New page I banged together

[Brian Young]

Xon,

Especially with after they can't restart the stardrive and start climbing out of atmosphere, but are forced to splashdown without shields.

That had shields all the way down. They also managed to activate the cloak, which is part of the shield, after splashdown.
I can provide the clip if necessary. Sam asked if they had enough shields to survive reentry. Zelenka was unsure. Woolsey said "We're about to find out." Visuals show a nice shield bubble.

[Brian Young]

They hit in No Mans Land.

I will look it up and get back to you.

[Brian Young]

Chris,

I'm watching "Mo Man's Land" now.
Indeed a missile does hit. Good call. But it doesn't really support your conclusions.
*Daedalus used all its nukes (per Caldwell's statement), and only one missile hit out out the bunch. Darts intercepted all the rest, as per usual. That, as I said, is why they are ineffective.
*This was indeed a nuke. Dialogue and visuals support that. But the visuals don't support a gigaton-level explosion. It isn't necessarily a naquadah nuke.
*The bomb caused "serious damage," but didn't destroy the ship.
*This, again, has nothing to do with Atlantis' shield strength or the power output of a ZPM.

There is only one way to relate this to a ZPM. Atlantis typically launches dozens of drones to deal with hive ships. Even if we assume this was a 1.2 gigaton nuke, it was more effective than many drones, which use up Atlantis' ZPM power to launch (Enemy at the Gate).
That again is consistent with my calculations and examples. It is inconsistent with yours.

Look, I'm not saying my position is perfect. But everything does work out to within an order of magnitude or two. And without pseudoscience or crazy assumptions. Yours does not. Therefore, my position is superior to yours.

In fact, looking at things here, you don't really provide many calculations. What is the usable power output of a ZPM? What is the resilience of Atlantis's shields? What is the firepower of these weapons, if we are not permitted to make calculations based on real targets, per your constant pseudoscience? Just what is your position here, other than to argue with mine?

[Brian Young]

Okay, back again. Thanks to Chris pointing me to "No Man's Land," (good call on the missile), I continued this two part into "Misbegotten."
In that episode, a bomb that looks just like Carter's "gatebuster" bomb is used as a failsafe to kill the Wraith on the planet in case they need it.
Sheppard asks McKay what kill zone it would have. McKay said anything within 3 miles would be toast.
Now this isn't stated to be a "gatebuster" that has been discussed here, but it looks exactly like it to me. In fact, I believe the prop to be the very same.
Perusing Mike's Nuclear Weapons Effects Calculator, I plugged in the known 1200 megaton yield of the missiles/bombs they've had since season 1 or 2. These are the naquadah-enhanced nukes, more destructive than anything we could build on Earth without naquadah. The smallest number it gives on anything is the fireball radius, and that is 7.4 kilometers, or 4.6 miles. Half again greater than McKay's stated 3 mile radius.
The thermal radiation radius for 3rd degree burns is 213 kilometers, or 132 miles. This is 32 miles greater radius than Mitchell quoted for the "gatebuster" bomb. He did use the word "vaporize," but we are talking about being as hot as fire *32 miles* farther out.
If we go up to 3 gigatons, as I've posited, the fireball radius goes up to over 10 kilometers, or 6 miles. TWICE the radius McKay quoted.
Of course the thermal effects radius is also TWICE that quoted by Mitchell for the "gatebuster." Yes he used the word "vaporize," but we're talking about *100 MILES* greater radius!
For those who prefer to use the cratering as the radius (which is completely unfounded), the Asteroid Destruction Calculator says 4.7 gigatons will blow a crater in a nickel-iron asteroid (much harder than dirt) of about 3 miles.
So, giving every advantage, there is no reason to assume this bomb is more than 1-4 gigatons.

Wow! They just confirmed in the commentary that it is THE SAME PROP.
Thus, there is good reason to assume this is the same kind of bomb (was it Mark 9?). It is the biggest bomb seen in the show. A doomsday weapon. Certainly less than 5 gigatons.

As a 3 gigaton explosion overwhelmed Atlantis' shields when a gate blew up (without a gatebuster to destroy it, I might add Chris!), and the "gatebuster" is considered a doomsday weapon at something close to that same yield, these are very consistent. A low-gigaton yield weapon is a doomsday weapon, but it takes about that to take out Atlantis quickly. This is consistent with my calculations.

[Murazor]

Okay, back again. Thanks to Chris pointing me to "No Man's Land," (good call on the missile), I continued this two part into "Misbegotten."
In that episode, a bomb that looks just like Carter's "gatebuster" bomb is used as a failsafe to kill the Wraith on the planet in case they need it.
Sheppard asks McKay what kill zone it would have. McKay said anything within 3 miles would be toast.
Now this isn't stated to be a "gatebuster" that has been discussed here, but it looks exactly like it to me. In fact, I believe the prop to be the very same.
Perusing Mike's Nuclear Weapons Effects Calculator, I plugged in the known 1200 megaton yield of the missiles/bombs they've had since season 1 or 2. These are the naquadah-enhanced nukes, more destructive than anything we could build on Earth without naquadah. The smallest number it gives on anything is the fireball radius, and that is 7.4 kilometers, or 4.6 miles. Half again greater than McKay's stated 3 mile radius.
The thermal radiation radius for 3rd degree burns is 213 kilometers, or 132 miles. This is 32 miles greater radius than Mitchell quoted for the "gatebuster" bomb. He did use the word "vaporize," but we are talking about being as hot as fire *32 miles* farther out.
If we go up to 3 gigatons, as I've posited, the fireball radius goes up to over 10 kilometers, or 6 miles. TWICE the radius McKay quoted.
Of course the thermal effects radius is also TWICE that quoted by Mitchell for the "gatebuster." Yes he used the word "vaporize," but we're talking about *100 MILES* greater radius!
For those who prefer to use the cratering as the radius (which is completely unfounded), the Asteroid Destruction Calculator says 4.7 gigatons will blow a crater in a nickel-iron asteroid (much harder than dirt) of about 3 miles.
So, giving every advantage, there is no reason to assume this bomb is more than 1-4 gigatons.

This is thoroughly shaky logic.

The same prop being used is in no way, shape or form enough to argue that the failsafe device in the Wraith prison camp was a mark nine. Not when it is never identified as such and its described effects contradict those of the mark nine (which is supported by both visuals and dialogue) by well over an order of magnitude. Hell, even the comparatively conventional naquadah bombs more than satisfy the requirements of McKay's description several times over as you yourself have just proven!

Or are we supposed to assume that some connection exists between the Milky Way Bedrosians and the Wraith just because both groups use the same recycled prop?

It makes far more sense to suppose that Stargate Command and related agencies use a standard frame/chassis for nuclear devices. The mark IX could simply be one such weapon with internal modifications that don't change the chassis' appeareance, with the Misbegotten failsafe device being a different type of bomb.

As a 3 gigaton explosion overwhelmed Atlantis' shields when a gate blew up (without a gatebuster to destroy it, I might add Chris!), and the "gatebuster" is considered a doomsday weapon at something close to that same yield, these are very consistent.

At the risk of repeating myself, two to three thousand megatons are the figures given for the destruction of a Milky Way stargate. The Pegasus gates use a newer, outwardly more advanced technology.

Considering the unknowns involved, three gigatons should not be treated as the strict high end of that event since the only in-episode quantification of the Stargate detonation is Zelenka comparing it with a dozen nuclear explosions. And considering the types of nuclear weapons available to Stargate Earth, that gives us a bracket of possible values ranging from the hundreds of kilotons to the low teratons.

[seanrobertson]

Those are good thoughts, Brian.

If this thread were a drawn-out Poker game, I've the impression that you're the only player who's actually shown his cards. In the meantime, other players hint that they have bigger, better hands, but they're either unwilling or incapable of actually showing them.

I bet there were occasions I've criticized someone's estimates without offering counter-figures. It didn't happen often, however, and the only reason I would refrain from extending an opponent that courtesy's when we simply can't derive reasonable estimates from something. That doesn't appear to be the case here at all.

The only other thing I can think to add to the thread's to put a finer point on Brian's statement to the effect that his estimates aren't perfect. That's the nature of this work. I'm sure most reading this understand that we are working with a range of figures out of necessity. We can never say, with Godlike precision, Thou shalt know the Asuran satellite's beam weapon had an output of 2.899999 terawatts.

But in another sense, we also have to remember that the source material itself is imperfect. There comes a point at which, if we do not sometimes momentarily cease suspending disbelief, one can go crazy trying to rationalize the irrational. The caveat is that it's important to understand when it is best to do this; it's certainly not something we should embrace willy-nilly, with a patchwork of little empiricism here, a little "artist's intent" there.

Think about a few examples. We all know things don't go "boom" in space. Forget nonsense rationalizations about a ship's speaker system converting laser beams into pew-pew-pew sounds for the benefit of the pilot(s) or crew. That is stupid. It doesn't even begin to explain why we hear all of this noise in exterior shots.

This one is a "gimme" since the sound in space thing is almost omnipresent in sci-fi shows and movies. SW, ST, B5, SG all do it. And ironically enough, hearing that stuff helps us better suspend disbelief; we're so conditioned by our environment that a truly realistic portrayal of objects in space (2001) seems unnatural, at least at first.

We also recognize obvious FX errors, like when the Enterprise shoots phasers from its torpedo tube in "Darmok," when the Defiant appears 50m long or less in "ST:FC" or when we see that large discolored area around the DS2 during the Rebel fleet's approach. We acknowledge that particular FX company didn't know where the phasers were, that some artists made the Defiant small for dramatic effect and that the funny-looking square was a crude compositing mistake, respectively.

More relevant to this thread: remember how some of y'all made a stink over that "not enough steam!" stuff? (Of course, no one ever actually did the math to show that was the case, even though that was kinda important -- seeing as how, you know, water didn't significantly attenuate the beam when Atlantis submerged.)

That became a key point in characterizing this weird, magic beam that affects one target strongly, another weakly and yet another in a different way.

Instead of tying your tails in knots, think about what would've happened if we saw the beam interacting with and vaporized such a great amount of seawater. All of the resulting steam may well totally obscure the city and, in so doing, ruin the whole frigging point of the scene: show something powerful encroaching on, then impacting, Atlantis/its shield.

And before anyone says I advocate "cherrypicking evidence" for some nefarious purpose, know that I think we should extend the same courtesy to the supposedly gigaton-ranged explosions we see in the same episode. Some of you contended that the size of the nuclear explosions on Asura point to huge yields. That's correct.

Just the same, you overlooked one of the lessons learned from TNG's "Skin of Evil"; i.e., nuclear explosions with such great areas of effect ALSO have commensurately long-lasting fireballs. "First Strike" does a far better job than "Skin" ever did, but remember, even a ONE gigaton explosion would glow very brightly for almost two minutes. The fireballs we DO see diminish to 10% peak emissivity or less within ~20 seconds (thus, you can't use the "scene cut" excuse), which points to something more along the likes of 25 megaton explosions.

What do I make of that? If the characters said they were using those fancy 1,200 megaton nukes and individual explosions clearly covered hundreds of kilometers apiece, I go with the gigaton figure and overlook the comparatively "small" fireballs. The people behind the scenes probably didn't know exactly how such big blasts would look in real-life; even if they did, that's all but immaterial: dramatically-speaking, it'd be dumb to hang over Asura looking at the pretty fireworks for 100 seconds.

Even Shep would get bored watching that

Alternatively, I might suggest we don't see the explosions from beginning to end in real-time; we see one of them go off, then, after a minute cut, the camera pulls back to show the tremendous effects those devices had on Asura, at which time their fireballs are beginning to dim.

Either approach requires us to temporarily recuse ourselves of the paradigm, and that's OK; in the grand scheme of things, that provides for a much more meaningful understanding of what we see.

That's what we're after: understanding. If you overapply "SoD," you'd be forced to conclude those six warheads involved superphysics. That leads us away from understanding things and should be considered a last resort -- something we're forced to invoke when an overwhelming amount of evidence points to technobabble, like phasers "vaporizing" people in 40 years' worth of Trek.

[Stargate Nerd]

Whew, I have been reading this entire thread over the last few days and I must say that I quite enjoyed not only Brian's page, but also the resulting discussion. Awesome read guys.

I do have a few thoughts and questions that I want to share though, if you guys don't mind me butting in at this point.

1. I suck at math, but perhaps one of you can make something out of it. In Flesh and Blood (season 10 Episode 1) Bra'tak crashes a Ha'tak vessel into an Ori ship. Is that scene useful for serious calcs?

I did try a calc, assuming that a Hatak weighs about 200,000 metric tons (roughly twice the displacement of a Nimitz aircraft carrier) and was traveling at 313 km/s (based on a Necronlord calculation that Hataks are capable of up to 32,000 Gs). I realize that speed would be an upper limit, but Bra'tak was going for ramming speed after all. I came up with ~2.35 Gigatons for that impact.
If my pulled out of my ass assumptions, use of the highest number possible for velocity and possible general butchering of physics gave anyone a headache, I want to apologize in advance. I just think it would be interesting to know how powerful that impact could be.

2. In the Stargate Atlantis Season 1 two parter The Storm/The Eye when the Genii takeover Atlantis, McKay has the city capture lighting bolts to power the shields. Can this event be used for calcs? (I would do it myself, but again I wouldn't know where to start)

3. Brian, when discussing the resizing of the Atlantis shield, you say that expanding it weakens it, so thus reducing the size must strengthen it. But wouldn't it make equal sense that changing the size in either direction would weaken it, since it's meant to work at original size?

4. About the Pyramid in Full Circle. If I remember correctly the episode implied that all of Abydos was destroyed. Wouldn't that point to a chain reaction weapon?
Also, about that weapon. Chris says that the Hataks weren't destroyed instantly. After using the frame skip in Quicktime Brian was talking about I must agree. At least following the initial discharge of the weapon, the Hataks in question seem to be enveloped by lightning bolts traveling across the hull for several frames, before they finally explode.

5. I don't think that the show ever mentions that the missile's Prometheus and the later ships are carrying are 1.2 gigatons Goauld Busters. They could just as likely be normal Earth nukes. This could explain why the missile's hit Ori ships in Camelot, but there are no major explosions. It also puts into question how powerful the nuke in No Man's Land really was.

[Batman]

Whew, I have been reading this entire thread over the last few days and I must say that I quite enjoyed not only Brian's page, but also the resulting discussion. Awesome read guys.
I do have a few thoughts and questions that I want to share though, if you guys don't mind me butting in at this point.
1. I suck at math, but perhaps one of you can make something out of it. In Flesh and Blood (season 10 Episode 1) Bra'tak crashes a Ha'tak vessel into an Ori ship. Is that scene useful for serious calcs?
I did try a calc, assuming that a Hatak weighs about 200,000 metric tons (roughly twice the displacement of a Nimitz aircraft carrier)

If anything I'd call that a serious lowball. A Ha'Tak is almost as tall as a Nimitz is long, and seriously wider and longer. AND doesn't have to be able to float. (Though one of them did back in SG-1, I don't recall if they mentioned wether that was due to natural buoyancy or engines).

and was traveling at 313 km/s (based on a Necronlord calculation that Hataks are capable of up to 32,000 Gs).

I'm afraid the acceleration is moderately irrelevant in this case. What was the relative velocity at the time of impact? Because unless it was over in less than a thousandth of a frame I'll tell you right there it was NOT 313kps.

I realize that speed would be an upper limit, but Bra'tak was going for ramming speed after all. I came up with ~2.35 Gigatons for that impact.
If my pulled out of my ass assumptions, use of the highest number possible for velocity and possible general butchering of physics gave anyone a headache, I want to apologize in advance. I just think it would be interesting to know how powerful that impact could be.

At least you actually tried Brownie points for effort

2. In the Stargate Atlantis Season 1 two parter The Storm/The Eye when the Genii takeover Atlantis, McKay has the city capture lighting bolts to power the shields. Can this event be used for calcs? (I would do it myself, but again I wouldn't know where to start)

As per Wikipedia (yes, I know, but for something this well known I'll trust them for at least a ballpark figure) common lightning would give them about 3E7 J/bolt, and that definitely wasn't a common storm. I will not pretend to understand how or to which extent that will affect lightning power beyond saying I would be surprised it wouldn't have been considerably more powerful.

It should be noted though that the hazard the shield was up against was a storm, where the vast majority of the damage is kinetic. Walls have been able to stand up to that for thousands of years with no power input whatsoever so the shield being able to keep out the storm on lightning power (whatever that may work out to be) does not say much about its resilience WRT incoming fire.

3. Brian, when discussing the resizing of the Atlantis shield, you say that expanding it weakens it, so thus reducing the size must strengthen it. But wouldn't it make equal sense that changing the size in either direction would weaken it, since it's meant to work at original size?

Even ignoring simple geometry, we are explicitly shown that shrinking it strengthens it (or at the very least reduces the power drain, which pretty much amounts to the same).. When Atlantis no longer has sufficient power to keep the shield at full size it does what? It shrinks the shield.

[adam_grif]

But in another sense, we also have to remember that the source material itself is imperfect. There comes a point at which, if we do not sometimes momentarily cease suspending disbelief, one can go crazy trying to rationalize the irrational. The caveat is that it's important to understand when it is best to do this; it's certainly not something we should embrace willy-nilly, with a patchwork of little empiricism here, a little "artist's intent" there.

Calling it "imperfect" is kind of an understatement

One of the things I've always found unusual is the tendency for this (and other) communities to take VFX over dialogue in canon terms. Obviously it's the writers that are creating the universe and deciding what happens, the VFX guys are just trying to translate the scripts and concept work into effects for the audience to go along with the character stuff.

To make matters worse, most of the FX team probably have no idea what things should look like, if someone tells them to make a billion gigatonne explosion, they aren't likely to know how long the fireball is supposed to linger, or exactly how large it should be, or what color it should glow. Take what you've said here:

...even a ONE gigaton explosion would glow very brightly for almost two minutes. The fireballs we DO see diminish to 10% peak emissivity or less within ~20 seconds (thus, you can't use the "scene cut" excuse), which points to something more along the likes of 25 megaton explosions.

What do I make of that? If the characters said they were using those fancy 1,200 megaton nukes and individual explosions clearly covered hundreds of kilometers apiece, I go with the gigaton figure and overlook the comparatively "small" fireballs.

The writers seemed to think it was actually somewhat more than the 1200 MT nukes, which were so season 1

McKAY: How the hell do you plan on doing that?

ELLIS: A set of Mark Nine tactical nukes housed in a custom-made weapons platform codenamed Horizon.

The Mark Nine were the super duper ones that fueled the black hole thing in "Foothold", reportedly able to "destroy anything within a 100 mile radius". That's not really a useful since we don't exactly know what they mean by "destroy" and "anything", but the 1200 MT "Goauld busters" were employed Season 1, and these were supposed to be much more powerful, because those other ones apparently weren't good enough to destroy stargates (?!).

Actually now that I think about it, they totally should have built Atlantis out of whatever they build stargates out of, because that stuff is STRONG.

That's what we're after: understanding. If you overapply "SoD," you'd be forced to conclude those six warheads involved superphysics. That leads us away from understanding things and should be considered a last resort -- something we're forced to invoke when an overwhelming amount of evidence points to technobabble, like phasers "vaporizing" people in 40 years' worth of Trek.

To be honest, the reason I rarely participate in any sort of vs analysis is because it leads us to all sorts of stupid conclusions and outrageous mental gymnastics. It's the application of scientific principles for measuring things that were obviously not designed with them in mind. Tbh, nothing would make me happier than if everybody who participated in such debates just gave up and agreed that it's a futile use of time.

[Batman]

I dunno. Given the writers tend to let the VFX guys run with the presumably flawed visuals why should I assume they are any more competent? I mean, if a writer says 'gigaton explosion' and then doesn't balk at KT level visuals he or she apparently doesn't know what a GT explosion looks like, either.

[adam_grif]

Yeah, but if they say it's GT yield, why does that matter? Even if the FX say it's KT yield, the story apparently considers it to be GT. I'd also point out that the writers don't necessarily have veto power over VFX, and it's not unusual for people to notice that a VFX is wrong for whatever reason but be unable to fix it because they have to ship a product soon and there isn't time to change (the story one of our members gave about his work on Independence Day comes to mind, as well as the final cutscene from Mass Effect that is hysterically wrong about everything).

It comes down to whether you think the person writing the story or doing the VFX is a more authoritative source. IMO I think the writers are because the story is "theirs", and the other people involved are just translating that story into film.

[Batman]

Because if they say GT yield but aren't fazed by getting KT visuals instead, they obviously don't know what GT yield means? If the story states GT yields and actually depicts the effects of that then yes, absolutely. A story that mentions GT but absolutely fails to show what would be the result of such? Um-no?

[Brian Young]

Murazor,
There is no evidence whatsoever to support a teraton-level explosion from the Mark9. If there is, please present it. With calculations.
I have stated repeatedly that the only reference to a specific yield comes from Mitchell's statement that it would vaporize anything within 100 miles. This supports a single-digit-gigaton yield calculation.
To illustrate (for the 5th time IIRC), using Mike's Nuclear Weapons Effects Calculator (I'm sure you can find it, since it is on this very website), a 1 teraton explosion would have a thermal radiation radius of over 3300 kilometers, or well over 2,000 miles. Mitchell's quote, if taken literally, and it is the only dialogue evidence we have, is about the thermal radiation radius. Vaporization = thermal.
The fireball duration would be 2255 seconds, or over 37 minutes. The episodes run about 42 minutes without commercials.
So, we'd have a thermal radiation (vaporization - thermal effects) radius of ***20 times*** what Mitchell quoted, and a fireball that lasted well into the next episode.
None of those things happened. None of those things were suggested. To suggest a teraton-level explosion is ridiculous.

Stargate Nerd,
Glad to have you. I had intended to leave this thread several days ago, but it seems interest continues.
I believe Batman already addressed some of your questions, but I'll add to it. The lightning would seem to suggest Atlantis isn't that hard to power after all. But that would be inconsistent with other events. So it seems likely that the lightning was only able to defend the city against its own mother storm.

3. Brian, when discussing the resizing of the Atlantis shield, you say that expanding it weakens it, so thus reducing the size must strengthen it. But wouldn't it make equal sense that changing the size in either direction would weaken it, since it's meant to work at original size?

I don't believe so. When lost in space, Atlantis collapsed the shield to just the tower to preserve power, as Batman noted. This pretty much proves that the shield takes less power when it shrinks. Thus, with equal power, it is stronger.
McKay said they couldn't expand the shield to protect the whole planet from radiation, because they didn't have the power. So, if expanded, it takes more power. Thus, with equal power, it would be weaker.
Sure, it isn't gospel, but certainly logical. Certainly more reasonable than when some suggest it gets weaker both ways. In this kind of analysis, it is important to note inconsistencies, and take what is most consistent.
You see, some people who participate in this kind of debate are so intent on producing huge numbers, it leads them into bad methods. They will claim one thing one minute, and the exact opposite thing the next minute. I am sure it isn't intentional, but rather a lack of understanding the topic.
For instance, there have been spirited objections to my calculations for Destiny's recharge rate. Those numbers looked too small for some individuals (because they don't match similar numbers for ships in Star Wars, Star Trek, and Babylon 5), so debate ensued that the method used to collect that energy is not known, therefore *no calculations* are valid. But geometry is the factor, not technology, and the involved parties don't comprehend that fact. There is no way for Destiny to collect light that is released in the exact opposite direction, for instance.
In fact I've found that method, Appeal to Ignorance, to be the method of choice in this particular thread when any calculation is made on a real target made of understood materials. It must be removed, so speculation and pseudoscience can elevate the technology to a level equal to that in other shows. I encountered this for many years when I ran a B5 website. The fact that a 500 megaton proximity detonation can destroy a Shadow vessel, a 2 megaton proximity detonation can destroy a Minbari Warcruiser, etc. must be strongly objected to. Because those things prove that ships in Star Wars would blow them to kingdom come. And we can't have that!
I love B5 more than any of those people. I love Stargate. But certain events place the military capabilities at a certain level, period. I love my wife, but I can't claim she is more beautiful than the prettiest model. The proper mindset is to *find out* how these things compare, never to change it to fit a predetermined outcome.
Atlantis can't make orbit with a single ZPM alone. Even with 3 ZPMs, they constantly complain about the lack of power. And the city can't accomplish some fairly routine scifi tasks with even 3 of them. This places certain limits on the power output, which are inescapable.

4. About the Pyramid in Full Circle. If I remember correctly the episode implied that all of Abydos was destroyed. Wouldn't that point to a chain reaction weapon?
Also, about that weapon. Chris says that the Hataks weren't destroyed instantly. After using the frame skip in Quicktime Brian was talking about I must agree. At least following the initial discharge of the weapon, the Hataks in question seem to be enveloped by lightning bolts traveling across the hull for several frames, before they finally explode.

The episode implies the settlement on Abydos was destroyed. Abydos was a barren wasteland that apparently had one settlement, and it was within walking distance from the pyramid. Note also SG-1 walked around on the ground completely safe a while later. The sand was not melted into a glass parking lot.
The chain reaction. Ah yes. Probably was. So what? That doesn't change anything at all. Applying a definition like "chain reaction" does not make the event any more escapable. It is a "Red Herring." The weapon instantly fragmented Hatak warships, but took several seconds with the pyramid. I don't care if it caused a million and one chain reactions, the fact that the pyramid withstood the weapon much better than the warships is conclusive proof that it is tougher than they are. It is simply inescapable.
Chris said the first ships hit were not damaged. Said something like nothing happened to them. In actuality, they erupted into fiery fragments after one hit. If we were to debate what "instantly" means, haggling over a few frames or fractions of a second, it would be a Red Herring. Those ships were easily fragmented, and the pyramid was not. By the same weapon. Period.

5. I don't think that the show ever mentions that the missile's Prometheus and the later ships are carrying are 1.2 gigatons Goauld Busters. They could just as likely be normal Earth nukes. This could explain why the missile's hit Ori ships in Camelot, but there are no major explosions. It also puts into question how powerful the nuke in No Man's Land really was.

Agreed. I have mixed feelings on that issue because there is no reason to not use their most powerful weapon. But naquadah has always been in short supply on the show. But they were fighting for their lives. But the visuals don't support a gigaton-level explosion.
I guess it comes down to this: just because they have access to 1200 megaton nukes doesn't mean that every one they launch is of that yield.
Some apparently like to claim that when McKay describes a bomb's blast radius, then act as if every missile launched by Daedalus must be a Mark8.
But McKay's blast radius and Mitchell's thermal effects radius are consistent. Both point toward a single-digit-gigaton explosion. Which is appropriate for a doomsday weapon.

[Brian Young]

I thought it was understood that visuals trump dialogue.
But I like to use both.
Of course, I don't see the problem here. Statements and visuals seem fairly consistent with these bombs on Stargate to me.

[Brian Young]

By the way, Merry Christmas, everybody!

[Crazedwraith]

The episode implies the settlement on Abydos was destroyed. Abydos was a barren wasteland that apparently had one settlement, and it was within walking distance from the pyramid. Note also SG-1 walked around on the ground completely safe a while later. The sand was not melted into a glass parking lot.
The chain reaction. Ah yes. Probably was. So what? That doesn't change anything at all. Applying a definition like "chain reaction" does not make the event any more escapable. It is a "Red Herring." The weapon instantly fragmented Hatak warships, but took several seconds with the pyramid. I don't care if it caused a million and one chain reactions, the fact that the pyramid withstood the weapon much better than the warships is conclusive proof that it is tougher than they are. It is simply inescapable.
Chris said the first ships hit were not damaged. Said something like nothing happened to them. In actuality, they erupted into fiery fragments after one hit. If we were to debate what "instantly" means, haggling over a few frames or fractions of a second, it would be a Red Herring. Those ships were easily fragmented, and the pyramid was not. By the same weapon. Period.

All you can really tell from that though is that Ha'taks are more vulnerable than a Pyramid to that particular weapon given the funky chain reaction nature of that weapon, it's a leap of logic to assume that pyramids are tougher than Ha'taks in all circumstances.

Given the way the discharge leaps from Ha'tak to Ha'tak in that scene it could very well be that the weapon actively disrupts powers systems, causing the mothership's reactors to blow, while the pyramid lacking said systems, were less affected.

[Brian Young]

Well, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. This is not.
Hatak ships were easily fragged. Much more easily than an ordinary stone structure. By the same weapon. Given that evidence, the pyramid is simply more resilient. Occam's Razor.
It actually makes sense when one considers how easily an Ori ship can blast through a Hatak, but had trouble with a mountain on the ground. Similar situation.
And when one considers how easily the Replicator beam crippled Apollo, but could not blast through an ordinary asteroid over a few minutes.
Three situations all with a similar result: ships in Stargate are less resilient than stone.

Not that this is a bad thing. It just places their resilience, and by extension firepower, below that wielded by some other popular groups in SciFi.

[Brian Young]

You know, you guys quickly jump to the "chain reaction" thing to try to wiggle out of this. But you don't stop to realize this argument states the weapon had to use a chain reaction to destroy the pyramid. Thus, the pyramid is that much more resilient than the ships.

[seanrobertson]

You know, you guys quickly jump to the "chain reaction" thing to try to wiggle out of this. But you don't stop to realize this argument states the weapon had to use a chain reaction to destroy the pyramid. Thus, the pyramid is that much more resilient than the ships.

Right. And even if we assume the weapon reacts very strongly with power systems, I'd think it would still have to overwhelm the Hataks' shields.

This isn't Star Trek, with Breen energy dampeners and phased weapons of the week, after all. Maybe some of that stuff exists in Stargate, too. But as you said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

[Chris OFarrell]

And I finally got around to replying to this thread, kept forgetting about it or not having the time. But thats what public holidays are for!

Chris, dude, you sure get riled up easy.

Hardly. You clearly don't spend much time on this board, when people get 'riled up' things look very...different. The logo doesn't include 'mockery of stupid people' for no reason...

The only thing that genuinely irritates me is your choice not to actually use the quoting software of the BBS properly to reply to my posts, making it incredibly difficult to reply to YOU as all I get is this huge wall of text. I find it impossible to believe that you are incapable of using internet forum software, so either you are doing it deliberately to just make my life that much harder as I have to keep going back and forth to figure out what you are saying, or you are just lazy.

But I would appreciate it if you could at least try.

I am quite convinced you don't understand why these limits directly oppose your position.

This being a good example, as I don't have a clue WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT here. This kind of sloppy work usually gets people referred to moderators, from someone of YOUR caliber I daresay I expected much better.

In that whole long post, all you've done is restate your original position.

Because the original position was generated and scattered over many a post, I decided to carefully lay it all back out again to make sure we were on the same page.

I'll reply by stating things very simply, that anyone reading can understand, even if they lack our knowledge of the show.

*The Arctarus thing was not a ZPM. It was not based on the same technology as ZPMs. A 2 year old could see that, as it is explained very clearly in the episode.

Then we are clearly not talking about the same episode, as Zelenca EXPLICITLY in the episode says that it IS;

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.

Zero Point modules and Arcturus are BOTH power generation technologies developed by the Ancients which BOTH WORK BY EXTRACTING ZERO POINT VACUUM ENERGY! Saying that 'they are not based on the same technology' is clearly flat out WRONG as they are, above, EXPLICITLY said to do the same damn thing, EXCEPT for the fundamental difference that ZPM's draw said vacuum energy from a self contained region of subspace, where as Arcturus was the next step, and was going to try drawing the SAME Vacuum energy from REALSPACE.

A two year old can see that they are related technologies and the later is an evolution of the former. If you are going to persist in declaring that they are in no way related, then that's your choice, but the canon is pretty explicit.

I'll provide the clip if necessary. Yes, McKay said at 50% power, it would provide as much power as a dozen ZPMs. *If he could make it work.* He could not.

You are misunderstanding what is meant by 'work'. The system WAS generating the energy levels stated. The PROBLEM was that it was also generating the exotic particles while doing it, which in turn disrupted the containment system, at which point the system started to steadily ramp up the energy production. The energy WAS BEING GENERATED at this time, the fact that the weapon started to fire off in a desperate attempt to vent some of the energy is proof that the energy existed no? But said weapon couldn't come close to outputting the energy levels needed, so the energy simply continued to build until the containment systems failed, and we got a gigantic explosion of all that released energy being let loose, all at once. Much like how a ZPM can be overloaded and release all of ITS energy all at once. Except this thing was generating all its energy in realspace, it wasn't holding energy in a subspace dimension and called upon when needed.

McKay NEVER qualified any of his remarks about the power output by saying that it wouldn't generate the levels of energy he expected if he couldn't control the exotic particles, the problem very clearly was that it WAS generating all the energy he wanted when he wanted, but the exotic particles -which turned the laws of physics on their head- interfered with the system and ultimately locked it into generating power which had nowhere to go, they couldn't CONTROL the power output, heck, McKay even says as much.

"McKay: The Ancient scientists running Arcturus were rushed into testing before they had perfected a means of effectively controlling the power output."

The energy weapon on the roof was used in a last ditch role to 'vent' the energy buildup to levels that the Ancients could shut the system down safely. Later when the same thing happens to the Atlantis team, it tried to vent some of the energy, but by that time far too much energy had been generated (and was still being added to) to do anything but buy some time until the field failed. But by definition, if the system was not generating the energy, then there would be no energy to get rid of. The exotic particles simply made it impossible to shut down the energy generation before they reached the capacity point of the containment field that was storing said energy. But McKay was still trying to halt the incoming energy until Sheppard convinced him to GTFO of there.

In short, you can get a decent estimate for the maximum wattage of a ZPM by estimating the energy release in Trinity, account for the 5-10 mins output it took to reach the energy level of the explosion, divide it by 12 to get the levels for a single ZPM on a per second basis. Now if a ZPM could sustain that level of output for anything like the time the Artarus system did is entirely another question; as I said earlier, the only time we've seen a ZPM floored to maximum output, it went from something like 60% total capacity to 0 in about 30 seconds. But given the energy levels we're talking about, you're still talking about big numbers.

Then it underwent catastrophic failure and exploded. From your own statements about power and energy, I don't think you understand the difference. The thing released a lot of energy all at once when it failed.

Yes because the CONTAINMENT system failed and all the energy that had been generated since it was turned on was let go. There isn't any indication in the episode (and I just re-read the script to make sure) that there would be a sudden wattage spike at the second second countless orders of magnitude greater then the output until that point. You can work out power by taking the time between turning on and release, then divide by 12 to get ZPM outputs as it was explicitly being run at 12 times a ZPM's output for the test.

Now as I said above, its relatively clear in 'Mckay and Mrs Miller' that a ZPM cannot sustain that kind of power output, but that was quite possibly the reason the Ancients were building this thing, lots more energy to draw.

That has nothing whatsoever to do with the usable power it could produce, had it worked properly. This is therefore a Red Herring. Your argument is like saying a nuclear power plant must generate X watts, because a nuclear bomb releases Y megatons. You know, because they are both nuclear and stuff.

No, it would be like me saying that one type of nuclear power plant must produce X watts because another nuclear plant with a faulty cooling system produced Y watts before it melted down.

*Exploding bombs worth 1.2 gigatons ARE considered very impressive in the show. The fact that Earth has them has nothing whatsoever to do with the resilience of Atlantis' shields nor the power output of a ZPM. This is therefore a Red Herring.

A Red Herring is an irrelevant point brought up as a distraction. My point about these weapons is that Earth has been producing single digit GIGATON ranged nuclear warheads since the first year of SG1, yet these weapons are NEVER used or hinted at being instant-gib weapons against ships such as Goa'uld Motherships or Wraith Hiveships, which are vastly weaker defensively then Atlantis. Ergo, its indirect proof that either your numbers are wrong or that Earths people are just complete idiots who have weapons that could have slaughtered Anubis's fleet in orbit for example, in a couple of missile spreads, but are just too big a fan of the idea of fighting fair to bring out the big guns. To say nothing of the Ori Battlewagons which were utterly unstoppable until they got the Asgard weapons systems, even with Mark IX warheads available.

The idea that based on your claims that Earth has access to weapons of such destructive power, a couple of which would equal the entire shield destroying power of the Asuran weapon (and by extension, a day or more bombardment from a full Wraith armarda) and neither the Goa'uld or Wraith or anyone COPY the relatively primitive technology in favor of far weaker technologies, and/or that Earth doesn't use these weapons against their enemies...its just doesn't make ANY sense.

Hell, in 'The Return', Landry calls the Atlantis crew in to give him advice on how to help the Daedalus get a nuke PAST the city shield, highly suggesting that the shield would shrug off any external detonation. This is when he REALLY needs to blow the city, yet no-one says 'So beam down one bomb. Then another. Then a third and forth, by that time you should have breached the shield as its not powerful enough to take five one Gigaton bomb'. Instead, he goes to the effort of bringing in the specialists to tell him how to GET AROUND the shield. The Replicators who know what the Daedalus was capable of were not at all concerned by its approach except to raise the shield.

So either everyone are complete morons, or the Atlantis shield can shrug off the best Earth can throw at it.

*For the third time, the technology used to gather solar power by Destiny is ***IRRELEVANT***. I believe I said before that you *don't understand the topic.* Geometry dictates that only X amount of power from the star is released in Destiny's direction. That, only only EVER that, can be absorbed by Destiny. I don't care if it sucks the power from a straw, it doesn't matter, never did, and never will. The fact that the ship uses this ~60MW/m^2 power to recharge is the final word on its capabilities. It is inescapable.

Clearly you don't have a clue what YOU are talking about here. You have no idea how the technology works, you have no mechanism for what this technology IS, yet claim that its irrelevant. You INSIST, without the slightest shred of evidence from any episode of SGU (meaning you are constantly making a claim without proof) that the system is only able to absorb the energy directly pointed at Destiny, when we know that there are energy fields in Stargate that can stretch a good fraction of a LIGHT YEAR if needed, and shields capable of ABSORBING energy and converting it for other uses that can extend over an entire planets surface. You are ignoring the fact that there are matter transportation technologies in existence that could arguably let them absorb energy a deep distance inside the star if they so wanted to, yet you are fanatically saying that Destiny is absorbing the direct solar radiance against its hull, and that is it, period.

WITHOUT ANY PROOF THAT IS HOW IT WORKS!

In short, you have nothing except a theory that has no facts behind it.

And beyond all of that, you have STILL failed to address the major flaw in your logic; if Destiny is only absorbing what is hitting it as we see, and only for the short time it sinks into the star and activates the device to gather said energy, then it would only be gathering the same amount of energy it would need to power the shields to protect itself from said energy at that point. It DOESN'T let the ship gather more energy for either the nice slow approach into the star, or when leaving it, and it sure as hell doesn't give it any excess power to the ships FTL systems, sublights, life support, weapons, shields or anything else along those lines! It would be, at best, a zero sum game where the energy expended gathering the energy to protect the ship would equal the energy gathered, and at worst, a lot less then that. Remember, this system doesn't protect the ship from the stars radiation, the shields do that, and when they tried to gate home by directly using said power from the star, it damn near destroyed them because the shields were being drained of the power and about to expose the ship.

Almost by definition, the solar system HAS to be absorbing far more energy then is locally hitting Destiny. Those shields aint free, even if you presume they go into a magic mode where they perfectly absorb everything hitting them and thus protects the ship (it doesn't as the 'dial home' Gate episode proves) but even if it does, it still won't make up for the far longer time Destiny took in approaching and leaving the star we saw in 'Light' where they would have been hit with much greater levels of radiation then the system absorbed over that minute or two in the star.

In short, YOU have made a claim; that Destiny is absorbing X amount of energy from the star through its weird star power device thing. You have utterly failed to meet ANY burden of proof beyond saying 'this much energy hits the hull'.

Either find supporting evidence for your position, or you have simply made a claim and not met the burden of proof.

*First Strike proves that a single ZPM can't put Atlantis into orbit alone. You argue that Atlantis was designed to use 3 ZPMs. Yes it is. But using your power figures, putting Atlantis into orbit with just one would be NO PROBLEM from a power standpoint. Your figures are therefore inconsistent and don't stand up to scrutiny.

And you clearly didn't' read what I actually said so I'll say it again; the Stardrive was NOT DESIGNED to be run with a single ZPM. PERIOD. It is not a question of the ZPM's power as we established that a ZPM can be run at very high power output for SOME SYSTEMS on Atlantis designed to draw on massive levels of power, again, in McKay and Mrs Miller which is a point you are ignoring yet again, when they explicitly drained a 60% full ZPM to 0% in less then a minute at its maximum power output. But the *Stardrive* system, is clearly built to run on 3 ZPM's, at least with the shield active. Idiotic design, sure. But as the Ancients who BUILT the damn city clearly never had any reason to fly without 3 ZPM's, or in the worst case, have the knowledge to rebuild the systems if they really wanted to, its not a crippling one...unless your not the people who built the city and only have a single ZPM.

But moving beyond that for a moment, lets actually take a close look at the episode as I did a few days back (pure luck, it was on TV an then got out the DVD to check it).

McKay states that the ZPM can't power the Stardrive as its 'a little busy powering the shield at full power'. Even when its not under direct stress from the attack thanks to the asteriod shielding them, it can't provide sufficient excess power to the Stardrive. So they get the drilling platform to give them the energy.

On the surface, this is pretty straight forward...but later events in the episode suddenly change things around...because I honestly don't think its a simple case of figuring out the energy to accelerate the city to escape velocity.

Because when the shields are lowered, a single ZPM of course proves perfectly able to lift the city. But they only need the shields lowered until they reach 18,000 feet. At that point, they are more then happy to turn the shields back on. Also at that point, the Replicator beam weapon strikes Atlantis and puts the shields once again under stress.

BUT they are STILL only in the lower Troposphere at that time!! They have NOT undergone even the acceleration a Space Shuttle takes at this point. Its only when they RAISE the shields again, that suddenly they kick in the gas, ascend into orbit in about ten seconds, and then open a hyperspace window and fly through hyperspace *while maintaining shields*, hyperspace being something that is said to be far more power expensive then sublight engines or shields are next episode when they can maintain shields, but can't open a hyperspace window due to lack of power. So it apparently is beyond the ability of a single ZPM to lift Atlantis off the surface of the planet with the shields on and not under stress, as in it can't move up so much as a meter...but a minute or so later, going from 18,000 feet to low orbit at the least in about fifteen seconds on one ZPM with shields active and jump to hyperspace...no problemo? And the drilling platform that was providing the extra energy only remained connected until they left the surface of the ocean, at which point it was no longer helping. Yet this was the time they NEEDED all the power? Atlantis floats, it didn't need power to rise to the surface, at least nowhere near as much as then taking off.

There has to be something else going on here, another factor that is sucking this huge amount of power. McKay states that *thirty percent* of their total power requirements are going to be consumed during the first ten seconds of flight. Yet in the first ten seconds, all they do is move up very slowly perhaps a thousand feet. The energy expended in that acceleration is insignificant next to a sudden acceleration to escape velocity from 18,000 feet into space in a matter of seconds, and then opening a hyperspace window, and doing so WITH the shields on, when it couldn't do the former with shields on. There is something else going on here, the most likely answers being;

1. The energy cost quoted includes powering up the Hyperdrive, which takes a massive amount of power to run. More then running the shields in fact as the next episode shows.
2. There are other 'hidden' costs to the sublight drives, such as the inertial dampening systems that are very power costly, and take a lot of energy to start up when the city starts moving (it IS very fragile after all).

Simply put, the timeline of events doesn't add up to a simple acceleration power curve of 'we accelerate, we need power, we accelerate faster, we use more power'. In fact its 'we start slow and need massive power to the point that nothing else can be powered, then we accelerate super fast and can power shields and hyperdrive as well, with no problems or energy drain'.

And on a related line on this topic for comparison; lets talk about the Wraith.

Wraith ship construction appears much denser then Atlantis, given that Wraith ships sink to the bottom of the ocean ('Submersion') where as Atlantis floats without power. It makes sense, given their lack of shields and being Warships, that they would be built with massive hull armor for protection. And we know with sufficient power, the armor can be 'grown' so dense that its all but immune to weapons fire. Although interestingly as Goa'uld ships are also denser then seawater given the events of 'Descent', it may well be that its just Atlantis that is so light, as its really a city that flies then a warship, and one clearly designed to land on water, but I digress.

We know that Hiveships land on planets as a matter of course, often for long periods of time when they are in hybernation, often with the planet growing around and half burying them. And Hiveships are gigantic, something like 5 klicks long is the generally accepted scaling these days based on the screen diagram in 'Allies' against the Daedalus, FAR larger then Atlantis in other words. And their acceleration is more then fast enough given their timeframes crossing star systems in realspace in Siege II, to say nothing of playing slingshot with black holes and Odyssey in 'Pegasus Project'.

Even a cursory look at the numbers shows a Hiveship is going to have orders of magnitudes more mass then Atlantis, yet IT has no problem taking off from planets, thus it must, by your logic here, generate a hell of a lot more energy then Atlantis can generate from its ZPMs. Yet, we know thats not the case, a FLEET of Hiveships and Cruiser escorts were going to take days to batter down the Atlantis shield with a single ZPM powering it (unless you are going to with a straight face say that they can only put a tiny fraction of a percent of that power into their guns for some crazy reason). And in the (spits) Atlantis finale, the major plot point (device) is a Hiveship that is integrated with a ZPM and so becomes horribly more powerful then any other Hiveship could even dream to become...meaning its normal energy generation is drastically inferior to a ZPM. And in an earlier related episode, Todd went to great lengths to get the ZPM's from the Asurans, and the Wraith originially in their war against the Ancients used 3 captured ZPMs to power a giant cloning facility to breed their warriors, something they couldn't do with their own power technology. McKay even goes so far as to say 'inefficient power generation is the Achilles heal of Wraith technology'.

So yet again, this whole tangent about the Stardrive and ZPMs' just doesn't stand up to close scrutiny except to say that Atlantis was designed to have 3 ZPM's power it, and a single ZPM cannot power both the Stardrive and shield at the same time (or at least not under the circumstances we saw in First Strike, the Asurans in 'The Return' appeared to power up the stardrive in a much slower way even with 3 ZPM's).

*Enemy at the Gate proves that even with 3 ZPMs, Atlantis can't fire, maintain orbit, and maintain shields simultaneously. This is completely consistent with the events in First Strike, but completely inconsistent with your figures. Your figures are therefore inconsistent and don't stand up to scrutiny.

No, Enemy at the Gates (spits) proves that in battle in orbit Atlantis against a ship with comparable power generation, Atlantis can't do all three at the same time when trying to survive a bombardment quite litterally orders of magnitude greater then anything we saw before. The Atlantis shield has never in any other battle 'lost integrity' against enemy weapons fire when being fired upon. Its always remained at full strength; the limit of its endurance against the Wraith in Siege III and against the Asuran beam in First Strike was the total power capacity of the ZPM. Although in the later case, Mckay states that the shield is holding and there is plenty of time to look at the situation, in the former, McKay states that the shield is under incredible stress from the bombardment...interesting difference...

At any rate, in THIS situation Atlantis was getting pummeled, its shields were dropping dramatically, hell the first volley knocked 30% off the shield power, something that no other weapon had come close to doing before! And as the next two salvos didn't kill Atlantis but it survived an extended engagement, its clear the ZPM's were continually reinforcing the shields to at least some extent.

As for not maintaining orbit, given the energy level of those bolts being fired at the city, the momentum the cites inertial dampening systems would have had to dissipate from them would have been huge in of itself, especially for a glorified flying city. Its far from impossible that the sublight engines/inertial dampening systems were expending huge energy to even maintain their partial orbit and fight the energy weapons momentum, and they needed whatever was left over to keep firing the drones. Zelenca even says that its the enemy weapons fire pushing them into the atmosphere, not that the engines no power *at all*.

*You really like to claim a weapon is a form of exotic physics, and therefore incalculable, whenever one hits a real target.

No, I really like toe claim a weapon is a form of exotic physics WHEN IT IS SHOWN TO BE A FORM OF EXOTIC PHYSICS because even a cusory look shows it doesn't do damage through simple and direct effects that can be easily quantified.

The Replicator beam is one clear example of this. So is Anubis's superweapon. You also have the Tollen Ion cannon and possibly the earlier Asgard weapons on their Belinkser class ships as examples to some degree.

This is a tactic that is convenient to some debaters who prefer to use pseudoscience to inflate figures. Just saying.

You know, this DOES irritate me. If you have something to say, then have the balls to say it. Don't sneer from a distance trying to sound like a smartass.

My argument is not based on the nature of the beam. Anubis' weapon instantly shattered Hatak warships like glass, then had a hard time with an unshielded pyramid.

And you are leaping at once to the conclusion that thus a stone > Goa'uld hull materials of course.

Even IF we ignore the fact that the weapon was clearly being used in two quite different modes at both times, where against the ships it was a brief beam that cascaded around the target and then caused it to exploded, where as against the Pyramyid it was a sustained beam combined that slowly built up, before stopping, vanishing, and then causing an explosion. Even IF we ignore the fact that the chain reaction clearly continued on to a far greater level then we saw given what Skara said when they went back to the planet and Carters announcement of a massive energy surge that was barely cut off by the Iris...

Even If we presume all that is for some reason irrelevant, I could just as easily say that all it proves is that the way this weapon works is clearly dependent on the presence of certain materials or substances in its target . And while Goa'uld Motherships were filled with it, making themselves giant bombs to this weapon, the pyramid was clearly just poor in them, requiring much more energy pushed in to have the same effect.

Simply put, your argument has no more merit then mine does, as we don't know how this weapon works, thus we can't determine what its likely effect would be on specific targets outside of Goa'uld starships and Goa'uld pyramids. The thing could be an antimatter converter for all we know that turns dense matter like Naquadah into its anti-particle and thus, things like ships that are heavy in Naquadah will go boom far more energetically then things that are poor in them.

Hell, a Naquadah chain reaction weapon even has precedence, and the fact that in the very next episode, Anubis targeted a Stargate specifically to blast a plantery target all adds up if I wanted to make a case for a theory, where as you don't even HAVE a theory, quite literally all you can say is 'the beam destroyed this, it took longer to destroy this', and prove nothing about the energy cost of generating said beam.

You can't even claim it overpowered the shields, as we have quite a few examples of what it loosk like when you overpower shields in Stargate, watch the Ori ships in Camalot one-shotting Ha'Taks with their bigass guns and you'll see the beam hit the shields, cause a massive shield flair, continue through anyway, and blow through the hull. Or when the Korelev blows up from the Ori weapons fire in the same episode. Or Prometheus against that orbital weapon that blows through its shields.

This beam didn't show any effect at all, but like Ancient drone weapons don't interact with shields, and have Herak when it happens shout out in a panic that 'OUR SHIELDS ARE OF NO USE!'.

In short, this weapon is effective unquantifiable except to say it makes mincemeat of fleets of Goa'uld ships. The thing could one-Shot Death Stars for all we know...

Yes, the effect was weird. But it was the same weapon used against the two targets. It easily destroyed Hatak warships, but took several seconds with a stone pyramid. The stone pyramid is therefore more resilient than Hatak warships. I find this inescapable, and the specific physics behind the beam to be irrelevant.

The former is connect, the later is utterly incorrect because it is clearly NOT a direct energy transfer effect and thus trying to point to stone being able to resist the beam is useless (well unless you know about many stone starships anyway). If this beam was a laser and it blew Ha'Taks apart and left scorch marks on the Pyrmayid, then yes, you can easily conclude that the later is more resistant then the former as you can easily calculate an assumed power level from said laser for mechanical or melting or vaporization effects on the Pyramid, then say this energy level was sufficent to kill the ships, thus the ships can't stand this much energy.

In this case, as we don't have the first damn clue how the weapon works, its impossible. What if, as I suggest, the energy field cascades over Naquadah, destabilizes it (something we know can be done even on a chemical level) and causes it to explode? As ships are filled with the stuff from their reactors to their weapons to the very hull of the ship itself, it would then stand to reason that this weapon would be utterly lethal against Stargate ships, but may well do nothing or little to a target that has little to no naquadah in it.

But you just say 'it blew up these, didn't blow up these near as well, thus, X > Y'. It might be a true statement as far as it goes, but the CONTEXT, the REASON why its true is whats actually useful here. It may well mean this beam can on full power blow up that asteriod 130 klicks long in Failsafe in a single blast, but barely dent a city block if fired against Earth.

Its a rather simple concept . If you agree the weapon is not a DET weapon but does damage in a weird way, then trying to use a direct energy transfer context of effects against X and effects against Y is useless. Its no different then Star Trek Phasers which 'vanish' people, yet against packing crates they are useless except for a few sparks. Different materials, non DET damage mechanism, very different outcomes, damn near impossible to calculate useful firepower as a result.

By the way, you said the first ships hit were not destroyed. That is a lie. I DO have access to these episodes for myself.

I'll let that comment go. What I said was, and I quote from the post;

Actually it DIDN'T, it hit the first 3 ships, nothing happens, then there is a massive internal explosion a second later that cause them to start blowing up one after the other. There is also no shield interaction between said beam and the ships, as in zilch to even suggest the beam simply overpowered the shields and punched through (as we see happen, say, with the Ori main guns vs the shields on Ha'Taks in 'Camelot' or against Anubis's supership in the very next episode). In the second volley, we even see one of the beams hit one of the Ha'Taks, then JUMP from that ship to its neighbor, causing both to blow up.

Honestly, making accusations like the above and your rather sloppy reply style makes me increasingly genuinely question if you are actually READING anything I post or just skimming...

*The Replicator city exploded over Atlantis when McKay overloaded all 3 ZPMs. This energy release, from orbit of the planet, did not threaten Atlantis nor the planet and animal life. This is inconsistent with your figures. Your figures are therefore inconsistent and don't stand up to scrutiny.

And pray tell WHY does McKay want to overload the ZPM's to a level that would DESTROY THEM along with the City, as well as Atlantis to BOOT? Seriously, they wanted to destroy the city and escape, not KILL THEMSELVES, to say nothing of Atlantis and the whole damn planet they were orbiting. ZPM overloads can come in different flavors; in this case they didn't cause the ZPM's to dump all their energy into realspace, they pretty clearly simply locked their power flow open so that more and more energy was being dumped into the Asuran cityships systems until, with nowhere to go, it exploded from the energy buildup that it couldn't dissipate, as can be seen from the internal explosions all over the cityship when it blew.

Then in critical mass, McKay even provides support by stating that different levels of energy would draw, with the failsafes disabled, different levels of catostrophic overload. And the Camulas ZPM which was rigged for maximum 'boom boom', was said by two characters to be able to definitly take out Earth, and perhaps even a good bite of the Solar System itself. And then again on the Asuran homeworld, McKay had a plan to overload a number of ZPM's simultaneously on the planet to create a massive controlled implosion of the nanites, but not blow up that nice friendly fleet in orbit of said planet.

Well at least until they went with Plan-B and blew up the planet anyway.

*The Ori were using a black hole to power their supergate. This was stated in the episode. It has nothing to do with the amount of power that can be transmitted through a gate.

And here is yet another point where your mystical inability to use BBS software makes it damn near impossible to reply to you without going back and forth trying to figure out what you are replying to comes back. Kudos.

My points were that the Writers got their 'Stargate science' confused when they started the whole Ori Black Hole Stargate crap up. In all the previous episodes dealing with Black Holes and Stargates, it was NOT the Blackhole that somehow provided energy to the gate and kept it open, the Stargate only stayed open for the normal amount of time a Stargate would stay upon, up to the 38 minute window. It was just that TIME DILATION effects caused time to slow down rapidly the closer you got to the even horizon. So it appeared to people in the SGC that the Gate had been open for minutes, people upstairs for hours, people in NORAD for days, people right at the event horizen probably for second.

Then they came in with the Ori using Black holes to somehow power a gate to stay open for long periods of time, because they had forgotten WHY the gate remained open fore long periods of time. They didn't actually do so, its just that time dilation made it LOOK like they did.
Now its not impossible that the Ori found ANOTHER use of black holes, a genuine way to power a Stargate somehow from one, but its more likely they just forgot, as in 'Pegasus Project' they have Earth use a black hole to magically provide unlimited power to a Stargate to remain open across interGalactic distances for a long time.

I was just making a point that the writers forgot themselves.

Anyway.

In Beachhead, even if the Ori were using a Black Hole on the other end to power their Stargate, there was still a LIMIT to how much energy could be sent through said Stargate, hence, the need to get the locals to blast the forcefield and provide the power to it to form around the entire planet, because the Ori couldn't send that power through. But with that said, the energy levels they were playing with on their end, Daniel Jackson thinks are clearly huge

Daniel Jackson: "Which means they have a power source which can indefinitely maintain a wormhole from another galaxy, plus this force field. A ZPM can't even do that."

That even a ZPM doesn't have the power output to both maintain an intergalactic wormhole, AND maintain a wormhole beyond the 38 minute mark.

Yet we know that:

A. A ZPM can clearly dial an intergalactic wormhole.
B. The Asurans have enough power to maintain a wormhole post 38 minutes, something McKay states takes a lot of power (aka their ZPM's).
C. But doing BOTH at the same time is not possible with that level of power source, at least not to also send through the power to generate the forcefield around the planet.

Thus, there is a defined limit to how much energy you can push through a Stargate, even with the power source in a Black hole to do all the 'heavy lifting' for you. Which again provides a neat reasoning behind the exotic anti-shield beam idea, because they can't send enough raw power through the Stargate to seriously threaten Atlantis AND protect the orbital platform from a counter strike, so they use an exotic weapon that will be just as effective.

I say again that they used a black hole because they can't generate that much power any other way. Black holes are uniquely dangerous. If they could do it by ordinary means, they would have. This is inconsistent with your power figures. Your figures are therefore inconsistent and don't stand up to scrutiny.

Except it doesn't make sense in that okay, lets say they use a black hole and get the power. Then great, you've ticked off the 'power wormhole, and keep it open' boxes. Then for the plain old simple forcefield around the planet, they can use their OWN power sources to transmit that without needing to use local sources...unless you've by doing the above, used up the limit of how much power you can transmit through a wormhole. Because this would have been a hell of a lot easier then the overly complex plan they came up with in 'Beachhead'.

*You then say the writers are wrong about this, and the time dilation is the factor, not power. In other words, you are freely changing the canon evidence to suit your own purposes.

And if you try reading what I said, I didn't DENY that they have explicitly said 'power the Stargate' in both Beachhead, Pegasus Project and Camalot, I was just pointing out that the WRITERS THEMSELVES were ignoring the established canon of WHY the Black holes did what they did with Stargates. Sheash.

*You say it takes teratons to blow up a stargate. But a few joules in the capacitors will do the trick. Your figures are therefore inconsistent and don't stand up to scrutiny.

Blow up EXTERNALLY FFS. I honestly don't know if you are just being deliberately obtuse or if you honestly don't get the difference between the power systems of a Stargate which are explicitly said to, with an INTERNAL buildup of energy in the wrong place, cause a chain reaction inside the stargate that sets off the Naquadah that has been CHARGED with said energy, in turn causing a chain reaction that blows the gate sky high...and the tough EXTERNAL shell of the Stargate designed to protect said Gate from enormous stress up to and including taking a dip INSIDE A STAR while remaining functional, taking a huge amount of energy to get through.

This is a statement as stupid as the same order as saying that because a concussion missile took out the Death Stars hypermatter reactor, an external concussion missile strike to the hull of the Death Star will of course cause instant destruction on the same order. Or because a personal phaser being fired into the Enterprise-D's warp core will destroy the ship, a guy in a spacesuit with a hand phaser should be able to easily take out the flagship of the Federation.

Its NOT a hard concept.

*snip ranting*

You know, I could make a reply to this by listing the number of logical fallacies, unsupported claims, ignored counterpoints and wild misrepresentations you have made in this thread, but instead I'm just going to call it a night. I won't be responding anymore in this thread because I have better things to do then bash my head against your wall of ignorance. Instead, I'm going to go ahead hopefully later this month with a dedicated Stargate thread which, starting from Season 1 of SG1, I will go into depth with all of these events I have listed, and the many others I haven't even touched in this thread, and build up the information on an event by event basis, to get a complete picture with various assumptions leading to various outcomes, but a far more complete picture.

If you want to dispute any work therein, be my guest, but I have neither the time nor the interest in trying to CONVINCE you of anything as you have shown yourself as utterly unwilling to accept even a SINGLE event that might throw your initial work into doubt.

[Brian Young]

Actually it DIDN'T, it hit the first 3 ships, nothing happens, then there is a massive internal explosion a second later that cause them to start blowing up one after the other.

Ah, if that's what you said, then I stand corrected.
But it doesn't change the fact that the argument is an Appeal to Ignorance. We don't know the specific physics behind the weapon, so all calculations are worthless - this is as blatant an Appeal to Ignorance as I can think of. We don't know how most of the weapons in SciFi work. If that is your stance, why do you post here to begin with?
The same argument is applied to the Replicator beam.
The same argument is applied to the Destiny recharging with solar power.
All those arguments are blatant Appeals to Ignorance, and therefore fallacious.

I find your argument that the device that destroyed a solar system is the same as a ZPM to be simply dishonest.

I guess we have reached an impasse.

[seanrobertson]

Chris,

I debated about posting this or other messages since you claim you're through with this discussion.

One reason I'll go ahead with this is because I'm not sure to take your word for that or not I mean, you hinted that you were finished here as early as Dec. 9. Four days later, you explicitly called it quits, only to post again later that day and, of course, yet another time on Jan. 6. (I could quote you to that effect, but at the risk of sounding arrogant, I don't think anyone doubts my integrity.)

Regardless, here I am.

At the outset of this thread, Brian privately asked me what I thought of you. I freely admit that I said you could be stubborn. But apart from that, I had a lot of very positive things to say. Glowing praise on your take of a Romulan Warbird's firepower, even. I'm sure Brian would verify that.

That's why I'm sincerely disappointed now

You're obviously frustrated, Chris, but frankly, you brought much of that on yourself. Try to step out of your own boots for a minute and look at how you've conducted yourself in this thread. Fairly early on, you assumed the role of a smarmy defense attorney, criticizing and probing, desperate to sow seeds of doubt.

Assuming you respond, do me this courtesy: before you start nitpicking, read on a bit first.

See, from late November, you've been saying Brian's "figures are too low," but you haven't once -- not ONCE -- had the decency to offer a single counter-figure or range of meaningful figures.

Oh, sure, you waved your hands and made vague allusions to planet-cracking or nova-level energies. But the next minute, you were practically masturbating over gigaton to teraton-ranged bombs

In brief, you wouldn't commit yourself to anything firm. Arguing for something that stretches from gigatons to nova-level events isn't an acceptable range of figures; that's a bad fucking joke, Chris!

Need I spell this out? That "range" covers well over TWENTY FUCKING ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE!

Really, what the hell kind of "analysis" is THAT? "Oh, it puts out anywhere from a million terawatts to a million million million MILLION terawatts!"

Pathetic

With that kind of wishy-washy commitment, face facts: you never really stood for something. More or less, your position's effectively boiled down to "I'm anti-what Brian says" -- little more

Especially in light of you questioning Brian's balls, I gotta say, man, that is downright chickenshit of you, Chris. At least Brian took a definitive stand. His two or three orders of magnitude to your twenty (and more likely, over THIRTY, even if you don't realize it) is a shitload more transparent, workable and honest. Moreover, you possibly posting "accurate" figures in another thread, elsewhere, sometime in the future, maybe, just ain't the same thing. You had ample opportunity to do that here.

Now, I also admit that I thought this thread was pretty much fucked a month ago. The debate had splintered off into so many secondary and tertiary bullshit issues that it was hard enough to simply keep track of who said what.

Just the same, there was no reason we couldn't step back and tackle a few key subjects on a case-by-case basis.

Indeed, that's what I'd like to do, time permitting. I'm keen to pick apart some of the things you said in your ultimate, for real, it's true, no kidding this time! post. One argument that really sticks in my craw is the one about Earth's nukes and the Wraith threat. You suggested Brian's figures are bogus because, if they were correct, Earth could "insta-gib" the Wraith Hiveships and other powerful opponents with gigaton warheads. But since Earth didn't use their nukes in that capacity, you reasoned, either the characters were suicidally stupid or Brian's "numbers" were "indirectly" proven wrong.

... err, somehow, that is

Now, you were never so gracious as to point out WHICH of Brian's figures you had in mind but, if it's necessary yet again, I'll elucidate how relatively low-yield particle weapons can be at least as deadly as large nuclear detonations at point-blank range. That's ESPECIALLY the case against unshielded targets, like the Wraith.

I'll also be sure to point out the most obvious flaw in your bifurcation; i.e., Earth DID launch spreads of nukes against Hiveships.

Do you remember that now? And do you remember the outcome, which Brian explained on Dec. 18?

Darts intercepted every missile miles before they came into range ("The Siege Pt. III."). To my knowledge, we only saw one missile get past the darts in "No Man's Land."

That nuke might not have "insta-gibbed" the Wraith ship; however, it was still heavily damaged, which sets an upper-limit on the ship's resilience.

Speaking of that blast, Brian noted earlier that it wasn't a gigaton-ranged. Let me quote him:

*Daedalus used all its nukes (per Caldwell's statement), and only one missile hit out out the bunch. Darts intercepted all the rest, as per usual. That, as I said, is why they are ineffective.

*This was indeed a nuke. Dialogue and visuals support that. But the visuals don't support a gigaton-level explosion. It isn't necessarily a naquadah nuke.

*The bomb caused "serious damage," but didn't destroy the ship.

*This, again, has nothing to do with Atlantis' shield strength or the power output of a ZPM.

(Guess you missed that, tacitly disagreed or you just decided to ignore it. After all, that a megaton-ranged nuke took out a big, bad Wraith ship could NEVER be in line with Brian's figures, could it? )

I'd also like to address all of this stuff about ZPMs in relation to the Arcturus Project. You set yourself up for a real humdinger with that one! Even more amusing is that I was bickering with Adam Grif earlier yet, in a post on Nov. 25, he said:

I don't think Arcturus is useful for calculating much of anything. If it's throughput was equal to 24 ZPM's, that doesn't imply that it's total reserve of energy was equal to 24 ZPM's. It may have orders of magnitude more energy capable of being extracted compared to 24 ZPM's, which was presumably what gets unleashed when they explode.

If project Arcturus was a hard drive, we know its read speed but we have no idea of its capacity.

BINGO.

In the meantime, let me say this: I've long considered you a genuine pal, Chris. I really think you are a good man.

Just the same, Brian has been one of my best friends for a decade. He was there for me at a time I couldn't count on many folks, including much of my family. He and his wife graciously shared a Disney vacation with me. I'm undoubtedly biased, but I say you came at him too hard. Then you made it worse by stomping off the playground like a petulant child.

Not cool.

-Sean

P.S. -- I thought it was a little petty of you to pick at Brian for not responding tit-for-tat to every little damned thing. The thinly-veiled backseat moderating was also base.

I'm a little surprised you haven't realized this, but Brian posts as he does for a good reason: he cuts through all of the impertinent shit and brings things back to what really matters. Maybe that approach risks missing some minor details, but in a thread of these proportions, I dare say wading through an ocean of line for line responses misses more. Much more. Need I reiterate that you completely overlooked Brian's counter-point to your silly "you R wrong cuz nukes don't instagib the Wraith lolz" question?

Speaking of something that will probably sound petty, I hope instead you take this in the spirit in which it is offered: please, learn the difference between then and than. You've made that mistake for as long as I've known you. I believe we're both in our thirties, yes? If you've seen me make a blatant grammatical error or misspelling all this time, feel free to correct me in turn.

[Xon]

Brian Young's posts are ridiculously hard to follow because he seems hellbent on stripping out any context on what the hell a given line is replying to.

[Xon]

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*!

Wrong. Stargate tech has demonstrated the ability to absorb power at a distance and collect power from subspace. Childhood's End shows that the Ancients had the technology to extend a rather short ranged(only a few dozen kilometres) energy dampening field from a device. The energy probably got dumped into subspace*, but hey Daedalus Variations shows it is posible to get energy out of subspace.


*The Stargate is capable of radiating ~10^13 watts when off. This is derived from Teal'c being stuck in the Stargate, and a significant chunk of his energy-mass being lost over a few days of the gate being off. The cooling system in the SGC isn't what I could sanely suggest being capable fo dissipating 10 trillion watts and the energy has to go somewhere so Subspace which the Stargate extensively uses anyway.

[seanrobertson]

Brian Young's posts are ridiculously hard to follow because he seems hellbent on stripping out any context on what the hell a given line is replying to.

Great -- callously nitpick a teensy part of a reply directed to someone other than yourself for the purpose of ... nothing. You get a gold star, "GGS"

Per this site's Debating Rule #5, I challenge you to step out of your trolling one-liner comfort zone and offer evidence to support your claim.

Back Up Your Claims.

If you make a contentious statement of fact and someone asks for evidence, you must either provide it or withdraw the claim. Do not call it "self evident", restate it in different words, force the other person to prove your claim is not true, or use other weasel techniques to avoid backing up your claims.