New page I banged together

[Brian Young]

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?

That is why they didn't use a moon-sized thing. But they still wanted to "toast the planet." They wanted it to be impressive is the point.

[adam_grif]

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

Yes, Camulus' tainted ZPM was booby trapped to explode as soon as an electrical current passed through it (which it would as soon as you plugged it in to anything). This was episode 4 of Season 8, "Zero Hour". But we've already told you everything related from that episode, it was the quote about how it would have "blown up the planet" followed by Carter claiming that he had underestimated.

[Chris OFarrell]

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.

Yessss, its going into the Stargate wormhole and keeping it open, so it doesn't shut down at the 38 Minute window mostly. Black Holes and high level energy systems are the only two things that can keep a wormhole open that long.

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.

Black holes and ZPM's (probably through different mechanisms though) have been shown to be able to keep a Wormhole open past the 38 Minute Window, somehow keeping the wormhole stable. THAT is what McKay was talking about in the context of Black Holes and ZPM's, here I'll post the exact quotes;

McKAY: Sure. The problem is, I don’t think it’s gonna shut down in thirty-eight minutes.

ELLIS: But I thought it was physically impossible for an artificial wormhole to stay open any longer.

McKAY: There is one exception to that rule. The S.G.C. has encountered attacks of this kind on their own Stargate and sadly we’ve discovered that if you pump enough energy into it, a Stargate can remain active indefinitely.

ELLIS: That would require an insane amount of power, wouldn’t it?

McKAY: Like a black hole -- or an unlimited number of ZedP.Ms.

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

At least as much as McKay said.

[/quote]

See above. And what I'm talking about is 'Beachhead' because the Ori (who have a full Ancient tech base) couldn't dump enough energy through remotely to generate a shield that would collapse the planet into a black hole, they had to come up with a highly convoluted plan to get the locals to do their dirty work, and that was also with a Stargate that had been kept open by either a black hole or ZPM level power source on the far side.

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.

Uh, not we didn't. We blew up the fleet they were building to attack Earth, but in the very next episode we see them with ships guarding their planet, the Apollo engages one (and we know they are Hyperspace capable). And at the end of the next episode, they launch a massive fleet to attack a Wraith system after McKay reprograms their attack command.
And hell in the worst case, that Stargate weapon had a Hyperdrive, it would have been easy enough to send it, dial up the Stargate and toss a ZPM through it, then watch the fireworks.

Firepower examples 1 and 2 involve explosions, not beams or ZPMs.

Example 1 was an exotic solar eruption when hit the Daedalus's shields as a continuous beam actually. Example two is a PLANET BLOWING UP dude!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAnCZ4cueC4

About 7 mins in.

The point is that if the shields can take the brunt of a solar event that is going to spread out, and whatever hits Lantia will actually scorch the entire sun facing surface of the planet, then that is a HELL of a lot more energy being absorbed by the shields, as in many orders of magnitude to put it lightly, then the DET component of the Replicator beam. The Odyssey taking at least part of the shockwave of the Asgard homeworld exploding is also playing with energy levels WAY higher.

And both ships had ZPM's tied into their power grid, which is why I mentioned it. In the formers case, without the ZPM they wouldn't have been able to do it. In the later case, nothing is explicitly said, but its highly probable it wouldn't have survived.
But the CRITICAL thing is that neither event taxed the ZPM's power supply.

Yes, Hataks and the 200 megatons. Who said those were beams? We didn't see them. Must have been nukes.

...they are assumed to be beams because the ONLY weapon we have ever seen Ha'Taks use are beams, they don't have any missile launchers as far as we know, nor do the Goa'uld use nuclear ordnance (although they do have big Naquadah...spheres...). Ocams Razor and all that, the answer is far more likely then not, their main guns dialed to 11. We know they have the ability to blast the surface of planets into wrecks, Sokar certinally had no problems turning Netu into a quite literal hell with orbital weapons fire.

Beachhead. If you'll recall, staff weapons on the ground contributed a lot to the shield as well, so no big deal.

Uh...no.

Staff weapons...dude...seriously? You have a multigigaton weapon on one hand, and you think some guys with STAFF WEAPONS 'contributed a lot'?

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?

No, because Samantha Carter said so. We see the nuke detonation and the aftermath, we can also see that it quite rapidly absorbs the energy of the explosion and starts growing at a fantastic rate across the planet, even as the detonation site cools down then vanishes.

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?"

Because its explicitly said in the episode by Zelenca, and explained in a very similar situation in 'Redemption' that this is what happens with Stargates if they take too much energy.

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?

Naquadah IS very stable, until it reaches a critical threshold of energy, at which point it goes boom boom. It was the whole point of 'Redemption', the energy building up in the Stargates capacitors (very slowly as Anubis's device only slowly introduced energy into the Stargate) steadily increased without any effect on the Gate at all, until it finally reached critical and exploded in a gigantic explosion. Specifically;

CARTER
Actually Sir, it is. The Gate itself is one giant superconductor capable of absorbing huge amounts of energy. Now, if that capacity is eventually exceeded, the Naquadah that the Stargate's made up of will become charged and could eventually explode.

O'NEILL
How long?

CARTER
A few days, maybe less…we're calculating it right now.

HAMMOND
Is there any good news?

CARTER
Just bad and worse, Sir. We're talking about a blast of two to three thousand megatons.

Yes, I know about the warhead. More bombs, explosions, etc. Not beams.

Dude, energy is energy. In fact a beam is a soft option; your calcs put the output of this beam at 4 Terrajoules per second. A 3 GT Stargate detonation for example is going to be delivering 12552000 Terrajoules, and deliver it at a far higher wattage due to the speed of the detonation. It took the Atlantis shield about 30 seconds or so to dissipate the energy (there was a minor explosion at the end not worth talking about) means the shield was able to dissipate at a rate of 418400 TW. If we look at the total energy absorbed (and as the shield had quite literally enveloped the Stargate it had to deal with 100% of the energy somehow), it would take your 4TW beam, what, 6 years to deliver the same amount of energy?

Slight disconnect here!

I'll check out the "Critical Mass" thing. I don't recall this, and I watched very closely for technical issues.

WEIR: What have you found?

SHEPPARD: Guess what? Turns out there's no bomb after all.

McKAY: Uhhhh, there's no actual explosive device. The explosion will come, but, uh, from somewhere else. Now, with the Wraith on the way, we'll need to cloak the city, right?

WEIR: Yes.

McKAY: Well, in order to do that, we need to reconnect the ZedP.M. in order to supply the necessary power.

WEIR: And what about the Stargate?

McKAY: Ah -- I've physically disabled the D.H.D. It won't be able to dial, so it won't be a problem. Now, the ZedP.M., however, will be. Now, as you know, the Zero Point Module controls the flow of massive amounts of power.

SHEPPARD: Like a dam.

McKAY: No, it's not like a dam, it's more like a ... uh ... actually, yes, it's like a dam. If you overload the dam, it breaks, which is why the Ancients put in place failsafes to prevent such a thing from happening.

SHEPPARD: Like a spillway.

McKAY: Could we just stick with failsafes?

(John shrugs.)

McKAY: The problem is, our Trust operative figured out a way to rewrite Atlantis' operating system and disable the failsafes, but mask it in such a way that the city sensors didn't detect it.

WEIR: So the dialling of Earth would cause the ZeeP.M. to overload.

McKAY: Oh, yeah! And given that dialling another galaxy requires tremendous amounts of power, we're talking catastrophic overload. I mean, the explosion would destroy not just the city, but, uh, most likely the entire planet.

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.

Actually no, it was ZPM technology, simply implemented a different way, instead of drawing energy from Spacespace/time, they drew it from realspace, but that led to the creation of exotic particles thanks to the laws of physics breaking down, which in turn completely screwed with the containment systems and started the system into a chain reaction.

The point from this episode is that the Ancients were looking to build a power system that would offer 10-20 times the energy a ZPM could offer. And we know how much energy ZPM's can offer, meaning the Ancients were capable of channeling and using even greater energies (its just that thanks to the exotic particles the system went out of control and an overload started that McKay couldn't stop. The ancients WERE able to stop it by 'venting' power through the weapons system attached to the facility, at least enough to then shut it down, but McKay reached a point that it had built it so even the weapon couldn't 'vent' enough energy to get it back below overload levels.

The point to take home is that the system was capable of generating SO much energy that when the containment system finally breached and let it all loose, it took out 5/6ths of a Solar system. And even at 1/20th that, a ZPM would have utterly mind boggling power (backed up by the fact that if you catastrophically release all that energy at once, you get a rather 'big boom'. As 'Zero Hour' and 'Critical Mass' point out.

And as such, its absurd to think that they play with THIS level of energy...but are under threat by a few gigajoules of power. Hence the 'exotic beam' idea.

Was technology even the Ancients couldn't wield. Irrelevant example.

This isn't a question about if they could USE the technology, the point is that we can see the energy levels we're playing with, and were given a number in terms of how much more powerful then a ZPM this system is.

The Wrait in "The Seige." Gigawatt range firepower.

You get that how? All we see is the Wraith Hivehsips blasting the Lantian station in 'Siege I' (which they did a bang up job of I should note, a 600 meter wide station destroyed in a single volley by the way) then the ship to ship combat which doesn't give us much information at all, then the bombardment against the Atlantis shield, which would be depleted in a matter of days (and given ZPM power levels, thats a rather impressive amount of firepower, wot?)

How exactly do you get 'Gigawatt range firepower', there isn't any event (except the station, which is almost uncalcable really) that can be used!

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.

Uh dude, a main sequence star like Sol generates a little more then a TW range of power, Sol's energy output is on the order of 3.8×10^26W. And until we know HOW the system works, its impossible to say how much of that Destiny is sipping. For all we know, those glowy things underneath it cast an energy field hundreds of thousands of kilometers wide and deep, absorbing energy as the ship moves along the surface of everything under it like a giant Japanese fish net. I'll say it again,; we have no idea how the mechanism works, and its therefore impossible to get ANY numbers from it on the data we have!

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.

*rubs head*

Yes, I have seen Atlantis. If you would read what I said, I directed you to the episode 'No Mans Land' where they dealt with kamakazi darts ramming missiles by throwing off twenty of them in a salvo to make sure at least one hit.

And it did hit.

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!

Except I would state that the energy DID go somewhere, its the reason the wormhole was staying active beyond the 38 minute window, but it doesn't have to COME THROUGH out the other side, 'Redemption' shows this clearly. When you see the Ancient device Anubis is using to hold the SGC's gate open, its firing a powerful beam right into the middle of it, but said beam does NOT come out the other side! All that comes out the other side is a tiny trickle of energy into the capacitors, which is so low in fact that the sensors didn't detect it until Carter re-calibrated the scale.

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.

*raises eyebrow*

I will point out that I was happy enough to provide any evidence you requested, or any further details several times in this debate several times, and all you had to do was ask for specifics...but enjoy yourself going searching then.

[Metahive]

Black holes and ZPM's (probably through different mechanisms though) have been shown to be able to keep a Wormhole open past the 38 Minute Window, somehow keeping the wormhole stable.

What about the gate-busting weapon Anubis used in the beginning of season 6 and which also kept a wormhole stable past the 38 minutes mark? What exactly powered that thing? I mean, since it was ancient tech, it might have used a ZPM or two, but are there any more specific informations on it?

[Murazor]

What about the gate-busting weapon Anubis used in the beginning of season 6 and which also kept a wormhole stable past the 38 minutes mark? What exactly powered that thing? I mean, since it was ancient tech, it might have used a ZPM or two, but are there any more specific informations on it?

We have no clue about what powered that facility, since ZPMS wouldn't be introduced for a while yet.

Also, two pieces of relevant information that I think haven't been mentioned yet.

1) The Atlantis expedition designed a self-destruct mechanism for the cityship by preparing one of their naquadah generators to overload explosively. They apparently expected a twenty kiloton detonation after a thirty seconds build-up.

GRODIN: If both codes are properly entered, the naqahdah generator will overload. It will take thirty seconds.

FORD: You sure it'll do enough damage?

McKAY: Ever seen a twenty kiloton nuclear explosion?

This could mean either a cook off of all the remaining naquadah in the reactor after the thirty seconds (which doesn't really tell us much on its own) or that it can generate twenty kilotons of energy in that same period (meaning that a lone naquadah generator set to overload would be able to output around ~2.75 terawatts for half a minute).

2) The relief force sent to the aid of Atlantis brought a MK II naquadah generator with shorter operational life, but six times the power output of the original. By putting it in a state of 'barely-controlled overload' they managed to get the Atlantis command chair and drone launch systems active.

EVERETT: I have another job for you. I understand that this base is equipped with a chair weapons platform like the one we found in Antarctica.

WEIR: Yes, but we have no way of powering it.

EVERETT: We do now. We brought a Mark Two naqahdah generator.

RADNER: We found a way to increase the power output by six hundred percent. It won't last nearly as long but it should be able to power the chair for as long as we need it to.

[...]

McKAY (continuing to work): Look, this generator can only power the chair because it operates in a state of barely-controlled overload.

The energy reserves of the mark II were totally drained after a relatively brief period of intermitent chair activation. Not having the episode around, I cannot give a decent timeframe for this, but if it can be estimated somehow, we can get ourselves some power figures for the power requirements for partial reactivation of Atlantis' main offensive systems.

[Ford Prefect]

What about the gate-busting weapon Anubis used in the beginning of season 6 and which also kept a wormhole stable past the 38 minutes mark? What exactly powered that thing?

Dramatic necessity.

[Metahive]

So...actually not all that different from a ZPM then?

[seanrobertson]

And if you continue to appeal to your understanding of how ZPMs work, I'll also thank you to substantiate that with quotations.

I already nearly-directly quoted Zelenka on that but if you insist on doing this the anal way that requires me digging through transcripts I can oblige.

"It extracts vacuum energy from [an] artificial region of subspace-time until it reaches maximum entropy."

It's arguably anal, but unquestionably a question of being thorough.

See, Adam, I'm tight with Brian but I'm simply not that familiar with Stargate. I saw the movie when it came out. I remember Ra and thinking, "Ah, the fellow from 'The Crying Game.'" I remember him crowing over how humans had "harnessed the power of the atom." I remember Kurt Russell acting a lot like most of his other characters.

Beyond catching snippets of an episode here and there, Brian's page and some "research" I've undertaken the past two days, you're talking about material that's pretty new to me.

Anyhow, more to the point: OK, so the ZPM sucks energy 'til it's full. Yes, that's an intention pun

As it stands, even if we assume an uncontrolled ZPM explosion destroys a planet or solar system, why does that mean Brian's wrong?

More specifically, where's the proof that you can siphon off significantly more than the terawatt or petawatt-range from the thing at once -- especially in a usable manner (e.g., pumping a decent fraction of that power to an energy weapon)?

Consider another "universe's" example in the Enterprise. Michael investigated the E-D's power generation when he was building and refining the main site. Suffice to say, the ship apparently stores enough antimatter that, if it all reacted with matter in a split-second, the resulting energy release would be in the 1E21-22J range.

Even if we were looking at a figure several orders of magnitude lower, however, the fact remains that the Enterprise can only actually use a tiny fraction of that energy at any given moment. Based on the difficulties she had accelerating a small moon by a few km/sec. in "Deja Q," her maximum output is about 3E16W.

Trek phasers and like weapons benefit from exotic chain-reactions, so their effectiveness isn't strictly limited to their actual output. Still, that output is likely in the low to mid-terawatt range. Consider the example of "A Matter of Time," in which the E was seriously concerned about a mere 60 GW phaser variance. In "The Ultimate Computer," Sulu managed to dial the phasers on the TOS Enterprise down to one percent -- "No damage potential; just enough to 'nudge' [the other Constitution-class ships partaking in the wargame," as Kirk said.

Picard's Enterprise is considerably more advanced. It's hard to believe she couldn't similarly restrict her phaser power to a single percent of maximum; thus, the E-D's phasers were good for at least 6 TW but, judging by the effects those phasers have against some inert and enemy targets, much more than 6 TW is not indicated.

My intentions aren't to change the subject to Trek. The idea is you simply cannot speculate about usable power levels based on how big of a bang something makes if it explodes all at once. That's principally the case when talking about a beam weapon. Even if you could pump thousands of times more power to the beam, frying the emitter's a very real concern.

In fairness, from what I've read of SG tech, there are some things that indicate impressive firepower. I see that Ha'tak ships bombarded the U.S. coast in "There But For The Grace of God" with the equivalent of 200 megatons, presumably per shot. The same sources note that this was set in an alternate universe, which may or may not have accurately mirrored "our" own.

Similarly, a lot of things I'm reading are ambiguous if not vague. Some note that, apart from a Ha'tak' entering a blue giant's corona (notable, but limited to extreme limit figures), the only thing I've seen that even begins to corroborate 200 megaton weapons is the fact that a shield withstood the 1.2 gigaton devices you mentioned.

And even then, the same source says those devices' warheads might not have gone off -- that the missiles simply slammed into a shield.

I think reconciling all this would be much harder for a newbie than making sense of Trek tech. For selfish reasons alone, then, yes, be very thorough. If being "anal" helps you get in the right mindset, all the better.

It's stated that such energy is required to indefinitely maintain a wormhole. It is NOT stated that the beam is being powered by "an indefinite number of ZPM's", because those ZPM's / a singularity may simply be hooked up to the gate on the other end to provide power in the same way that the ZPM's are normally interfaced to provide power boosts to the gate.

That's true. It wouldn't make much sense that a 4 TW beam would need a whole bunch of those ZPMs to power it. But since we're talking about Brian's conclusions and the power levels he's presented, it's just as well that I answer with something he said:

"If the Replicators were capable of many times greater firepower, they could have destroyed Atlantis during the stargate's standard 38 minute cycle, without the need to provide it with extra power. The primary goal was the destruction of Atlantis, after all."

We also know that a non-trivial amount of power from the beam is being drawn by the satellite itself to maintain shields that are potent enough to resist any and all weapons that the 304 can throw at it.

*snip quotes, for which I thank you.*

From this we can infer that:

- The 304 still has nukes
- The only way they feel it is possible to destroy is by getting said nuclear devices past the shields (i.e. the shields could take a hit from the 1200 MT warheads that come on 304's standard).

I'd definitely agree that the ship still has at least one nuke from that dialogue, but are the 1.2 GT warheads standard? Could they even hit such a small target without a proximity detonator?

From these two things, we can further infer that, therefore, the beam's power output must be sufficient to counter a significant portion of a 1.2 GT device detonating in close proximity.

Whoa, hold on a second. The shield's drawing power from the beam, yes, but you're assuming the shield's power requirements and actual resilience are directly ratioed. That's an unwarranted assumption.

It's guaranteed that more than half of a detonation will be wasted because it's a spherical burst, but assuming 1/5 of the energy was delivered (a very close explosion, but easily doable since there is zero point defense and is not moving erratically). This puts the durability at ~240 MT assuming it "barely survives" that.

That's reasonable ... up until you get to the one-fifth part.

As I alluded, that satellite is tiny, dude. Compare the beam it's firing to the thing's size.



We're talking 20m wide, maximum, so the satellite presents a paltry frontal area of ~314 m^2. Even if a gigaton device went off within one length of the thing's diameter, the most it'd realistically absorb is about 30 megatons.

If even 1/10 of that value was devoted to the beam's strength, it would have sliced the asteroid in twane without a moment's hesitation and slaughtered Atlantis in seconds.... unless the beam was NOT a pure DET weapon.

Again, we can't assume that the possibility of surviving a 30 megaton explosion means the satellite's shield must draw 120,000 TJ to "counter" that explosion. Not to "disprove" something we see and can easily quantify, like the Replicator beam.

The number of hive ships is largely irrelevant since we have no firepower calculations for them. The ZPM was expected to last "days" against them, and did last for about a day before their plan was put into action. The best we can draw from this is that they ate 1/7th of the ZPM's remaining reserve capcity, and even that number is highly shaky.

If you must know, it was 12 hive ships but they destroyed 2 of them. Miscellaneous smaller vessels escorted them.

I was reinforcing the critical need for specificity. You cited a bunch of stuff that simply wasn't useful, let alone data one could use to demonstrate Brian wrong.

"Megatonne range" is an estimate based on the height of the mushroom cloud, but this estimate can vary from "hundreds of kilotonnes" to "single digit megatonnes" based on the scaling of Atlantis you use.

This is the chart used to roughly approximate the expected yield:

*snip chart*

That is one wickedly cool chart.

I'm just getting around to Atlantis' dimensions. I take it there any images of the cloud and Atlantis in the same frame?

I have no idea what you're talking about with "on top of the shield"? How is that a vague allusion? They literally beam the device a tiny distance above the shield and detonate it.

Yeah, that was nitpicky. Sorry about that one.

You mention no more than single-digit megatons. Alright. Let's say the shield was hit with a far greater yield and, after geometric concerns, had to deal with 10 megatons. That's more than fair on my part.

One reasonable-looking estimate I saw puts Atlantis at about 4 km in diameter. Its frontal area would be approximately 12.5 million square meters.

That in no way invalidates Brian's Replicator beam calculations. Its intensity approaches 570 GJ/m^2.

The nuke's?

Three point three GJ/m^2 (albeit that energy's delivered much, much faster). Almost 200 times less.

In a similar vein, hold an opaque 2x2 meter plastic shield between you and the sun. You'll be shaded all day long. Concentrate the same amount of sunlight your shield area blocks into a 5 mm wide beam and it'll punch through very quickly.

I think you know where I can take that. I'm not necessarily suggesting that a hundred-fold intensity increase will be that much more effective against Atlantis' shield.

Nonetheless, if someone says Brian's conclusions are simply incorrect, he/she should try and disprove that possibility.

His calc puts it on "kilotonnes per second" based on the asteroid melt, and this is what happens when you blow up a 23 KT device underwater:

*snip image*

Naturally there are significant differences between a coherent beam and a spherical detonation, but this should give you an idea of the magnitude involved. What we see on screen is not exactly inspiring for even his estimate of KT/s.

Oh, I'm aware of the underwater tests. Thanks for the cool image (again), though. I don't know that I've ever actually seen that one.

Still, you're exaggerating a bit; Brian's figure barely touched even one kiloton/sec. The device tested above was 21 to, as you say, 23 times more energetic. A solid order of magnitude bigger. It's certainly more vapor than we see the beam burning away, but I'd expect that.

I find it absurd to look at all of this and conclude that the beam's kinda effective against an asteroid, great against shields but piss-weak in making steam out of water. Rather than resort to some of the contortions many of you have, why not consider that the beam has an effective range and Atlantis is at the extreme END of that? We all agree it's no laser, so it won't be as potent at orbital distances as at PBR.

[Brian Young]

Chris,

All your examples actually happened. Good job. You see, I'm a bit jaded from 15 years of chasing examples that never happened. Like The Black Star surviving an explosion.
These all happened. I'm impressed. But they all have caveats.
*Echos. Daedalus blocked a CME. Impressive visual effects. I can't believe I forgot about his Must have fallen asleep. I remembered the whales distinctly Anyway, on Mike's page about shields, you can see a calculation very similar to this involving a Borg sip being hit by a CME which was much larger than this one. He calculated the Borg ship was hit by no more than a megaton. So this example reinforces my calculations.
*Unending. The planet did indeed explode. I don't know where the "one light second" thing comes from, but not from the episode. The planet was far in the background, but no distance was given. Anyway, no large debris hit the ship, so this doesn't really mean anything. By the way, the Ori ships did survive as well, but no large debris hit them either. I space, there would be no "shockwave."
*There but for the Grace of God. Sam said the blasts on the east coast were equivalent to 200 megaton nuclear weapons. As "blasts" as likely caused by bombs, I think she meant that the nuclear weapons caused blasts equivalent to 200 megatons. That is the proper way to say it "equivalent to X megatons" I think. And the hits directly on the ground in other episodes certainly don't deliver 200 megatons. "The Sentinel," for example.
*Beachhead. Correct, Sam said the bomb delivered 70% of the energy needed. Good call. But as soon as Prometheus opens up, they fire a half dozen missiles, which you yourself said are probably of similar yield. It was not until hen that the shield began to expand again significantly. It didn't do much from the Hatak bombardment. What I meant about the staff weapons is true. That is what started the shield's expansion. But the expansion around the planet was primarily accomplished by detonating the bomb and then the missiles.
*First Contact/The Lost Tribe. The shields failed. Held it for a while, but still failed. Tells us only that they cannot withstand a low gigaton-level explosion.
*Critical Mass. Okay, I concede that a ZPM can be rigged to explode. Gosh, I can't believe I forgot that either! Good call. But as a ZPM uses no fuel, we cannot determine usable power from said explosion. Because we can't determine the potential energy of the fuel. Dr McKay said a ZPM is like a dam, and you can overload it. In other words, this example only tells us that the resulting explosion would be because they *exceeded* the usable power output of the ZPM.

So none of these examples really change anything.

Bravo for bringing real evidence though. Good job. I usually don't see that.

[Brian Young]

What I meant about "The Sentinel" was the pulse weapons hitting the ground. They certainly aren't in the 200 megaton range. So I think Sam was talking about bombs in the other episode.

[Murazor]

I'm just getting around to Atlantis' dimensions. I take it there any images of the cloud and Atlantis in the same frame?

Credit to the fine people at Stargatecaps.

These one seem to be from the end of the Siege pt 2 with the initial activation of the cloak after the destructive effects of the nuke have started to wane.

*Echos. Daedalus blocked a CME. Impressive visual effects. I can't believe I forgot about his Must have fallen asleep. I remembered the whales distinctly Anyway, on Mike's page about shields, you can see a calculation very similar to this involving a Borg sip being hit by a CME which was much larger than this one. He calculated the Borg ship was hit by no more than a megaton. So this example reinforces my calculations.

However, it is stated that in a similar previous incident, the Ancients with three ZPMs, managed to enlarge the Atlantis shield enough to protect a "significant portion of the planet" and prevented global ecological damage.

McKAY: Well, the Ancients were able to raise the shield and stretch it wide enough to protect a significant portion of the planet -- attenuated, to be sure, more of a thin bubble, but it was able to block out enough of the radiation ...
ZELENKA: That’s interesting, because we have found evidence of mass extinction on other parts of the planet.
McKAY: Wow! Well, now we know what caused it(!)
WEIR: OK, so our shield is already activated. What else?
McKAY: Ah. Small problem. The Ancients had three ZedP.Ms at their disposal and we -- as you know -- only have one. Maybe I was so insistent on keeping them because I too am able to sense trouble on the horizon.
SHEPPARD: Just like a pigeon.
WEIR: So we just need to get the other two ZeeP.Ms back here temporarily ...
McKAY: Not enough time. Look, the Odyssey’s away from Earth. In the time it would take them to return, the blast wave would almost certainly have hit us.
SHEPPARD: How far can we extend the shield with one ZeeP.M?
ZELENKA: Well, enough to cover the city and perhaps a little bit of the ocean surrounding it, but ...
SHEPPARD: We should evacuate, just to make sure.
McKAY: We can’t gate to Earth. Look, we need the ZedP.M’s power for the shields.
SHEPPARD: We’ve got the Intergalactic Bridge.
McKAY: The midway station isn’t completed yet. We’d need to ferry people by Jumper. Again, no time.
SHEPPARD: Alright -- we’ll send everyone to the Alpha Site and pick ‘em up when this is over.
McKAY: I don’t think you understand. Look, the shield will protect the city from the initial blast, yes, but the entire ecosystem of this planet will be damaged beyond recovery for hundreds of years. Look, we’re talking no plant life, which means no breathable air ...

Seeing the concerns voiced by McKay, he is predicting a textbook mass extinction event. I think that I might have read somewhere in your own site (Shadow Planet Killer analysis, perhaps?) that NASA states that you need energies in the order of a hundred million megatons to prevent a mass extinction event.

Even if we disregard the fact that Daedalus managed to deflect the CME away from the planet (because the scientific wrongness of the whole scene plain burns), we still are left with a 3 ZPM Atlantis absorbing a large enough fraction of a hundred teratons to prevent a global mass extinction in Lantia.

[Brian Young]

Chris,

One more reply, then I've got to go Christmas shopping.
So, your contention is that the stargate itself is absorbing all that energy, rather than being transmitted through the beam? I addressed that in the page itself. This cannot be true for several reasons:
1. If a stargate absorbs that much energy, it will explode. See your example from "Critical Mass" and Anubis causing the SGC stargate to explode by doing this. The beam in "First Strike" was going to be active for at least 29 hours to take out Atlantis's shields.
2. If they really have all this power, WHY DIDN'T THEY JUST SHOOT IT AT ATLANTIS DURING THE STANDARD 38 MINUTE CYCLE?
3. Why didn't they just shoot it at Atlantis' own stargate, like Anubis, causing it to explode? Actually, that's a good question anyway!
4. Why use a beam at all that wastes its energy powering the gate? See number 2.
Doesn't make any sense. The fact they fired a beam means the beam was using the power. Not logical any other way.

Example 1 was an exotic solar eruption when hit the Daedalus's shields as a continuous beam actually. Example two is a PLANET BLOWING UP dude!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAnCZ4cueC4

About 7 mins in.

The point is that if the shields can take the brunt of a solar event that is going to spread out, and whatever hits Lantia will actually scorch the entire sun facing surface of the planet, then that is a HELL of a lot more energy being absorbed by the shields, as in many orders of magnitude to put it lightly, then the DET component of the Replicator beam. The Odyssey taking at least part of the shockwave of the Asgard homeworld exploding is also playing with energy levels WAY higher.

And both ships had ZPM's tied into their power grid, which is why I mentioned it. In the formers case, without the ZPM they wouldn't have been able to do it. In the later case, nothing is explicitly said, but its highly probable it wouldn't have survived.
But the CRITICAL thing is that neither event taxed the ZPM's power supply.

The exploding planet didn't hit the ships with any large pieces of debris.
This "HELL of a lot more energy...then the DET component of the Replicator beam" was likely in the low megaton range. And it caused physical damage to the ship. Supports my calculations.

...they are assumed to be beams because the ONLY weapon we have ever seen Ha'Taks use are beams, they don't have any missile launchers as far as we know, nor do the Goa'uld use nuclear ordnance (although they do have big Naquadah...spheres...). Ocams Razor and all that, the answer is far more likely then not, their main guns dialed to 11. We know they have the ability to blast the surface of planets into wrecks, Sokar certinally had no problems turning Netu into a quite literal hell with orbital weapons fire.

We didn't see the event in There but for the Grace of God. In "The Sentinel," Hatak weapons don't do much damage to ground targets. Anubis used his most powerful weapon on his most powerful ship on Abydos. It took several seconds to take out the pyramid. This is not consistent with 200 megaton beam weapons. They were therefore most likely nukes.

Staff weapons...dude...seriously? You have a multigigaton weapon on one hand, and you think some guys with STAFF WEAPONS 'contributed a lot'?

LOL. Well, not "a lot." But they are what started the thing.

Because its explicitly said in the episode by Zelenca, and explained in a very similar situation in 'Redemption' that this is what happens with Stargates if they take too much energy.

Conceded. But this is why that isn't what happened in "First Strike."

Dude, energy is energy. In fact a beam is a soft option; your calcs put the output of this beam at 4 Terrajoules per second. A 3 GT Stargate detonation for example is going to be delivering 12552000 Terrajoules, and deliver it at a far higher wattage due to the speed of the detonation. It took the Atlantis shield about 30 seconds or so to dissipate the energy (there was a minor explosion at the end not worth talking about) means the shield was able to dissipate at a rate of 418400 TW. If we look at the total energy absorbed (and as the shield had quite literally enveloped the Stargate it had to deal with 100% of the energy somehow), it would take your 4TW beam, what, 6 years to deliver the same amount of energy?

The shield failed. Yes, the explosion at the end was small. But this really only means the shield cannot withstand a gigaton-level explosion.

Actually no, it was ZPM technology, simply implemented a different way, instead of drawing energy from Spacespace/time, they drew it from realspace, but that led to the creation of exotic particles thanks to the laws of physics breaking down, which in turn completely screwed with the containment systems and started the system into a chain reaction.

It was similar to ZPMs in that it drew zero point energy. But it was completely different technology. This was very clear. And "thanks to the laws of physics breaking down," this has nothing whatsoever to do with usable power levels generated by a ZPM.

How exactly do you get 'Gigawatt range firepower', there isn't any event (except the station, which is almost uncalcable really) that can be used!

That is addressed in the webpage.

Uh dude, a main sequence star like Sol generates a little more then a TW range of power, Sol's energy output is on the order of 3.8×10^26W. And until we know HOW the system works, its impossible to say how much of that Destiny is sipping. For all we know, those glowy things underneath it cast an energy field hundreds of thousands of kilometers wide and deep, absorbing energy as the ship moves along the surface of everything under it like a giant Japanese fish net. I'll say it again,; we have no idea how the mechanism works, and its therefore impossible to get ANY numbers from it on the data we have!

Destiny can only absorb the energy that HITS IT. At the surface of a star like our sun, you get about 60 MW/m². If we assume that Destiny presents 1,000,000 square meters with its underside (to be generous and make the math easy), it would absorb no more than 60,000,000 megawatts, or 60 terawatts. And that is assuming 100% efficiency. If it does this for 10 minutes (to be generous), it would absorb no more than 36,000 terajoules, or 8 megatons. This is on the same order of magnitude I calculated for the Replicator beam. Again, this supports my calculations.

Except I would state that the energy DID go somewhere, its the reason the wormhole was staying active beyond the 38 minute window, but it doesn't have to COME THROUGH out the other side, 'Redemption' shows this clearly. When you see the Ancient device Anubis is using to hold the SGC's gate open, its firing a powerful beam right into the middle of it, but said beam does NOT come out the other side! All that comes out the other side is a tiny trickle of energy into the capacitors, which is so low in fact that the sensors didn't detect it until Carter re-calibrated the scale.

The stargate in First Strike didn't explode. They used a beam to attack Atlantis.
Are you saying the stargate absorbs anything above a certain power level? What is that power level? Why didn't it blow up?

I will point out that I was happy enough to provide any evidence you requested

They were all real, and all correct! Good job. BUT, each one also had a caveat. The only caveat with the First Strike example is the lack of steam.

[Brian Young]

Murazor,

The radiation was the problem, not the CME itself. This is in the quote itself. It would not threaten Atlantis directly, but would kill plant and animal life.
The CME vs the ship is very similar to the event in Star Trek TNG "Descent." Mike did some calculations on that, which are above my head. Anyway, we're looking at 4,000 terajoules or 1 megaton. Since they needed the ZPM to do this, and the ship still took physical damage, this supports my calculations as well.

[seanrobertson]

Hiya Chris.

Please pardon me for interrupting, but I had to comment on this part:

Dude, energy is energy. In fact a beam is a soft option; your calcs put the output of this beam at 4 Terrajoules per second. A 3 GT Stargate detonation for example is going to be delivering 12552000 Terrajoules, and deliver it at a far higher wattage due to the speed of the detonation. It took the Atlantis shield about 30 seconds or so to dissipate the energy (there was a minor explosion at the end not worth talking about) means the shield was able to dissipate at a rate of 418400 TW. If we look at the total energy absorbed (and as the shield had quite literally enveloped the Stargate it had to deal with 100% of the energy somehow), it would take your 4TW beam, what, 6 years to deliver the same amount of energy?

Slight disconnect here!

Your math's correct (personally, I would've gone with two thousand MT to be conservative), but you're overlooking a critical thing.

I talked about this a little in my last post. Comparing nukes and highly-focused beam weapons could indeed mean "energy is energy" is an oversimplification.

We know a nuke's energy will impact fairly evenly across Atlantis' entire shield. On the contrary, we also know a beam weapon, like the Replicator's, is highly localized. If Gate shields are like Trek's, they might spread a beam's energy out across a greater part of the shield's face, effectively reducing the intensity. (They appear to do just that, though to what extent's impossible to know. All we can say for sure is that the area of impact is lit up much brighter than the rest.)

I digress. I found an estimate that pegged Atlantis at four klicks wide. If that's correct, its shield profile is 12.5 million square meters. Struck with three gigatons, every square meter must cope with 990 GJ. You say the shield dissipates that over 30 seconds. Thus, each m^2 bleeds off 33 GW.

Concerning the explosion at the end of those thirty seconds: Apparently the shields couldn't get rid of all of that E, so I'd guess this puts an upper-limit on its dissipation rate.

At the end of the day, the Replicator beam still provides a order of magnitude more energy per unit area. Over the course of 30 hours ... ? Depending on how these shields work, a 4 TW beam could easily pose the threat Brian says it does.

[seanrobertson]

Destiny can only absorb the energy that HITS IT. At the surface of a star like our sun, you get about 60 MW/m². If we assume that Destiny presents 1,000,000 square meters with its underside (to be generous and make the math easy), it would absorb no more than 60,000,000 megawatts, or 60 terawatts. And that is assuming 100% efficiency. If it does this for 10 minutes (to be generous), it would absorb no more than 36,000 terajoules, or 8 megatons. This is on the same order of magnitude I calculated for the Replicator beam. Again, this supports my calculations.

Brian,

That's too generous

I was intrigued by the Destiny, so I fiddled around to determine its profile area. For a still incredibly generous estimate, I broke the ship down into a pair of right triangles.



One of the Stargate Wikis says the ship's nearly 750 meters long. Based on that, b is 438m.

Facing the star ventral-side down, we're looking at >330,000 m^2, or 20 TW if she skips along the photosphere.

I shouldn't have to tell anyone that is an outrageous upper-limit. My little triangles include at LEAST as much empty space as it does the ship. Even with a more refined area estimate, one would have to take into account the fact that solar collectors don't cover the ship's whole belly, and that any kind of such devices wouldn't have perfect efficiency.

[Murazor]

Your math's correct (personally, I would've gone with two thousand MT to be conservative), but you're overlooking a critical thing.

I talked about this a little in my last post. Comparing nukes and highly-focused beam weapons could indeed mean "energy is energy" is an oversimplification.

We know a nuke's energy will impact fairly evenly across Atlantis' entire shield. On the contrary, we also know a beam weapon, like the Replicator's, is highly localized. If Gate shields are like Trek's, they might spread a beam's energy out across a greater part of the shield's face, effectively reducing the intensity. (They appear to do just that, though to what extent's impossible to know. All we can say for sure is that the area of impact is lit up much brighter than the rest.)

I digress. I found an estimate that pegged Atlantis at four klicks wide. If that's correct, its shield profile is 12.5 million square meters. Struck with three gigatons, every square meter must cope with 990 GJ. You say the shield dissipates that over 30 seconds. Thus, each m^2 bleeds off 33 GW.

Concerning the explosion at the end of those thirty seconds: Apparently the shields couldn't get rid of all of that E, so I'd guess this puts an upper-limit on its dissipation rate.

At the end of the day, the Replicator beam still provides a order of magnitude more energy per unit area. Over the course of 30 hours ... ? Depending on how these shields work, a 4 TW beam could easily pose the threat Brian says it does.

The problem with this is that you are thinking that the Stargate destroyed in First Contact explodes outside the Atlantis city shield.

That's not the case.

When the Stargate is about to explode, they use the emitters of the city wide shield to make a small shield around the Stargate itself, with perhaps a meter of clearance in every direction. Considering the dimensions of the Stargate we are talking of 12-13 square meters of surface area for the whole thing with the whole energy of the detonation contained inside the shield.

The shield would have needed in the order of a couple of minutes to diffuse (exact term used) all the energy, but the shield emitters were building under the effort and in the end there was enough left to blow the windows of the large room in which the Stargate had exploded.

Minor brainfart. Make that thirty square meters for the Stargate sized shield they put around the explosion. The rest of the point stands.

[Brian Young]

Chris,

Before I go shopping, and before my wife kills me, I wanted to pop back in to add that I'm very impressed.
Most people on these boards can't impress me. But you are both knowledgable and resourceful. All your examples were good ones. I don't think they stand up to scrutiny where this debate is concerned, but they were all spot on. Correct nearly to the letter, just minus the caveats that a full viewing reveals.
Anyway, I am duly impressed and pleased, so...
If I decide to go forward with the new web project I'm thinking about, I want to invite you to come in as a guest commentator.
It would be for a week or month or whatever timeframe I decide to set. I think you would represent the pro-SG side very well.
E-mail me, and I'll fill you in on what I've got in mind. Or better yet, maybe I'll give you a call.

[Brian Young]

I shouldn't have to tell anyone that is an outrageous upper-limit. My little triangles include at LEAST as much empty space as it does the ship. Even with a more refined area estimate, one would have to take into account the fact that solar collectors don't cover the ship's whole belly, and that any kind of such devices wouldn't have perfect efficiency.

True, they are comparatively small. But we're talking about upper limits, so I just used the whole underbelly as the solar collector. And apparently too large an underbelly. Where did you find the size estimate? I think Destiny is probably larger than that. I'd guess at least a mile long, but I haven't scaled it.

The stargate exploding thing is as..what was dude's name?...said. They collapsed the shield around the stargate. But it failed. The resulting explosion wasn't that bad, but it still just presents an upper limit on Atlantis' shields in the low gigaton range.
It therefore doesn't directly contradict my calculations on the beam.

BUT, just for kicks, let's see how it would break down. If the explosion was...let's just say 5 gigatons, and the shield managed to block nearly all of it, and the exact amount of energy was needed to penetrate the shields by a beam as well...
Over 29 hours, the beam would need to deliver about 48 kilotons per second. That is just an order of magnitude above my current calculations. And it is generous, because the shield failed. So, if anything, this also supports my calculations.

[Murazor]

Let me offer a breakdown/analysis of the First Contact incident. Feel free to play around with it or poke holes in what follows:

Intensity of the explosion:

The Atlantis Stargate initiates a power buildup that causes it to reach "critical overload" and explode.

In the case of the Milky Way Stargates, such overloads have been directly rated at two to three thousand megatons (SG1 6x01 'Redemption I').

The Pegasus Stargates, however, use a different techbase. The best quantification we have for the explosion in First Contact comes from the lips of Zelenka, one of the re:

ZELENKA: The Gate exploding is the equivalent of a dozen nuclear explosions. There's nowhere we could evacuate quickly enough to a safe distance.

A dozen nuclear explosions offers us a wide range of possible interpretations. For the sake of being thorough, I am going to consider four possible scenarios:

A) Low: A dozen 'Fat Man' type nuclear weapons would give us a yield of 252 kilotons.

B) Mid-low: A dozen 26 MT devices (~50% more powerful than the Castle Bravo bomb), like the shaped charge used by SG1 during the Pegasus Project years before the First Contact episode, would give us a yield of 312 megatons.

C) Mid-high: A dozen 1 GT naquadah enhanced warheads, available to Stargate Earth for over a decade at this point, would give us a 12 GT.

D) High: A dozen mk IX naquadriah enhanced nuclear weapons, depending in what calculations you choose to believe, could be anywhere from the double digit gigatons to double digit teratons.

Atlantis shield:

With only seconds to spare, the Atlantis people decide to collapse the Atlantis city shield around the gate leaving a disc shaped shield some seven meters tall and perhaps two meters wide, for a total shield area of approximately 120 square meters (I seriously misremembered the size of an Stargate in my previous figure). This shield contains the explosion for approximately eighty seconds and 'diffuse' most of the energy, but some residual energy (some megajoules at most, since two normal humans survived it in the same room without taking cover) causes an explosion that blows the windows in the gate room.

Energy intensities:

A) Low: 2.1 kilotons per square meter.

B) Mid-low: 2.6 megatons per square meter.

C) Mid-high: 100 megatons per square meter.

D) High: >200 megatons per square meter. Potentially three orders of magnitude higher.

Energy diffusion rate:

Thanks to the explosion being contained, the shields must have gotten rid of all the energy except for the negligible amounts that escaped as visible light and the final explosion that rocked the Atlantis gate room.

A) Low: 3.15 kilotons per second.

B) Mid-low: 3.9 megatons per second.

C) Mid-high: 15 megatons per second.

D) High: > 30 megatons per second. Potentially three orders of magnitude higher.

The "three figures" thing is based in the mk IX yield, which we know to be 'multi-gigaton' (stated as such in Beachhead) though some scalings of the fireball suggest single digit teratons.

[Batman]

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.

If you need that big a number of ZPMs to power that beam ZPMs are pretty pathetic compared to modern day technology, actually.
At this point while I think Chris has a good case on why we should have seen more interaction between the beam and the water (though personally, I think he's overestimating the depth Atlantis is at, or at least the depth the beam has to penetrate), my main gripe is what the hell happens with all this power?

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?

Where is all that power going period? Even using your numbers, an 'unlimited' number of ZPMs powered beam should have gone through Atlantis' shields like they weren't there.

Certainly not into the water. Therefore, it must be DET into Atlantis's shields.

Except that much energy input, by your own calculations, would drop Atlantis' shields in a fraction of a second.

I can think of no other logical explanation, because that energy HAS TO GO SOMEWHERE. See? You're a smart guy

You obviously aren't into superhero comics.

, you have to see it is inescapable.

That as per Meredith's statement the beam should have had massively more firepower than we actually saw in the episode? Yes, I absolutely do.

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.

Err-at this point I should perhaps interject that I have no quarrel with your ZPM power level numbers, quite the contrary. Even with your numbers McKay's statement is either flat out wrong or hyperbole (and we DO know he exaggerates at times).

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.

Except by your own math, Atlantis' shields could never handle the power implied by McKay's statement.

[seanrobertson]

The problem with this is that you are thinking that the Stargate destroyed in First Contact explodes outside the Atlantis city shield.

That's not the case.

When the Stargate is about to explode, they use the emitters of the city wide shield to make a small shield around the Stargate itself, with perhaps a meter of clearance in every direction.

Thank you kindly for the correction.

Considering the dimensions of the Stargate we are talking of 12-13 square meters of surface area for the whole thing with the whole energy of the detonation contained inside the shield.

The shield would have needed in the order of a couple of minutes to diffuse (exact term used) all the energy, but the shield emitters were building under the effort and in the end there was enough left to blow the windows of the large room in which the Stargate had exploded.

Minor brainfart. Make that thirty square meters for the Stargate sized shield they put around the explosion. The rest of the point stands.

Indeed. That's ... something. I'm not quite sure what to make of it. But I see you've posted an analysis. We'll take it from there.

[NecronLord]

I'm liking this project so far, but I'm unsure of the necessity to put in any kind of 'Vs' element, I think a pure SG project would have more popular appeal.

As an aside, I've been considering attempting to scale Destiny based on the scenes of people moving about on its outside, and the size of its shuttles. 750 meters seems about right though.

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.

The Asurans had no particular quarrel with the Flagisallus, so that may have been an unconscionable action for them.

[Chris OFarrell]

So many responses, uch!
Well I brought it on myself

I'll try to get through it all this evening, I have plans for today I'm sorry to say, most of which center around a girl who could quite literally be Jessica Albas twin sister...

Priorities and all that

[NecronLord]

Also, I think it's pretty clear that the Asurans wanted to destroy Atlantis in this episode, they may have preferred to capture it in an earlier one (possibly to replace their own city ship that was destroyed?), but they also said they wanted to destroy it on other occasions and this seems to be much more of a direct retaliation for the human attack, rather than a capture effort.

Also, good luck Chris!

[Metahive]

Here's what the episodes give us:

In Progeny, the Asurans want to destroy Atlantis, Niam says as much whe asked why the Asuran city ship took off. In The Return they plan to claim the city as their own, they even plug additional ZPMs in and activate the stardrive. In First Strike Oberoth says they wish to "neutralize" Atlantis in response to the nuclear barrage they suffered earlier. He doesn't directly state it, but his intentions are clear, so the satellite weapon was meant to raze the city.

Since I also have First Strike at hand now, I think it can't be wrong to provide a few screencaps:

Asuran Satellite Weapon firing


Asuran Satellite hits Planet


Asuran Satellite Beam travels towards Atlantis (sorry for the distortions)


Asuran Beam hitting Asteroid


Asuran Beam cutting through Asteroid


Asuran Beam hits Atlantis


Close up on the Asuran Beam


Asuran Beam hits Atlantis #2


Hope they're useful in some way. I can get more if there's a demand.