Science and Fiction

Triple-B

Rear Admiral
Recently I was thinking of the behemoth and the temblorbomb and their effects in destroying planets.

If a planet dies naturally it will end up in a supernova.

but what about artificially destroying a planet, should the planet not also end up in a supernova?

If yes, the kilrah sector for example could not be tresspassed due to its high gamma ray concentration
 
Not really. If a planet "dies" naturally its core gets colder and in theory the planet slowly looses its atmosphere until it becomes a dead rock. No supernova.

Only supermassive suns die in supernova form, the smaller ones simply exhaust their atomic fuel and get colder and colder.

So no, artificially killing a planet should not make it go supernova, only I guess it'd make a huge bunch of lava drops making a nice asteroid field, or a smaller planet with "rings" around, something like that. I especially like Prophecy's depiction of the destroyed Kilrah because it looks just right:

kilrah.gif
 
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I think you need to understand what a supernova actually is. A planet does not have enough mass to cause a supernova, only the more massive stars do and only when they reach the end of their lifespan. So a planet does not 'end up in a supernova', whether it 'dies' naturally or artificially.

Edit: Bah, Pete beat me to it. (BTW, Pete, no apostrophe in the possessive form of 'its'. :p)
 
As far as I remember a star must be at least 8 times bigger than our sun to go supernova..

Funny thing about Kilrah. The Planet was actually destroyed in Wing 3's final movie.. than we see it in Prophecy.. hmm
 
Hehe, I suppose they decided that the bomb designed to shake the planet apart completely disintegrating it was a tad... silly.
 
As far as I remember a star must be at least 8 times bigger than our sun to go supernova.
Not necessarily bigger, just more massive. I don't know if 8 times is the exact figure.

Maybe what you see in Prophecy is the debris falling "back together"?
Not likely. If the planet had been completely broken apart, it would more likely form an asteroid field around the Kilrah star. The Kilrah we see in Prophecy is probably a design decision that a planet in the process of breaking up is a more interesting image than simply flying through asteroids the whole time we're in Kilrah.
 
It may also have had something to do with the Privateer sequel being developed at the time which involved the Kilrathi searching for a Steltek artifact that could reform Kilrah.

(I know, they should just steal The Orb from Oasis... :))
 
I believe the original poster was referring to the fate of planets in a star system. I doubt if Kilrah's sun(s) were of significant size and mass to eventually explode in a supernova. Supernova stars tend to blow up quickly with little time for life in the system to develop. Our sun is too small to end up exploding in a supernova, but in a few billion years the sun will turn into a red giant which will likely consume the first three planets of our solar system.
 
Someone else will have to tell us the science, but I can add that Kilrah is a K6-type main sequence star.
 
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