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Topic: Thoughts about the Ur-Quan... (Read 36554 times)
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FalconMWC
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Interesting thought D_999 - That would explain why the kor-ah can take out a entire race (ZFP) but the precursor ship can't. It just was not outfitted for that kind of weapons.....
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jabbrwock
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Well, yeah. In spite of the combat scale, planets really are a whole lot bigger than ships, but not nearly as well armored. Scouring the life from a planet requires an entirely different type of weapon than blasting a ship out of space. The Kzer-Za use similar technology for both purposes, but apparently this is a fairly unusual solution. The Kohr-Ah obviously use very different systems for planetary bombardment and space combat, and the precursor ship isn't even equipped for planetary bombardment at all.
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FalconMWC
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On the other hand though, I am sure the hellbore would cause pretty big damage - its not like the atmosphere is a shield or anything.... 
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Chrispy
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 Scary...
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jabbrwock
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If one wanted to destroy all life on a planet and not wish to settle,
such as the Kor-Ah seem to do, one might try setting the atmosphere
on fire. I'm not sure about other planets, but Earth's air is about, what,
20% oxygen? I'm sure there is potential there for very rapid destruction.
A very scary weapon would be a catalyst for the reaction between Carbon and Oxygen, dropped into the atmosphere. If the catalyst were effective enough, everything on the planet that could burn, would, and when it was done, there wouldn't be any oxygen left in the atmosphere.
The atmosphere isn't likely to burn - most of the gasses in it are stable and don't burn well. But there's all sorts of combustibles on the surface. Planets are disturbingly fragile - yet another argument for prioritizing the space program, or better yet, multiple space programs.
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Art
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jabbrwock: I think something that catalyzed combustion of *all* carbon by *all* oxygen would be highly unlikely. I'm no chemist, but what determines the tendency of a carbon compound to react with oxygen is very dependent on the compound itself -- a catalyst that just causes all carbon compounds to burn into CO2 is pretty much fantasy as far as I know. It'd require a large amount of energy input to start such a reaction anyway; I think it's easier for an SF author to just input that energy on the surface in the form of radiation and make everything burn the old-fashioned way, by raising the temperature to activation energy everywhere very fast. 
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Art
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Another cool, shamelessly ripped WoMD would be a black-hole Generator. I love Orion.
It'd be a strategic weapon, not a quick-killing tactical weapon. Unless you actually mean a weapon capable of making huge star-size masses and hurling them at things (which would be a war-ender without needing the stars to be anywhere near the size of ordinary black holes) a "black hole generator" most likely compresses a small amount of matter (using exotic, science-fiction forces) into a density high enough to form a singularity.
This small singularity would actually not be that hard to make -- assuming you can harness immense, science-fiction level forces, but it takes a lot less suspension of disbelief than making a star-sized black hole and flinging it at things. There have been science fiction stories that were pretty credible based around using some exotic phenomenon to spontaneously form a singularity without enormous energy expenditures.
It would take years and years and years to completely engulf the planet, since its event horizon starts out extremely small and it's only able to absorb tiny bits of matter at once -- in space, in fact, the black hole wouldn't be able to absorb enough matter to survive and would give off more in Hawking radiation than it took in, and glow like a blazing hot torch. (Hence the common sf trope of using tiny black holes as power sources.) But while the planet would still be there for years to come, soon enough the planet would be noticeably shrinking in size, causing huge earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, climate shifts, and all other kinds of good stuff wrecking everything.
So flinging them left and right at planets to ward off attacks from their fleets might be unrealistic, but the idea of a planet that's been sabotaged by black hole and slowly falling apart as its drains into the black hole would be a great sf setting. Great excuse for all those stereotypical "the world is cursed" settings we see in fantasy.
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Death 999
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I think the hawking radiation outflow would be dwarfed by the matter inflow if you stick it in dense matter (e.g. a planet), and it is sufficiently heavy to begin with.
Collider byproducts (e.g. two gold atoms) would not be heavy enough, but if you put about 1 kiloton of matter into it, the schwarzchild radius will be about the radius of an atomic nucleus. If you gently lob it at a planet instead of shooting it out at half the speed of light (once again, as opposed to in a particle accelerator), this will give it plenty of opportunity to gobble up every atom in its path.
Assuming it only gobbled up the atoms in its direct path, that would total to around one ten-thousandth of a mole each time through the planet. Yeah, this will take a while.
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Art
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I think the hawking radiation outflow would be dwarfed by the matter inflow if you stick it in dense matter (e.g. a planet), and it is sufficiently heavy to begin with.
Collider byproducts (e.g. two gold atoms) would not be heavy enough, but if you put about 1 kiloton of matter into it, the schwarzchild radius will be about the radius of an atomic nucleus. If you gently lob it at a planet instead of shooting it out at half the speed of light (once again, as opposed to in a particle accelerator), this will give it plenty of opportunity to gobble up every atom in its path.
Assuming it only gobbled up the atoms in its direct path, that would total to around one ten-thousandth of a mole each time through the planet. Yeah, this will take a while.
The idea is not to fling it through the planet but to send it through so slowly that it spirals through the planet down to the planet's center of mass and develops a stable orbit there, nestling inside the planet and slowly absorbing it. There was a cool hard sf story about this being done on the Moon (by accident), and another about it being done (by aliens) on Mars. Too bad I can't remember titles right now.
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