How is this supposed to work?

[CompanionCube]

The one thing I could never put my finger on is what exactly caused the Icarus planet to blow up... I know they said the Lucian Alliance attack caused it but come on... Can a planet's core be THAT sensitive to outside forces that scale a million times smaller than the actual planet in question? A couple of Ha'tak vessels fire their standard weapons and suddenly the entire planet blows up. I'm having a very hard time buying this.

[General Jumper One]

The gate got it's power directly from the planet's unstable naquadria core, and the combined drain from the gate and the bombardment from the ha'taks caused it to blow up.

[AlexanderD]

If you will recall the instability of naquadria that led to Daniel's death, you'll see just how reactive the element is. The planet Icarus Base sat on was composed of a naquadria core, so one must assume that veins of naquadria branched out towards the surface. Energy transfer from orbital bombardment could very well have initiated a chain reaction that led to the planets destruction.

[USS Thor]

The main thing was the writers wanted to make a huge explosion and to cut off the Icarus base personel, If you'll recall the Hammond moved into position and was absoring alot of the Hataks weapon fire. The gate did use the power from the core but since the gate used capacitors it's likely the power flow was actually relatively stable which helps minimize the instability of naquadria even though it creates the random particles. IMO it was poorly written due to the fact that Langara never exploded when Anubis was attacking or when the fleet attacked his ship when it was over the planet. If you watch SG-1 that planet had a dangerous vein of naquadria and if that vein was so close during the attack then that planet would of gone boom

[Amelius]

But remember that Naquadria becomes more unstable the more power that's required from it. The Langarans weren't using the Naquadria of their planet to open a wormhole several million/billion lightyears away while they were being attacked by Anubis. Just dialing the Destiny might have been enough to cause the explosion of Icarus. It's quite possible that the attack had nothing to do with the explosion at all.

And saying that "The gate did use the power from the core but since the gate used capacitors it's likely the power flow was actually relatively stable which helps minimize the instability of naquadria even though it creates the random particles." is pure speculation. If they didn't need huge power requirements because of the capacitors in the gate, then why would they need the Icarus base at all? They needed the power that the Naquadria core provided which contributed to (or outright caused) the explosion. That's precisely why the Langarans were against using their planet for the second attempt to get to Destiny.

[psl1]

Not knowing much about SG history, I would have to point out that the impact energy of a meteorite far exceeds any power that can be artificially created. Unless the planet was new it had to have suffered some number of meteorite impacts. If the planet was that delicate, it would have surely disintegrated long ago.

Sounds like the writers were looking for a device to create the unusual circumstances of the entire destiny story....and I have no problem with this at all. Its called artistic licence.

[ZRFTS]

I would have to agree on the artistic license thing, I mean it did seem cool and contribute to the story but even in the universe of Stargate, that explosion seems questionable. Who knows whether or not the explosion was caused by the attack or not but the attack did help destroy the base and or effect the Naquadria for the disturbance to be noticeable.

[General Jumper One]

Not knowing much about SG history, I would have to point out that the impact energy of a meteorite far exceeds any power that can be artificially created. Unless the planet was new it had to have suffered some number of meteorite impacts. If the planet was that delicate, it would have surely disintegrated long ago.

Sounds like the writers were looking for a device to create the unusual circumstances of the entire destiny story....and I have no problem with this at all. Its called artistic licence.

Not if the planet was riddled with naquadria veins on the surface that went through the crust like on Langara.

[Naonak]

But remember that Naquadria becomes more unstable the more power that's required from it. The Langarans weren't using the Naquadria of their planet to open a wormhole several million/billion lightyears away while they were being attacked by Anubis.

This.

[Amelius]

Unless the planet was new it had to have suffered some number of meteorite impacts. If the planet was that delicate, it would have surely disintegrated long ago.

But that's just assuming that the planet was ever hit by something large enough to create the kind of energy needed to start the chain reaction.

And keep in mind, the planet wasn't made of Naquadria, it had a naquadria core. That means it would have needed to be hit by something with enough energy to not only start a chain reaction, but also penetrate deep enough into the planet to reach the core. We probably would have seen evidence of a crater that large. It wasn't until humans arrived and started messing around that the naquadria was put into a position to be hit (either directly by weapon fire or energy transferred through whatever they were using to get the energy from the core to the Stargate). As I said above, most likely the weapons had little to no effect on it. Dialing the gate to another galaxy probably had more to do with the explosion than anything thing those ships could do.

Not knowing much about SG history, I would have to point out that the impact energy of a meteorite far exceeds any power that can be artificially created.

Not really, a ZPM has been stated as having enough power to destroy a solar system (or at the very least a whole planet). Zero Hour

[psl1]

Destroying an entire solar systems and planets is something that only Stars have the power to do. I understand the artistic license needed to move the story along, but it has to be used within reason or you change the dynamic of the show. Just like some magical material that does every thing ...like "unobtainium" etc.

The more you move science fiction from physical reality, the more the audience has to suspend belief and the more it drifts into fantasy. In the first Dr Who’s the key phrase emerges "reverse the polarity of the Neutron Flow". We quickly realized even as kids that it was code for the script & Dr Who’s reality had to be changed for the story to continue [cheated or cheat codes in modern gaming]. Since a certain amount of 'tongue in cheek' was always implied this proved to be not much of a problem.

In short this new form of "unobtainium" has to be 'taken on faith' for the mythology of the show to continue. So either you accept it or not. Arguing about this is like theologians arguing about "how many angles fit on the head of a pin". If those guys had SG back then, they would not have been arguing about angles :-)

[Quizziard]

Destroying an entire solar systems and planets is something that only Stars have the power to do.

Unless you have materials WAY more powerful and dangerous than uranium or plutonium, yet in large enough quantities to core a planet...