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Where do THE BORG come from?
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by mrneutron: [QB] [b]Of Planet Killers and Neutronium[/b] Like so many things on Star Trek the trouble here is that the writers stumble upon a cool sounding substance but don't think of the ramifictions of using it. Sorry Mr. Spinrad! Here's a brief description of neutronium: http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Neutronium The big issue is the mass of the stuff. Anything that masses 100 million tons per tablespoon is gonna have a killer gravitational pull (imagine a basketball with the Earth's mass and a surface gravity of something approaching a million Gees). Yes, the entire thing couldn't be made entirely out of neutronium as there had to be mechanisms inside it. BUT, this is the Catch 22. To REMAIN neutronium the object has to have a mass as least 1 sun. The less neutronium there is in the object the more likely it is to fall below this minimum mass. Once it does, boom! No more neutronium. So, if it's dense enough to remain neutronium, it's surface gravity would be so intense that any mechanisms inside it would be crushed into neutronium itself. [i](Instant neutronium! Just add gravity!)[/i] Okay, [i]maybe[/i] the builders floated the mechanism in the (hollow) at the machine's center of mass, so it would be pulled on equally from all sides, but as gravitational pull increases the closer you get the the center of massm the pull on the various parts of this would be uneven as well (I could be wrong). I'd imagine even this would get all those mechanisms smashed instantaneously. (Hmmm, or maybe that's what the 97.835 megaton blast did...nudge the mechanism a nanometer out of balance and the gravity ripped it apart.) Oh, and all this forgetting the fact that the Planet Killer is an unstable shape and there would have to be some amazing power exerted just to keep it from collapsing onto itself and becoming a nice smooth sphere. So, the machine had to exert some kind of power that would negate its own gravitation pull. What kind of power source could it possibly be?! The only thing my friend and I could think of was a Hawking-esque "Leaky" Black Hole, but that raises a whole bunch of other issues. No matter how you slice it a neutonium is massive beyond belief and it's probably the worst substance to use as a construction material (and I won't even get into the subject of shed electron valences and the "quark soup" nature of the material). Fun! [/QB][/QUOTE]
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