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Subject: 
Re: Ewok Holocaust
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.starwars
Date: 
Sat, 27 Jan 2001 09:38:16 GMT
Viewed: 
841 times
  
But the question is whether or not the explosion would hurt the Ewoks.

I don't think it would... first the orbit of such a space station would be
several 1,000's of miles from the moon/planet.  You would do this so that
the gravitational effects of the planet/moon would not hurt your station and
you could keep it in orbit without spending a lot of energy to do so.

Most of the energy from space bounces off the good old Earth and a lot of
the matter does also... hitting at the wrong angle it just bounce back into
space.

After the 1992 eruption of Mount Pinutubo
(spelling?) in the Philipines, world temperatures were on the average 1-2
degrees cooler for well over a year.

But this was from the Earth itself and this dust was thrown into the air
from below never reaching the upper levels.  Instead it just stays in the
jet streams and creates all kinds of havok.

What would be the effect upon the Moon's
forests when they were suddenly blanketed in masive quantities of debris • that is
possibly irradiated or toxic to plant-life in super-saturated quantities?

How do we know that their power source would even be radioactive?  But even
if it were most of this would just bounce of the planet any way and not
cause a lot of harm.  The sun hits us with much more energy every day, which
is where we get the winds, etc. from.

What
would happen to Ewok villages as huge chunks of debris slam into the • forests?  A
bullet, when fired into sand, makes an impact crater that is extremely • large in
proportion to the size of the bullet.

Object can only fall so fast, whatever the gavitational constant of that
planet is, until the air resistance causes them to stop accelerating.  BUT I
will say this is the one thing that could destroy a large chunk of the
planet.  A large object falling into the right place and boom good-bye life.
[Ex:  What if a large object fell into the Amazon and destroyed it... a
large portion of life on the Earth would be gone and it would effect the
entire planet since the Amazon creates a lot of Oxygen and fresh water.]

It's more likely that the effects would be deadly, rather than benign. • This
influx of debris doesn't even take into account the terrible radiation • that both
animal and plants would be exposed to.

Again, planets are a lot harder to unbalance than people tend to think... I
hear about global this and that all the time but 99% of these things are
just the normal course of events for the planet.  They have happened before
and will again.  Ice-ages come and go, the Earth heats up and cools down,
etc.

Surely, that huge reactor core, as well as the power infrastructure of the
station, would have unleashed not only terrible heat, but lethal energy
bursts across the electromagnetic spectrum.

Not enough to do spit...  again most of this would just be bounced into
space and never reach the planet surface.  Imagine hitting a surface of
water going really fast, i.e. slapping the water in a pool - ouch.  Now
increase that speed a lot and make the surface air... same thing.  It might
as well be solid.  As for the energy, well a lot would be reflected back
into space, just like on Earth.  That is what keeps us from being fried by
the sun.

Heck, even solar flares from 90
million miles away can significantly increase the amount of infrared • radiation
absorbed by the Earth, and I'd wager that such a close relationship • between the
Moon and battle station (a relationship that couldn't be maintained • without some
kind of force employed by the reactor field to counteract the mutual pull • of
gravity.

Nope you just place it into orbit high enough and you don't have to do
anything.  It will stay there without any energy being spent.  The perfect
place for something like that here would be about in the middle between the
Earth and the Moon, which by the way is slowly moving away from us all the
time so long before the sun expands and kills us the moon will move to far
away and end life as we know it.

Just imagine the terrible coastal devastation because of tidal action
on the moon...) would mean that an initial blast that undoubteldy flashed • many
millions of degrees fahrenheit or celsius (doesn't really matter - point • is, it
was initially far hotter than the surface of a star), with an outburst of
radiation that would do who knows what to the exposed side of the Moon. • Turn it
into a wasteland, no doubt.

Nope... see above.

And then what about the atmosphere of the Moon?  No
doubt it would combust, maybe even vaporize in the initial heat blast • (kind of
like a star instantly appearing next to a planet), and then the • composition of
the atmosphere (if an atmosphere even existed after the blast) would have • been
forever changed into a lethal poisonous mix of gases (the biology of • Ewoks, by
all anectodatl evidence, is remarkably similar in mammalian respects to • humans)
that would be impossible to support Earth-like life (and there was a *lot* • of
Earth-like life.  And back to the close-proximity of the two bodies; they • were
practically kissing (far, far, far closer than the quarter-million miles • that
separates Earth and the Moon.)  That scene in Jedi where Han and Leia look • up to
the pretty fireball in the sky is a dead-on inconsistency.  That • space-station
would have been as big as Baltimore in the sky.  Anything not simply • vaporized
by the blast would be so damaged by the radiation, that they would, well, • er...
I don't know?  What *would* happen to you if about a million nuclear bombs
suddenly went off a few hundred miles overhead?

But the station wasn't that close.  You just wouldn't build it there.

Let's go back to the text, so to speak...chapter and verse.  When that • explosion
occured, nobody was blinded by the glare

because most of the light energy was reflected back into space.

or had their eardrums burst as the
incredibly loud sound of billions and billions of cubic tons of atmosphere • was
compressed by the heat.

Energy doesn't transfer that way... again most of it would jsut bounce off
and that which didn't would be spread out over the entire surface.  The
shock wave (pressure wave of air) would mostly just bounce around the planet
back and forth like ripples on a pond.  This did happen once on Earth by the
way when a rather large object hit us and destroyed the Dino's [but remember
that a lot of life lived through even that only the big things died off].

Han and Leia looked up at the pretty fireworks, ewoks
squealed in delight, and Rebel troops slapped hands.  Soon thereafter, • X-Wings
flew overhead and dropped fireworks.  There wasn't even a terrible meteor
shower.  We got *nothing* from Lucas.  Sure, it probably wouldn't be of • too much
*immediate* consequence to Earth if some planet midway between us and Mars
suddenly exploded, but come-on, even a moon a tenth the size of our • current one
would pretty much end civilization as we know it if it blew up 250,000 • miles
from us.

Ummm, NO!  First most of the crap hitting the atmosphere wouldn't make
enough light for anyone to notice unless it was on a very clear night.  AND
who is to say that anything would even head toward the planet.  If they put
the station where they should/would have then only a very small part of the
explosion would be headed toward the planet and the rest would just go off
into space.  The tiny bit that reached the Planet just wouldn't do much,
sorry.

BUT let's go with the worse case:

They build the thing really close to a planet/moon.  They have massive
gravity generators on board to keep everyone from floating off, massive
reactors of some kind, a bunch of tough material that would survive any
explosion.  Well then I would say the Ewoks were F***ED because most of what
has been said here would happen.  Large pieces of really hard and heavy
metal come raining down on the planet and they cannot burn up because their
just to dang tough.  BOOM!  several large impacts around the surface would
cause unbelievable damage.  AND somewhere on the surface a tiny little bug
would survive and in several million years come into power as the new Empire
:)


Actually the greatest SF screw-up ever is the Star Trek Transporter with one
of these you can do anything:  Go back into time, Create exact copies of
people, Cure anything, Replace limbs, Store matter as energy, reverse aging,
switch bodies with someone else, etc. etc.

-Will



Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Ewok Holocaust
 
(...) But the question is whether or not the explosion would hurt the Ewoks. No doubt all of that cosmic dust over centuries is beneficial to the Earth...it adds to soil fertility and the nutrient balance of the oceans. From a geologic/ (...) (23 years ago, 26-Jan-01, to lugnet.starwars)

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