True power of ZPMs

[Xaeden]

You don't know that, they said the ZPM was full in moebius and it certainly would not drain to 66% traveling through hyperspace.

The big drain would've been during the Seige considering the shield couldn't hold out for more than a few days with just one ZPM powering it and the Wraith were just pounding the shields for a bit before they got them to stop (up to a few hours while they got the cloak working and the previous kamazai run by the darts). Plus we don't know how much power it took to get the experiment to 5% and remain there. While on the Daedalus Mckay's sister previously mentioned the power requirements to pull this off would've been massive and Mckay explained to her that they had a ZPM. Then there's minor things, like the power required to run the city's systems for over a year and constantly dialing Earth. The gate bridge was more than just a way to allow them to two way access between Earth and Atlantis. They also wanted to be able to not use the ZPM whenever they wanted to dial Earth, suggesting the power drain for that may be more than we think.

[from_orion]

Because as long as there's no significant change in the pressure, it can stay like that for, well, nearly an eternity.

Think of an old stone bridge.

Sorry to say this but that may have been the most completely incorrect statement I have ever read.
Two examples:
1: The Asuran's beam
2: 10 hive ships firing at the shield.

Both of these occasions resulted in massive power drain and imminent shield failure. Both of these were relatively constant strain on the shields.

[Tomouse55]

Sorry to say this but that may have been the most completely incorrect statement I have ever read.
Two examples:
1: The Asuran's beam
2: 10 hive ships firing at the shield.

Both of these occasions resulted in massive power drain and imminent shield failure. Both of these were relatively constant strain on the shields.

But both of them were point drains on the shield, i.e. where the beam/energy weapon was actually hitting the shield where as the pressure from water would have been almost uniformly distributed across it.

In the example of the stone bridge, you could drive a car across it and that would be fine but you could break it with a hammer with repeated strikes.

[from_orion]

But both of them were point drains on the shield, i.e. where the beam/energy weapon was actually hitting the shield where as the pressure from water would have been almost uniformly distributed across it.

In the example of the stone bridge, you could drive a car across it and that would be fine but you could break it with a hammer with repeated strikes.

As stated in "Grace Under Pressure" shields draw more power with increased strain of ANY type. So the stone bridge analogy is not relevant to shield operation.

[Tomouse55]

As stated in "Grace Under Pressure" shields draw more power with increased strain of ANY type. So the stone bridge analogy is not relevant to shield operation.

I agree completely, its common sense that increased strain on the shield would increase the drain on it and that's clearly what weapons fire from the Asurans/Wraith would count as over the relatively low drain of holding back the ocean.

I think the bridge came up as a demonstration from real life of a similar principle not an exact duplication of the same principle.

[from_orion]

I see.

[Semmer]

Guys, when watching Mortal Coil, the following struck to me (see spoiler)

Spoiler:

(from GW transcript "Mortal Coil")

KELLER: The other Replicators have found us.

KELLER: They failed to break down our mental defences and bring us back into the collective, so now they want to destroy us.

McKAY: Well, you have to raise the shield!

KELLER: We can't. Your creation required too much power and we couldn't get our hands on multiple ZeeP.M.s without drawing too much attention.

Now some of you might wonder what good does that hold for us?

We know this: E=mc^2

Energy equals mass times speed of light squared

We know that the speed of light is 300.000.000 meters/second

Mass of an average human is 75 kilograms

With these informations we can calculate how much energy is needed to create 5 humans from scratch

We get E=5*75kg*((300000000)^2)
E=33.750.000.000.000.000.000 Joules

So according to the transcript we had 3 ZPMs at our disposal and 375 kgs of mass to create.

Therefore, A single zpm contains

AT LEAST 11.250.000.000.000.000.000 Joules of energy

That's 11,25ExaJoules of energy (11,25*10e24J)

Just for comparison, our little sun pumps out 100 billion times more energy every second (7.96*10^38 J/s)

Discuss!

[Mister Oragahn]

Why is it that a possibly limitless energysource keeps running out in stargate. The ZPMs that powered the cities shields for 10000 years and easily protected them against wraith bombardment somehow deplete incredibly quickly in the hands of the atlantis expidition.

Concerning the "true power of ZPM", the highest transfar I've noticed is in McKay and Mrs Miller, at a rate of 2% per second.

Considering that a full ZPM has enough energy to turn a whole system into that twice at least, the real power of a ZPM is, huh, a **** lot.

Think about 2 e42 watts.

[SP90]

The gate bridge was more than just a way to allow them to two way access between Earth and Atlantis. They also wanted to be able to not use the ZPM whenever they wanted to dial Earth, suggesting the power drain for that may be more than we think.

So using the gatebridge is like IP phones and dialing the 8 chervon Earth address would be like using a sat phone.

[Ouroboros]

Why is it that a possibly limitless energysource keeps running out in stargate. The ZPMs that powered the cities shields for 10000 years and easily protected them against wraith bombardment somehow deplete incredibly quickly in the hands of the atlantis expidition.

Because the writers think it's reasonable to use up most of the energy of a supernova to lift a 3km object into orbit or make a few clones?

This is a lot like the "no really the wraith are mostly insect and evolved from bugs" thing. You just gotta try to plug your ears as hard as you can and sing to drown out the stupidity because there's no halfway sane way to actually make it work.

For some reason it's possible to blow up an entire starsystem with a ZPM that's only half full but at the same time it's also possible to put a noticible drain on one doing trivial things like leaving excess equipment on too long.

The only way to explain it is massive inefficiency on the order of like .00000001% of the actual power being usable. That violates COE bigtime though, and makes you wonder why the ancients would bother with ZPMs as anything but giant bombs if that's the best sort of extraction rate they could hope for under controlled conditions.

Or you go with the reverse. The tainted ZPM was painted with some sort of chemical that provided the supernova levels of energy to the blast. Since there were only trace amounts of it on the thing that would then lead to the inevitable conclusion that just a few molecules of this magical stuff could power entire civilizations from now until doomsday. This would then render actual ZPMs a complete a joke by comparison to this simple chemical, and open up interesting questions about what an oil drum full of it could blow up.

[2ndgenerationalteran]

Apparently opening the wormhole to pegasus to let all the military personel in the siege 2 and then powering the dedalus at full speed to pegasus used somewhere up to a third of the zpm (we don't know for sure it was completely full). I full ZPM can power atlantis' shields underwater under minimal strain with the city completely powered down for 3300 years.

You have no perspective huh, you think that a ZPM can deplete 33% by one brief use dialing another galaxy and adding extra power to a hyper drive engine. We have no reason to believe the ZPM was used, if i remember right they said because ra didn't even know what it was there is a very good chance that it completely full. To give some perspective Atlantis had weekly check in with earth, which is no apparent drain to the ZPM considering they would not have done that if it skims 20% of the power out each time. The Odyssey has a ZPM and the crew takes into battle and uses it to power the hyperdrive and that apparantly doesn't drain the ZPM very much. The ZPM probably was drained during the Siege pt 3 taking the wraith bombardment.

[J_schinderlin56]

In "Zero Hour" Carter tells Jack that if a ZPM with a 50% charge were to explode, it could destroy the entire solar system. That's a lot of Power!

[Gate-builder]

In "Zero Hour" Carter tells Jack that if a ZPM with a 50% charge were to explode, it could destroy the entire solar system. That's a lot of Power!

It is possible that this was because Camulus had tainted it with something that would have greatly increased its explosive power. It would seem stupid of the Ancients to use a power source that could cause so much destruction if something went wrong

[Ouroboros]

It is possible that this was because Camulus had tainted it with something that would have greatly increased its explosive power. It would seem stupid of the Ancients to use a power source that could cause so much destruction if something went wrong

What exactly?

I just posted about this.

Even if he tainted it with sure anti matter it wouldn't have come close to the sort of explosive power that was required. Also if Camulus has acess to some sort of chemical so powerful that trace amounts can blow up a solar system why isn't he using it in his ship weapons and reactors to completely dominate the universe.

[umopapisdn]

The writers make the ZPMs to be almost infinitely powerful when it suits them and drain like an AA battery when it is needed. There is probably a plothole in the middle that gives off varying amounts of power.