Neutrino Ion Generators - better than ZPMs?

[thekillman]

but instead of having a core flow for gravity generation, the neutronium would cause the gravity. if its a bigger planet, there's not much of a problem. a planet made of neutronium would be called a black hole.

[jnadreth]

I just don't see the War battered Ancients terraforming a planet for the Asurans in the way you have suggested. Othalla, Orilla, Hala all had Nuetronium deposits so it seems unlikely that Asuras would be any different.

[thekillman]

i meant they were terraformed. asuras was a replicater planet and didnt look quite peacefull in niam's vision to weir. but perhaps the asurans terraformed it later on to be better

[Andru10]

Why ? Replicators can survive in almost any environment... what would be the point of terraforming the planet ?

[Unbreak]

Hum, how can humans survive the radiation emitted by a neutron star ?
We have seen SGA on the Asurans planet...
Terraforming an STAR ? Why the heck would someone do that ?
On Nians vision the planet was being attacked by the Lanteans, how the heck would it be peaceful ?

[2ndgenerationalteran]

What ever class ship brought Dr. Wier and Woolsey from earth to atlantis probably had an NIG, it traveled from earth to atlantis in 4 days, the same time it took the Daedalus with a ZPM. IMO the ship that brought them to atlantis had 4 NIGs like the beliskner. so approximately the same power output, but for how long it can do it compared to the ZPM's pretty impressive endurance, and the sheer difference in size is what makes the ZPM a marvel

[Dev Corvin]

Yet another power source thread, sigh. We REALLY need an official one of these.

Anyway, a couple of my old posts apply here:

[when I said that] ZPMs [are] a "dodgy concept", I was referring to the fact that Vacuum/Zero Point Energy is only present in an universe that contains large amounts of matter and/or free energy. It's caused by things like base levels of radiation, gamma rays, gravitational and magnetic field interactions, etc.

The reason why the way ZPMs work is "dodgy" is because ZPMs use ARTIFICIALLY created mini-universes, and then draw ZPE from those universes. The "maximum entropy" issue is that the active (rather than passive) drain of this energy causes the creation of exotic particles which eventually build up and lead to the destruction/nullification of that artificial universe.

The problem with this concept is that the lynchpin of it - the creation of an artifical universe with matter/energy contained within it - would actually require the use of more energy than the ZPM would be able to return in the first place. So essentially you'd have to have an immensely powerful alternate power supply in order to CREATE the ZPM in the first place.

AH! BRAINWAVE!

That may be why ZPMs are so rare in the SG universe. We know that the Lanteans used geothermal drilling platforms to tap massive amounts of energy from a planets' core - it could very well be that the ZPM "factories" essentially used massive arrays of geothermal generators to create the artificial universes contained within ZPMs - essentially the Lantean equivelant of charging up a battery.

In which case, that may explain why the Ancients lost the war against the Wraith in the first place. If the Wraith were able to take out the ZPM factory planets - or the planteary cores burnt out / dried up - the Lanteans would be stuck for a renewable power source. The construction of the drilling platform on Atlantis may have even occurred AFTER this happened as a way of extending their ability to generate the shield while submerged at the expense of reducing the lifespan of Lantea.

This would also explain why the Asuran offshoot faction were "unable to obtain a sufficient number of ZPMs", if creating them is actually a difficult, time-sensitive process and not simply a matter of pressing a button and having a ZPM pop out. It would also further explain why there's no ZPM factory in Atlantis itself, since Atlantis is designed as a floating base with no known facilities for excavation/drilling.

[ZPMs] are essentially massive batteries. A ZPM contains a very small artificially created universe (which requires more power to create it than you get out of it in the end, hence the theory about a geothermal energy ZPM production plant), and provides a mechanism for drawing energy from this universe.

Now, imagine a 2 litre pepsi bottle filled with water, and a tube over the neck of the bottle. If you connect that tube to a pump, and pump the water out of the bottle without allowing any air to return back into it, the bottle shrinks around the water thus maintaining the pressure/volume constant. Eventually, you end up with a completely empty bottle - empty of water and of air, all crumpled up; assuming it doesn't break along the way. This is what the term "maximum entropy" refers to when talking about ZPM capacity. Essentially, you're pumping energy out of the mini-universe, causing it to shrink and fracture around it until the universe is void of viable energy.

If that's tl:dr for you, basically ZPMs are batteries and not generators, and are charged up by conventional generators such as; geothermal drilling stations, photoreactive (solar) panels, Naquadah generators, solar core thermal probes, tidal power, etc.

[thekillman]

personally im sticking with a slightly different explanation: they isolated a region of subspace and extracted energy from it, while arcturus was an attempt at direct extraction. or: there's a theory that there are universes within our universe: the zpm would extract energy from that one, but the chance of tapping into a universe succesfully and finding one in the first place is what makes it difficult

[Dev Corvin]

personally im sticking with a slightly different explanation: they isolated a region of subspace and extracted energy from it, while arcturus was an attempt at direct extraction. or: there's a theory that there are universes within our universe: the zpm would extract energy from that one, but the chance of tapping into a universe succesfully and finding one in the first place is what makes it difficult

You can "stick to that explaination" all you want, but it's incorrect. It's been stated on the show by McKay and Carter SEVERAL times throughout both series' that ZPMs draw ZPE from subspace in artificially created "pocket universes" contained within the ZPM.

That's the canon answer.

[Eberhardt]

you know for such a technologically advanced race of beings the acients where massive power hogs. They couldn't come up with something that used a little less power then all their stuff?

[thekillman]

go through the trouble of making 3 zpm's and you dont have to worry about power for
10 000 years. so i create 3 zpm's, and my country is sustained for some 5000 years. so its easy. make one once, and use it to power a city, and you dont have to worry for tons and tons of years. which, unlike most of us think, is long. its a few dozen lifetimes.
so your kids' kids 'kids times 50 thats 3x 50 is some 150 generations. so 100-150 generations dont have to worry about zpm's. as opposed to having it used to power a city shield under constant siege or to launch a city into hyperspace or something like that. really, its usefull, but the ancients used it to power even bigger things. while i think a zpm alone can give us a year of power. ten zpms for ten years of planet-wide cheap power. imagine. like 5 PC's powering the planet[ volume wise]. its like
"damn, we have greenhouse gas problems".

* go back in time to get a few dozen zpm's from the asurans*
"sir we dont have to worry bout power for the next few decades"


thats what a zpm is supposed to do. give power for day to day use. not to drain it in 10 seconds or make cities go from planet to planet. NIGS are bigger, and could be less usefull. but when talking about things like atlantis, its usefull. cause you dont need 3 zpms. just some neutronium, and you can power the entire city and travel between galaxies and such. neutronium is scarce, so use zpm's to power the city day to day. fire up the NIG's for combat mode, and tadaa. 3 zpms for some 10k years. about 3 nigs for weeks of shielding, or weeks of hyperspace travel.

[lord groovy]

And one thing that bothers me with ZPMs : with a life expectancy of 10000years at least there is a risk to lose the know-how over time.

If I could make a ZPM, I would leave a tutorial for my grandchildren's grandchildren. But they surely won't be able to make it work on the first attempt. And with such a powerful device they may even kill themselves and the entire human race. Make more ZPM and store them : it will just accentuate the problem.

[thekillman]

thats true. but ancients have a remarkable lifespan. besides, if earth was powered by a single ZPM, it would last about a year or perhaps more, as we use tons and tons of energy, and also waste a ton of it.

[morrismike]

A single ZPM could not power the earth for a year. That zpm might contain enough energy to potentially power the earth for a year BUT getting that type of power out of it and into the electrical grid would be nearly impossible. That zpm could probably power a single city for a century or so.

[thekillman]

why not?