do so very quickly.

*Why use a special shield-draining weapon that isn't effective at doing so, when a regular old beam, that happens to carry this "supernova"-level power, would blow the city to subatomic particles in a fraction of a second?

This is a trick question, right? For whatever reason they obviously didn't use the Superbeam of Doom as the planet clearly was not reduced to its constituent atoms the moment it hit.

*Why does it take less power to defend from the beam than to lift off? This is an intergalactic starship.

How much power does it take a tank's armour to block an incoming projectile? None whatsoever. There is not necessarily a direct relation between the power of the impacting beam and the power the shields needs to draw to withstand it.

This whole argument is based on the lack of steam. Has anyone stopped to think that the effect on the asteroid and the effect on the water represent similar magnitude firepower?

I'm reasonably certain one of the points of contention is they don't?

The simple fact is, this weapon, *whatever its nature*, was powered by "an unlimited number of ZPMs."

Err no it wasn't. It was powered by something, and Meredith said it would require the power of an unlimited number of ZPMs (which, if taken literally, would reduce the power of a single ZPM to pretty much none whatsoever BTW) or a black hole-which, once more, means a really small black hole, that the vast majority of the power didn't go into the beam to begin with, or that McKay was laying it on to make sure everybody understands that yes, they were that royally screwed.

In over 2 minutes, it could not penetrate an asteroid that a single turbolaser bolt from the smallest turbolaser would vaporize in a fraction of a second. That Excalibur could fragment easily. That a single photon torpedo would fragment easily.
If that works out to less power than one expects, deal with it.

I don't think anybody has a problem with the firepower numbers. The questions seem to be a)if it's a DET weapon why doesn't it look like one (I already admitted I'm working from memory so I'm allowing that maybe it does and I was simply wrong), and
b)for me personally, if the thing requires that awesome a power source (an 'infinite' number of ZPMs/a black hole), since the power is obviously not going into the beam, what do they need it for?

[Brian Young]

Adam,

Again, I apologize for being unfriendly earlier. My team lost today by one point, and I'm a bit on edge.

NecronLord calculated the minimum power requirements to get Atlantis to lift off, and came up with a figure of ~14 MT/second. Based on the assumption that one ZPM is not enough to lift off and you need 2, that makes 7 MT/s the expected output of a single ZPM.

Actually, if you'll kindly read that page again, you'll see that this is an *upper limit.* It supports my calculations.
I haven't scaled Atlantis myself, but by my eyeballing, it looks about right.
Using the density of water is good, because it has to be close, but slightly less to float.
Then he calculates the amount of energy it would take, and points out that a ZPM cannot do this. That was, of course, reinforced in "First Strike," the episode in question here. Therefore, he calculated an upper limit on the power output of a ZPM. In other words, the usable power output is less than this figure.

Again, this is in agreement with my calculations, albeit a magnitude higher. It supports my position, rather than yours.

[Brian Young]

Batman,

See, none of this makes any sense.
*You guys assert this beam does not apply DET, simply because there is no steam. I pointed out that the water did not absorb the beam, nor even that much sunlight, so there is no reason to have steam. Do you have special knowledge of this beam that the episode did not provide?
*The Replicators didn't use the beam of doom or whatever. I like that. They didn't, because they don't have one. McKay clearly said the beam must be powered by "a black hole, or an unlimited number of ZPMs." This was their best shot. Period. Please watch the videos, that is why I go to the trouble of making them - nobody remembers things clearly.
*You see, the whole 19 hours thing. I just can't get past that. You are saying this beam was specially designed to drain shields. But it takes all night and into the next day. But that they have firepower to simply blow up the planet. But didn't do it. None of that makes ANY sense. The Replicators were trying to destroy Atlantis. Period. They didn't want to occupy it. They had a better one of their own. They didn't want the planet. It is nearly covered with water, and not worth much. Do I need to vidcap the scene where they state their intentions?

Someone keeps mentioning bombs. In Stargate, bombs and missiles are routinely shot down. Beams can really only be intercepted by shields or objects.

[Brian Young]

Okay, everybody involved. To state the beam does not apply DET requires Burden of Proof. Not speculation or what-if scenarios. Please provide it.

[Batman]

Batman,

See, none of this makes any sense.
*You guys assert this beam does not apply DET, simply because there is no steam.

I have, repeatedly, said that the beam may very well DO apply DET on top of its shield draining magic, AND admitted I may be wrong about the lack of steam for a pure DET weapon to begin with due to us never being shown how much steam there was to begin with.

*The Replicators didn't use the beam of doom or whatever. I like that. They didn't, because they don't have one. McKay clearly said the beam must be powered by "a black hole, or an unlimited number of ZPMs." This was their best shot. Period.

Exactly. Which begs the question of if they had a couple million ZPMs or a freaking black hole as a power source at their disposal, why did they they settle for a beam that would take days to kill Atlantis?

Please watch the videos, that is why I go to the trouble of making them - nobody remembers things clearly.
*You see, the whole 19 hours thing. I just can't get past that. You are saying this beam was specially designed to drain shields.

No, I'm not. I'm saying it might have been, which works with some of the aspects of the episode and really doesn't with others.

But it takes all night and into the next day. But that they have firepower to simply blow up the planet. But didn't do it. None of that makes ANY sense. The Replicators were trying to destroy Atlantis. Period. They didn't want to occupy it. They had a better one of their own. They didn't want the planet. It is nearly covered with water, and not worth much. Do I need to vidcap the scene where they state their intentions?

So why DIDN'T they just blow up the planet and be done with it? You're the one arguing they had a million ZPMs or their equivalent available to do it. McKay's statements are simply incompatible with the even by SG standards not particularly impressive performance of that beam even for a DET one.

Someone keeps mentioning bombs. In Stargate, bombs and missiles are routinely shot down. Beams can really only be intercepted by shields or objects.[/quote]

[Xon]

Even when SG-Earth was planning at destroying Atlantis in "Return" 3x11, the question was not if the BC-304's nukes could hammer the shield down or how many. But how to get past the shield. Later, against a Wraith Hive we see that BC-304 can fire a dozen nukes at once.

[Brian Young]

Batman,

I think you're starting to see my points. You just don't realize it yet.

Exactly. Which begs the question of if they had a couple million ZPMs or a freaking black hole as a power source at their disposal, why did they they settle for a beam that would take days to kill Atlantis?

My point is that, as McKay said THIS BEAM must have been powered by "a black hole, or an unlimited number of ZPMs," then ZPMs must not be very powerful by comparison to other SciFi technologies. Because this beam ain't that great. Regardless of its specific physics. McKay said THIS BEAM was using all that power.
If it were used just to drain shields and not DET, where is all that power going? Certainly not into the water. Therefore, it must be DET into Atlantis's shields. I can think of no other logical explanation, because that energy HAS TO GO SOMEWHERE. See? You're a smart guy, you have to see it is inescapable.

So why DIDN'T they just blow up the planet and be done with it? You're the one arguing they had a million ZPMs or their equivalent available to do it. McKay's statements are simply incompatible with the even by SG standards not particularly impressive performance of that beam even for a DET one.

Bingo. Why didn't they do it? Because they can't do it. We know from different episodes that the Replicators have several ZPMs at their disposal. Not millions certainly, but a generous supply of them. We can determine by McKay's statements that more than one or two were used for this.
Now, all that power has to go somewhere. If you guys want to argue against DET, you have to explain WHERE. I point toward the obvious - into Atlantis' shields. To be fair, the beam has to power the stargate and shield as well. But the primary power consumer here is the beam. The beam is the reason for the satellite in the first place. And we know that it takes only one ZPM to power strong shields, because that is what Atlantis was using. The gate stays open because the powerful beam is transmitting through it, not because it uses a bunch of power.
Anyway, if McKay is right, and he usually is, and this beam is carrying the equivalent of several ZPMs of power, and that energy has to go into the target (thermodynamics and all), we are back at square one with the asteroid.
All the way around the world to get back were we started. At least one ZPM worth of power could not drill through the asteroid, calling the power levels into question.

[Brian Young]

Bombs again. Okay. Bombs have a distinctly different effect than beams.
Maybe there is no naquadah in the Pegasus galaxy? I don't recall them looking for it. I don't recall anyone using it.
For the record, Apollo did use naquadah missiles (from Earth) against the Replicators' home planet. And they worked. May have been shields, may not have been.
Most of the time we see missiles or bombs used in Atlantis, it is an Earth ship firing them, and they get shot down. The drones don't. But they seem to damage vessels by penetrating, not by sheer explosive energy. And have we seen them used against shielded vessels? The only ships I recall in Atlantis with shields are Apollo, Daedalus, and Atlantis. The Wraith don't have them, the Aurora ships don't have them.

Anyway, there are two reasons the Replicators would not use bombs:
*Only small ones will fit through the stargate. Recall our guys destroyed all their ships!
*They can get shot down in the long distance from geostationary orbit to sea level.

In that mindset, this beam is their best shot, at least when they can't effectively deploy missiles.

[Chris OFarrell]

Dude! Quote system!

Okay, now, long reply to Chris's long reply.
*No, Babtech will drop the curtain and bow before the new year.

I feel like I should shoot you in the kneecaps for that, but its had a good run. I'll have to grab everything off it at some point...

*I never said the water was "perfectly transparent." But you call it "pitch black." It may have been some time since you've seen Atlantis, but take a look at the images I just provided. Diffuse sunlight shines all the way to the bottom.

Assuming its sunlight, it should be an even light from above. And heck, even if Atlantis is at a relatively shallow depth of a kilometer or so (which is conservative as the tower of Atlantis is 500-700 meters tall), light won't penetrate that far. In the first picture, the light of all things appears to be off to the right somewhere (it could be the ancient drilling platform we see a little later). In the second picture, the 'light' is clearly the shield grid of the city, which is, along with the laser, probably providing the local illumination.

But at any rate, if this weapon was a laser (which it isn't pretty clearly) the fact is that water is very opaque to red light at any rate, so it would have to be really working to push through.

Hell, all of this isn't really of much interest anyway; light penetrating the water isn't really even the question outside of the fact that it doesn't get a free ride, its the destructive energy we're interested in. If this was a DET weapon, the thermal energy would be being absorbed by the water all the way down all the time, as new water would be continually moving in to replace the water that is vaporized (again, something we just DON'T see, I can post close ups if you want). It was clearly loosing SOME power to the water, they say as much in the episode, but nowhere near enough.

I mean a rough, on the back of an envelope calculation here;

The beam is 3 meters thick by your page (and an eyeball of the beam coming out of the Stargate matches that quite nicely). Lets assume Atlantis is about 1000 meters underwater (not an unreasonable number given that the cities central tower is about 500 meters tall and its clearly more then twice its height under the surface) so we get a nice round number of ~21214 cubic meters of water it has to burn through. Might be interesting to calculate the energy needed to bring that to the boil, then vaporize that volume of material. IIRC its about 4 Joules for each kilogram of water increase of temp by 1 degree, and 1 ton (1000 kg) for each cubic meter of material...

And given that it has to constantly maintain that level of energy against the ocean, that its much more a power number then an energy number. Its probably still well within your estimates, but that is a HUGE volume of steam we should be seeing...

But its clearly NOT turning that volume of material into steam, I've gone over the episode a few times now, and all I can see is a few bubbles around the edge of the beam, no gigantic cloud of steam over the entire area on the surface for example...

This isn't dirty lake water. This is clean ocean water. I haven't been that long removed from a cruise, and in The Bahamas, for instance, I could see very clearly all the way to the bottom. I'd bet a laser pointer would shine just fine too. And I didn't see the first drop of this "pitch black" water to which you refer.

Uh, nice anecdote, but dude, I expect better from you of all people! There are plenty of pages on the web about light penetration in water, I can link to some if you want...
Light (an EM in general) penetration is dependent on wavelength. Long wavelengths such as red light will only penetrate 10-20 meters at best before being absorbed. Short wavelengths like blue can go as deep as 1000 meters or so. And the water absorbs heat readily (hence why the surface of the ocean is warm). If you pump a gigajoules worth of thermal energy into it...that energy has to go SOMEWHERE. It simply isn't going to pass through unhindered.

*Yes, it is a coherent beam. That is my point. Coherent beams penetrate more than diffuse light. A laser pointer will shine a lot farther than a lamp with the same power. That is the whole point of making it coherent.

Actually in these terms it just means the energy is focused onto a very small point. The same amount of energy is released in a lamp or laser of the same power, it just diffuses more, but it still has to drill all the way down. It just means its going to be delivering more of its total power at the end.

*Maybe the beam has little effect on water, but terrible effect on shields, for whatever reason. Why would this help eliminate Atlantis? The goal was to destroy Atlantis. After this mysterious beam drains the shields, then what? Why not use a beam that simply does what beams normally do? Recall a small asteroid was an effective barrier against this beam.

Atlantis is an incredibly fragile spaceship, without its shield grid. This point is made several times through the series; this beam if it completely drained the shields (and thus the ZPM) would leave them open to being taken over by the Replicators if they wanted the city intact, or be more then ample on its own to dice the city. Even the glancing blown the city took with its shields down at the end of the episode did major damage.

Further, there are arguable limits on just HOW much raw energy you can dump through a Stargate.

And hell if they just wanted to blow up Atlantis, they could have just had one of their ships drop a rigged ZPM off into orbit, then run like hell as the planet is vaporized. They went to quite a large degree of trouble to hit Atlantis in a way that would leave them helpless after all.

*Slow down, too fast on all the firepower calculations! I'm getting old! I didn't see any numbers there, but has anyone actually looked at those examples carefully? I note the Hatak vessel is in there, and I have never been impressed by their firepower. In fact, it took several seconds for Anubis's heaviest weapon on his heaviest ship to take out a pyramid. The pyramid is a replica of the Great Pyramid, so we're talking about a skyscraper. The Little Boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima destroyed 60,000 buildings. This was one, albeit large, building. Not nearly as destructive as that one nuke, rated at 15 kilotons, or about 60 terajoules. That ship was much more powerful than a Hatak, and IIRC, powered by naquadria. But in any event, this does not support firepower greater than the Replicators' beam.

Sorry, I'll list it out;

In 'Echos', a 304 (with a ZPM attached to its power grid) stood directly in the path of a major solar flare thingy (it wasn't really a flare but its the best description) in orbit around a star. Said weird flare was going to change from being a super concentrated bit of destructive goodness to a large 'wave' of energy strong enough to completely destroy the Biosphere on Lantia, as in 'scorch the entire surface of the planet and kill anything on the side facing the sun' and the Daedalus took all of it with it, albeit with a ZPM to boost its shields.

In 'Unending', another 304 with a ZPM (the Odyssey) had a planet explode, Death Star style, when they were perhaps a light second away, and took at least some of the shockwave. Somewhat terrifyingly, you could even argue that two Ori ships in close orbit MAY have survived due to ship numbers in Arc of Truth being wrong unless you presume they survived, but I just presume they were able to hyperspace out in time.

Goa'uld Ha'taks in 'There but for the Grace of God' were capable of unleashing firepower said to be equivalent to 200 megaton nukes, but I would qualify that by saying that it was an alternate universe, and they never explicitly talk about energy weapons, it could have been some kind of Naquadah warhead or some such. And 304's are capable of taking extended periods of bombardment from these ships. Said ship classes are also capable of sitting in the Chromosphere of a Blue supergiant star for up to 9 hours before shield failure.

'Beachhead' is regarding events in the episode of the same name; an Ori prior was attempting to push a forcefield around an entire planet to collapse it into a black hole. Due to the difficulties of pumping that much energy through to the Mikey Way through the Stargate the Ori prior had connected to his home Galaxy, they came up with a plan to use their enemies in the Mikey Way, by designing the forcefield to somehow absorb energy and grow the forcefield. A Mark IX Naquadriah weapon (which has a probable yield that ranges from higher GT to low TT depending on what variables you use, but explicitly said to be Multi-Gigaton) provided 70% of the energy needed for the forcefield to expand, the rest was provided by a fleet of Ha'Tak motherships which arrived and started pounding the planet with their guns, the total time they spend firing can be roughly put down to a matter of minutes.

And as for the Atlantis shield, 'First Contact' / 'The Lost Tribe' has the Atlantis Stargate detonating from a massive energy buildup as a side effect of bit of technology some rogue Asgard turned on. In 'Redemption' Sam Carter calculated the energy release of a Stargate exploding when the Naquadah in it cooked off as 2-3 thousand megatons, the Atlantis shields shrunk around the Stargate in a rush to contain it were able to handle all that energy. Although the emitters , albeit the emitters were not designed to work like this and overloaded, but it shows that they were able to take an instantaneous Gigaton level event. And Zelenca declared that the energy release would be the equivalent of 'a dozen nuclear explosions', which might given an indicator of the yield of the 'regular' nukes the Stargate crews throw around.

Oh and the SGC at least 3 times has explicitly talked about their 1200 megaton warhead;

The initial time they were used in 'The Serpents Lair', in 'Fail Safe' and in 'The Siege II' (the warheads were used as space mines in that episode). Its never made clear if the nuclear warheads used on Daedalus class ships are of that yield, but they are clearly a standard issue weapon, and a far less powerful weapon then the newer Mark IX weapons (which are also it would appear becoming standard issue as the Daedalus had a couple of hand for use in 'The Shroud'.

Oh and we also know they have 30 Megaton warheads (which they can also calibrate to a highly precise yield) in 'The Pegasus project'.

As for ZPM power levels, there are quite a few examples of people talking about their total stored energy, if catastrophically released being planet killer levels (the most explicit being 'Critical mass' where that formed the core part of the episodes crisis). However it appears different systems on Atlantis can only take so much energy from one ZPM, which isn't too surprising as the city was said to be designed to be run with 3 ZPM's in parallel, not sequence.

And in Trinity, a technology that the Ancients were developing to replaced ZPM technology blew up a solar system when it overloaded and released all the energy into realspace when the system was unable to bleed off enough energy. It was more powerful, I think it was said to be 10-20 times from memory, but when we're talking about solar system destroying energy waves, well I don't think we need to quibble too much...

Then of course you have the Wraith attack in 'The Siege III', with something like 10 Hiveships and 20 Cruisers sustaining an orbital bombardment that was going to drain their ZPM in a couple of days. Given their fire rates, if your calculations hold true RE the total energy level in a ZPM, then each of those Wraith ships shots would be worth...well...I'm not sure if they would be QUITE so bad as a pistol round in the energy delivered, but...

And there is more if you want it!
Or if you want more information about these episodes/events, just let me know!

But they are the reason why I'm so hesitant to take the Replicators firepower at face value as a simple direct transfer of energy from the beam. Because there is a huge wealth of OTHER information which points to a very different picture, it makes me take a very long look at this event. And then when you see a lot of question marks, like the beam passing through water without any real problem.

*Okay, I can dig the naquadah causing the EMP. It wasn't that severe, and certainly not what you'd expect from a gigaton nuke. So, I'll concede that.
*The fact that Thor used the term terajoules is telling, all by itself.

Actually he uses the term 'Kilojoules'
But by the same token, he says a BILLION kilojoules rather then saying a million megajoules or a thousand gigajoules or one terajoule, so I don't really see that the prefix he uses means that much...

This is, again, on the same order of magnitude as the Replicators' beam. This being the flagship of the "Supreme Commander of the Asgard Fleet" easily places their power generation capabilities below that of most of the other major SciFi races we discuss here.

Putting aside the numbers from 'Fair Game', we also know that there is a direct correlation between energy and hyperspace speed. The Daedalus being the best example; 18 days without a ZPM to travel between Galaxies, 4 days with. The later generations of Asgard ships are capable of Galactic crossing events in a matter of hours, arguably minutes. Earth couldn't even build Hyperdrives without using Naquadriah instead of Naquadah, as they couldn't get enough energy from Naquadah based generators, at least in their early design ships.

The fact that Asgard ships are faster then anyone else in Hyperdrive speeds is a pointed message in of itself.

A Minbari Warcruiser, for example, probably outguns any beam weapons powered by those reactors. Certainly, any warship in Star Wars would blow it across the galaxy.
*Destiny can't tap the power from the star's core without reaching said star's core. It barely submerged into the photosphere. The power available at that point would be a few terawatts.

Uh dude, come back to me when you can actually explain the mechanism of how Destiny actually gathers energy. We don't have ANY idea how it works, what scale it operates on and what range it can draw power in from while inside a Star.

*The missiles and using them against the Ori, Wraith, etc. Well, they tried, and their missiles were routinely shot down.

At times. The ori never shot down any missiles. And the Wraith did at times, but other times they did not, and while the hits hurt them, they didn't come close to 'Instant-Gib' as they should if your numbers were matched up, even if you're assuming lower KT yield nukes, which would appear to be a rather iffy idea. In 'No Mans Land' for example we see a saturation nuke strike launched on a Hiveship, the nuke that gets through the Dart point defense makes a big explosion, but doesn't seriously hurt the ship at all.

*Interesting idea about the beams vs the Hive ships, but we have no idea how resilient their hulls are. Being organic in nature, I wouldn't feel comfortable using iron as a base.

Actually that would probably be quite conservative, as Wraith hull materials have been shown to have durability on the same order as ships in Stargate using conventional materials, if not greater in fact, with some 'hull regeneration' bullcrap that repairs the ships hull, even in battle. Given the kind of materials thrown around in Stargate (Naquadah, Trinium and the like) which have absurd structural and thermal properties compared to iron, to be in the same ballpark...

Again, looking at the basics, this beam kicked Apollo's ass, with those fancy Asgard shields and all. It was gonna take out Atlantis in the 8th round. But it couldn't content with an asteroid the size of Serenity.

Hence my problem, given the above examples of the yields/numbers Stargate routinely throws around, then this beam which does so little damage to the asteroid yet so easily slaps the Apollo away...
Reconciling this by saying the beam is an exotic beam that is geared to drain shields with a (probably incidental) direct energy component makes a lot of sense, especially when we see that it is all but unaffected by the ocean, when a direct energy transfer type weapon (like a laser or particle beam) should have to burn its way through with rather spectacular effects.

And it is not as if there is no precedent for this in Stargate; there is implication that Asgard and Tollen weapons had exotic effects that let them bypass shield technology and hit their target directly, at least against more primitive shields. And when Anubis upgraded his ships shield technology based on his understanding on Ancient technology, suddenly those weapons stopped getting a free lunch and said Goa'uld ships become much more of a threat to races that relied on such advantages.

BUT.

Against other Goa'uld, such as 'Yu', he didn't get any clear advantage other then numbers, its not like his ships suddenly started to dominate all the battles they were in or anything, in fact he had quite a few losses and had to rely on sheer numbers. And Ancient 'Drone' weapons passed right through even those upgraded shields without doing anything to so much as slow them down.


To sum it up simply; if this sequence with the Replicator beam existed in isolation, I'd be far happier to accept it on face value, but because there are a LOT more sources which starkly disagree with this one, I try to find a way to reconcile them. An 'exotic' weapon system does this nicely, there is precedent for it in Stargate and the aforementioned water issues strenghten the case for seperating the effects against the asteroid vs the effects against shields.

[Brian Young]

Okay, one more post before another episode.
I grabbed two clips from "First Strike."
http://www.babtech-onthe.net/discuss/oberoth.mov
This is where Oberoth clearly states he intends to eliminate Atlantis. His intentions are quite clear.
http://www.babtech-onthe.net/discuss/commentary2.mov
This is from the commentary. They clearly wanted this to be impressive. For instance, "We knew we wanted to toast the planet."

In other words, the artist intent was to demonstrate the might of the Replicators, and Oberoth clearly is bringing it.

BTW, who brought up the missiles? I really can't keep up with the pace, I'm getting old. Was it two of you guys? Great questions, and I had not considered it, but see my previous post as to why they didn't use them IMO.
So I have two suggestions I consider sound.
*Sam may not have had access to a MarkII naqhadah generator after all in the alternate universe. (Chris I think.)
*Explain why they didn't use missiles or bombs. (Batman and/or Adam I think.)

[Chris OFarrell]

I'm not really certain where commentary actually fits into the canon scale...

But I was never under any real doubt that they wanted to destroy Atlantis, and this beam was doing a bang up job at that.

But as has been said, if they WANTED to eliminate the Atlantis guys rapidly, they could have just easily sent a ZPM via Hyperspace rigged to detonate five seconds after the ship that drops it offs and heads back home. By by Atlantis, planet and possibly solar system for that matter. And there wouldn't be anything they could DO about it. This weapon system was clearly one they had available and was sufficient to the task, so they sent it to destroy Atlantis, and it was doing a bang up job.

It doesn't make it the upper limit of their destructive capabilities though, anymore then me shooting someone with a gun discounts me shooting them with a tank canon. Both will kill the person after all.


EDIT

After checking out those movies, the commentary doesn't appear to really help you much at all, if you are tying to place this weapon as a high-order weapon. They talk that they wanted to actually DESTROY THE PLANET in the episode when they were writing it...but they clearly decided not to do that because they just had an episode where they saved this planet from being destroyed. So they eventually came up with the satellite.

I'm sorry, I just honestly don't get the point you're trying to make here dude?

[Brian Young]

Chris,

Dang, this is going to take a long time.
Let's get off the whole water penetration thing. It isn't relevant. McKay said this beam carried the power of "a black hole, or an unlimited number of ZPMs." That energy has to go somewhere. Thermodynamics. If it isn't going into the target, you've got a lot of explaining to do. In other words, it is DET BY DEFAULT.

Further, there are arguable limits on just HOW much raw energy you can dump through a Stargate.

At least as much as McKay said.

And hell if they just wanted to blow up Atlantis, they could have just had one of their ships drop a rigged ZPM off into orbit, then run like hell as the planet is vaporized. They went to quite a large degree of trouble to hit Atlantis in a way that would leave them helpless after all.

We blew up all their ships.
Firepower examples 1 and 2 involve explosions, not beams or ZPMs.
Yes, Hataks and the 200 megatons. Who said those were beams? We didn't see them. Must have been nukes.
Beachhead. If you'll recall, staff weapons on the ground contributed a lot to the shield as well, so no big deal. And the nuke was an explosion as well. There is no way to know how much of the explosion was usable energy. Are we to assume they absorbed 100% of the explosion just because you said so?
The stargate explosion. I had forgotten about that. I'll have to take a look. But this is another explosion. And how do we know this was a result of the naquadah "cooking off?" Someone else posted on here that naquadah is very stable. If that is the case, the explosion may have just been the power source. Was the gate active?
Yes, I know about the warhead. More bombs, explosions, etc. Not beams.
I'll check out the "Critical Mass" thing. I don't recall this, and I watched very closely for technical issues.
I've already addressed "Trinity." Another explosion. Has nothing to do with the usable power generated from the thing, and was different technology from a ZPM. Was technology even the Ancients couldn't wield. Irrelevant example.
The Wrait in "The Seige." Gigawatt range firepower.

Uh dude, come back to me when you can actually explain the mechanism of how Destiny actually gathers energy. We don't have ANY idea how it works, what scale it operates on and what range it can draw power in from while inside a Star.

Irrelevant. The energy AVAILABLE at that point would be low terawatt range, because that is the power level the star emits. The method used to collect it is a red herring.
Shooting down missiles. You have seen Atlantis I presume? This was a plot point. They couldn't hit the Wraith ships with their missiles, because they got shot down every time. So they had to beam them aboard the hive ships to destroy them. "Didn't hurt the ship at all?" It destroyed each one, until they found a countermeasure to prevent beaming.

Hence my problem, given the above examples of the yields/numbers Stargate routinely throws around, then this beam which does so little damage to the asteroid yet so easily slaps the Apollo away...
Reconciling this by saying the beam is an exotic beam that is geared to drain shields with a (probably incidental) direct energy component makes a lot of sense, especially when we see that it is all but unaffected by the ocean, when a direct energy transfer type weapon (like a laser or particle beam) should have to burn its way through with rather spectacular effects.

Recall thermodynamics. The power from "unlimited ZPMs" has to go somewhere! And it wasn't enough to burn through an asteroid!

I'm going to take my valuable time to look at some of these examples. But if you just found them on a Google search, and they aren't for real, I will be very, very pissed off. That is the reason I stopped this crap before. People would post "evidence" that I'd spend hours digging up, that turned out to not be for real. They were just spewing bullshit.
We'll see.

[Brian Young]

When has a ZPM ever exploded, or threatened to explode, in the entire series?