I think its only fair, given that this thread refused to die and kept going, that I can reply to Brians last post. It will however be my last post as well.
Brian Young wrote:
Chris,
The Replicators then after pouring this power into the LOCAL STARGATE which USED IT TO GENERATE THE WORMHOLE, then fired a second beam through which had NOTHING TO DO with powering the wormhole or maintaining the connection, all it did was power the Satellite weapons shields (as McKay states that the beam is doing) and the rest then hit Atlantis to slowly drain the ZPM of energy over the next day or so.
Right. But then you ALSO CLAIM said beam is not a DET!
[/quote]
Which has what to do with my point that there are two separate things here? Perhaps it would be best if I summarize my position as I have since watched both Redemption and First Strike since all this started, and to sum it all up.
1. McKay states the only 2 things that can keep a Wormhole open past the 38 Minute window are a black hole, and a huge amount of power.
2. The only other time a Wormhole has been kept open without the black hole, is 'Redemption' (an event McKay was directly involved with, so we can treat him as something of an authority on the matter).
3. Ergo, said wormholes in Redemption and First Strike were being *kept open* by massive amounts of power.
However, in Redemption, only a tiny amount of power came through the wormhole. And it was not reintegrated, it simply built up slowly in the Gates capacitors, something that happens 'normally' as well (variations in the local gates capacitors as a matter of course) but this time it was always increasing, and without the wormhole shutting down, it would eventually reach 'big boom' levels.
4. Now in 'First Strike' again a Wormhole is being maintained via an off-world power source to push it past the 38 minute time limit, this time however a beam weapon is shot through the Gate.
5. Said beam is also powering the shield on the Stargate-Satellite in orbit, a shield powerful enough that McKay instantly dismissed any Drone or Nuclear attack upon it as an option. Given that the SG Earth has routine access to low GT level weapons (hell, see what they had just did to the Replicator homeworld!), the energy the beam must be carrying has to be carrying in at least that level of energy, if not more, for it to be proof against any direct attack. However the beam itself has some level of a DET component when used against things like that Asteroid, and an almost negligible effect against seawater with only trace amounts of heating/vapor, nothing like the thousands of square meters that should have been vaporized.
*For some really useful information about lasers and penetration;
http://panoptesv.com/SciFi/DeathRay.html
http://panoptesv.com/SciFi/LinAbs.html
6. Said beam also has the capacity to completely drain the Atlantis ZPM inside a day or so, indirectly at least, via the shield grid and continually draining the shield (the shield itself was explicitly stated to be holding under the strain by McKay, clearly its just a question of how long the ZPM could maintain the power to the shields). It is also capable of causing extreme damage to a Daedalus class ships shields with only a few seconds contact. Both shields (Atlantis and Daedalus) have withstood far in excess of the level this beam delivers through its DET component as seen to the asteroid (among other things, the Atlantis shields under highly unusual circumstances dissipated a multi-gigaton detonation inside a minute or so without even a hint that the ZPM was stressed).
7. And we have several examples of the shield holding, but steadily drawing a ZPM's total energy to maintain the shield. 'Siege III' being the best example, but we also have 'Adrift', the episode post 'First Strike' showing the shield systems can indeed 'pull' the energy out of the ZPM at very high levels, that mesh with the 'First Strike' example.
8. Ergo, the conclusion I have come to that the beam has exotic properties that cause extreme damage to shields, but only minimal damage to other things, and even THAT damage can vary depending on what gets hit (e.g. Asteroid vs Water). Its the only logical way to mesh up the fact that this beam can draw down the total energy of a ZPM (which is bloody huge), yet the beams DET component is shown to be minimal. As stated above in one example, other events such as the Stargate going 'boom' involved FAR more energy delivered FAR faster, didn't even mention the ZPM as being drained or even stressed. Yet this beam was going to completely kill it.
*snip more of the discussion that goes over the above*
Burden of Proof. I have presented a valid argument against each of your examples.
And I would highly dispute that you have done so. So we point fingers at each other and say 'nuh huh' and 'ya huh!' for the next few years...
*The other technology that destroyed a solar system is not a ZPM.
No, but its based off the same technology. But more critically for our purposes and the reason we bring it up, is that the total energy output of Project Arcturus was EXPLICITLY GIVEN as two dozen or so ZPM's. Said total energy level when unleashed in the catastrophic breach when the system was locked open and unable to 'vent' enough energy was sufficient to blow up 5/6ths of a solar system, meaning that even a single ZPM's total energy capacity in comparison would be...significant, to put it lightly.
In terms of modern tools, a ZPM is comparable to an air tank, with a large, but finite energy potential. Like air pressure in a tank. The other is akin to a leaf blower, with virtually limitless energy to draw upon. Like limitless air in my yard. It did not work. The fact that it exploded and destroyed a star system has nothing WHATSOEVER to do with the usable power output of a standard ZPM. Yes, McKay said at 50% power, etc, etc. But the problem was the potential ENERGY of our ENTIRE UNIVERSE was too much to control, and a star system was destroyed. A ZPM has not only a smaller power output, but an exponentially lower energy potential. Possibly finite vs infinite. This example does not support your position.
Incorrect. The Project Arcturus system had infinite POTENTIAL energy, BIG difference. Unlike a ZPM which has a limited amount of finite power. BOTH a ZPM and the Arcturus system COULD be set to 'engage leaf blower mode' and spew out utterly ungodly levels of energy, its just that a ZPM would run out of said energy inside a minute, where as the Arcturus system would be able to keep going to the total entropic potential of the universe itself, and do so at a couple of dozen times the size of a 'ZPM Leaf Blower'. In 'Trinity', the system locked into overload and kept building up more and more power because the exotic particles kept screwing with the control and containment systems, then the roof weapon tried to 'vent' the energy, but couldn't get rid of enough to let them shut down the system, and one short chain reaction later, the energy came flooding out.
See 'McKay and Mrs Miller' in terms of a ZPM at 60% power being drained to 0% in a short time-frame. Yes, thats a ZPM with its total capacity vanishing down an inter-universal bridge.
Now its clear that on Atlantis, only some systems can draw on a ZPM to this level, but again, the place was designed to run with three of them in parallel (Before I Sleep), so its not entirely surprising that some systems (the sublight engines at any rate) were designed to work with 3 ZPM's in parallel, when it was built by a culture capable of manufacturing as many of them as they needed.
*The energy released by a bomb. Ah yes. A ZPM must be greater, because it was built by the Ancients.
Eh?
No, a ZPM must be greater because we know the total potential energy from a ZPM has been stated multiple times to be on the level of between 'lets vaporize this planet if all the energy inside it is catastrophically released at the same time...or perhaps a good part of the solar system', as opposed to a Stargate blows with the force of 2-3 Gigatons, which is a big number, but nowhere near THAT levels of energy. And again, we know that level of energy can be emptied from a ZPM as 'useful and usable' energy inside a minute or so (McKay and Mrs Miller).
Circular logic. Show me an instance where one of those was used against Atlantis' shield.
Its very hard to determine exactly what you are talking about here as you are not quoting, but the point is that a Multi-Gigaton detonation was quite successfully contained by the Atlantis shield *without any mention or indication of a drain to the Zero Point Module*. Period! Thats on the same order as one of the 1200 Megaton 'Goa'uld Buster' warheads the SGC has had since Season 1.
Just one. Recall the missiles that took out targets on the Replicators' planet. No shields prevented it, and they have many ZPMs.
...and you have evidence that they had shields across the targeted areas or raised them in time of course? The fact that they didn't fire so much as a drone against the Apollo or the Horizon or the MIRVed missiles kinda suggests they were taken completely off guard and didn't enact any countermeasures at all.
*I looked up all those episodes, and none of them negated my calculations.
I honestly have no idea what you are replying to here. But if you are replying to specific instances I have brought up, I'd appreciate something more then 'they are wrong, moving on'...
*The gate destroyer beam. So, only a certain amount of energy is transmitted through the gate? Then why do spears, staff blasts, bullets, people, or *anything else in the entire 17 year run* come out exactly as it went in?
Because THOSE THINGS go through the event horizon of the sending Stargate, get transmitted as a matter stream to the receiving Stargate, which then converts them back into the original form, and reintegrates them. The Gate Destroyer is NOT sending anything through to be dematerialized and rematerialized like normal operations, it is somehow directly increasing the total energy in the receiving gates capacitors that power the Stargate without going through the buffer which will slowly reach their maximum storage limit and go 'boom', probably by directly manipulating the wormhole itself which is maintained by said Stargates. HOW it does this is unclear, all Carter says is that there is an energy transfer in progress from the sending Stargate to the receiving Stargate and its being stored IN said Stargate.
Which is very different from the way energy works when simply shot through the event horizon against a closed iris, the incoming energy does not get stored (otherwise all you would need to do if your enemy has a closed iris would be to pour a huge amount of energy down the Stargate in a matter of seconds and the other Gate would blow up as it became unable to deal with the energy) meaning this Gate Destroyer is bypassing that system to feed the trickle into the Gates capacitors. Which strongly suggests this is something outside the matter stream the wormhole transmits, probably to do with the wormhole itself.
If Anubis' weapon poured so much power through the gate, but "not enough to reintegrate," why do all those lower energy events not get sucked up by the gate too?
Bad explanation on my part. And as I said or at least tried to, Anubis is not pouring power THROUGH the Gate to keep it open, but power into the Stargate to maintain the wormhole. Thats ONE mechanism involved here, the same one used in First Strike, even if outside of that, the two events are distinctly different.
The OTHER half of this Redemption technology is the Gate Destroyer which is causing energy to build up in the receiving Gate. It CAN'T be simply transmitting energy straight into the wormhole like normal staff blasts, people, whatever s, as they WOULD simply arrive at the far end with the Iris closed and dealt with however the Stargate deals with it (ejected into space somewhere between the two Gates I would guess if 'Red Sky' is any indicator of how it might work). And we know that shooting massive amounts of energy down a wormhole with an iris doesn't do jack to the Stargate on the other end. But this Gate Destroyer DOES get the energy across and into the other gate.
My theory, again, is simply that the wormhole (which BOTH Stargates maintain but power is supplied from the offworld Gate for incoming wormholes as we know) simply carries more power then it should be carrying (completely separate from the matter stream the wormhole is carrying), and that excess power is just shunted off by the receiving gate into its capacitors, to be discharged at a later time, probably in the next outgoing connection. BUT as the Gate Destroyer keeps the wormhole locked open, it cannot get rid of the energy.
At a guess, you can't dump more then a tiny amount of excess power into a Wormhole without said wormhole destabilizing and causing weird stuff to happen; the prime example being of a Wormhole 'jumping' to another nearby Stargate if there is a sudden surge beyond normal limits, which in fact probably explains why so little extra power was added in 'Redemption', any more and it could have 'jumped' to a different Stargate somewhere near Earth.
This makes no sense. I asked if they have all this ridiculous power capacity, why didn't they just shoot it at Atlantis in the standard 38 minute cycle. You said because the stargate would use up the energy. But why doesn't that happen to anything else in the entire series run? Like spears, bullets, staff blasts? You say Anubis' weapon must be powering the stargate because it is big and is firing a beam that doesn't reintegrate. You won't accept that this could be one of those weird no-damage weapons, but you'll gladly pull those out of your ass whenever something hits a real target? Stolen Concept fallacy.
To go over it again as you are clearly misunderstanding...
1. I said in terms of energy transfers down a Stargate that there are LIMITS to what you can send through the matter stream, this is made EXPLICIT in 'Beachhead'.
2. On top of what you can send through the Matter Stream, there is also the OVERHEAD energy cost of actually GENERATING THE WORMHOLE IN THE FIRST PLACE. Which is normally low enough, but goes up a huge amount when you dial very long distances, OR, dial a short distance but force it to remain open past 38 minutes. The two combined in Beachhead probably took an absurd amount of power.
3. And you CLEARLY don't get that there is a distinct difference between the WORMHOLE that is established between the Stargate A and Stargate B, and the MATTER STREAM said Wormhole *carries* between Stargate A and Stargate B (you can generate a matter stream outside of a wormhole in Stargate after all, its the plot point of '48 Hours'. Stuff like Staff Blasts, people, Puddle Jumpers, Radio Signals and Replicator Death Beams all go through the MATTER STREAM and obey its rules, INCLUDING when an Iris/Forcefield is present on the far end. The energy that leaked into the receiving Gates Capacitors was directly from the WORMHOLE itself being maintained by the Stargate, and as we all know, a receiving Stargate receives power from an INCOMING wormhole, it doesn't drawn on its own power supply. And here, it was just reviving a tiny bit of extra power, which is something that happens normally, given that the capacitors locally are stated to go up and down in normal operations. But in this case, it was a steady stream of excess power being stored, which *because the Gate would NOT shut down*, would eventually reach critical limits and cause the Stargate to explode.
I don't think I can make it any more simple then that, although I think its clear I haven't been explaining it well enough. I might have to draw pictures next post...
In response to "How much power can be transmitted through the gate?" you said:
No figure is given. Logically, it must be less then the energy yield of the Mark IX Naquadriah bomb and whatever the Goa'uld Ha'Taks and Prometheus could pour in on top of that.
That was an INCOMING wormhole.
Yes and? The Ori were the guys who dialed in the wormhole, to establish their beachhead planet. Yet they couldn't deliver energy THROUGH the Gate, at least from another Galaxy, to equal the energy Prometheus and the Jaffa ships could provide, hence the whole plan to get them to attack a forcefield that would somehow suck all their energy up.
Either that or the Ori just like incredibly complicated plans for the sake of them when they are doing something as critical as building a Supergate to send their mainline forces and ships through...
Now you are also quite correct that dialing in from another Galaxy probably also limited the energy they could send, but even that just adds more evidence that there IS a finite limit to what power you can send through the Stargate in terms of raw power. Extra-Galactic dialing on top of that probably means there is even less ability to send that much energy, but the point still stands that its clearly not unlimited, for the Ori to go to such extreme lengths to power their shield, and even makes a nice reason why they would use an exotic 'shield draining' beam rather then raw power, to get the same effect
All it means is that the Ori were unable to produce the power to dial another galaxy and keep it open indefinitely. It has nothing to do with the amount of power that can be transmitted through the gate. It simply means that the Ori cannot produce the power of a black hole by ordinary means.
Except the Ori have the full tech base of the Ancients, hell, they have MORE then that as they have the knowledge of fully Ascended beings. Adria knows as much about the Stargates, for example, as the people who made them (the Ancients) even though that technology wasn't invented by the Ancients until AFTER the Alterans had left the Ori Galaxy! They have the ability to dial in Priors from their own Galaxy which is so far away that even with Intergalactic Hyperdrive technology, you need to build a Stargate capable of moving ships to get to the Mikey Way from it in a reasonable time, do remember that in 'Beachhead' the Stargate the Prior came through from the Ori Galaxy remained active the WHOLE time. Meaning they not only dialed in from another Galaxy, but were pumping the necessary power to keep it open beyond the 38 minute window, a level of power McKay in First Strike of course put at ZPM levels.
Shockwaves are not transmitted through space. Period. Please give it up.
Semantics. The detonation of the Asgard homeworld creates a wave of debris, energetic radiation, vapor moving out in a mostly spherical pattern, except for a Ring of Doom, all of it carrying energy (be it kinetic, thermal, whatever) from the initial detonation which put it in motion. Call it what you will, it happened and the Odyssey took at least some of that impact.
Although now that I think about it, the fact that the ASgard BLEW UP THEIR OWN PLANET kinda shows what energy levels they can play around with, I mean its not every SciFi race that casually blows up planets (or collapses main sequence stars into solar system consuming black holes for that matter)...
The Shadows blew up their own planet. Epsilon 3 was going to explode, but was prevented. This is quite different from blowing it up from the outside with a weapon Death Star style. The black hole event was very impressive, but like the Ori, simply proves that they can't destroy the planet any other way. They can't produce the power of a black hole any other way.
How exactly is is different? Most of the calculations for the Death Stars firepower simply come from taking the mass of the planet and working out the energy needed to scatter said mass beyond escape velocity (gravitational binding energy), working out how fast it delivered said energy (and in more advanced calculations, how much extra energy on top of that) and from that you get your figures.
Epsilon 3 exploding might have released even more energy or far less, we don't know as we don't see it happen. The same could be said for Zha'ha'dum, but I have no idea if anyone has actually tried to work out those numbers.
Now its also far far easier when you can build things like bombs at the center of your planet to cause a mass scattering event, which means the energy from said explosions if they DID actually mass scatter, is going to be much lower because the energy can be delivered much more directly and efficiently. The Death Star is impressive because it delivers a lot more energy given the velocity of the fragments, the fact that it was delivered externally through a beam and the timeframe it was delivered in.
But it doesn't mean that either of your examples doesn't in their own right add up to a LOT of energy...
This is shown many times in Stargate. Any time anyone needs stellar-level power, they go to a black hole, or find a way to make one. This includes the Asgard and Ori. This mean, by default, they have no other way of generating that much power.
...what are you talking about? The only time Black Holes are used in terms of 'power' is to keep a Stargate open.
And THAT was actually the writers getting screwed up; the reason a Black Hole kept a wormhole open a long period of time WASN'T because it provided a great deal of power, but because the time dilation provided by the Black Holes gravity lensed out of the wormhole in advance of the gravitational field (something Carter admitted was impossible but happened anyway). The wormhole didn't remain open for a long period of time. Its simply that thanks to time dilation, the further from the event horizon you go, the faster time was, and the closer you got, the slower it was, so it LOOKED like it was still open from a distance. To the point that it could look like its been open for years, even if relative to the Stargate itself, it was only open for minutes.
It was a key plot point of 'A Matter of Time'.
Its just that the later writers got sloppy and forgot WHY the gate 'remained open' longer then normal and that it wasn't actually doing this, just making it LOOK like it was being kept open longer then normal.
But that's neither here nor there; however it apparently works, its clearly now just a trick in terms of Stargates and keeping them open for extended periods. Neither the Ori nor the Asgard use a Black Hole for an energy source, just to somehow 'force' a Stargate to remain open (and the Asgard have never forced a Gate to remain open long term either). Hell, the Asgard have the technology to frigen artificially collapse a star into a super massive black hole, as in one far more massive then the star it used to be, to the point that it pulls its solar system in along with it. How they did that, no-one knows...but they did it.
When asked if you even LOOKED at Mike's page about the CME, you said:
No because, and I'll say it again
Then I'll not discuss the subject with you further. You obviously have no interest in serious debate.
Actually I did look over it in the end, and it was exactly as I predicted. I could say the exact same thing for you. YOU need to watch the actual episode and try again because all your points are dealt with in said episode. Your argument boils down to 'something happening in science fiction can be thrown out because the real world doesn't work that way'.
Sorry to say it DOES happen in the Stargate universe, and they even go to the trouble of pointing out that this is EXPLICITLY said to be an extremely unusual and unknown to 'our' science event that defies the way a sun works as we know it, but in the end, we CAN crunch useful numbers from it. You OTOH keep rejecting what happened because 'it doesn't work that way in real life', which is a fundamentally ABSURD position to take on a board debating science fiction.
It happened in the episode. Its that simple.
Anubis' weapon used on Abydos. Okay, it *instantly fragmented Hatak vessels* engaged in battle. So you can't claim their shields weren't up.
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.
So yeah, if you're going to insist that said beam is in no way 'exotic', then I'd suggest you watch the episode.
.
You can't claim the weapon was some kind of shield-draining, do no damage thing.
I wouldn't claim it was a shield draining thing, I COULD suggest the shields didn't actually offer any resistance to the beam though. Which, if this was some kind of Ancient tech weapon Anubis used/built, would make a degree of sense, as Ancient Drones are equally unaffected by Goa'uld shields, and there are other shield ignoring weapons in Stargate, the Tollen ion cannons being a prime example.
I won't PUSH it, but even a cursory look at the episode shows this weapon is...weird.
It had much more trouble destroying the pyramid on the ground. Which had no shields. O'Neill lived through it, looking around the pyramid as the weapon hit. So, NO MATTER WHAT THE SPECIFIC NATURE OF THE BEAM, the same weapon had a much harder time with an unshielded stone pyramid than with Hatak vessels. Hatak vessels are therefore less resilient than a stone pyramid.
Yes, now if you can please explain to me how exactly the weapon didn't do diddly squat to said Pyramid WHILE IT WAS FIRING, but when it STOPPED firing, said Pyramid instantly exploded, you can make your case that this beam does it damage like a nice simple DET weapon like a laser or particle beam? If you can explain to me how THAT works in line with being a nice simple non-exotic weapon like a laser or particle beam, then you will have a great point!
Kinda like how Apollo's shields are less resilient than an asteroid.
In either case, stone is more resilient than a shielded warship.
Yes and in Star Wars, an Asteroid is equally more powerful then a mighty Star Destroyer as we see when the clearly fully shielded bridge of an ISD gets crushed by one! See I can make rather pointless and perfectly inane comments too!
And we know blowing a Stargate takes a LOT of energy, they are tough buggers, hence why Carter built her Doomsday bomb.
Wait a minute. The SGC had to adjust their monitors to even pick up Anubis' energy buildup. Over a few days, let's just say 168 hours (1 week) to be conservative, a 100 watt (easily detected) buildup would add 60 megajoules. How much can the SGC's computers NOT detect? 100,000 watts, like a major radio station? That would still just spike the level to 60 gigawatts.
Depending entirely on how charged the capacitors were initially of course, they are typically charged to a level that would let a Stargate, even without active support, be manually dialed and establish an outgoing connection.
And this is INSIDE the Gate itself, big difference. Externally, Stargates are bloody tough things. We've seen them take a direct hit from an asteroid smacking into them, sit on Spaceships that crash into planets and be recovered fully functional, be on planets that Carter estimates have undergone a massive chain reaction and been turned into a ball of plasma with the Stargate still intact and active, have had nukes go off in their faces, sinked into Lava.
They had 1.2 GT nukes, yet these were clearly considered unable to blow a Stargate externally, they had to develop the Mark IX 'Gatebuster' *specifically* for this purpose. And even those are recomended to be detonated behind an active wormhole, so the event horizon doesn't absorb enough of the energy of the bomb to let it survive.
Yes, they are that tough. There is a reason the network has remained intact for so long.
How much power would he have to pump in during a week to equal the Little Boy bomb at 15 kilotons (the weakest nuclear detonation)? 104 megawatts, or like 1,000 major radio stations, all broadcasting directly into the SGC computers. But they could barely pick it up.
Which still doesn't actually give us any numbers, all we can do is make assumptions.
But the Stargates capacitors are just that, a stopping point for the external energy flowing from the primary power source into the stargate, which then uses said energy to generate a wormhole. Its big enough to store enough energy in of itself to power the Stargate (Fair Game) for a single dial out, but there is no telling how BIG it is. It wouldn't have to be huge to be the spark plug that sets off the Naquadah, if its in the right place.
There is overwhelming evidence that this weapon is...not normal, I guess you could say.
Irrelevant. It easily fragmented Hatak vessels (massive physical damage from DET), but could not do the same with an ordinary stone pyramid. This proves that Hatak vessels are not as resilient as said pyramid.
Just like how Apollo's shields are not as resilient as an asteroid. But more conclusive, because you can't wiggle out of this one by saying the weapon wasn't designed to work against physical barriers. The Hatak vessels were BLOWN TO PIECES.
[/quote]
...yeah, come back to me on that when you can actually prove how the weapon actually works. For all we know if could spin around electrons and make a certain part of its target into antimatter and cause it to mutually annihilate itself. For all we know, it causes a nuclear reaction in certian types of materials, which were present in the Ha'Taks far more then the Pyramid. Or it causes the Naquadah in the ships power systems to cook off, who the hell knows? Just because there is an explosion doesn't mean we have he first clue about the MECHANISM of what is going on here.
All we know is that this weirdass beam hits, it cascades over the surface of the Ha'Taks and then there is what appears to be a series of internal explosions generally after the beam has done its work, and then the ship explodes. Then against the Stone Pryamyid, the beam hits it, cascades into it, STOPS FIRING without leaving so much as a scorch mark on the stones, then the thing detonates step by step in a perfectly symmetrical explosion down from top to bottom as if something is exploding inside each level.
If you want to sit here and say that is conclusive evidence of a direct energy transfer (such as a laser delivering direct thermal energy via a beam) then I wonder if you understand what we are talking about when we saw 'DET'.
Then you agree the stargate explosion provides an upper limit on shield strength, then change it to a lower limit.
Then, you say that shrinking a shield weakens it like how spreading it weakens it. Make up your mind. Either:
*Shrinking the shield strengthens it, spreading it weakens it.
*Shrinking the shield weakens it, spreading it strengthens it.
My point was that the shield was designed to repel external events around the city, not to surround an explosion and contain it, meaning attributing any high ends to this event is going to be very difficult. Add to that the fact that the shield failed via the emmiters overloading, not because of any lack of power, in fact, there was no mention at all of this event being a strain on the ZPM, unlike the events in Siege III and First Strike. And in THOSe events, there was never any mention of the shield emmiters overloading under the strain. Or in 'Enemy at the Gates' (*spits*) when the ZPM Hive managed to bash down the Atlantis shield grid in a matter of minutes.
Which is it? Make up your mind and stick with it. You can't pull one with one example and the other with another. Stolen Concept Fallacy.
My POINT is that the shield on Atlantis is rather clearly designed to protect the city from external threats, not internal threats. And its questionable to point to it being shrunk to a fraction of a percent of its size as a reliable indicator of its upper limits when being used in the way it was SUPPOSED to work.
McKay said they could not protect the planet, because spreading their shields that far weakens them. Therefore, shrinking them strengthens them.
I never bloody claimed some magical No Limits 'if you make it bigger, it magically gets stronger'. I was talking about the difference between using the shields they way they were DESIGNED to be used and what they could hold up against in an extreemly unusual situation where they were being run very differently to the way they are normally used. That the shields are comprimised in terms of their total sterngth when you shirnk it down to Stargate sized and use them to contain an internal explosion that they have to disipate through the emmiters rather then just keep pumping power in to keep said energy in the external environment. That the shields are at their maximum effeciency when they are enlarged to protect the city as they are DESIGNED to do, but then they will steadily loose power the further (again) you go past that design limit.
Beyond that, review the evidence. Expanding the shields to cover a region of about 20 kilometers, and still being strong enough to resist the solar event WAS possible, albeit attenuated compared to the normal strength. With ONE ZPM. However, its VERY interesting to note that the Ancients, with 3 ZPM's, were able to enlarge the shield FAR more then simple 3 times that volume, they were in fact able to protect a significant area of the PLANET with that same relative level of shield strength. Which is yet more evidence that some systems on Atlantis were clearly designed to be run with 3 ZPM's in parallel, and there are significant dropoffs when you only have one.
The city automatically shrunk the shields when they were lost in space, because there was not enough power to protect the whole city. The shields shrank to just the control tower. Therefore, shrinking them takes less power. Therefore, shrinking them with equal power makes them stronger.
No, the city shrank the shield because it didn't have enough energy in the ZPM to maintain the sheild around the entire city, and thus the atmosphere around the entire city. By shrinking the shield to only the central power, they used LESS energy from the ZPM, there is no evidence that the shield around the tower was any stronger because it was not USING equal power, that was the whole point of shrinking the shield in the first place!
Therefore, the 3 gigaton explosion of the stargate defeating the shields provides an UPPER limit on their resilience. To deliver equal energy over 29 hours, the Replicator beam would need to deliver 120 terawatts, only an order of magnitude more than I calculated. This supports my calculations, because it is an upper limit.
4 TW vs 120 TW. If you want to hold true to your assumptions (many of which are arguably inflating the figures) that level of power in the beam would have blasted straight THROUGH the asteriod in exactly one second...which did not happen. Unless of course you are now willing to simply ABANDON your calculations completly for this line of thought, we're still talking about a huge gap between the two figures.
But moving past that, I'll again point out the Star Destroyer sized Elephant in the room; the Stargate blowing did NOT DRAIN THE ZPM! It overloaded the shield emmiters, but it didn't so much as annoy the ZPM, the Replicator beam OTOH (and the Wraith fleet in Siege III) WERE going to Drain the ZPM, even if the shield itself wasn't going to be breached.
THAT is the difference here and why trying to push such an absurdly low energy figure from such a wacky beam as being a direct impact on the ZPM is laughable because a far higher level of energy delivered all at once DIDN'T touch the ZPM's total energy. It did burn out the shield, albeit for very different reasons which I argue are because the way the shield was configured at the time.
I also don't need, I think, to point out the gigantic difference between having a multi-gigaton explosion hit you all at once and having the shield hold against THAT, and a sustained beam over a long period of time.
No, a ZPM cannot put Atlantis into orbit. They tapped the power from a drilling platform to supplement the ZPM. They still had to drop shields, and barely made it. I say again, a single ZPM cannot put Atlantis into orbit. This is completely inconsistent with your ridiculous inflated figures. If a ZPM wields enough energy to destroy a planet, putting Atlantis into orbit would be child's play.
And as has been said many times, the Ancients DID NOT DESIGN ATLANTIS TO RUN ON 1 ZPM. It was specifically and explicitly designed to run on several at the same time, EXPLICITLY including the Star Drive.
It is a stupid way of designing it? Quite possibly, but its a limitiation they put in it. And one ZPM is perfectly capable of powering the Star Drive...so long as its not having to also power the shield at full strength.
There is only one system on Atlantis that can draw on the full sum of energy in a ZPM in a short timeframe, and that was the lab where they worked on the cross universal bridge. The shields clearly have limits (the Wraith bombardment for example was said to be 'straining' the shield even if it held and McKay stated that the ZPM was also fully tied up in 1st Strike maintaining the shield at full power) in what they can draw. Now when McKay lowered the shield for a few seconds to get them going (as they explicitly said that however the Stardrive works, it was going to draw almost all its enerngy in the first few seconds of liftoff) they had NO problems a matter of seconds later in engageing the shield, accelerating out of the atmopshere (in fact, oddly enoguh, they appear to do utterly massive acceleration in between putting the shield back up and entering Hyperspace as they go from the Troposphere to orbit in that timeframe) and engaging the hyperdrive.
I'll say it again; Atlantis's Stardrive is DESIGNED to work with 3 ZPM's, because the Ancients always HAD 3 ZPMs. Stupid design, but its the way the Ancients designed it. Now if there were Ancients around, I'm sure they could probably reenginer the whole ZPM power grid, but as they were somewhat short of a bunch of Ancients at this time...
But it is completely consistent with my figures.
I say again, if we subscribed to your ridiculous inflated figures, putting Atlantis into orbit with one ZPM would be an afterthought.
If they DIDN'T have to power the shield at full strength, it would be an afterthought. IF the Ancients had designed the city to run off one ZPM and not three, it would probably be an Afterthought.
But they DIDN'T design the city that way, its made clear in several episodes that some systems need all 3 ZPM's in parallel to work properly, and this explicitly INCLUDES flying the city off into space
Its simply the only way for the canon data to be reconciled.
The fact that they needed to supplement that power supports my figures.
All it says is exactly what has been said in canon since Season 1; that Atlantis was designed to work with 3 ZPM's, NOT ONE. Even if one in theory holds vastly more power then they could need to run the systems, the Ancients simply didn't design much of the systems that way. Period.
It is obvious you don't understand whence you speak. So I'll break it down for you. You are saying that a single exploding ZPM can destroy a planet. That means it can accelerate the entire mass of the planet, including Atlantis, to escape velocity. But the episode proves it can't accelerate Atlantis alone to escape velocity without help!
Actually the energy levels are quite possibly far higher, a catostrophic ZPM overload has been said to take bites out of solar systems which is a FAR higher level then simply mass scattering the planet, and the Arctarus explosion rapidly filled the entire screen from a modest distance and eventually took out 5/6th of a solar system...but lets stay simple.
And at this point as you are not replying to quotes at all in your posts, I have no idea if you are talking about the Asgard homeworld explosion or a ZPM overloading and releasing all of its energy at once.
And if they didn't have to power the shield, they have no problems at all in terms of blasting off, hell, they don't have problems doing both at the same time, as for some crazy reason, the power is all used up in the first 10 seconds of the ascent. And IN that timeframe, they are not getting at all high, certinally nowhere near orbit, yet they accelerate AFTER that, which suggests some very screwy things are going on. It could be that the power surge initially is to the inertial dampening sytems or something along those lines, as its not a case of the energy use INCREASING with acceleration, but actually falling right off after just lifting off the surface of the ocean.
But all of this still doesn't get around the explicit fact that Atlantis was designed to fly (and run all its systems for that matter) with 3 ZPM's, not one. Which is a perfectly valid and canon reasoning to explain all this.
Chris, you don't understand the topic. Give it up.
There is no way under the sun (pun intended) for Destiny to absorb energy that it doesn't receive. Period. If you intend to continue to debate this point, you need to educate yourself on the topic. Because you don't understand it.
The method used to gather solar power is completely irrelevant. The UPPER LIMIT is the energy released toward Destiny by the star. The amount it absorbed will be something lower than this. No system is 100% efficient. Period.
Your argument in this case is a blatant Appeal to Ignorance. I believe I said that before.
And SWOOOOSH goes the point right over your head.
Again.
You persist in continually stating that destiny can only absorb the energy directly under it form the Star WITHOUT KNOWING HOW THE SYSTEM WORKS AND HOW IT IS GATHERING THE ENERGY. You don't KNOW this, you can't PROVE it, you can't provide so much as one iota of evidence as to how this mechanism works, yet you keep repeating it like a mantra. You keep INSISTING that it can only been absorbing what is directly striking the hull, but that in of itself makes no sense given that the total energy absorbed would be a net energy loss compared to having to PROTECT the ship from the sun during the collection, as well as its approach and departure, when it was on zero power, yet it clearly collected vastly more energy then was spent.
You DON'T KNOW how it works, yet you just keep hammering that it MUST only be absorbing what is directly touching the hull when you can provide NOTHING to support your assertion. Its not an 'appeal to ignorange', its a RECOGNITION of ignorance as we don't have the first clue what is going on. I could and have postulated all manner of mechanisms from energy fields spreading out over a fast area of the star and absorbing energy to a matter transportation system sucking energy directly out of the stellar core, but I have no more proof of these theories then you do of yours.
You simply don't get that your numbers are based on a set of completly unprovable assumptions on how the system works, and thus are completly worthless.
Provide me One. Damn. Quote. from Stargate Universe saying 'the Solar collectors suck up the radiation that strikes the hull directly and converts it to energy for our systems' and then THEN you have a case.
Until then you have NOTHING.
What statements exactly? The only statement I think he makes is that a Mark IX was designed for "vaporizing Stargates and anything else in a one-hundred mile radius."
This is the thermal effects radius. I believe I covered that with another debater already, who conceded the point. A 3 gigaton explosion (just the stargate) has a thermal effects radius of 200 miles, twice the radius Mitchell quotes, although he did say the word "vaporize."
His statement is loose to the point of irrelevence, the numbers I was throwing around were cacluated from the detonation itself and the blast radius and fireball size seen, and that would be lowballing it given that energy form the bomb is directly going into the shield at this point.
I have no idea what you are claiming by the 'thermal effects radius', unless you are trying to claim the radius at which a person will receive 3rd degree burns or something, as per various nuclear weapons calculators...which is clearly not what Mitchell is saying; his statement is that anything within a hundred miles of Ground Zero will be VAPORIZED by this weapon when it goes off, which I could easily take to mean the energy level needed to vaporize a crater of material 200 miles in diameter, with various effects beyond that limit diminishing, if I wanted to take it utterly literally. Which would come up with numbers so absurd I instantly dismiss them.
The far more useful and reliable numbers are direct scaling of the detonation from orbit, although that will be a low ending as the energy of the explosion from T-0 is being sucked directly into the shield.
And then you argue that the CME can breach the laws of physics because this is science fiction.
And this is unusual...why? You know that whole Causality being turned into the bitch of any culture with FTL technology?
The CME does not 'breach' physics by the Stargate universe, in their universe, it is simply something a Star does, releasing a massive amount of energy that can fry the biospheres on planets in the solar system, an energy burst the Daedalus intercepts and deflects.
Getting red faced and saying "BUT THATS IMPOSSIBLE, STARS'S DONT DO THAT!" is the height of absurditiy when its a KEY PLOT POINT of an episode that it DOES happen and can be quantified.
Therefore my calculations, based on observed evidence, are invalid. Appeal to Ignorance. If we multiply Mike's calculations by 1,000, to make the CME wankably big for you, it still comes out to about a gigaton, or 1/2 to 1/3 that of a stargate detonation. It STILL supports my calculations.
Seriously, you just pulled a number out of your ass there and declared that you would be nice, make it bigger and sniff, saying that its still a tiny number.
Get this straight for the last time; the solar even in Echos is on a scale closer to a NOVA then a solar flare. Unlike Mikes figures, which are based on what happens in real life, REAL LIFE CME's don't reach out from Sol and wipe the Earth's Biosphere out with a fraction of the total power unleashed.
Is it seriously THAT hard for you to get why saying 'but real life figures are nothing like this!' is a completly invalid argument when this solar event is EXPLICITLY STATED INSIDE THE EPISODE, BY THE CHARACTERS, to be an event that is like NOTHING our star has ever put out, on a scale that makes the 'typical' solar flair look like a church picnic flare gun being fired??
Red Herring about bombs. The missiles didn't work because they were intercepted before reaching the hive ships. Every time.
They hit in No Mans Land. Try again.
A proximity detonation would also affect Daedalus.
Except they were perfectly willing to FIRE THE THINGS when they were in close range anyway, without any fear of being damaged by their own weapons, which eliminates that possibility. To say nothing of beaming the weapon on the far side of the Hiveship for example. Honesty, give it up.
To sum up your entire position; the Atlantis shield, one of the, if not THE most powerful shields in the Stargate universe, can't take more then 2-3 of Earths 1.2 GT warheads, weapons they have had around since the first season of SG1, six of which they could spare at short notice to be used as space mines.
And you are seriously claiming with a straight face that Earth is so bloody stupid that they are not using these weapons left right and center to one shot the most powerful ships because...why? They like being fair, being good sports? They have weapons that should be one-shotting Ori Battlewagons, yet instead of beaming them next to said ships and laughing at the fireworks, they try to be ever so sporting and beam the nukes directly past those shields to detonate inside, because...they like being fair? Or at least until they get their Asgard weapons, then they for some reason drop the 'lets be fair!' rules and start firing off the nukes.
And when Ellis asked McKay 'Can I get a nuke past its shields' in First Strike, he wasn't saying this because the shield was so damn powerful that his biggest nukes wouldn't scratch it, he was asking because...he wanted to play fair? And instead they HAD to come up with an overly comple and easy to go wrong plan to submerge the city, then fly the city off...rather then just nuke the damn thing.
Seriously, no. Just no.
We know from the Replicator beam and bombardment by Wraith ships that it cannot withstand weapons of that yield, even proximity detonations.
And the Marines did mine asteroids to take out said hive ships with said bombs and said proximity detonations.
Uh they didn't mine any asteriods, the warheads were in place as mines, supposdely invisble to Wraith sensors and when the Wraith walked into them, they would blow them and cripple the hives. Yeah.
So tell me if this is such OVERWHELMING firepower as you clearly put it, why don't they do this to every damn enemy? Because the Atlantis shield is WAY more powerful then any ship; Daedalus could onyl take that Wraith fleet for a few minutes, where as Atlantis was expected to take it for days.
Now lets work this out. 2 mins out of 24 hours, is roughly 1/720. Which if we take your 3GT number as the extreme upper limit for the most powerful shield in the universe adds up to...4 Megatons!
SO, to sum this up, a Daedalus class ship, which carries Asgard shielding letting it take more damage then most any other ship in space, has a grand total damage sink of...4 Megatons. Goa'uld Motherships clearly take much less then this, at LEAST half (Ori ships one shot Goa'uld ships, but take several to kill 304's) so lets say 2 Megatons.
Well golly, didn't Colonel Samulas go to so much trouble making Gigaton level Naquadah enhanced nukes to stop Aphosis in Season 1, when he could have shot up any old conventional city buster to take him out! And wasn't Apohosis damn suicide laughing at the warheads heading for him and just raising the shield beause he had no fear of the firepower they carried. And hell, I wonder why Prometheus didn't slaughter Anubis's fleet in the battle above Earth by firing even ONE of these warheads against his ship, instead of going on a suicide attack run to buy every last second to get the Drones online! Hell, why don't the Goa'uld cower in fear from the almighty Tauri and their super nukes instead of blasting 304's out of the way again and again....
It. Just. Doesn't. Add. Up.
The...other...defense rests.
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.