Scientists Finally Address An Important Issue
By Wyatt Earp | January 18, 2012
Lord (Vader) knows there are too many useless scientific studies out there; studies for which we are footing the bill. Now, instead of pondering the effects of bovine gas, a few British eggheads examine if the Death Star could blow up the Earth.
The study’s authors make some simple assumptions: The planet being fired upon doesn’t have some sort of protection, like a shield generator. And it’s about the size of Earth but solid through and through (Earth isn’t solid, but the planet’s layers would have significantly complicated the math). They then calculate the planet’s gravitational binding energy, which is the amount of energy required to pull apart an object. Using the mass and radius of the planet, they calculate that destruction of the object would require 2.25 x 10X32 joules. (One joule is equal to the amount of energy required to lift an apple one meter.)
The energy output of the Death Star isn’t given directly in the movie, but the space station was said to have had a “hypermatter” reactor that had the energy output of several main-sequence stars. For an example of a main-sequence star, look to the Sun, which puts out 3 x 10X26 joules per second, and they conclude that the Death Star could “easily afford to output [the energy required for an Earth-like planet's destruction] due to its tremendous power source.” (H/T – Think Geek’s Twitter Feed)
The study also addresses a larger planet like Jupiter. Check it out at the link.
Topics: Coolness! | 10 Comments »
January 18th, 2012 at 8:54 am
Remember, the Death Star is a George Lucas creation, so it won’t shoot unless Earth shoots first.
January 18th, 2012 at 9:44 am
John D – Why must you make my head explode so early in the morning?
January 18th, 2012 at 10:24 am
Sorry, Wyatt, but my “Fred Sanford” pickup got a flat tire. Blog-snark is the only weapon I have left in my arsenal.
January 18th, 2012 at 11:12 am
Meesha so happy Lucas no make SW movies no more!
January 18th, 2012 at 12:34 pm
Wyatt:
But did those Brits mention what would happen to the Death Star’s power output IF all the toilets were flushed AT THE SAME TIME??
Hey, if you blow up a planet, you also gotta crap, right?
(…and Sith-Lord help them when it’s Bantha-Burrito night.)
Roll safe out there.
January 18th, 2012 at 9:21 pm
The funny thing is, they could cause the same (actually more) destruction with an anti-matter beam like the destruction beams in Ender’s Game for about the power cost of a standard modern city.
January 18th, 2012 at 9:36 pm
So they COULD have blown up a gas giant? This doesn’t solve the mystery of why, for the love of little green apples, in the first movie, the Death Star warped to Yavin IV, and then WAITED until the moon was available for blowing up before they shot it?
Why didn’t they just blow up Yavin IV, and then….oh wait, if they blew up Yavin IV, that would probably destroy the moon too. George Lucas, you’re an idiot.
January 19th, 2012 at 12:00 am
Stupidest study since…..uhhhhh…. the last stupid study I guess.
So what they’re saying is that the Death Star has to put out only 750,000 times as much energy as the Sun?
Why, with that much energy they could travel 4 parsecs in under 4 parsecs!
Tools.
Hollywood gets science correct less than they get history correct.
They get science correct about as much as they get military stuff correct.
Which is to say, pretty much never.
Next up, I expect them to explain how, in the Firefly universe, we can “use up the planet” and still have enough resources to fly all the billions of people to another solar system (or galaxy, depending on if you’re watching the movie or the TV show).
That, and how they can give a moon the same gravity as the Earth.
And then explain why, if they could have made the Moon, Mars, Venus and all the moons of Saturn and Jupiter into Earth-like planets we moved to another galaxy (solar system).
Yeah, I’m the one who yells at the screen about physics when watching Armageddon, why do you ask?
January 19th, 2012 at 12:32 am
Veeshir: Outting myself as an even huger nerd than I already have here. In the making of stuff for Firefly and Serenity, they say that basically the only people with enough resources to escape the dieing Earth in big numbers are America and China. Thus the Chinese swearing (and a way to get the swearing in around censors who don’t speak Chinese). Some other groups got out, but not in any huge numbers.
January 19th, 2012 at 12:39 am
Then as for your moon mass; that falls under Joss Whedon’s approach of “I don’t care about the nitty gritty of the physics because I’m making a western….in space”.