Death Star superlaser

[Enola Straight]

Can ANY sheild or armor stand up to a full blast of the Death Star superlaser?

Kilometers-thick neutronium alloy?

Could a Black Hole swallow a blast without exploding?

[Ender]

Can ANY sheild or armor stand up to a full blast of the Death Star superlaser?

Kilometers-thick neutronium alloy?

You can't alloy neutronium. I suppose enough of it could serve as a heat sink, but how much i don't know. Keep in midn we don't know the true power of the DS, we have a low end number based off the speed of some of the fragments, there were faster moving ones that get you higher numbers and then you have to remember that the energy would be imparted in the form of heat, greatly increasing the numbers again.

Could a Black Hole swallow a blast without exploding?

For all we know the particle bemas that make up the SL could do something funky, so again, no idea.

[Rogue 9]

Well, if you go by the Maw and the Death Star prototype, then a superlaser has no effect on a black hole. They test-fired the thing in the Maw Installation, which means that it would hit black holes by necessity. None were destroyed.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Well, if you go by the Maw and the Death Star prototype, then a superlaser has no effect on a black hole. They test-fired the thing in the Maw Installation, which means that it would hit black holes by necessity. None were destroyed.

Um, automatic assumption, anyone?

[Rogue 9]

The destruction of a black hole would cause immediate and fatal problems for Daala's fleet and the destruction of the Installation. Besides, wasn't the superlaser fired during the novels inside the Maw and miss at least once? And when it did hit, it was a full power blast on a Corellian Corvette. That would not stop the beam by any stretch of the imagination. And yet no black holes were destroyed. I'm fairly certain that the beam was even described as bending into a black hole at one point, and no effect upon the singularity was described.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

What makes you assume that the beam has to hit one of the black holes, though? I'm somewhat familiar with the JAT, and I don't recall them ever mentioning something like that.

[Rogue 9]

I'm seriously familiar with the Jedi Academy Trilogy, as it was the first EU series I ever read. (Bad choice, I know, but its done.) I'm fairly certain that they did hit one, by virtue of being close enough to the black hole that it attracted the superlaser.

[Mad]

Could a Black Hole swallow a blast without exploding?

Hm, what's the gravitational binding energy of a typical black hole?

While I don't think the DS could destroy a decent sized black hole, I wonder if it'd cause anything to be ejected... it'd probably have to accelerate small parts of it very close to the speed of light in order to do so.

[Howedar]

I don't think you can un-point-mass a black hole. They go poof in gamma radiation or something, but I think once its a black hole it stays a black hole until it becomes radiation.

[Chris OFarrell]

In Tyrents Test, the DS prototype fired at the suncrusher and missed, the Superlaser beam simply sucked into the event horizen without so much as a by your leave.

Of course the whole idea about a 'stable' cluster of black holes that hasn't collapsed in on itself....bah.

I'm sure there is stuff that can withstand the superlaser. Quantum Crystal armour can at least resist it. The Sun Crusher got hit by the edges of the superlaser and survived, just barely. And it only had a small amount of the plating. Hundreds of meters of the stuff may well work. A planatery shield with a surge capacity equivilant to a superlasers power (you'd probably need a hypermatter reactor of power equal or greater then the Death Stars) would work as well.

[Rogue 9]

Not Tyrant's Test, that's the last book of the Black Fleet Crisis. You're thinking of Champions of the Force.

[Spartan]

Even if the DS's sheilding is an order of magnitude above a planetary shield, it could not hold off a SL; even a Eclipse class superlaser should easily breach them.

1. Planetary shields are composed of overlapping segments, major capital ships possess shields composed of overlapping segment; the DS is intermediate in size no reason to believe that it has a single shield.

2. The entry on torpedo spheres states that it is possible to scan for weaknesses and powerfluctuations in shields, and that these fluctuations can be targets and breached. The whole point of the torpedo sphere is to locally collapse portions of a planetary shield, so it is possible to penetrate a far more powerful shield with a weaker weapon and careful scanning.

3. Locallized shield burn outs are seen everywhere in the EU, no reason to think this would be any different.

As a side note I don't believe anything could realistically withstand a full power DS SL shot. Factor in the likely thermal energy, and the "liberating the energy of a star" quote from the ANH novelization; and your talking near supernova output.

[Rogue 9]

Supernova outpur would have destroyed the station at Alderaan, wouldn't it?

[Spartan]

True, but I was thinking more of the reactors power output. The quote say liberate the energy of a small sun, sno maybe the mass-energy of a red dwarf star.