New page I banged together

[adam_grif]

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)?

The reasoning is as follows:

- The total energy capacity of a ZPM is known to be very high
- The Replicator beam weapon will take however long it was (19 or 29 hours or something) to drain the energy of the ZPM.

Now, if the ZPM on the receiving side could not draw more than it's normal power to dump into the shields, then a beam weapon powered by multiple ZPMs would instantly penetrate the shields and destroy the city, since the shield output could not match the beam strength, especially when you consider that the shield must protect the whole city but the beam is only striking one tiny part of it.

However, what we see is that the more powerful the weapon striking the shields, the faster the shields are penetrated (1 beam from this destroys the shield far, far, far faster than a fleet of 10 massive warships and numerous escorts constantly bombarding all over with weapons). The implication seems to be that the harder the shields get hit, the faster the power drains from the ZPM to keep it active.

In an episode that I believe Batman mentioned, a ZPM is drained of most of its power in a matter of minutes. That is to say, that, at least up to a certain point, ZPM's can be drained arbitrarily fast (I acknowledge that limits certainly must exist somewhere, but are probably more to do with the capacity to shift the power around via conduits rather than a limit on the ZPM outputting it itself).

That was awfully long winded, but what I'm trying to say is that the ZPM's are not fixed at a certain, very low level of power output. A naive estimate assuming no inefficiencies in the draining of the ZPM at a higher rate where it was going to take 29 hours to drain a ZPM could be gained by assuming that a ZPM is a low-end extinction level event for total energy, and dividing by time

"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 already had this partially answered elsewhere. In the episode "Beachhead" of SG-1, the Ori were trying to get as much power through the gate as possible to power a giant shield to collapse a planet into a black hole. Essentially, they trick the humans into firing their biggest baddest new nuke (supposedly much more powerful than the 1.2 GT devices they previously had) to provide the energy with some kind of magical energy-absorbing shield.

The Ha-Tak vessels firing for a short period of time apparently provided 30% and the nuke provided 70% of the needed energy. As a side note, you might be able to derive Ha-Tak firepower estimates based on this, if you can work out how many there are, how long they fired (average shots per second and so on) and then use the 7 : 3 ratio provided, with the energy of the "7" side being based on scalings of the nuclear detonation!

But back on topic, this is brought up because although the Ori have another, similar black hole in their own galaxy to provide power to a super-stargate they are building (that is large enough to accommodate massive warships), they cannot provide enough power through the stargate to do it remotely.

This implies that there is a very strict limit on how much energy the wormhole can transmit to the other side, i.e., the replicator beam may have been at "max capcaity" for all that the stargate would transmit. This is to say, they couldn't fire harder not because they didn't have the firepower, but because there was a bottleneck.

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.

If you're going to play the magical physics card, at least allow us to use it too. We've been trying for this whole thread after all

The assumption all parties have had so far going in is that the energy that the shield absorbs must be matched by power generation. Joules in = Joules out in order for the shield to work. Now, there are any number of magical shields you could come up with that do NOT operate on this principle, but it's the only way we can make things calculable at all.

That the calculations drawn here are not accurate because of magical physics has been our argument all along, so welcome to the team

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.

If you don't even need to match the thing hitting you in order to "neutralize" it, then does this not imply that Altantis' shields are even more pathetic than the calculations originally derived here? If anything, that statement would make it MORE likely that this is using shield draining mumbo jumbo, because the Replicator sat is apparently capable of tanking 30 megatonne blasts but Daedelus isn't even capable of a tiny fraction of that, almost destroyed by a glancing blow from this supposedly "barely kilotonne" level weapon.

It would low-ball the ZPM's power even more for similar reasons.

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

In additions to the one that the other guy already posted, there is a shot where you see the fireball directly on top of Atlantis' shields as soon as the thing explodes.

The nuke's?

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

Did you just calculate the energy as spread over the entire shield of atlantis? Because the very peak of the shield at the top should have been taking the brunt of the explosion, as it was detonated quite literally within a few meters above the shield.

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.

"Intensity" of the beam and "burning out the emitters" was never mentioned as a possible problem in the episode, it was reasonably clear to me that the beam was a threat because it was draining power from the ZPM. Am I correct in assuming that you're suggesting that higher intensity beams drain power faster to counter?

If so, then, once again, his calculations on ZPM power based on total energy in being "blocked" by the shield may be misleading for the exact same reason it might have been if it was a technobabble beam to begin with - the ZPM is not really being drawn to anything approaching it's actual full capacity, but rather being artificially shortened in lifespan because of some property of the beam other than pure energy value.

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.

Are you trying to imply that Altantis' shields are not even strong enough to stand up to 29 hours of something that barely boils water?



Look, I'll state again for the record that all of our unwillingness to believe that ZPMs are so crap is NOT related to fanboyish concerns of "oh no it will be too weak and star wars will crush it" or whatever. It's there because the Stargate Verse, as whole, does not seem in any way consistent with those energy levels.

[Metahive]

The Asuran beam has some pretty weird characteristics, it quickly drains the shields, but when it finally hits the city it barely does any damage outside of shattering some windows and lethally wounding Dr. Weir. It seems to be a really precisely calibrated cutting beam. Did they just plan to carve the center controlling tower out of the city perhaps? That would certainly "neutralize" the city as Oberoth threatened before.

[Chris OFarrell]

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.

*blinks*

Someone claimed the Blackstar survived? Uh...
So, did you ask them why the Minbari call Sheridan Starkiller instead of Starslightradiationburner?

*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.

To go back over what I said, this is NOT a little CME! The physics of it are a little crazy, but its spelled out in the episode quite clearly. This solar event that hits the Daedalus's shields and is deflected is some kind of crazy super event, hyper concentrated, that once its gets squirted out of the star is going to spread out and, by the time it hits Lantia, it will generate a mass extinction event across the surface of the planet facing the sun. In the past when the Ancients had the city with 3 ZPM's, they got last second notice of what was happening and extended the shields on Atlantis to cover a big chunk (but not all) of the planet facing the sun and absorb the energy. In the present it wasn't an option as they didn't have 3 ZPM's, just 1, and they wouldn't be able to extend the shields that far (which interesting provides yet more evidence that a great many systems on Atlantis are designed to work with 3 ZPM's and even if 1 ZPM has more then enough power on its own, they still need 3 plugged in in parallel).

At any rate, two things can be taken from this;

1. Three ZPM's powering Atlantis can extend its shield to a partial planetary shield and shrug off a mass extinction event.
2. A 304 with a ZPM can take the concentrated force of the next mass extinction event to come along before it even dilutes to the level that hit the planet in the past.

Now I will also qualify that by saying that the visuals are rather screwy, but the dialogue is very consistent all the way through. Further, it doesn't appear as if the Daedalus was absorbing all that energy at all, simply using its shields to deflect it away from the planet and absorbing some of it in the process. But even if its only absorbing a few percent, thats a rather incredible feet.

*Unending. The planet did indeed explode. I don't know where the "one light second" thing comes from, but not from the episode.

Rough scaling of the Asgard homeworld, assuming its the size of Earth (not an unreasonable assumption given what we saw in 'New Order II' where it appeared to have an Earth level gravity well). Its quite possibly a little too far, for a comparision check the 'Earthrise' pictures Apollo-8 took of the Earth from about a light second away.

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.

Well no debris hit, but the energy shockwave that tore the planet to bits and was accelerating out far faster then the planetary debris DID hit them. It is true that no real numbers can be crunched from it, but I like to think that it at least points to a consistent picture of the levels of energy being thrown around that Stargate ships are exposed to and survive.

By the way, the Ori ships did survive as well, but no large debris hit them either. I space, there would be no "shockwave."

Well the ship chasing the Odyssey survived of course. Two other ships however were clearly heading down to the planets surface when the Odyssey broke orbit (the third Ori ship chased them) and would have been either in low orbit, the atmosphere or the ground when the planet went 'boom'.

The problem is that 'The Arc of Truth' suggests that the Ori have STILL not reopened the Supergate between 'Unending' and 'Arc of Truth', yet the fleet that shows up in the Sol system has seven ships has seven ships.

4 ships came through in the initial invasion of the Milky Way.
1 was destroyed in 'The Pegasus Project' leaving 3 ships.
1 was sent back to the Ori Galaxy with the anti-ascended weapon activated leaving 2.
6 ships come out of Supergate (probably 5 new ships plus the one that left above heading back) leaving 8
1 ship is destroyed by the Odyssey in Unending leaving 7.
1 ship is damaged or destroyed, we just don't know, leaving 7 or 6.

But 7 ships approached Earth in Arc of Truth.

The conclusion some people reached? That the two Ori ships thus survived a planet going BOOM right next to them.

I personally just say 'duh, they entered hyperspace before the boom but we didn't see it, don't be a moron' when people say the above. But that's the kind of conclusion you can reach using undisputed canon data

*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.

Actually Goa'uld type weapons are generally referred to as 'blasts', there are numerous cases of people talking about 'blasts from staff weapons' or 'staff weapons blasts'. The point is that there is never any example of a Goa'uld mothership having Any kind of missile launcher or bomb system. The only ship that does is an Al'Kesh, which uses some kind of weird energy bomb. In the following episodes in OUR reality, Aphosis sitting in orbit told Khorel to 'burn their first city to the ground' for example.
The simple fact is that we have plenty of evidence of orbital fire with their big guns, but we don't have ANY evidence of ANY bombs or missile type weapons systems on Motherships, and I must say its one hell of a stretch to simply presume the existence of them rather then simply assume the KNOWN weapons systems are doing the job...

Of course, as this is an alternate universe, it probably doesn't REALLY count if you want to be strict about it.

And regarding the Sentinel, the bombardment wasn't meant to inflict damage, it was meant to intimidatey. Hence the bolts harmlessly hitting the water, and the huge voice in the sky saying "I am XYZ Goa'uld, from this time forward, you will serve me!" Its pretty clear the Goa'uld wanted the city and its people intact, hence the advanced Jaffa party who seized the place in advance of the Motherships arrival.

There are really only two bombardment sequences in Stargate against planetary targets that are really of any use in working out numbers IMHO;

One is in 'Homecomming' where Ba'al and a fleet fire on Anubis's Mothership hovering over the Kelowan capital. And there are problems there as well; the bolts from the ships overhead are seen to penetrate through the ships shields, blow right through the ship, out the underside shields, then punch into the ground, penetrating an unknown distance down (but enough to make a bunker on the far outskirts of the city shake heavily) into the ground afterwards, often through a skyscraper.

It does however suggest that Goa'uld starship energy weapons are really keyed up to penetrate and deliver their energy in a high focused way (which in turn does give more credit to the idea that the TBFTGOG event was some kind of bomb, possibly an Al'Kesh through Naquadah charges out or something) rather then explode out.

The other bombardment event is from 'Continuum' in the AU where Qutesh orders Earth to be blasted to hell. Again in this case, the bolts fired appear to over penetrate into the ground rather then explode out leading to surprisingly limited surface damage, at least initially.

*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.

Uh, those missiles are nowhere near the yield! The Mark IX they used on the planet was quite literally Sam Carters new doomsday device, using a Naquadriah boosted Nuclear warhead instead of a Naquadah boosted warhead, with a nominal yield somewhere between higher triple digit gigatons and single digit Teratons depending on the assumptions you make, based on the detonations we saw in 'Beachhead' and 'First Strike'. Even IF Prometheus had 1.2 GT missiles (which it may well not have to be fair) equipped on its missiles, they would have only added partially to the total, the Ha'Tak's would have been making up the rest for the most part.

It was not until hen that the shield began to expand again significantly. It didn't do much from the Hatak bombardment.

Well we don't really see what the initial bombardment did. We DO know that the energy was absorbed, it accelerated the expansion from 30 minutes in the future to only a few minutes, so it wasn't inconsequential.

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.

Uh, the Staff weapons wouldn't have done anything really. I mean we're talking about weapons that put out what, a few Kilojoules a bolt, against the Mark IX? The power derived from the staff blasts would be quite literally immaterial compared to capital ships firing on it and the supernuke, so I think we can safely ignore their contribution as a rounding error or so

*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.

True, but context is everything. Firstly, the shields were doing something they pretty clearly were not really meant to do, project an internal field around the Stargate of a tiny size, compared to the massive surface area they normally have to dissipate energy. Secondly, unlike normal operations, they can't simply hold against the energy and let it dissipate into the environment around the ship, the shield generators themselves here had to actually absorb the energy directly and dissipate it somehow, which is a much more difficult job, to put it lightly.

And even then, they DID withstand the low gigaton explosion, what was left when the shield cut out was only a minor blast wave in the control room, as in sub ton level, let alone Gigaton.

And the ZPM was not touched in terms of being drained by this event, no mention was made in either this or following episodes of the ZPM being adversely affected. Where as your beam, assuming it delivers as you calculated a sustained 4TW effect (and frankly I think your assumptions are far too generous regarding the asteriod) then it would take...

Lets see;

1 Gigaton is 4184000 TJ
So assuming the blast was lower end, 2000 MT as per Sam's comments, we're looking at 8368000 TJ delivered to the shield, give or take a few joules at the end.
Now I'm just going to go by that number, the shield was able to disipate that energy steadily over about 30 seconds or so, but thanks to the enclosing shield, it also had to 'hold' that energy level the entire time, so go figure, and its too late at night for calculus :p

Now, your calcs put the beam at a sustained 4TW. So, simple math shows us it would take about...3.9 years to deliver that much energy, unless my maths is way off. And again, the ZPM itself in this situation was not drained or anything from this.

So...um....

Yeah!

*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.

Well, yes and no. There ARE some applications that allow a ZPM's energy to be drained at an absurd rate. The experimental power system they tried to build in 'McKay and Ms Miller' for example, which in turn was a reproduction of the Trinity device. In that episode, they got a ZPM (which an awesome wall mounted display shows us was at about 60% charge initially) and actually rammed the throttle on it up to 100% output, dumping all its energy into the space bridge to collapse it and stop the universe from being destroyed. They actually manage to drain the ZPM completely in that episode in about twenty seconds.

And a very similar thing happens in 'Adrift', the episode that follows 'First Strike' in fact. That glancing hit from the Replicator beam slices some of the ships primary conduits that feed the shield generators, and the ZPM as a result increases the amount of energy it is putting INTO said conduits so enough will get to the shield generator. BUT it can't put so much into those conduits that it can maintain the shield at full power either, nor can it maintain the Hyperdrive in action at the same time. So its clear that you CAN still overwhelm the ability of the ZPM to power the city shield without getting close to depleting the ZPM, its clear that the cities primary conduits from the ZPM to key systems are limited, unlike the power system conduits in the above example that let them waste an entire ZPM in no time. Hell, First Strike is all about that, the ZPM is so tied up delivering power to the shields that it can't deliver any more power to the Stardrive, hence their need to use that Lantian drilling platform to give just enough of a boost to get off, even when they used the asteriod to shield them.

Despite the fact that the ZPM still had more then ample power to lift the city AND power the shield inside it.

But that's also probably because the city was DESIGNED to be used with 3 ZPM's in parallel (as explicitly stated by Janus in 'Before I sleep') and the Ancients never expected to do crazy things like try to fly it while under attack with a single ZPM on hand.


I think its safe to say at this point that neither of us is going to convince the other. I just find that the Replicator beam being a direct energy transfer weapon so completely out of line with all the other examples seen in Stargate, that I can only accept it as an 'exotic' beam to make sense and mesh with all the other overwhelming examples of far greater numbers and energy levels being thrown around as a matter of course.
I don't think your numbers are wrong, per see, in fact they are probably a little high, but I just think it makes so much more sense if the DET component is simply an after effect of the beam, and its doing its job in a much more sophisticated way...

But I think most of the arguments on this subject have been covered in depth by now anyway.

So I'll try to stop my incredibly long essays and let you get some sleep, rather then subject you to reading through them as I say in 200 lines what could be said in 2...

[Murazor]

1 Gigaton is 4184000 TJ
So assuming the blast was lower end, 2000 MT as per Sam's comments, we're looking at 8368000 TJ delivered to the shield, give or take a few joules at the end.
Now I'm just going to go by that number, the shield was able to disipate that energy steadily over about 30 seconds or so, but thanks to the enclosing shield, it also had to 'hold' that energy level the entire time, so go figure, and its too late at night for calculus :p

Now, your calcs put the beam at a sustained 4TW. So, simple math shows us it would take about...3.9 years to deliver that much energy, unless my maths is way off. And again, the ZPM itself in this situation was not drained or anything from this.

So...um....

Yeah!

Err... Your math is way off. That date must have been quite something.

A sustained four terawatts beam will have delivered two gigatons worth of energy after 24.18 days. It still leaves a discrepancy of over an order of magnitude, but it is not quite as bad as your figures show.

[Chris OFarrell]

Yeah, thats why you should never do maths when you're almost asleep, I forgot that there are these things called 'minutes' in between seconds and hours...I thought for a min I had pasted my online account number into wincalc until I had a good look and hit myself...

So lets try that again;

Beam is delivering 4 TJ a second (roughly 1 Kiloton per second, give or take).
Gate blasting has an energy level of between 2-3 gigatons (2000 - 3000 megatons, 2000000 - 3000000 Kilotons).

Now there are 60 seconds in a min, and 60 mins in an hour, and 24 hours in a day, so

(((2000000/60) /60) /24) = 23.1 days

Or for the higher number

(((3000000 / 60) /60) /24) = 34.7 days

Still a heck of a lot more then the 12 or so hours! And again, I'll say that the gate going boom didn't really stress the ZPM.

[Chris OFarrell]

And as for the date, it wasn't actually a date, I was just going to a thing where she would be a round (she is a friend of my sister).

The GOOD news is that IMHO she was actually hotter then Jessica Alba.
She was also incredibly smart, she had just finished a PHD in frigen pure mathematical theories that had me just nodding along dumbly when she tried to explain.

The bad news is that she has a boyfriend who was there.

The worse news is that he was actually a really nice and likable guy, not someone who made it easy to hate him on behalf of all single males in the Western Hemisphere...
*sigh*

Annnnnnnnnnyway Brian, I'll reply to your second post I missed yesterday later, probably this evening.

[Brian Young]

Guys,

Sorry I had to drop out. My wife was upset with me for spending the whole holiday on the computer.
But I wanted to pop in and note that I just watched "Redemption," the episode where Anubis attacked the stargate, causing it to explode.
The energy he was sending through to keep the stargate open and overload the gate was so small, they had to adjust their equipment to even read it. Sam adjusted the sensitivity 200% to even see the pattern. They didn't pick it up at all for some time.
So the assertion that the stargate was absorbing significant amounts of power from the beam in "First Strike" are unsupported.

[Brian Young]

To go back over what I said, this is NOT a little CME!

The CME was no thicker than the ship itself. This is therefore not a large one. Physics - this was a small CME, they don't come highly concentrated like a coherent beam. Take a look at Mike's page on the Borg thing I mentioned.
And again, with the planet exploding, shockwaves don't travel through space. If no debris hit the ship, it's no big deal.
Just saw that as I was scrolling up to log out.
Now, to spend more time with the wife.

[Brian Young]

Uh, those missiles are nowhere near the yield! The Mark IX they used on the planet was quite literally Sam Carters new doomsday device, using a Naquadriah boosted Nuclear warhead instead of a Naquadah boosted warhead, with a nominal yield somewhere between higher triple digit gigatons and single digit Teratons depending on the assumptions you make

And after I said all that stuff about you being good...
You yourself have said, in this thread, that the missiles are the same naquadah-enhanced whatever.
And Sam said "that was a multi-gigaton explosion." Nothing anywhere about teratons.

There are some slippery folk here on these boards. Or maybe I can't keep up with who said what. One minute a missile is equal to a certain bomb, the next it is not. One minute the beam is a weird shield-draining but not dangerous thing, the next the stargate is draining all the power. One minute Atlantis is 700 meters wide, the next a few thousand. One minute a star doesn't follow the laws of physics so Destiny can be more powerful, the next it doesn't so a CME can be more powerful. One minute an asteroid blocking a beam is irrelevant, the next it didn't hit the command tower like I saw it do. One minute the beam drained Apollo's shields because it is a shield-drainer, the next it takes over a day to do the same to Atlantis' - but wait, Daedalus can block a CME that Atlantis can't with the same power source.

It seems I'm the only one that has presented a consistent analysis. Or am I just getting you guys mixed up, and you all disagree with each other?

Anyway, I've really got to spend some time with the wife. Yikes.

[Brian Young]

Oh wait, watching the episode. The bomb used naquadria, not naquadah. I see, gotcha.
My bad.
But still, let's consider a possibility. Nothing to substantiate this, just noting a possibility. If the bomb released 15 times (!) the energy of each naquadah-enhanced missile, and it provided 70% of the energy needed, the 5-6 missiles would provide the other 30%.
On the display, the shield expanded significantly when the bomb exploded, but not again until the missiles exploded.

[Murazor]

Daedalus can block a CME that Atlantis can't with the same power source.

Not what was described in the episode. The concern wasn't Atlantis being destroyed by the CME, but lacking the ability to expand the shield enough to keep a viable environment afterwards.

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 ...

Daedalus could block it, because it was capable of taking off and getting close enough to the sun to intercept the CME close to the source. Atlantis couldn't, not because of shield limitations, but because it required two additional ZPMs to take off.

The CME was no thicker than the ship itself. This is therefore not a large one. Physics - this was a small CME, they don't come highly concentrated like a coherent beam. Take a look at Mike's page on the Borg thing I mentioned.

The physics are wrong, no matter how you put it, because normal coronal mass ejections simply don't come as coherent superlaser-style beams. This one visibly did, something so utterly extraordinary that treating it as a normal CME is a premise error. As for its size...

McKAY: It’s a coronal mass ejection on a scale that dwarfs anything our sun has ever emitted. Apparently the sun in this solar system goes through an unusually turbulent sunspot cycle every fifteen thousand years or so. The Ancients have records of this class of C.M.E. occurring twice before.

And Sam said "that was a multi-gigaton explosion." Nothing anywhere about teratons.

Teraton figures have been calculated with a literal interpretation of the following statement...

MITCHELL: Great. In that case, we have in our possession a Mark IX naquadria enhanced nuclear warhead, which was designed solely for the purpose of vaporizing Stargates and anything else in a one-hundred mile radius.

For reference, according to the Asteroid Destruction Calculator blasting a crater 160 km deep in a granite asteroid would require 5.93 teratons.

Figures within an order of magnitude of this value (hundreds of gigatons to tens of teratons) have also been calculated using as a basis the enormous persistent fireball left after the explosion, despite unknown quantities such as the amount of energy drained away by the Ori shield.

[Brian Young]

Okay, can't sleep. Something is bothering me, and I finally put my finger on it.
You guys keep referring to Atlantis' shields preventing the extinction of life on the planet so many years ago from the CME. But you see, the danger was from radiation. This is the key piece of information I mentioned before, but I finally realized you guys don't understand. It takes an impactor anywhere from 1 million to 100 million megatons to cause an extinction level event. But that is from an IMPACT. Or an explosion. This is radiation. That was made clear in the episode. Different thing altogether, and does not require the bloated energy figures.
Thanks to examples you guys gave, we know that Atlantis' shield can not contend with an explosion as much as 3 gigatons. Even when collapsed to the size of the gate. See, if you expand a shield, it gets weaker, therefore if you collapse a shield, it gets stronger. A stargate's explosion was 2-3 gigatons, per Sam Carter.
Therefore, thanks to you guys, we know the absolute upper limit on the shield is 3 gigatons, because it would be weaker when surrounding the entire city, and it even failed when collapsed to the size of the gate.
An impact of a million megatons is therefore between 300 and 1,000 times greater than the shield capacity.

Furthermore:
As I mentioned before, if we divide 3 gigatons by 30 hours (29 hours plus the stargate's 38 minute cycle), we get about 28 kilotons per second, or about 120 terawatts for the Replicator beam. This can be considered an upper limit, as it is based on the upper limit of shield capacity.
This is consistent with my calculations, because based on limited data on both calculations, we come to within an order of magnitude or so. Even if we used my calculations as a lower limit (!), the beam is between 4 and 120 terawatts. That is a pretty tight grouping for this kind of analysis.
It is also consistent with the fact that a ZPM cannot put the ship into orbit.

I don't buy the "just a shield-draining thing" for several reasons:
*Never mentioned in the episode, so that was just made up.
*It directly affected the asteroid, just not to the magnitude you guys want.
*We can clearly see *from orbit* the beam melting the bottom of the ocean, as it sweeps to hit Atlantis. That is the red glow.
*The lack of steam is obviously accounted for by the clarity of the water, as it doesn't absorb the beam.
*It was going to take over a day to drain the shields. So if it is a special kind of physics designed just to drain shields, it is a piss-poor one.

I don't buy the idea that the gate absorbs all the power, because that has no precedent. In "Redemption," Anubis' weapon was barely detectable by the SGC. No matter how large his weapon is, it is the effect that counts. And they could barely read it.
*Radio signals sent through the gate come out just as strong.
*A spear thrown through the gate comes out just as fast.
*Staff weapon blasts shot through the gate come out just as powerful.
Powering the gate is not the problem. The Replicator beam should come through just as powerful as it went in.

No amount of whining over the energy from naquadria bombs will help, for several reasons:
*We've never seen that used against Atlantis.
*We've never seen that used against Daedalus-class ships.
*It may exceed the shield capacity of Atlantis anyway, established as less than 3 gigatons.
*The only way to calculate a yield on this thing is by the 100 mile radius and fireball duration.
Using Mike's Nuclear Weapon Effects Calculator, we can see that the gate's detonation itself (if we assume 3 gigatons) would account for twice the 100 mile radius, as "thermal radiation radius" is 310 kilometers (200 miles). Fireball duration would be nearly 3 minutes, which is consistent with what we see onscreen. It is also within what Sam Carter called "a multi-gigaton explosion."
If we assume the bomb was nearly *twice* this (even though it exceeds the requirements already), it would be 5 times greater yield than the naquadah-enhanced bombs used before. This is consistent with the 5 missiles fired completing the shield, as seen onscreen.
It is even more consistent if we stay with 3 gigatons, as that is still more than twice the yield of the 1.2 gigaton ones used before, and stays consistent with both dialogue and visuals.
Not that this has *anything* to do with the Replicators, Atlantis, or the power output of a ZPM, which can't put the ship into orbit without help.

[Brian Young]

For reference, according to the Asteroid Destruction Calculator blasting a crater 160 km deep in a granite asteroid would require 5.93 teratons.

You're using the blast radius, not the thermal effects radius. Read the quote.
A 3 gigaton explosion (the gate itself, without counting the bomb) would cause 3rd degree burns at 200 miles.

[Chris OFarrell]

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?

No my contention is that, as stated in the episode, the energy is going into the generation of the wormhole as maintaining a constant wormhole post 38 minute mark is explicitly said to require an enormous amount of energy. This energy is not going into the receiving Stargate, its being used by the OUTGOING Stargate back on the Asuran homeworld to GENERATE this wormhole and hence, it has been expended before reaching the destination Stargate.

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.

Um, I think you mean 'First Contact'/'Lost Tribe' in regards to the Atlantis Stargate exploding. 'Critical Mass' is the ZPM threatening to go 'boom. In the case of Anubis's Gate weapon, I think its pretty clear EXACTLY enough energy was being delivered to the Stargate to keep it open past the 38 minute window, but beyond that only a tiny amount of energy was being sent through. Not enough to reintegrate on the far side, but enough to reach Earths Stargate and begin to very slowly build up in the capacitors until finally, a day or two later, the energy buildup would reach such a level that the Naquadah storing it cooked off. The Atlantis Stargate in 'First Contact' reached this same level in a matter of 30 seconds or so due to the Altero device.

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?

Because there is a defined limit to how much energy you can transfer through the Stargate. As shown in 'Beachhead'; even the Ori who have an equal -if not superior- technological base to the Replicators couldn't deliver an unlimited amount of power through the Stargate, and so they had to hope they could trick the 'locals' into provide the power.

And your point raises a question in of itself; if they REALLY wanted to blow up Atlantis in a moment, why didn't they simply toss a 'rigged' ZPM through the Gateweapons Stargate and detonate it catastrophically, taking out the planet and Atlantis? We know that ZPM's can do it, and we know they have plenty of ZPM's, so why not?

Answer; they have a perfectly suitable weapon on hand that will do the job without needing to go to such extreme lengths, and so they put it into use. And it DID work, Atlantis was screwed, they just (as always) managed to come up with some insane off the wall plan they didn't expect.

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!

Well it won't destroy Atlantis. Unlike Earth in Season 6, they have a Daedalus class ship in orbit that can just beam the Stargate into orbit and let it detonate a few days later while they go grab another Stargate. Logic suggests that if they could have overloaded the Stargate that quickly and blown the city, they would have done so; its probably a function of the Gate destroyer that it takes that long to build up the charge. If you shot energy at the gate any faster, it would probably be rematerialized by the Stargate and dealt with as a normal shield/iris attack. The Gate destroyer appears to exploit a tiny window of opportunity for incoming energy from a wormhole where if you hit it with less then a certain amount of energy, it simply gets absorbed by the Stargate itself and NOT rematerialized. Now, I'll bet dollars to donuts that in normal operations when the wormhole shuts down, it simply discharges that energy harmlessly...but if the wormhole remains active, it CAN'T get rid of the charge.

And if you keep adding more energy to it, eventually, as Susan Ivanova put it so well;

'No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow'

4. Why use a beam at all that wastes its energy powering the gate? See number 2.

Addressed, but I'll also point out that the beam was actually serving two purposes; it was both the offensive weapon of the platform AND the power source for the shields around it that protected it from counter attack. As Atlantis had a full stock of drones at that point and the Apollo had its own nuclear ordinance to play with, and McKay considered both as pointless against the shield, we can't forget that a significant chunk of the power was ALSO going to the defenses, enough to withstand whatever was thrown at it.

Doesn't make any sense. The fact they fired a beam means the beam was using the power. Not logical any other way.

See above.

The exploding planet didn't hit the ships with any large pieces of debris.

True, but the shockwave that tore the planet to pieces did hit the ship, at least in part. But yes, no real numbers can be easily gained from this sequence.

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.

The episode makes it abundantly clear that this was NOTHING like a solar event we see on our own star and that the energy levels involved are FAR greater then anything Sol puts out, that it was something humans had never seen a star do before.

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.

Dealt with The Sentinel in the previous post. As for the weapon used on Abydos, it was not a regular Goa'uld weapon, it was a very exotic weapon with highly unusual properties that appeared to do some really weird chain reaction crap. Interestingly however, just as Jack heads back through the Gate, they close the Iris behind him and Sam reports a massive power surge. Then they try to dial the Stargate and find that it has blown up (a fact confirmed at the end of the episode) and everyone on planet got blown up as a result, even people some distance away in caves sheltering from the fighting.

And I hate to sound like a broken record, but there is still not the slightest evidence that the Goa'uld have nuclear warheads or use nuclear technology, that their ships mount any kind of missile launchers or projectile launchers / bombardment cannons or anything to back up this claim...
You really appear to be pulling a capability out of thin air that we have never seen or heard of before, it would be like claiming B5 ships have ion cannons because we hear about a ship being 'disabled' or something.
If of course you can provide me any evidence of Goa'uld Motherships having missile launchers or the Goa'uld throwing space to surface nukes around of course...

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

No, the transmitting Stargate was pouring all its energy through, the receiving Stargate however didn't receive any of it and store it, it just came out like normal. The Ancient weapon Anubis used appeared to be specifically designed to only send enough power through that it would be stored and not reintegrated (after spending the energy to generate the wormhole of course), but this took some time to build up.

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

Well, it DID withstand a gigaton level explosion if all that was left was an inconsequential blast at the end of it all. And as I said, the shield did it under conditions that are highly unusual in several respects; specifically in that a small part of the shield (the total surface area the shield would usually have to dissipate that kind of energy is just a tad bigger after all) held, and the ZPM had no problems providing the power levels needed. This isn't a case of the ZPM running out of power or anything, it was just the shield emitters powering this tiny shield struggling to directly absorb all that energy from such a tiny shield. And it DID manage to do it, although it did effectively take everything the shield had.

I mean it might be interesting to work out the surface area of the mini-shield here and work out the per square meter dissipation ability of the shields. We can see that the shield tends to spread out energy over as large a surface area as possible after all, it might be interesting to see if we presume that the above incident represents the absolute high end of the shields instantaneous dissipation capabilities what numbers you'll get over the total area...

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.

Well I'd hardly say COMPLETELY different, they do constantly compare it to ZPM technology and how it is very similar in the episode.;

McKAY: A Zero Point Module is an artificially created region of subspace time. It's kind of like a miniature universe in a bottle.
ZELENKA: It extracts vacuum energy from this artificial region of subspace time until it reaches maximum entropy.
CALDWELL: So what's different about this thing?
ZELENKA: Project Arcturus was attempting to extract vacuum energy from our own space-time, making it potentially as powerful as the scope of the universe itself.
CALDWELL: It strikes me as something the Ancients would have tried first, even before ZeeP.Ms.
McKAY: And they may have, but extracting zero point energy from our own universe is ... well, it's, uh, definitely trickier.

In short, a ZPM extracts vacuum energy from a self contained pocket of subspace which eventually reaches maximum entropy and is thus empty. Arcturus was attempting to do the same thing, but from our own universe, which being far larger then the little pocket universes, equals absurdly more energy. Rodney explicitly states that even running the system at 50% output it will equate to the output of a dozen ZPM's. Its just that exotic particles generated in realspace keep warping the containment system so the energy the system generated couldn't be contained, and swiftly the whole thing overloaded and went boom with the power of a dozen ZPM's or so, blowing up 5/6ths of a solar system.

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.

Oh, that. I thought you were talking about a specific incident of firepower to calc off.
I will point out its a little iffy though, given that one of the things you and I are debating is those very calculations...its slightly circular logic to then point to them as showing Gigawatt range firepower

Destiny can only absorb the energy that HITS IT.

You don't KNOW that because you and I don't know how the technology WORKS dude! Thats my point! you're assuming the system catches energy hitting the ship, how do you know its not generating some kind of field into the star to draw energy off? You don't! I don't! We don't know ANYTHING about how it works, except that six glowy triangular things lower themselves, glow white and then energy is absorbed.

Until you can actually provide a mechanism for this technology, there is simply no way to draw ANY useful numbers from it, period. It would be the same as seeing a ship in SciFi floating in anti gravity and without any more information then that, trying to calculate how much energy it is expanding to hover a meter above ground, without knowing anything about how much Work the system is doing, for example.

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.

Yessss? But did you notice that as I just said, the 'Redemption' weapon was clearly putting it EXACTLY the right amount of energy to hold the Stargate connection open...and then nothing else, except for the tiny trickle that would build up? If Anubis could dump the energy into the other gate faster by dumping more energy and blowing up the SGC in a few seconds...I think he would have done so, no?
Ergo, the timeframe and tiny amount of energy into the gate is a fundamental part of how the Gate Destroyer works, the Replicator system has nothing to do with that type of technology, OUTSIDE of dumping enough energy into the wormhole to maintain an open connection.

Are you saying the stargate absorbs anything above a certain power level? What is that power level? Why didn't it blow up?

Actually no, just the opposite, that it absorbs 'inconsequential' and trivial energy coming in that is so low Carters diagnostics of the Stargates systems didn't even detect the energy being absorbed by the Gate until she took a very close look.

LT. SIMMONS
Major…there's a rise in power being retained by the Gate's internal capacitors of .1%.

CARTER
Well, while there's an open wormhole, the value tends to fluctuate by at least that much anyway.

LT. SIMMONS
Not for the last 12 minutes, it hasn't.

CARTER
Go to Gate diagnostic screen four.

LT. SIMMONS
Normal…no incoming energy readings.

CARTER
Increase sensitivity by 50%.

[A few blips appear on the computer graph.]

CARTER
What was that?

LT. SIMMONS
Could be interference in the line between the Gate and computer.

CARTER
There it is again. Increase sensitivity by 200%.

LT. SIMMONS
That's well within the accepted margin of error for the sensors.

CARTER
I know, try it anyway.

[A pattern of blips appears on the computer graph.]

CARTER
I admit it's a pretty small anomaly, but it could be contributing to the power build up in the Gate.

LT. SIMMONS
But, uh…

CARTER
Errors are random, Lt. Whatever this is, it has a distinct pattern.

LT. SIMMONS
Right.

In short, the Gates capacitors routinely fluctuate by this much with an incoming wormhole as a matter of course, a tiny almost inconsequential amount...until it keeps getting added....and the Stargate can't shut down to discharge the energy...meaning 'uh oh'.

CARTER
We've detected an energy build up within the Gate. It's being transmitted through the incoming wormhole. We didn't notice it before because our sensors aren't calibrated to measure something this small.

HAMMOND
The iris appears to be holding.

CARTER
Yes, Sir. It's likely slowing the energy transfer significantly, but it's not stopping it completely.

O'NEILL
(hesitantly)
Doesn't sound so bad.

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?

[Someone off camera hands Carter a lap top. She shakes her head negatively.]

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

HAMMOND
Enough to take out Colorado.

CARTER
The resulting environmental effects could destroy all life on Earth.

O'NEILL
There's worse?

CARTER
We have no idea how to stop it.

Later Carter explicitly says she is looking for (and clearly fails to find) ways to drain the energy from the gates Capacitors.

[Lt. Simmons is walking with another officer down a corridor toward the Gate room.]

OFFICER
Shouldn't we be cutting all power to the Gate?

LT. SIMMONS
Won't do any good. Incoming wormholes draw their energy from the offworld source. Major Carter still wants to be able to monitor the Gate through the feedback system.

[Sgt. Siler is at the base of the ramp in the Gate room as Lt. Simmons and the other officer pass.]

SGT. SILER
(to technician on the ramp)
We can't use the Russian Gate because we can't dial out of another Gate when there's already an established incoming wormhole to Earth.

[Jonas walks into the Gate room at that time and looks around at the chaos. He is holding some books and turns to gaze up into the control room where Carter is leaning over a computer terminal talking with two female technicians.]

INT—SGC CONTROL ROOM

FEMALE OFFICER
Energy build up has reached 18%.

CARTER
There has to be a way to drain the capacitors…

To summarize; the Gate Destroyer delivers enough energy to keep the wormhole open, and then on top of that delivers a very small amount of energy that is stored in the gates capacitors and not reintegrated like normal matter or energy. Its highly improbable that the low level of energy and time limit is a choice for dramatic purpose, but a limitation in how the system works to build up the lethal energy in the capacitors.

The Replicator beam OTOH is WAY more power and reintegrated like normal energy/matter is reintegrated, not touching the receiving Stargates capacitors in terms of a buildup, but just passing through like normal.

[Murazor]

You're using the blast radius, not the thermal effects radius. Read the quote.
A 3 gigaton explosion (the gate itself, without counting the bomb) would cause 3rd degree burns at 200 miles.

Actually, I am using the cratering radius which is a high end but still valid interpretation of the statement (since third degree burns =/= vaporization of everything in a hundred mile radius), possibly supported by the ginormous fireball observed.

I mean... take this scaling I've just done of the fireball (possibly somewhat inaccurate - I have done it in a hurry with less than ideal image editing tools). For the fireball size to fit a single digit gigaton detonation, I would have had to make a mistake of a full order of magnitude.

It is consistent with this one, which shows an even greater amount of planetary curvature.

[Metahive]

And I hate to sound like a broken record, but there is still not the slightest evidence that the Goa'uld have nuclear warheads or use nuclear technology, that their ships mount any kind of missile launchers or projectile launchers / bombardment cannons or anything to back up this claim...

Well, they do have these:



but they don't show up outside Flesh and Blood, so who knows what those bombs are actually used for.

[Chris OFarrell]

And after I said all that stuff about you being good...

*raises eyebrow*

You yourself have said, in this thread, that the missiles are the same naquadah-enhanced whatever.
And Sam said "that was a multi-gigaton explosion." Nothing anywhere about teratons.

No, I didn't. The Mark IX is a Naquadriah enhanced nuclear weapon quite distinct from the lesser weapons because it is an absurdly overwhelming powerful weapon, they brought it along SPECIFICALLY because it was far more powerful then anything else they had. Its why they call it a 'Gatebuster' after all.

And Sam indeed said 'Multi-Gigaton', but as I said, if you examine the episode you can crunch numbers based on the detonation and fireball size, scaled, which put it easily into the upper Gigaton level or even lower Teraton level. And the statement would not be the first time that Stargate people reference things by a lower order of magnitude; the always call the 1.2 GT weapons '1200 Megaton' weapons after all, not 1.2 Gigaton weapons, and there are more then a few other SciFi shows that do it.

There are some threads on SDN about it you should be able to search for, the numbers thrown around depending on the assumptions you make are anything from mid tripple digit Gigatons to low double digit Teratons (I ignore as moronic the people who take the energy needed to crush a planet into a black hole (which the forcefield did) and assume the bomb gave 70% of THAT power and come up with just...yeah....numbers). The numbers can also be crunched in 'First Strike' based on the attack on the Replicator planet, although said warheads looked quite a bit smaller, that could easily be the difference between a prototype weapon and the production weapon.

There are some slippery folk here on these boards. Or maybe I can't keep up with who said what. One minute a missile is equal to a certain bomb, the next it is not.

*sigh*

I never said the bomb and the missiles fired from 304's were equal, far from it, the bomb is a bloody doomsday weapon! My point is that Earths ships in Stargate MIGHT use missiles tipped with the 1.2GT warheads, but they also clearly don't use the same yield nukes all the time, we know they have warheads in the ~30 Megaton range with focused directional detonation abilities for example (which were used in 'The Pegasus Project' to try and 'jump' the Stargate) and we could easily assume Prometheus was using those in 'beachhead' when they opened fire, the 1.2 GT gives us a high end for the missiles Prometheus used, but even then if we're assuming even a 500 Gigaton Mark IX detonation, thats still only fractions of a single percent being added by Prometheus with its salvos against the planet, at a time.

One minute the beam is a weird shield-draining but not dangerous thing, the next the stargate is draining all the power.

Eh?

One minute Atlantis is 700 meters wide, the next a few thousand.

*shrug* Not involved in that discussion, but the answer should be simple. At hte start of the TV series they paid their CGI people to make a single super high-res mesh of Atlantis for all their external shots, hence why they were able to do things like the shots in 'Siege II' zooming between parts of the city, so often, because they already had the thing to work with.
And I think they actually gave the exact dimensions for it at some point in the past, and as they always used that model...

One minute a star doesn't follow the laws of physics so Destiny can be more powerful, the next it doesn't so a CME can be more powerful.

Thats a cheap shot. You have utterly failed to provide any evidence for how the energy gathering system thingy even WORKS, meaning we have no idea how it gathers energy from the star, you are simply ASSUMING that it MUST be a direct skin-skin contact against the hull of the ship or something, without the slightest supporting evidence to support your claim from the canon. Meanwhile the CME event in 'Echoes' is explained BY THE CHARACTERS as being an event well outside what stars like Sol normally do. You may not LIKE that it is such, but you simply cannot wave your hands and say that Mike says its impossible because it doesn't act that way, when the Characters in the SHOW ITSELF are saying that it is!

SHEPPARD: We figured it out.
McKAY: Well, actually, I did most of the figuring ...
SHEPPARD: Adaris is a ship we found in the Ancient database.
McKAY: It’s an Ancient science vessel. About fifteen thousand years ago, it ran into some trouble. The entire crew was killed except for the pilot.
WEIR: The burned man. Teyla noticed the uniform. He was an Ancient pilot.
McKAY: Which would explain the burns.
ZELENKA: What does?
SHEPPARD: The ship got hit by a blast of radiation from the sun.
McKAY: It’s a coronal mass ejection on a scale that dwarfs anything our sun has ever emitted. Apparently the sun in this solar system goes through an unusually turbulent sunspot cycle every fifteen thousand years or so. The Ancients have records of this class of C.M.E. occurring twice before.
SHEPPARD: The ship was very close to the sun when it happened.
McKAY: It’s a massive prominence. It arced up and then collapsed when the magnetic field surrounding it weakened. We’re talking an intense proton stream travelling at over four thousand kilometres per second.
SHEPPARD: Most of the crew was killed instantly but the pilot managed to open up a hyperspace window just as they were hit. He flew the ship back here, jumping ahead of the radiation wave just in time to warn everyone.
McKAY: The Ancients were able to raise the shield and extend it far enough to protect a large portion of the planet from the blast.
WEIR: So what are you telling me? This is going to happen soon?
McKAY: Not soon. It’s happening right now.
(He turns the screen of his laptop towards her. It shows a prominence curling out from the edge of the sun.)

...

CONTROL ROOM. The image of the coronal prominence is now on a large screen.
McKAY: The magnetic field around it is already beginning to weaken. When that prominence collapses, the coronal mass ejection will occur. It’ll erupt from a very small area -- a mere pinprick in comparison to the total sun’s surface, but it’ll immediately begin to fan out. Within a few million miles, the blast wave will cut a swathe wide enough to take out this entire planet.
SHEPPARD: How much time do we have?
ZELENKA: The prominence will collapse any moment now. After that, we have less than an hour before the radiation wave hits us.
WEIR: Why didn’t we notice this before?
McKAY: Because these things happen very quickly.
ZELENKA: This kind of sunspot cycle is extremely chaotic -- impossible to predict. No doubt that’s what caused the glitch in the Jumper’s navigational systems.

....

McKAY: This is not a good plan.
SHEPPARD: Sure it is.
McKAY: You realise just how close we’ll have to get to the sun?
SHEPPARD: Pretty damned close, I’m thinkin’.
(He picks up the case for the Z.P.M. and opens it.)
McKAY: Suicidally close. I mean, we’ll be toast.
SHEPPARD: That’s why we’re taking the ZeeP.M. -- to give the Daedalus’ shield an extra boost.
McKAY: OK, OK -- you want to deflect the coronal mass ejection away from the planet.
SHEPPARD (taking the Z.P.M. out of its slot): Like an umbrella.
McKAY: OK, listen to me. (He picks up his computer tablet and starts to draw on its screen.) This ... (he draws a big circle in the bottom right hand corner) ... this is the sun; and this ... (he draws a small squiggle in the top left hand corner) ... this is us.
(John frowns at the drawing as he puts the Z.P.M. into its case.)
McKAY: A bolt of energy unlike anything you could possibly comprehend is gonna shoot out of the photosphere at a tremendous velocity, OK? (He draws a line coming out of the sun and heading towards the dot depicting Atlantis.) It is immediately gonna start fanning out ... (he draws lots of lines fanning out in different directions from the line) ... like so.
SHEPPARD (impatiently): I know.
(He goes over to the power console and bends down to retrieve something.)
McKAY (drawing a curve across the emission line to depict Daedalus’ shield): Which means that we will have to be really close to the surface of the sun if we wanna intercept that stream and deflect it before it can start spreading out.
SHEPPARD (popping back up into view for a moment): I know, Rodney! (He bends down again.)
McKAY: No, no, I don’t think you do. I don’t think you fully grasp the reality of just how damned hot it gets that close to the surface of the sun.
(John has retrieved a small device from the console and comes across to the case with it.)
SHEPPARD: That’s why we’re taking a ZeeP.M. -- to strengthen the shields.
McKAY: From the blast wave, yes, but even with the shields at that strength, the build-up of residual heat behind it could cause serious problems for the Daedalus ... (he points to himself) ... and everyone inside it.
(John puts the device in the case and closes the lid.)
SHEPPARD: “Could.” “Could” cause.
(Rodney sighs.)
McKAY: OK. Tell me ... (he shows John his drawing again) ... if this is such a great plan, why didn’t the Ancients do it?
SHEPPARD: They were in the middle of a war! They probably didn’t have a ship available at the time. And, like you said, they had three ZeeP.Ms.
ZELENKA (over radio): Rodney?
McKAY (irritably): What?
ZELENKA: The prominence has begun collapsing.
(John picks up the case.)
SHEPPARD: Colonel Caldwell, we’re ready.
(Rodney grimaces. A transporter beam envelops the pair of them and whisks them away.)

In short, there is a crazy solar event with a massive prominence that takes place every 15,000 years. After said prominence crashes back into the sun, it causes a very concentrated blast of energy to squirt out of this star, which spreads out and part of which fries Lantia. The Daedalus with the ZPM hooked into its shield grid stands right in front of said squirt as it shoots out but BEFORE it can spread out, and deflects it so it doesn't touch the planet.

Its simple enough, and it HAPPENED, you can't just keep saying that the characters are wrong!

One minute an asteroid blocking a beam is irrelevant, the next it didn't hit the command tower like I saw it do. One minute the beam drained Apollo's shields because it is a shield-drainer, the next it takes over a day to do the same to Atlantis' - but wait, Daedalus can block a CME that Atlantis can't with the same power source.

...there is nothing in Echos suggesting that Atlantis couldn't block the CME, as Rodeny points out to Sheppard in the quotes above when he actually ASKS John why the Ancients didn't do what they said, John even offers up several possibilities, the most clear being that they didn't have the warning our people did, and with 3 ZPM's, Atlantis was able to stretch its shields out to protect the planet and solve the problem THAT way, and it did.

[Chris OFarrell]

And I hate to sound like a broken record, but there is still not the slightest evidence that the Goa'uld have nuclear warheads or use nuclear technology, that their ships mount any kind of missile launchers or projectile launchers / bombardment cannons or anything to back up this claim...

Well, they do have these:



but they don't show up outside Flesh and Blood, so who knows what those bombs are actually used for.

Actually they show up first in 'Prophecy', with the most awesome Goa'uld 'Mott'. He sends a suicide squad of Jaffa into the SGC who are defeated, but not before one of them brings this bomb deal in and detonates it.

Of course, we also see the same thing in Stargate 'Continium' which suggests they are rather wimpy, as simply dumping it over the side of the ship and letting it sink for a short distance is enough to escape the blast unharmed.

[Metahive]

True, I for some reason misremembered the bomb in Continuum as being cylindrical. According to the (lack of) damage it did there, it's got even less oomph than a common depth charge. Makes one wonder why those things are so huge to begin with.

[Brian Young]

Murazor,

You obviously don't understand the topic at hand. Blast effects are kinetic. Vaporization is thermal. You are using an asteroid fragmentation calculator, when you should be using the nuclear effects calculator.
To get the thermal effects down to the 100 mile radius Mitchell quotes, you have to go all the way down to 600 megatons. Just over half a gigaton.
But that is inconsistent with Carter's "multi-gigaton explosion."
Of course this is the point where things are as hot as fire, 3rd degree burns and stuff. Mitchell said everything within 100 miles would be vaporized, hence multi-gigatons.
But if we go above single-digit gigatons, it becomes inconsistent as well because the thermal effects radius swells to over 300 miles with a 10 gigaton explosion.
I don't know how far out things would be vaporized, but a 3 gigaton explosion (just the stargate) has a thermal effects radius of over 200 miles, twice the 100 Mitchell quotes, and as we go in 100 miles (!), the effects increase exponentially. Therefore, a 3 gigaton explosion satisfies the requirements of the episode. If we go much above 5, Mitchell's statements would be under-rated.

A teraton-level explosion is completely unsupported.

[Brian Young]

Chris,

No my contention is that, as stated in the episode, the energy is going into the generation of the wormhole as maintaining a constant wormhole post 38 minute mark is explicitly said to require an enormous amount of energy.

But this is disproven in Redemption, where the power level was so low, they could barely detect it.

Um, I think you mean 'First Contact'/'Lost Tribe' in regards to the Atlantis Stargate exploding. 'Critical Mass' is the ZPM threatening to go 'boom. In the case of Anubis's Gate weapon, I think its pretty clear EXACTLY enough energy was being delivered to the Stargate to keep it open past the 38 minute window, but beyond that only a tiny amount of energy was being sent through

Thanks for the episode correction. If exactly enough energy was being sent through to keep the gate open, and it was low low they could barely read it, how do you justify saying the stargate sucked all the power in First Strike? I watched both parts last night. This is unsupported.
So which is it Chris? Did the gate suck all the power, or is the beam a weak shield-drainer thing that takes more than a day to work? I'd just like to know which position you are taking, because it keeps changing.

Because there is a defined limit to how much energy you can transfer through the Stargate.

And what is that figure? You said the stargate sucked all the power from the beam, which was powered by "an unlimited number of ZPMs." The Ori couldn't power the gate easily, because it was in another galaxy, BTW.
Tell me how much power CAN be transmitted through the gate, and we'll know the power of the Replicator beam.

f they REALLY wanted to blow up Atlantis in a moment, why didn't they simply toss a 'rigged' ZPM through the Gateweapons Stargate and detonate it catastrophically, taking out the planet and Atlantis?

The ZPM was going to explode because they drew too much power. There is no reason to assume it will blow up all by itself, when not attached to a machine drawing power. It isn't a grenade where you pull the pin and run.

Well it won't destroy Atlantis. Unlike Earth in Season 6, they have a Daedalus class ship in orbit that can just beam the Stargate into orbit and let it detonate a few days later while they go grab another Stargate.

Ah, conceded.

True, but the shockwave

..would be transmitted through open space HOW?

The episode makes it abundantly clear that this was NOTHING like a solar event we see on our own star and that the energy levels involved are FAR greater then anything Sol puts out, that it was something humans had never seen a star do before.

Mike's calculations were based on the largest CMEs. If this one were greater, it would be larger, not smaller. Did you look at the page in question?

As for the weapon used on Abydos, it was not a regular Goa'uld weapon, it was a very exotic weapon with highly unusual properties

More of that huh? I find it highly unusual that every time I point out a beam striking a natural object, you resort to technobabble and pseudoscience. It wasn't a regular beam, it was some kind of stupid thing that doesn't do damage...

Well, it DID withstand a gigaton level explosion if all that was left was an inconsequential blast at the end of it all.

The shield FAILED. This places an UPPER LIMIT on its capabilities.
In the episode with the CME, they make it clear that extending the shield weakens it. Therefore, shrinking the shield strengthens it.
Losing containment and blowing up a star system has nothing to do with the USABLE power from a ZPM. Answer me this, how does the energy required to blow up a star system compare with the ability to put Atlantis into orbit? A feat which a ZPM cannot do.

You don't KNOW that because you and I don't know how the technology WORKS dude! Thats my point! you're assuming the system catches energy hitting the ship, how do you know its not generating some kind of field into the star to draw energy off? You don't! I don't! We don't know ANYTHING about how it works, except that six glowy triangular things lower themselves, glow white and then energy is absorbed.

The technology used is IRRELEVANT. A star releases its energy in all directions. Destiny can only absorb the light that hits it. Period.
Are you saying the ship emits these energy fields that extend out like nets to collect more energy? That is completely pulled out of your ass. If they could do that, there would be no need to *physically enter the photosphere*!

Until you can actually provide a mechanism for this technology, there is simply no way to draw ANY useful numbers from it, period.

Appeal to Ignorance. We can easily calculate an upper limit based on Destiny's size.

Actually no, just the opposite, that it absorbs 'inconsequential' and trivial energy coming in that is so low Carters diagnostics of the Stargates systems didn't even detect the energy being absorbed by the Gate until she took a very close look.

BUT YOU JUST SAID IT ABSORBS SIGNIFICANT POWER FROM THE REPLICATOR BEAM!!!

The Replicator beam OTOH is WAY more power and reintegrated like normal energy/matter is reintegrated, not touching the receiving Stargates capacitors in terms of a buildup, but just passing through like normal.

BUT YOU JUST SAID IT ABSORBS SIGNIFICANT POWER FROM THE REPLICATOR BEAM!!!
So, which is it?

[Brian Young]

No, I didn't. The Mark IX is a Naquadriah enhanced nuclear weapon

Already noted and conceded.

And Sam indeed said 'Multi-Gigaton', but as I said, if you examine the episode you can crunch numbers based on the detonation and fireball size, scaled, which put it easily into the upper Gigaton level or even lower Teraton level.

Not according to Mitchell's statements. A 3 gigaton explosion (like the stargate) easily fulfills the requirements of the episode.

Thats a cheap shot. You have utterly failed to provide any evidence for how the energy gathering system thingy even WORKS, meaning we have no idea how it gathers energy from the star, you are simply ASSUMING that it MUST be a direct skin-skin contact against the hull of the ship or something, without the slightest supporting evidence to support your claim from the canon.

You mean like how it physically enters the star?

Meanwhile the CME event in 'Echoes' is explained BY THE CHARACTERS as being an event well outside what stars like Sol normally do. You may not LIKE that it is such, but you simply cannot wave your hands and say that Mike says its impossible because it doesn't act that way, when the Characters in the SHOW ITSELF are saying that it is!

Meaning it breaches the laws of physics?

[NecronLord]

One minute Atlantis is 700 meters wide, the next a few thousand. One minute a star doesn't follow the laws of physics so Destiny can be more powerful, the next it doesn't so a CME can be more powerful. One minute an asteroid blocking a beam is irrelevant, the next it didn't hit the command tower like I saw it do. One minute the beam drained Apollo's shields because it is a shield-drainer, the next it takes over a day to do the same to Atlantis' - but wait, Daedalus can block a CME that Atlantis can't with the same power source.

It seems I'm the only one that has presented a consistent analysis. Or am I just getting you guys mixed up, and you all disagree with each other?

I don't think there's much concensus on what Stargate stuff is capable of what. Back in the day, using the 700m scaling of Atlantis, I calculated that based on the inability of two ZPMs (now we know it can be done though) to lift the city, and the fact that it is bouyant, rising to the surface of the ocean when its shields fail, and clamps are released, that an abosolute upper limit for a ZPM was 28 petawatts (6.75 Mt/sec). I shall revise that based on First Strike and whatever the latest scaling of Atlantis is tonight if I get the time, and post it here, there's a fair bit of tightening up that can make that number go down too.

I tend to think that invoking magical weird effects like inertial dampening is to be avoided at all costs.

Actually they show up first in 'Prophecy', with the most awesome Goa'uld 'Mott'. He sends a suicide squad of Jaffa into the SGC who are defeated, but not before one of them brings this bomb deal in and detonates it.

Of course, we also see the same thing in Stargate 'Continium' which suggests they are rather wimpy, as simply dumping it over the side of the ship and letting it sink for a short distance is enough to escape the blast unharmed.

In fairness, I expect they are adjustable in yeild or may be loaded with different warheads. Lord Mot clearly expected to take out the SGC or something, not just blow up the gateroom.

[Murazor]

Oh well. That will show me to use stuff without reading the fine print. I concede that I used the wrong methodology there, to try to calculate the explosive energy of the gatebuster.

So let's try a different approach. Feel free to correct me if I screw up again.

Let's say that we put a cube containing 1 kg of room temperature (30ºC) water a hundred miles away from ground zero of the detonation. How much energy would the

mark IX need to release to vaporize the cube of water from said distance?

Latent heat of vaporization of water: 2.26 MJ/kg.
Specific heat of water: 4.18 J/g per kelvin.
Raising temperature of 1 kg of water from 30º to 100º = 70*1000*4.18 = 292.6 KJ
Vaporization of 1 kg of water originally at 30ºC = 292.6 + 2260 = 2552.6 KJ

A cube of water weighing 1 kilogram will have a surface of 1 square decimeter in each of its sides.

A sphere with a radius of 100 miles will have a surface of 3.25E13 square decimeters.

To vaporize 1 kg of water from a distance of 100 miles, the bomb would have to release 8.3E19 joules.

8.3E19 joules is equivalent to ~19.85 gigatons.

This is for water, but values will fluctuate up and down considerably depending on which material we put in the hundred miles line.

---

For iron, for example...

1 kg of pure iron would form a cube with sides of approximately 25 square centimeters.

Latent heat of fusion of pure iron: 531 J/g
Latent heat of vaporization of pure iron: 13.07 KJ/g.
Specific heat of iron: 0.45 J/g per kelvin.
Melting temperature of iron: 1538ºC
Boiling temperature of iron: 2862ºC
Vaporization of 1 kg of iron originally at 30ºC: 1508*450 + 531000 + 1324*450 + 13070000 = 14.87 MJ.

A sphere with a radius of 100 miles will have a surface of 3.25E15 square centimeters.

To vaporize 1 kg of iron from a distance of 100 miles, the bomb would have to release 1.93E21 joules.

1.93E21 joules is equivalent to ~462.45 gigatons.

[seanrobertson]

Man, this thing has taken off like greased lightning!

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)?

The reasoning is as follows:

- The total energy capacity of a ZPM is known to be very high
- The Replicator beam weapon will take however long it was (19 or 29 hours or something) to drain the energy of the ZPM.

Got it on the second swing -- 29 hours

Now, I downloaded the transcript of this episode and I read it beginning to end. Nothing ever said, "The shield will fail in 29 hours because the ZPM will run out of juice."

It doesn't really matter. In no way does it disprove Brian's calculations.

*snip for time*

However, what we see is that the more powerful the weapon striking the shields, the faster the shields are penetrated (1 beam from this destroys the shield far, far, far faster than a fleet of 10 massive warships and numerous escorts constantly bombarding all over with weapons). The implication seems to be that the harder the shields get hit, the faster the power drains from the ZPM to keep it active.

That makes sense enough to me. It still doesn't speak to a 1:1 power consumption/defense value.

In an episode that I believe Batman mentioned, a ZPM is drained of most of its power in a matter of minutes. That is to say, that, at least up to a certain point, ZPM's can be drained arbitrarily fast (I acknowledge that limits certainly must exist somewhere, but are probably more to do with the capacity to shift the power around via conduits rather than a limit on the ZPM outputting it itself).

Perhaps it's something like that.

In my research, I see Necronlord came up with an upper-limit for the amount of energy one could use from a ZPM, at least in the context of flying Atlantis. You can see that post here.

Regardless, unless he was wrong, we're talking about an upper-limit in the 10,000 TW range for a single ZPM.

(And yes, I see Necron's new post. We'll revise things as needed later.)

That was awfully long winded, but what I'm trying to say is that the ZPM's are not fixed at a certain, very low level of power output.

We're spoiled by some "literary" sci-fi and the likes of Star Wars, but terawatt laser-like weapons are by no means "low-level," especially given that the protagonists in Stargateverse are modern humans who have inherited alien technology.

A naive estimate assuming no inefficiencies in the draining of the ZPM at a higher rate where it was going to take 29 hours to drain a ZPM could be gained by assuming that a ZPM is a low-end extinction level event for total energy, and dividing by time

Let's take a closer look at that.

First, let's assume that, at maximum capacity, a ZPM contains an Earth-like planet's minimal shattering energy of 5E16 megatons. We could easily go higher for the nova-level events we hear about (but never actually see ), but let's go with this figure to try and keep the numbers a little more manageable.

Also to that end, let's assume that, right before the Asuran satellite attacks, Atlantis' ZPM is severely depleted, down to perhaps 5E12 MT (2E28J).

We'll further pretend that shields must meet every incoming watt with a watt. Let's also go ahead and say that 29 hours of running Atlantis' shield would, in fact, drain the ZPM dry.

Okay: so what's 20.9 quadrillion terajoules divided by however many seconds are in 29 hours?

2E23W. About 200 billion terawatts or 5E7 megatons/sec.

From that, we're forced to conclude some other things:

*The Asuran satellite beam that Oberoth clearly states is intended to destroy Atlantis must be hellaciously powerful. It'd have to be to challenge Super Star Destroyer *coughs*, I mean, *Atlantis-calibre* shields. It's pretty odd that it took awhile to slowly carve through an asteroid, eh? Maybe it IS a special shield-killer, and only has 0.00000000002% effect against mundane rock.

Yes, that's it!

But, wait a minute ...

This super powerful shield-killer was going to take 29 hours to breach Atlantis' defenses. That's a pretty shitty shield-killing beam, innit?

I'd say so. A beam configured to burn through shields that takes twenty nine fucking hours to do the job is LAUGHABLE. Did any of you guys even CONSIDER how self-contradictory that is before you jumped on the excuse train?

*Where does all of this shield energy GO?

If it's radiated off the shield's surface into the atmosphere, I wouldn't want to be nearby (as in "on that planet"). Maybe it's somehow converted into neutrinos.

*If the shields are this powerful, why would they ever be threatened by ... well, ANYTHING the bad guys could ever throw at them? I've seen some people at other websites furiously fapping away over some teraton level devices detonated on Asura. Funny thing is, those guys pull out all the stops in fancy, even beautiful graphics and math ... but they overlook something so simple, so elementary as FIREBALL DURATION.

Maybe after they're done jacking off I could remind them that a teraton-level device detonated in an atmosphere would glow brightly for almost THIRTY-EIGHT MINUTES! And the ejecta ... LOL. You'd see molten material from the crust jetting out into space like a geyser.


That reminds me ... we should take stock of the things invented in this thread to date:

1. Beam that's expressly built to kill shields but blows elephant cock for that purpose
1a. Beam that can switch from shield-killer to Atlantis-cooker (I guess Oberoth just pushes a button?)
2. Oberoth's button
3. Neutrino converter for shields such that running them doesn't rapidly bring about extinction-level events
4. A million megaton explosion with megaton-ranged fireball durations (i.e., 10-20 seconds)

The last one doesn't count since I'm bringing up other sites, but I couldn't help myself. Inventing things is FUN!

*snip*
But back on topic, this is brought up because although the Ori have another, similar black hole in their own galaxy to provide power to a super-stargate they are building (that is large enough to accommodate massive warships), they cannot provide enough power through the stargate to do it remotely.

This implies that there is a very strict limit on how much energy the wormhole can transmit to the other side, i.e., the replicator beam may have been at "max capcaity" for all that the stargate would transmit. This is to say, they couldn't fire harder not because they didn't have the firepower, but because there was a bottleneck.

You know, Adam, I don't really have a big problem with the notion that you can "get" more out of a ZPM than a few terawatts for given applications (like taking off into space).

My chief concern is that nobody's demonstrated why a 4 TW beam simply cannot be a threat. I'm told it "can't be" because incidents like Atlantis' shield handling a nuclear blast. More on that in a moment.

If you're going to play the magical physics card, at least allow us to use it too. We've been trying for this whole thread after all

I'm not trying to play any card; we don't know how the shield works so, at best, we might say, "IF it works like this, then ... ". There's no proof that it takes 10 watts of shield energy to cope with 10 watts of incoming energy, but one of your arguments *hinges* on that. Remember? You said the satellite's shields can potentially field X; therefore, the beam should output X or greater.

That's too big an "if" to boldly declare we should ignore Brian's figures -- or, for that matter, far too big an "if" to ever consider a retarded, purely fanon "shield-draining weapon" so inefficient it takes more than a DAY to do its job.

The assumption all parties have had so far going in is that the energy that the shield absorbs must be matched by power generation. Joules in = Joules out in order for the shield to work. Now, there are any number of magical shields you could come up with that do NOT operate on this principle, but it's the only way we can make things calculable at all.

If we're forced to make a bunch of unwarranted assumptions, that defeats the purpose of a calculation in the first place!

Maybe shields do need to output a terawatt to defend against a terawatt laser striking them. That makes sense a kind of intuitive sense; however, as I've said many times now, if someone is trying to dismiss OBSERVED EVIDENCE willy-nilly, he had better not do so on the basis of a complete unknown.

That the calculations drawn here are not accurate because of magical physics has been our argument all along, so welcome to the team

That's the trouble. The magical physics, horrendously inefficient shield-blasting beam is based in circular logic.

That beam cannot be only 4 TW!

Why not?

Because if it were, it'd never threaten Atlantis.


How do you know that?

Because it takes more firepower to threaten those shields!

Maybe if someone had shown where a much more powerful beam couldn't defeat the shields in 29 hours, y'all would have a point. Instead, we get a bunch of invalid comparisons to less-intense weapons like bombs and a whole bunch of wild-assed stuff about ZPMs blowing up planets. Basically, a whole fish market's worth of red herrings.

As for the relative lack of steam, the simplest explanation is that the beam didn't interact with the water all that much. It might've been visible, yes, but it DID behave a lot like a laser, so that's understandable enough.

If you don't even need to match the thing hitting you in order to "neutralize" it, then does this not imply that Altantis' shields are even more pathetic than the calculations originally derived here? If anything, that statement would make it MORE likely that this is using shield draining mumbo jumbo, because the Replicator sat is apparently capable of tanking 30 megatonne blasts but Daedelus isn't even capable of a tiny fraction of that, almost destroyed by a glancing blow from this supposedly "barely kilotonne" level weapon.

It would low-ball the ZPM's power even more for similar reasons.

Appeal to consequences. We go where the evidence takes us, not where it makes us happy.

By the way, I was most generous with that 30 megaton estimate. It's dishonest to act as if it's anything but what it was meant to be: a potential upper-limit based on the POSSIBILITY that "nuke" meant "the biggest anti-ship nuke ever fielded by Earth" could get very close to that little satellite. I could've really held your feet to the fire over that "Earth has used 1200 megaton devices before against ships; therefore, they MUST have them on that ship to use against the satellite" foolishness. Instead, I offered a highly generous figure.

Here again, we're on mighty shaky ground to try and challenge something we actually see and can quantify.

Did you just calculate the energy as spread over the entire shield of atlantis? Because the very peak of the shield at the top should have been taking the brunt of the explosion, as it was detonated quite literally within a few meters above the shield.

I retract my apology for nitpicking. I was right to question you about something as subjective as "right on top."

This is the first frame of detonation. That's more than a "few meters."



At its highest point, the shield isn't much taller than the central tower, which we can still make out in this image (black line). The distance from there to the center of the explosion's appreciable.



Note that the explosion is even with the lowest clouds we see. Stratus clouds begin ~2 km above sea level. I don't think Atlantis is a kilometer high. Based on Necronlord's scaling, it's roughly one-quarter that, and the shield itself isn't much taller.



Consequently, Atlantis' shield is on the order of some 1.5 kilometers from the center of the blast.

The fireball lasts just over 8 seconds, corresponding to something between 3 and 4 megatons. I'll assume the latter to be nice.

That means the shields successfully coped with 592 MJ/m^2. Running with Necron's estimations again, that means the shield dealt with about 350 kilotons. Close to 800 KT if the bomb detonated inside a kilometer, which it did not.

Nitpick the particulars to your heart's content; it won't change the order of magnitude we're looking at here. Just as you figured, we're dealing with a single-digit megaton nuke. And at the distance it blew up, it could only impart about 10 percent of its total energy to Atlantis' shield.

Now, let's start over. You still wanna tell me that a 4 terawatt beam couldn't defeat those shields after many, many hours of constant bombardment?

"Intensity" of the beam and "burning out the emitters" was never mentioned as a possible problem in the episode,

Hohoho You do not want to go down that road, my good man Should you want to stick to dialogue-supported bits alone, as Michael once said, I'll cling to that approach like a drowning man to flotsam.

Do I really need to explain why?

it was reasonably clear to me that the beam was a threat because it was draining power from the ZPM. Am I correct in assuming that you're suggesting that higher intensity beams drain power faster to counter?

If so, then, once again, his calculations on ZPM power based on total energy in being "blocked" by the shield may be misleading for the exact same reason it might have been if it was a technobabble beam to begin with - the ZPM is not really being drawn to anything approaching it's actual full capacity, but rather being artificially shortened in lifespan because of some property of the beam other than pure energy value.

Huh? Whose-its calculations on ZPMs based on this blocked E's off-base because if it was a shield-draining beam that blows goats for draining shields, the ZPM isn't heavily taxed and something-something.

Granted, I'm still blinking the sleep from my eyes and I'm being a dick, but in a couple dozen words or less, can you tell me how that disproves Brian's 4 TW estimate?

Are you trying to imply that Altantis' shields are not even strong enough to stand up to 29 hours of something that barely boils water?

You're appealing to consequences again. And I must say, this gives me flashbacks. "You're trying to make B5 out as 'weak'!" was a running accusation at Spacebattles for YEARS.

Range limitations isn't a perfect explanation, but it's still a more rational excuse than many of the things you, Chris et al. have offered. It invokes less terms and fits more of the facts at hand. It still involves a lot MORE firepower than we see on many occasions, and from some of those "ancient" races no less. I looked up a SG-related thread in which you not only participated, you even pointed out how pathetic one Ha'tak's weaponry (?) was!

I can find the thread again if you like. Posters compared the bombardment with the Borg sphere's from "ST:FC."

Low megajoule-range? Ooh, that Asuran terawatt beam looks a sight tastier now.

Besides, if I REALLY wanted to take the piss out of SG, I'd remind you and everyone else that the satellite's beam would be closer to the 10 GIGAWATTS Destructionator mentioned a few pages back. (I see no one wanted to touch that one. ) Beam weapons generally aren't as good at breaking up asteroids as our trusty buried explosives of equivalent energy. A kiloton bomb will shatter a 100m asteroid convincingly, but a 4.18 TW beam won't.

'Course, the asteroid in "First Strike" is NOT 100m wide. It's little more than half that. As D13 said, nailing it with 4 TW should do a serious number on the rock. Hitting it square in the middle for a second or two would almost certainly blow it apart.

As a matter of fact, perhaps we should start anew and replace any mention of 4 terawatts with .01 TW. I fancy that

Look, I'll state again for the record that all of our unwillingness to believe that ZPMs are so crap is NOT related to fanboyish concerns of "oh no it will be too weak and star wars will crush it" or whatever. It's there because the Stargate Verse, as whole, does not seem in any way consistent with those energy levels.

I dunno, Adam. It sure seems like some of you are being decidedly fanboyish on this one. You outright made up a beam with properties that are not only unheard of in Stargate. Even worse, let's not bullshit here: you are all intelligent men, but all this talk about shield-zapper that takes twenty-nine hours to do the damned deed? That is a STUPID proposition.

To date, the only objections I've seen are the ones Brian's already mentioned. You compare bombs and ZPMs supposedly blowing up planets with a laser-like beam.

Baffling.

The bottom line -- and essentially my only concern from here on -- is this: if someone can cite good evidence why Brian's Replicator beam figure's wrong, please, do so. If you're going to invoke some convoluted comparison with a bunch of if this, then maybe that reasoning, we might best go ahead and agree to disagree. I've jumped through several hoops already quantifying things when the burden of proof was NOT on Brian or me. I imagine he feels the same.