Death Star - reality vs fiction

[Nmenth 291]

What started as a discussion of Star Wars technology versus Eve Online evolved into some calculations to (dis)prove the scientific plausibility of a Death Star which seemed to be more fantasy than fact.

 

I thought I would share my results here, as the SW/Eve debate originated from this chart posted by Sonic which I first saw here. I made this image to depict the vast size of the Death Stars compared to the above image. It is scaled at one pixel per km.

 

The question is, could the Death Star really blow up a planet? I am not the first to ask this, and as this video also played a role, you might as well enjoy it too:

 

The main formula this video touches on, but manages to evade actually mentioning, is the gravitational binding energy of Earth, which they estimate to be "2 or 3" x10³² joules, but to be more precise, it is 2.487x10³² joules.

 

According to this video, using the famous E=mc² equation, the amount of mass you would need to annihilate to produce the energy required to blow up Earth would be about the size of Mount Everest (1x10¹⁵kg).

 

What they do not go very far into is the subject of hypermatter, which they pass off as, well...

 

However, hypermatter may be more acceptable than they thought. According to the Star Wars wiki, "At the heart of each Death Star was a gigantic hypermatter reactor, which possessed an output equal to that of several main-sequence stars." It also states, "Despite its high efficiency, hypermatter still required massive amounts of reactant fuel to power the great starships of the spacelanes. For example, at peak power, the Venator-class Star Destroyer's main reactor annihilated the equivalent of 40,000 tons of matter each second."

 

While I could not find how much was being annihilated in the Death Star's hypermatter reactor, the Venator-class Star Destroyer was only 1137m long x 548m wide x 268m high, while the Death Star was a 160,000m wide sphere.

 

The video implied that much mass would be consumed in seconds as they counted the firing sequence from the film, but Star Wars lore says the superlaser required 24 hours to recharge. So that mass being consumed should actually be spread out over 24 hours, only ~11.574 million kg per second, which compared to the 36,290,000kg (40,000 tons) per second from the Star Destroyer is completely reasonable.

 

Secondly, one might wonder if a hypermatter reactor at least the size of Mount Everest could actually fit inside the Death Star. Well, Everest is approximately 1521km³ in size, while the Death Star would have a volume of 2,144,660km³.

 

So, it seems the Death Star is not as scientifically implausible as one might first think. The Death Star II, had it ever been finished, would have been even more terrifying as it could recharge in three minutes, which would have to consume 5.6 trillion kg per second.

[Nyerguds 102]

Building it, however... now that's pretty implausible

[Nmenth 291]

Well Admiral Conan Motti of the Imperial Starfleet did point out that the Earth "does not have our massive means of production".