Quote:
Originally Posted by FeiLin
I have no idea how many J the main battery is, but I assume it's A LOT…
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For what it's worth, it is possible to estimate the energy of the main armament on the Death Star from the fact that it blows up Alderaan (an Earth-like planet) and scatters the debris at a measurable speed. 10^31 J are required to overcome the planet's gravitational binding energy, but a minimal-energy disintegration involves the debris leaving at escape velocity, which is only about 10 km/s, and that would result in the cloud of debris taking eleven minutes to expand to double the size of the planet. Alderaan explodes to double size in a few seconds, which implies a lot of kinetic energy in in excess of the gravitational binding energy. I haven't done the calculations myself, but those who have tell me that the answer is 10^38 J. That's one hundred trillion yottajoules.
The authors of
Star Wars ignored physics, and perhaps you should too.