What, no planet kablooey?

cthia wrote:I didn't miss your post either. And I enjoyed a blast of a laugh from the past.

In some science-fiction, it is impractical to transport enough ground troops to invade a planet, or The Empire simply wants to make a statement. So they bombard a planet with a bunch of nukes or large kinetics, or Energy Weapons of some sort. This bombardment may be limited to a small geographical area but more often it is a general assault that wipes out most civilization if not all life on the planet.

A term frequently used in relation to this trope is "glassing," which originally referred to the bombardment being intense enough to cause the soil to vitrify, or melt into volcanic glass.

cthia wrote:Honorverse level destruction.

Do forgive me, but I am still wasting time on these darn tropes -- lovely tropes.

cthia wrote:

Daryl wrote:Planets were destroyed to create Ringworld, then the star and ring accelerated to fractional C to escape the core explosion.
Same for Dyson Sphere stories. There was another involving a steerable neutron star, but I can't remember the title. Venging had aliens preempting rivals by using antimatter needles to shatter the Earth's core.

Can anyone remember the story of which Daryl speaks regarding the steerable neutron star?

cthia wrote:My wife is watching Star Trek the movie (2009) for the first time. I just witnessed the destruction of Vulcan -- Spock's home world, by an energy beam from a rogue Romulan vessel that created a black hole at the core of the planet that consumed it.

It was an impressive scene and special effects.

And a supernova destroyed Romulus, also an impressive scene -- which fueled the Romulan antagonist in the movie.

munroburton wrote:
You need to watch it a bit more closely. The energy beam was essentially a mining drill to create a shaft to the core(guess Vulcan was tectonically inert, eh?), then Nerus dropped a sample of 'red matter' down the shaft.

Don't ask me why a quantity of red matter on Vulcan's surface wouldn't have been enough to do the same thing.

Move along, no science to see here.

Theemile wrote:
I remember an interview with Ronald Moore (BSG/STNG) and he mentioned parts of scripts where some writers had written something to the effect "He <teched> the <tech>" where what was said really didn't matter cause they were making the whole thing up, and "sciency" words could be filled in later to make the scene make sense -ish.

So in Star Trek, the science is definitely a distant second to the plot.

Theemile wrote:

munroburton wrote:
You need to watch it a bit more closely. The energy beam was essentially a mining drill to create a shaft to the core(guess Vulcan was tectonically inert, eh?), then Nerus dropped a sample of 'red matter' down the shaft.

Don't ask me why a quantity of red matter on Vulcan's surface wouldn't have been enough to do the same thing.

Move along, no science to see here.

I remember an interview with Ronald Moore (BSG/STNG) and he mentioned parts of scripts where some writers had written something to the effect "He <teched> the <tech>" where what was said really didn't matter cause they were making the whole thing up, and "sciency" words could be filled in later to make the scene make sense -ish.

So in Star Trek, the science is definitely a distant second to the plot.