(Spaceships) TL11^ Personal Space Transport

[AlexanderHowl]

The Death Star is far more terrifying. Raising the temperature to ~200,000 K would only require 1.1×10^27 J. Utterly destroying a planet requires ~220,000 times as much energy (2.4×10^32 J). Anyway, the Death Star used a hypermass annihilator system to power it, which is probably best represented as a Cosmic Antimatter Reactor (or Cosmic Total Conversion Reactor). Either way, it requires ~3 trillion tons of hypermass to be annihilated per full powered blast (good thing that the Death Star was over 80 km in radius and probably massed 300 trillion metric tons [SM+31]).

[maximara]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

The Death Star is far more terrifying. Raising the temperature to ~200,000 K would only require 1.1×10^27 J. Utterly destroying a planet requires ~220,000 times as much energy (2.4×10^32 J). Anyway, the Death Star used a hypermass annihilator system to power it, which is probably best represented as a Cosmic Antimatter Reactor (or Cosmic Total Conversion Reactor). Either way, it requires ~3 trillion tons of hypermass to be annihilated per full powered blast (good thing that the Death Star was over 80 km in radius and probably massed 300 trillion metric tons [SM+31]).

I disagree. Sure in terms of raw power it comes out as more terrifying but it is a case of 'boom you're dead, while with Project: Cinder your planet is effectively turned into a convection oven. As Maptap put you would be "Literally being baked to death."

Also as Matpat's video explains the laser isn't just raising the temperature of the air but are turning it into the fourth state of matter - plasma. We are talking about "twice the temperature of the sun".

As the beam is maintained after a while the air would turn the surface to plasma and if done for long enough you would effectively have a very short lived star as all matter of the planet was turned into plasma.

[AlexanderHowl]

200,000 K is much hotter than twice the temperature of the surface of the sun, as the sun's surface is only 5,800 K. As for 'baking' to death, you are vaporized in an instant either way, so it does not matter. Heating an entire planetary surface to plasma would require 8.6 × 10^24 J per meter deep of the planetary area that you are converting to plasma (5,800 K), so it is much slower than the Death Star (128 meters per blast after interval after stripping away the atmosphere). At those temperatures, you are also radiating a lot of energy away every second, so you are more creating a planet sized incandescent bulb than a planet sized ball of plasma.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

200,000 K is much hotter than twice the temperature of the surface of the sun, as the sun's surface is only 5,800 K. As for 'baking' to death, you are vaporized in an instant either way, so it does not matter. Heating an entire planetary surface to plasma would require 8.6 × 10^24 J per meter deep of the planetary area that you are converting to plasma (5,800 K), so it is much slower than the Death Star (128 meters per blast after interval after stripping away the atmosphere). At those temperatures, you are also radiating a lot of energy away every second, so you are more creating a planet sized incandescent bulb than a planet sized ball of plasma.

Project: Cinder didn't get the atmosphere up to that temperature instantly; it took at least a few hours, given that in the relevant game that particular level involves evacuating a group of unprotected civilians. Of course, I don't think it ever got things up to anywhere near that temperature, at least in the case of Vardos - planetary structures are fairly intact (mostly just having damage from the storms and degradation from being abandoned to nature) when you return a few decades later in the DLC. I don't know about elsewhere in the canon, but at least in Battlefront 2, Operation: Cinder seems to only have the effect of generating powerful storms. Something that did ramp up to those temperatures would indeed be more terrifying (albeit less powerful) than the Death Star - as described in the video, you'd have the temperature just steadily rising until you cooked to death. "Slowly cooked to death" seems more frightening to me than "suddenly ceased to exist" (even if not directly hit by the Death Star's beam, I'm pretty confident the shockwave would turn inhabitants into jelly or similar).

[maximara]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

200,000 K is much hotter than twice the temperature of the surface of the sun, as the sun's surface is only 5,800 K. As for 'baking' to death, you are vaporized in an instant either way, so it does not matter. Heating an entire planetary surface to plasma would require 8.6 × 10^24 J per meter deep of the planetary area that you are converting to plasma (5,800 K), so it is much slower than the Death Star (128 meters per blast after interval after stripping away the atmosphere). At those temperatures, you are also radiating a lot of energy away every second, so you are more creating a planet sized incandescent bulb than a planet sized ball of plasma.

I suspect Matpat was using some kind of average as the interior of the sun is 27 million degrees F as he just used "the sun" with no reference to where in the Sun he is talking about. Or he might have been talking about the Convection Zone.

Also one must remember the "hidden heat" present in the hange from solid to liquid to gas to plasma. This is why steam at 100 C can be more scalding than water at 100 C; it takes a lot of energy (heat) to change from one form to the other. Energy that doesn't show up on any thermometer.

As for radiation goes plasma is ionized radiation (ultraviolet, x-rays, and gamma rays) while heat (inferred) is non ionized radiation. But ionized radiation has more energy then non ionized radiation and per the First Law of Thermodynamics that energy isn't just disappearing. The smallest red dwarfs (less than 0.35 M☉) use convection and as a result are the longest lived main sequence stars with some though to go back to the birth of the universe and will, in all likelihood, be the last type of star in the universe.

Of course to do any of this and with Star Wars ships using some form of White Dwarf matter as fuel you re still talking around TL10 easy though not quite TL11.