The Borg Have Been Busy II: Assimilation Boogaloo

We know about the Battle of Wolf 359 in early 2367.

We know about what's commonly called the Battle of Sector 001 from First Contact in 2373.

But as hinted at in First Contact, there were things going on we didn't know.

Picard's Ahab moment suggests as much:

We've made too many compromises already, too many retreats. They invade our space, and we fall back . . . they assimilate entire worlds, and we fall back. Not again!  The line must be drawn here! This far, no further!  And I will make them pay for what they've done!

This speech always intrigued me, not just because it is frakking awesome, but because it suggests a lot more interplay with the Borg than just Wolf 359, more even than what we could deduce from "I, Borg"[TNG5] set in late 2368.

This concept is backed up by Sisko in "In Purgatory's Shadow"[DSN5], noting that "we need all the help we can get. The Dominion picked a perfect time to invade. The Cardassian fleet is in shambles, the Romulans are not much better off, and between the Klingon War and the recent Borg attack, Starfleet's spread pretty thin."

Most people of course assume that the recent Borg attack refers to Star Trek: First Contact.   However, I don't think that's true.  For one thing, the stardates don't work.   The follow-on episode to "In Purgatory's Shadow" was "By Inferno's Light", and the stardate in that episode was 50564.2.

That's the date given after the Dominion fleet goes into Cardassian space with Dukat at the start of the episode, an event which occurred a day or two at least after Sisko's "recent Borg attack" comment.  This is also after he Klingons who had invaded Cardassia (including Gowron himself) get smacked around sufficiently by the Dominion to show up at DS9 en masse with tail tucked between their legs, despite it being an enemy outpost at the time. Gowron indicates he still has forces in Cardassian territory, but he has taken a sufficient whipping to sign back on to the Khitomer Accords then and there, which I daresay was somewhat un-Klingon of him.

But in any case, it is obvious that a little time should have passed between the arrival of the Klingon fleet and Sisko's original statement, but even if we ignore that extra time, we still have a date of 50564.

First Contact, however, is noted as having a stardate of 50893.5  . . . this date doesn't refer to the battle, either.  This refers to the report from DS5 about Ivor Prime being destroyed by the Borg, and is the date given as Picard is about to brief his officers that a Borg cube is about to cross the Federation border on a direct course for Earth.   The Federation fleet is being massed by Admiral Hayes in the Typhon Sector, wherever the hell that is, and based on the fact that the cube made it to within sight of Earth, it was apparently a running firefight.

So in 2373, sometime maybe in the 50550-50564 range, give or take, we hear a Starfleet captain talk about a recent Borg attack.  And then in around 50893, about a third of a year (four months) later assuming 1000 stardate integers per year, another Starfleet captain notes that his dread fear of six years is coming true at the moment, as the Borg have begun an invasion of the Federation (which seems rather overstating the matter given the single cube, but whatever).

(It occurs to me here that some might wish to think that the running firefight lasted four months, which would be an interesting concept but for the fact that it doesn't work.   Picard's log entry noting the beginning of an invasion would be at the end of that four months, and not the beginning.)

In any case, Picard's log entry may seem to suggest that nothing much had happened in the intervening six years, but then this was the very same captain who found Hugh in late 2368.

So, let's ponder his awesome speech a bit further for a moment.

"They invade our space, and we fall back"  . . . sure, that could be a reference to the fact that Starfleet always pulls back to a defensive position such as Wolf 359 or the Typhon Sector to amass a fleet, but that interpretation leaves the line kinda lame.   Of course you're gonna gather a fleet a little ways back when a fast juggernaut is coming.   On the other hand, the Federation did send the Enterprise-D to check out the six uninhabited star systems of the Argolis Cluster as a prelude to colonization in "I, Borg", and it is entirely possible that when they became aware of Borg scout ships skulking about they thought better of the idea.   But that's hardly a thought as awesome as the line itself.  I mean, for that line to really work, you'd have to have the equivalent of seeing Borg on the Florida Keys and having the US pull back to a Tampa-Orlando defense perimeter.

"They assimilate entire worlds, and we fall back" . . . well, what worlds have they assimilated?   Jouret IV at the start of "The Best of Both Worlds"[TNG3]?  That was the Federation's most distant colony . . . it doesn't seem like that would've involved a lot of retreating.    The Federation and Romulan outposts from "The Neutral Zone"[TNG1]?   I don't see that being a situation where either side would really fall back.

No, it seems to me that there must have been other things going on.

Obviously, small Borg scouts skulking about in 2368 near Federation space would have implied a Borg presence in the area.

As for what area that might be, we have several clues.

For one, Admiral Hayes amassed a Federation fleet in late 2373 at the Typhon Sector.   We've never heard of that again, but we have heard of the Typhon Expanse.   There's even a map of the Typhon Expanse in "Cause and Effect"[TNG5], but until I see higher definition screencaps I can't say anything more about it.

So where is the Typhon Expanse?  Well, a couple of episodes earlier the Enterprise-D was near the Cardassian border, as deduced by the fact that she responded to the distress calls of the USS Denver in the Beloti sector when the Denver had struck a mine left over from the Cardassian conflict.  While they could've gone a good distance in the intervening 70 stardate units (after all, it took just 50 stardate units to get to Earth for "The First Duty" which follows "Cause and Effect"), this does at least hint at the notion that they were somewhere close to the Cardassian sphere of influence.

This is also hinted at by "I, Borg"[TNG5] . . . the Borg scout crash site is near or within the Argolis Cluster, which was used in 2374 as a blind by the Dominion to hide a sensor array on the other side of it ("Behind the Lines"[DSN6].   While I suppose the Dominion could have hidden a sensor array clear on the other side of nowhere, it seems that they would hide one reasonably close to their Cardassian territory so as to keep an eye on the conflict zone and nearby regions.   As noted, the sensor array let them monitor ships across five sectors, and it could even detect cloaked ships at a range of a couple of light-years.  The plot of "Behind the Lines" strongly suggests it was only a day or two from Starbase 375.   This is useful because 375 was the staging point for the retaking of DS9, which was roughly three days away per the next episode, "Favor the Bold" (not accounting for fleet departure prep and ginormous battle time).

Indeed, this map of the Cardassian War as seen in "When it Rains"[DSN7] (and often shown virtually identically in shape but as a Dominion map) suggests that Starbase 375 is around 29 light-years from Bajor.

(Just a note, but that would be around 3500c for the Federation fleet's speed, assuming 29 light-years in 72 hours, which is a bit conservative.   And, as long as we're here, this larger view suggests that late in the war, Cardassia occupied a space around 250 to 275 light-years wide at maximum extent, give or take . . .

. . .  at least insofar as the slice of it shown.)

The Argolis Cluster does not show up in the map, however, and neither does the Typhon Expanse.  Based on our speculation thus far it would seem like they both should, and that perhaps the Typhon Sector is perhaps several days away from Bajor and DS9.

So what have we learned here?  Well, it seems reasonably solid that "I, Borg" happened relatively near Cardassian space.  As for whether the Borg cube from First Contact came from the same direction, I'd say the evidence is thin on the ground . . . the Typhon Sector and Typhon Expanse may be completely unrelated, in which case First Contact might have absolutely nothing to do with that side of the Federation at all.   However, if it did, then the Borg may have been flitting about doing who knows what in the direction of Cardassia and Ferenginar.   Recall that in 2364, the Enterprise-D was headed out to explore the "great unexplored mass of the galaxy" past Deneb.  If the galactic center is "north", then that's "west".   The Federation was also interested in the as-yet-unknown Ferengi possibly being involved at Deneb, and they later met the Ferengi.   Ferenginar shows up on that map above . . . it's hardly beyond the pale to ponder that the Enterprise-D might've been exploring "the great northwest" in early 2364, with Cardassia as a sort of Baja California area toward the southwest.

And it wouldn't be a shock for the Borg to be roaming around that same area, or perhaps even a bit more northward, in 2368.

So, rolling with our "Borg in the Northwest" hypothesis, what might've been going on?

I wouldn't surmise anything extreme like a thriving Borg planet or unimatrix or any other such thing, nor would I even argue that cubes were present at all, but it is pretty definite that there was Borg traffic in the Alpha Quadrant.   I would hypothesize this continued into the 2370s, and that the Federation must have withdrawn from certain areas that suffered minor Borg incursions a la the 2368 Argolis incident or from the areas of distant extra-Federation worlds or colonies that were annihilated.

But let's remember, too, that Sisko suggests losses from the recent Borg attack four months before First Contact.    This strongly suggests that there was one occasion where multiple ships were lost.

Or does it?   Sisko notes the recent Borg attack as being a reason Starfleet is spread pretty thin, but that in and of itself does not necessarily prove losses.   Picard notes that they invade Federation space and the Federation falls back, so they may very well have prudently avoided confrontation as much as possible, but still repositioned part of the fleet in a defensive posture a set distance from that area.

Either way, you end up with a Federation whose western resources were probably stretched to the limit, with ships needing to be at the Cardassian border, and also some point toward the northwest, and of course the Romulan Neutral Zone patrols back east, and so on.   Sisko's speech really nails that point home . . . it was indeed the perfect time for a Dominion invasion.

I would surmise that the Borg must have been sighted or heard of, presumably outside Federation space for the most part.   It's possible, perhaps even plausible, that the Federation learned of some colony world (of theirs or someone else's) being assimilated in early 2373 while they were engrossed in hostilities with the Klingons.  The world was probably off in the boonies somewhere not immediately relevant to the Klingon War, the Dominion's presence, et cetera.

If the Borg were't on a direct course for Earth, then the Federation might very well have decided to evacuate that area and dig in a bit further back.  A significantly sized task force patrols the area or is proving relief to the ally or somesuch, and maybe that taskforce gets wiped out by the Borg, or maybe not.   Maybe the area is evacuated, maybe folks are left to fend for themselves . . . either way, the Federation withdraws rather than contest the space with the Borg.

If there was a battle, you could end up with something smaller than or perhaps equal to Wolf 359 but which, in the larger context of the times what with the Klingon War going on, is just par for the course in their version of newspapers.

A tale like that, or similar, would certainly serve to explain why Picard was acting like a lot more had gone on than merely a really scary Borg incursion one time, but that instead he had been living in fear and rage.   It would also serve to explain why Sisko suggested a recent Borg attack four months before First Contact.

In any case, this notion that the Borg were still lurking about fits a few details.   For one, the Borg Queen still had quite an interest in assimilating Species 5618 (Earthlings), even creating a new assimilation technique with them in mind a year or two later ("Dark Frontier"[VOY5].   Two, assimilating nearby or outlying worlds would fit the Borg pattern which saw them cruise down the Neutral Zone picking up bits as they passed.  Three, the Borg had assimilated distant but not shockingly distant worlds as soon as the 2290s or thereabouts, given the El-Aurian refugees in Generations.

This is all to say, the Borg were still lurking about, but First Contact was the first major attempt to take Earth since "The Best of Both Worlds".

In other words, the Borg had been watching, biding their time.  It is not known what made them decide to come in 2373, but perhaps they had come to realize that the Federation was distracted by the Klingon war and perhaps that the Dominion was coming.

There are a few details left to ponder, such as figuring the timing of First Contact and checking on the status of the Defiant in DS9 episodes around that stardate . . . if she's missing, it makes perfect sense, and even moreso if the rest of the crew is off doing something else.  On the other hand, if they were on her at the same time, it wouldn't.fit.

Another detail to consider is that if the Borg were around the Alpha Quadrant circa 2373 as the buildup to the Dominion War began, one wonders if there wasn't an encounter between a small Borg ship and a Dominion vessel.

That would be interesting, to say the least.

*******************

Update:  A potential flaw in the Typhon Sector = Typhon Expanse argument is that the Enterprise-E was initially 3.5 hours or so from the Typhon Sector rendezvous at maximum warp, assuming that's what Data was talking about when he was cut off by Picard saying they weren't going.    The flaw is that it doesn't make a great deal of sense for the E-E to have had to cross virtually the entire Federation to go play with Romulan space dust . . . but on the other hand, if the E-E was anywhere near the Typhon Sector, and given that they wanted Picard away from it, that might actually work like gangbusters.  

In any case, it took long enough for the E-E to get to the Neutral Zone that they had just completed their first sensor sweep right around the time the battle started.   At that point the Borg were traveling at warp 9.6, though, per the comm chatter, so it may not have involved terribly much time passing . . . after all, "The Best of Both Worlds" features the Borg and the E-D getting to Earth in mere days from the Federation's (former) most distant colony world.

It's a potential flaw, but not a fatal one.  

Facebook

http://www.facebook.com/STvSW

I've long considered having a Facebook presence, though I never could figure out what it might be useful for.  Now, I have done it, and I still don't know.

Suggestions welcome.

Steelcrete Trade Federation Bridge Doors

Qui-Gon's lightsaber has always puzzled me, and it seems I'm not the only one.

Estimates of the power of the lightsaber against the Trade Federation bridge doors and additional blast doors in The Phantom Menace range from around 30 kilowatts to over one gigawatt . . . a mere difference of 34,000 times or so.

I've never really messed with that example because, well, it confused the hell out of me.  The problem was that Qui-Gon has his hand all up in that door's personal space like it was a hot date, and indeed, it was hot . . . glowing hot, in fact.   And until droidekas show up and ruin the quality time, Qui-Gon is doing his best smooth, chill, Barry White play, totally unaffected.

See, that's just how pimp Qui-Gon is, because most people with their hands a couple of inches or less from a big giant thing of molten metal would be snatching their hand back like they'd been bit.  Or, more accurately, burned.   Because they would have.  A lot.

However, methinks now the whole problem is that everyone has just sort of rolled with the idea that what they're seeing is some dense metal because, well, okay, it sorta looks that way, and the idea of a "blast door" implies a big honking heavy solid metal immovable object, to our modern thinking.

But, short of imagining lightsaber hilt shields or some sort of mysterious Force SPF 5000 Suntan Lotion, there just hasn't been any way to really reconcile the non-smoldering, non-blistering, non-why-can-I-see-my-bones-now hand problem.

Except, maybe there is.   The assumption of metal might be wrong.  The material might be something more like the tiles of a space shuttle, which can be glowing red hot but still be held in the hand.

And the fun part is that you can actually have it both ways, here.  See, the door that was glowing right next to Qui-Gon was the normal bridge door.  There's no great reason I can think of why this door need be metallic, at least (or especially) on its outer layers.  If anything, a mere security door need only be blaster-proof . . . which would, presumably, mostly involve being heat-shielded.

So let's check our reasoning against the script and novel . . .

QUI-GON makes his way to the bridge door and begins to cut through it.
INT. FEDERATION BATTLESHIP - BRIDGE
The CREW is very nervous as sparks start flying around the bridge door.
QUI-GON and OBI-WAN are on the view screen.
NUTE : Close the blast doors!!!
The huge, very thick blast door slams shut, followed by a second door, then
a third. There is a hissing sound as the huge doors seal shut. QUI-GON tabs
the door with his sword. The screen goes black as a red spot appears in the
center of the blast door.
RUNE : ...They're still coming through!
On the door, chunks of molten metal begin to drop away.
NUTE : Impossible!! This is impossible!!

So far, so good.   We have definite confirmation of the blast doors (which are on the bridge side of the normal bridge door) being metal.

Now let's check the novelization:

"I want destroyer droids up here at once!" Nute Gunray screamed, watching as one of the Jedi began cutting through the bridge door with his lightsaber. He felt his throat tighten and his skin begin to crawl. "Close the blast doors! Now!" One after another, the blast doors began to shut and seal with hissing sounds. The crew stood transfixed as on the viewscreen the Jedi continued their attack, lightsabers cutting at the massive doors, melting away the steelcrete like soft butter. Mutters of disbelief were heard, and Nute screamed at them to be silent. Sparks showered off the blast door under attack by the Jedi, and a red spot appeared at its center where the larger man plunged his lightsaber into the metal almost up to its hilt. The viewscreen suddenly went blank. At the center of the door, the metal began to turn molten and drop away. "They're still coming," Rune Haako whispered, gathering his robes as he backed away further.
Viceroy Nute Gunray said nothing in response. Impossible! he was thinking. Impossible!

Aha!   Steelcrete. It's not the air-filled ceramic we were looking for, necessarily, but at least we weren't told the bridge door was metal.   The doors being observed on the viewscreen as being under attack were steelcrete . . . the metal doors were the blast doors which they didn't need the viewscreen to observe dropping molten chunks.

The steelcrete could still have the properties we were hoping for, especially if it is akin to the "hydrofoamed permacrete" inasmuch as solidity is concerned.   But as a precaution, I've searched for steelcrete elsewhere in the scripts and novels and it is nowhere to be found . . . Wookieepedia seems to agree that it doesn't appear in any other canon source.   So, not only have we solved the Qui-Gon mystery, but in the process we have learned something about steelcrete which was otherwise just a big giant question mark.

And really, this is the perfect end to the story, because we get to have our kilo/mega/gigawatt lightsaber without the mess and fuss of trying to rationalize how Qui-Gon could still be a magic-fingered pimp when by all previously-held rights the notion of him still having fingers ought to have been doubtful.

My TV Interview Invite

I'd mentioned a couple of times lately that I was once invited onto a national TV show but declined on the grounds that I didn't want my foes to know my face.   

After all, they were then at the heights of their psychotic behavior where they were threatening my life over a frickin' internet debate about science fiction technology, so that last vestige of anonymity -- given that they'd already been calling my home, distributing my address, workplace, and discussing 'home visits' -- was my remaining tactical advantage in the event they ever made good on their plans.  Well, that and the crappy .380 I used to have.  (Fear not, I now have a much finer selection.)

In any case, I'd been trying to recall details about it and searching my e-mails to try to find it, but for some reason I kept having trouble locating anything even close to it.   Of course, the fact that my e-mails are absolutely swarming with references to "tv", "show", "producer", and whatnot wasn't helpful.

But finally, I found it.   Turns out it was for a show on TechTV (which later became G4techTV, then just G4).

Unscrewed With Martin Sargent reveals the pop culture side of technology: what's new, what's hip, what's hot. The ultimate showcase for the darker, funnier, sexier world of the modern technophile, Unscrewed With Martin Sargent pushes the boundaries of late night television. Hosted by the funny and forthright Martin Sargent from The Screen Savers, with his sidekick, the lovely Laura Swisher, this outrageous 30 minutes promises to go where no other show on television has gone. Sargent mingles with tantalizing guests in studio and remotely.

The show apparently once featured an interview with Maddox of "The Best Page in the Universe" fame, so I would've been amongst august company (at least to hear Maddox tell it).

Anyway, here's the e-mail . . . and yeah, it says posting permission was "no", but (a) it's been over a decade, (b) the show and network are gone, and (c) it was business and not a personal message from a reader, so I don't think it's important anymore.  Nevertheless, as is my custom, I will redact all personally identifiable whatzits:

From: Sean [redacted]
To: g2k @ st-v-sw.net
Date: Mon, Sep 22, 2003 at 6:34 PM
Subject: ST-v-SW.Net Feedback 

redirect: http://www.st-v-sw.net/STSWhi.html 

source: Went to it. 

posting+permission: No. 

comment: Hi 

My name is Sean [redacted], I am a television producer working with the booking manager for TechTVs newest show 'Unscrewed with Martin Sargent'. It is our goal to 'unscrew' the top off the internet and show our viewers the people and places that make the internet so interesting. I came across your website and thought you would make a perfect guest. We w like to conduct this interview via netcam (If you do not have one I am more than happy to send you one for free). 

We would like to talk to you about how you got started, what the response has been to your website and what plans you might have for the website in the future. The interview itself will only take a few minutes so hopefully this will be as painless as possible. 

We shoot all of our shows on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8:00pm-10:00 PDT. 

Thanks very much for your consideration and pleasel free to call or email me with any questions or concerns you might have, or contact Unscrewed's booking manager, Adam [redacted]. 

Adam [redacted]
Booking Manager/Guest Producer
'Unscrewed'
techtv.com/unscrewedtechtv.com 

I look forward to speaking with you. Please email me back with a phone number and the best time to call. 

Sean [redacted] 

About TechTV
TechTV is the cable network that showcases the smart, edgy and unexpected side of technology. By telling stories through the prism of technologechTV intrigues viewers with everything from help and information to cutting-edge documentaries to outrageous late-night fun. TechTV viewers are highly interactive and passionate about engaging in the television experience and log a monthly average of 1.5 million unique visitors to techtv.com. Owned by Vulcan Inc., TechTV is currently available in nearly 40 million homes in the US and distributes content to more than 70 countries.

Permacrete

In the RotS novelization, we hear of the Invisible Hand using "hydrofoamed permacrete" and, later, a note about "a pile of rubble: shattered permacrete, hydrofoamed to reduce weight."   Indeed, Kenobi, unconscious, was Force-launched by Dooku "into the wall so hard the hydrofoamed permacrete buckled and collapsed onto him", though as Anakin found later, "no bones were broken: this was a concussion, no more."

Needless to say, then, this hydrofoamed permacrete doesn't sound like some super-tough, super-dense material.  It would certainly be more substantial than the normal styrofoam we're all used to, but it doesn't seem any more substantial than, say, a sheetrock wall, and given the complete collapse it seems as if it wasn't especially well framed.  (Meaning, a sheetrock wall is anchored to framing studs that are spaced fairly closely, meaning even if you launch a guy through the sheetrock in-between the studs, you'll usually just have a guy-sized hole in the sheetrock rather than a collapsed wall of sheetrock or, worse, collapsed wall altogether.)

I am reminded of other similar techniques used today.  I've seen foam sections used as building material for ornamental purposes, covered in stucco or similar to provide the finishing touches.  And indeed, there is a material commonly referred to as 'eps concrete' where, instead of using sand and rock for the aggregate material of the concrete, simple polystyrene foam is used instead, reducing weight.  "Hydrofoamed" is a word of not perfectly clear meaning, though it suggests something involving water.  Perhaps ice was used as aggregate for a low-temperature concrete mix and then, once hardened, the water is melted, and the wall was dried?   That would be an interesting technique for low-cost, low-weight concrete if your hydrofoamed concrete factory is located in arctic climates, anyway.  Maybe I should patent that.   The last few sentences are hereby copyrighted!

In any case, we know of permacrete from other prequel novelization references, too.  For instance, on Naboo the palace at Theed featured permacrete on the interior that was blasted into shards along with the glass by Panaka's blaster, and the ray shield preventing Obi-Wan from reaching Qui-Gon was said to be as good as a three meter wall of permacrete insofar as keeping Obi-Wan out, suggesting that a wall of such impressive proportions is sufficiently impervious as to keep a Jedi out for an indeterminate length of time.   In the later prequel novelizations, permacrete seems to be referred to as walkway material for Coruscant, the landing pads of Kamino, and the Separatist landing platform of Utapau.  The buildings of Coruscant are said to be durasteel and permacrete canyon walls after the Battle of Coruscant.  The stuff's even slippery when wet.

In short, we have no great reason to suspect permacrete is terribly much stronger than concrete.   Stronger, yes, insofar as it allows for the multi-kilometer buildings of Coruscant, but relatively simple steel-reinforced high-density concrete was used for the base of the Burj Khalifa (formerly Burj Dubai) in this century, and that building is almost a kilometer in height.  I say "relatively simple" because although it was an engineering challenge to get the mix and pours just right, it did not require a totally unprecedented material bearing no resemblance whatsoever to the concretes that had come before.   We might not be able to extend that to a multi-kilometer structure today, but I also rather doubt that it would take a thousand years of development to arrive at such a solution.

There is also reference to "duracrete" in the novelizations, identified as the material of the plaza around the Senate building in the RotS novel, but with no other information provided.  But given the presumable age of the plaza, I would presume it is a lesser material than permacrete.

Nerd Culture Podcast Interview

If you'll forgive a touch of self-promotion, I let a persuasive bloke talk me into a full-on guest spot on his podcast.

http://nerdculturepodcast.com/2014/01/podcast-episode-76/

Bo and David are joined by special guest Robert from ST-vSW.net and discuss all things Star Trek vs Star Wars, including the difference in Fans, Canon rules and changes, the imposter Spock & who would win in a dogfight between the Millennium Falcon and the Defiant…and much much more!

In it, you'll hear me imitating a popsicle . . . this due to letting a stray but talkative cat in from the cold, meaning I ended up having to go out into it for the purpose of the interview. So, pardon me for sounding shiver-y.

Also, I forgot almost every single thing I wanted to say, so it is thus my natural rambling. (Suffice it to say, I'm better in text.)  But fortunately the editing process involved cutting out about half of it so I almost sound like I stayed on topic.


Enjoy!

Death Star Explosions: The Foliage Factor

More calculatory bliss.

On a forum it was recently asked just how powerful the Death Star explosion over Yavin IV could've possibly been . . .that is, "what is the most energy released by the Death Star that Yavin IV could have survived?"

Well, that sounded like fun.

A beginning estimate would be to basically figure out a level of energy that would observably damage the moon on the surface. This is useful because of three factors.

1. As the Rebels take off to go fight the Death Star, the red gas giant is visible in the sky. This suggests that the Yavin base ought to have been within line of sight of the Death Star blast.

2. After the battle, we get two useful scenes.

A. We see a brief shot of the planet from a great distance as the surviving Rebels fly home.

B. We see a close shot of the jungle near the Rebel base with its impenetrably dense stone before the medal ceremony.

So, as a result, we know that the condition of the base and nearby jungle was basically the same before and after the Death Star was destroyed. With that fact in mind, we can estimate an energy intensity that would have produced observable effects, then rock the inverse square law back out to the range of the Death Star. Since the planet and jungle are not observably affected, this would serve as a back-of-the-envelope upper limit.

- Atmosphere

Now, in reality, there would be a number of other factors to consider, such as atmospheric attenuation (especially in the sense of what parts of the spectrum make it through), cloud cover more specifically, and so on. So while we could use surface effects and ignore the atmosphere, technically the actual energy would need to be greater. For sunlight on Earth, it is said that about 50 percent makes it to the surface to be absorbed, 30 percent gets reflected at the surface, and 20 percent is absorbed by the atmosphere. That 20 percent is what we need to zoom in on at the moment, because I presume the 30 percent figure is a general value including such things as oceans (what with their being 75 percent of the planet and all), which are not relevant to our inquiry.

Just in case, though, let's assume that a third of the radiative emission of an exploding Death Star would be absorbed by the atmosphere . . . that means we need to increase our relevant values below by 33 percent.

- Range

As for the range to the Death Star from Yavin, most estimates are in the 150,000km range, which I believe is true for both the SFJ pages and Wong's SDN. (Also, some nincompoop on SDN claimed I am the source for a very specific figure from Michael January's pages, but that's just a funny thing I've been wanting to share and is not relevant right now.)

I haven't personally studied the matter, but we'll roll with this figure for now as it is not really inconsistent with the ~77,000km range of the Alderaan shot.

- Damaging the Surface

For ease, we can use estimates from http://glasstone.blogspot.com/2006/04/ignition-of-fires-by-thermal-radiation.html . . . that for a nuclear explosion, the energy required to ignite assorted things like dry and dark rotted wood falls somewhere in the range of 15-25 calories per square centimeter (my own selected range from the wide assortment of figures he reports). Now, Yavin IV didn't exactly look dry, so we could crank this up further to 50 just to try to be sure, and to try to cover the 33% atmosphere absorption mentioned above.

I don't see where a precise time factor is provided, but we can presume for the purpose of this that the nuclear weapon and the Death Star blast would radiate for about the same amount of time.

Translating to joules per square centimeter, then, with a calorie being 4.184 joules, that's 209 J, which in square meters would be 2,090,000 . . . so,  two megajoules per square meter. (The total energy incident on Yavin would be interesting but not relevant here.)

- The Inverse Square Law

The inverse square law is a fancy term for the idea that the intensity of something per unit area at a range of, say, one meter (e.g. an intensity of 1 watt per square centimeter at one meter's range) will fall off in a geometric fashion. So, at two meters, you'll actually see the intensity drop to 1/4th watt per square centimeter, because while the distance has only doubled, the affected area will quadruple. At three meters it's 1/9th, et cetera. And note that while I used watts above, joules work just as well if you don't need a time factor . . . indeed, the inverse square law applies to all sorts of things, what with it being fairly basic geometry, applied.

The fun part for our purposes, though, is that you can also estimate the strength of the actual source itself if you know this intensity at a given range. This isn't really the inverse square law per se, but it is often discussed in the same breath.

So, in the case of 1 watt per square centimeter at one meter's range, we can work backward. It is 100 centimeters to the point where the intensity is 1 watt per square centimeter, meaning that if we want to work backwards to a 'zero point' all we need to do is get the total wattage for the whole sphere. That's just figuring the whole area of the sphere and multiplying the known wattage on one square centimeter accordingly. So, a 100cm sphere has an area of 4πr^2, or 4π(100cm)^2, or 125,663.7cm^2. Since we know the intensity is 1 watt per square centimeter and we know the whole sphere is 125,663.7 square centimeters, then the point source of energy must be outputting at a rate of 125,663.7 watts, or about 126 kilowatts. (That's a lot, but so is a watt per square centimeter at one meter's range. Per the basic geometry, you'd be looking at 10,000 watts per square centimeter at 1 centimeter range . . . yet the sun only hits us with 0.14 watts per square centimeter, and we only receive about 0.1 watts per square centimeter at the surface.)

- Rocking the Law

So with 150,000,000 meters as the range and two megajoules per square meter as the energy intensity at that range, the total energy of the Death Star blast would be 4π(150,000,000)^2 times two megajoules, or 282,743,338,823,081,391.5m^2 times two megajoules. That gives us about 565,500,000,000,000,000 megajoules, or 565,500 exajoules, or 5.655E23 . . . or, about 135,000 gigatons.

If, however, the estimated range is wrong and it was really, say, 500,000 kilometers (500,000,000 meters), then the final value would be much higher, in the range of 6.3E24 J, or about 1.5 million gigatons.

The sun puts out 4E26J every second, meaning that the Death Star explosion upper limit from the first  example would be equivalent to 1/700th the energy output of the sun at the range and with the energy on the surface specified.

Given a range of 500,000km, the comparison comes out rather better, with the Death Star explosion coming in at about 1/64th of the sun's energy every second.

However, given the way the Death Star II played out so very much closer to the surface of Endor, all of these figures seem ridiculously high.

- Addenda

I seemed to recall doing something like this before, so I went to look and found that this is a different technique (insofar as calculating via affecting foliage) than what I used in regards to getting an upper limit for the DS2 explosion in the Superlaser Effect section of my site. See #4 at http://www.st-v-sw.net/STSWsuperl-5.html and you'll see a technique involving evenly heating the atmosphere by fifty degrees Celsius. While I still don't think that was a completely terrible approach, I think the full methodology above is much superior.

Applying it, and using the 3500km value, we get 3E20 J as the upper limit, which is 1/1,333,333 of the sun's output in one second.

Even that is very much too high, given that we know exposed skin was unaffected by the DS2 blast . . . two megajoules per square meter in a short timespan like that would definitely provide a touch of sunburn.  Leia didn't even seem to notice the DS2 had gone up until several seconds later, so we can reasonably suppose that she was not burned, blinded, et cetera.

3E20 joules . . . about 73.6 gigatons . . . is thus, to my mind, a very solid upper limit value for the DS2 destruction, and probably applies with caveats to the first Death Star, to boot.

Also, just for bonus points, and to actually apply the main part of the inverse square law a little, if we assume the Falcon and friends were only about 500 kilometers from the second Death Star when it blew, then they would've been getting about fifty times more energy per square meter, or 100 megajoules per square meter.  The Falcon would therefore probably have had to deal with, say, 20,000 megajoules . . . 20 gigajoules . . . incident upon her, at worst case.  That's a bit less than a five ton bomb.