#Minor Spoiler# Mark IX explosive capability?

[SmallTimePerson]

Fission reactions convert more energy than fusion ones but they're still really inefficient.

Could have sworn that a fusion reactions are alot more efficient than fission reactions, H bombs being bigger than A bombs.

[Lord §okar]

They are: fusion reactions are about 0.7% efficient (yield per unit mass of reactant). Fission is even worse at 0.1%. The is because the number of nucleons before and after the reaction is conserved, only binding energy is liberated.

Incidentally, the efficiency of a naqahdah reaction sits in between the two at 0.6% (64,000lbs yielding 1.2 gigatons). If we could get fusion to work it'd be far superior to naqahdah.

[Avatar28]

I should probably clarify. A single nuclear fission reaction involving U-235 releases about 215 MeV of energy (Pu-239 is similar). Fusion is actually a multistage process. The P-P chain used within the sun releases about 25MeV of energy per reaction chain. The D-T (Deuterium/Tritium) chain in most nuclear weapons yields about 17.6 MeV of energy per reaction chain.

Therefore, in that sense, fission releases something like 10 times the energy of a fusion reaction. However fission also only occurs in very heavy atoms so for a given amount of mass you have more reactions with fusion which more than offsets the lower efficiency per reaction.

In fact, in most nuclear weapons (at least many of the larger sized ones), more energy comes from fission than through fusion. For example, in the Castle Bravo shot (the largest device ever initiated by the United States), 10 megatons of the 15 megaton yield came from fission, most of it from the third stage.

[Mister Oragahn]

The collapse of the planet would require enough energy that when placed into the bomb casing would stipulate the presence of enough mass in sufficient density to convert the thing into a black hole. That analysis is out.

Visual explosion expansion consistent with low teraton/high gigaton ranges would stipulate a warhead mass of a couple of hundred tonnes. That's out, as is the 100 miles quote (maybe the shield helped by funneling the energy, who knows?)

Which leaves us with the only reliable statement of yield; that of the explosion being multi-megaton in magnitude.

I'll let you invent whatever technobabble fits your needs to explain how exotic naqahdah and naqahdria are.

Facts remain. Dialogue and visuals show levels of destruction largely in excess of your suggestion.

We know that stargates can resist to tremendeous levels of destruction that would utterly dwarf a multi megaton warhead.

[Lord §okar]

I'll let you invent whatever technobabble fits your needs to explain how exotic naqahdah and naqahdria are.
Nice answer. No amount of tripe will override relativity which means there can't have been an absurd amount of reactant in the warhead, meaning we automatically need to invent an excuse, have you forgotten how this works, or this Kodak moment?

First, was there naqahdah on that planet? I remember that planets devoid of naqahdah was rather a rarity in stargate, according to Carter I think.

Then, didn't the actual diameter of the explosion get dilated because something exerced a pressure upon it? I've heard of some large shield. If the explosion can't expand normally, it will try to find a way to get away where room is, which in this case seems to be horizontally, so it might seem that the radius is "forced".

Did you change your opinion before or after the advent of the SG-1vSW thread?

Facts remain. Dialogue and visuals show levels of destruction largely in excess of your suggestion.
Dialogue says several gigatons, visuals are unreliable (and lead to impossible hysical rammifications).

I don't know about you but I like my theories to not violate relativity.

We know that stargates can resist to tremendeous levels of destruction that would utterly dwarf a multi megaton warhead.
What's the relevance... the stargate wasn't destroyed.

[Mister Oragahn]

I'll let you invent whatever technobabble fits your needs to explain how exotic naqahdah and naqahdria are.
Nice answer. No amount of tripe will override relativity which means there can't have been an absurd amount of reactant in the warhead, meaning we automatically need to invent an excuse, have you forgotten how this works, or this Kodak moment?

No. I take the naqahdria as super magical element of doom and voilà.
Frankly, no excuse fitting with our understanding of physics will explain the insane properties of naqahdah, even less naqahdria.

Did you change your opinion before or after the advent of the SG-1vSW thread?

I forgot that the shield would actually absorb the energy, unlikely to flatten the explosion.
I also forgot about my earlier suggestion about the planet's biocenose. This was a plausible explanation of the insane explosion we saw. I consider it plausible that the planet had some naqahdah in its soil, but not to the extent of the planet in Chain Reaction, which was so full of naq that it turned into a plasma ball... which the stargate survived to for at least 38 minutes.

Facts remain. Dialogue and visuals show levels of destruction largely in excess of your suggestion.
Dialogue says several gigatons, visuals are unreliable (and lead to impossible hysical rammifications).

Visuals wouldn't be unreliable if the soil had naqahdah in it.
Dialogue says high level multi gigaton.

We know that stargates can resist to tremendeous levels of destruction that would utterly dwarf a multi megaton warhead.
What's the relevance... the stargate wasn't destroyed.

The relevance is that even with that knowledge, the Terrans thought their bomb would destroy the stargate. So we're clearly looking at a level of destruction higher than anything the Terrans ever presented thus far.

[helio9]

"The relevance is that even with that knowledge, the Terrans thought their bomb would destroy the stargate. So we're clearly looking at a level of destruction higher than anything the Terrans ever presented thus far."

Not necessarily. We know the Ori sheild absorbed the energy from the bomb in order to expand. Who knows if the gate felt the full destructive effect of the bomb or not. If a stargate can survive a multi-gigaton nuke...they're pretty damn near indestructible.

[Avatar28]

Well we know that one has been able to withstand being within the surface of a star for at least an hour before so, yeah, I'd say that's pretty bleeping tough.

[Lord §okar]

No. I take the naqahdria as super magical element of doom and voilà.
Frankly, no excuse fitting with our understanding of physics will explain the insane properties of naqahdah, even less naqahdria.



I forgot that the shield would actually absorb the energy, unlikely to flatten the explosion.
I also forgot about my earlier suggestion about the planet's biocenose. This was a plausible explanation of the insane explosion we saw. I consider it plausible that the planet had some naqahdah in its soil, but not to the extent of the planet in Chain Reaction, which was so full of naq that it turned into a plasma ball... which the stargate survived to for at least 38 minutes.



Visuals wouldn't be unreliable if the soil had naqahdah in it.
Dialogue says high level multi gigaton.



The relevance is that even with that knowledge, the Terrans thought their bomb would destroy the stargate. So we're clearly looking at a level of destruction higher than anything the Terrans ever presented thus far.

Which clearly makes any analysis unreliable.

[Mister Oragahn]

Not necessarily. We know the Ori sheild absorbed the energy from the bomb in order to expand. Who knows if the gate felt the full destructive effect of the bomb or not. If a stargate can survive a multi-gigaton nuke...they're pretty damn near indestructible.

In Chain Reaction, a stargate resisted the naqahdah filled planet's transformation in a giant plasma ball for 38 minutes, at least. That's an impressive level of energy.

In Exodus, a shielded stargate survived in the vicinity of the Vorash sun for an hour and inside that same sun for 27 minutes.
Considering that the stargate was just equipped with additionnal remotely controlled thrusters, which could hold a limited quantity of fuel only, the energy the shield had been used must have been coming from somewhere else, which could only be from the stargate, or the shield was absorbing the energy and dumping it into the stargate's vortex.

In case one, it's quite easy. From redemption, we know the gate can't store more than 1.2 GT worth of energy, and that's without counting the possibility that the naq the stargate is made of actually amplified the blast, as said by Jonas in Fallen. So the amount of energy a stargate can store is logically largely lower than 1.2 GT.
Needless to say, that's peanuts compared to the amount of energy the stargate would have been facing inside the sun, and the shield would have collapsed way too soon. If this happened, then the shield largely dropped before even the gate entered the sun, and from that moment, it was the gate which was absorbing the energy and dumping it somewhere, probably inside the wormhole.

In the second case, then the shield was helping the absorbing the energy and directly dropping it in the vortex, bypassing the gate's buffers and avoid any possible damage on the gate for the time being, until the amount of energy would be too vast for the shield to actually absorb and dump into the vortex.
At this point, the shield would collapse and the stargate would get unprotected.
This second case is less clear since it's very speculative and we couldn't put a limit on how much joules of energy the shield could absorb and dump before collapsing.

Of course, that's not counting the fact that sometimes the gate can disengage if too much energy hits it.
The show isn't consistent on many aspects of the gate mechanics anyway.