Fermi Questions

Larry Weinstein, Column Editor

Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA 23529;
weinstein@odu.edu.

Solutions for Fermi Questions, March 2015

to 2300 K will only increase the velocity by a factor of
w Question 1: The Death Star
so that the typical thermal veloc-
In the movie Star Wars, the Death Star fires a super- ity of 103 m/s will still be much less than the escape
laser and destroys the planet Alderaan. How much velocity of 104 m/s.
energy is needed to do this?
1032 J seems like a lot. At the current human power
Answer: The planet Alderaan is destroyed spectacular- usage of < 1013 W, it would take us 1019 s = 331011 yr
ly, exploding outwards and glowing yellow. We need to or much more than the age of the universe (1010 yr) to
estimate the gravitational binding energy of a planet and use that much energy. The total solar power reaching
the thermal energy needed to increase its temperature the Earth is
to yellow-hot. Lets assume that Alderaan is Earth-sized.
We can approximate the binding energy of the Earth
(with mass ME and radius RE) by the binding energy of
two spheres each of mass ME/2 separated by a distance
RE. (This approximation is about two times smaller
than the exact answer, but is certainly good enough for If we could store all of that power, it would only take us
estimation.) If you havent memorized the radius of the 1015 s = 33107 yr to accumulate that much energy. Im
Earth, RE, you can calculate it from the distance between too impatient to wait that long. If we could capture the
New York and Los Angeles [3000 miles or 5000 km and entire power output of the Sun,
three time zones implies a circumference of (24/3)3(53
103 km) = 43104 km]. The mass of the Earth can then
be calculated from its radius and density (more than
water rH 0 = 103 kg/m3, less than iron rFe = 104 kg/m3 ):
2
then it would only take 33105 s or about four days to
accumulate that much energy.
OK. 1032 J really is a LOT of energy.

This gives a gravitational binding energy of Copyright 2015, Lawrence Weinstein.

E
w The Death Star's temperature
In the movie Star Wars, the Death Star fires a
superlaser and destroys the planet Alderaan.
. What temperature would the Death Star reach
The resulting debris glowed yellow, implying a surface due to the thermal energy generated by firing
temperature of at least 2000 K. At an average heat capac- the superlaser?
ity 10 times smaller than waters: Answer: In order to answer this, we need to estimate
the energy of the superlaser, the efficiency of convert-
, ing stored energy (chemical? electrical? nuclear?) into
superlaser energy, and the mass and heat capacity of the
the energy needed to raise its temperature by 2000 K is Death Star. In the last problem we estimated the energy
only of the superlaser pulse to be 1032 J.
The efficiency of the superlaser was (will be?) prob-
ably between 10 and 90%. If it used chemical or nuclear
energy (i.e., thermal energy), then its efficiency is limit-
and can be neglected. This is not surprising. Typical ed by thermodynamics. If it used electrical energy, then
thermal velocities at room temperature are 300 m/s (the its efficiency could be much higher. Lets assume 50%
speed of sound). Increasing the temperature from 300 efficiency, so that to produce a 1032 J laser pulse the

The Physics Teacher Vol. 52, 2014

 Death Star has to absorb 1032 J of waste energy.
The Death Star is the size of a small moon, so we will
estimate its radius as more than 10 km and less than
103 km. This gives it a volume of
Maybe we made an error. Lets estimate the necessary
temperature a different way. The Earth radiates all of
the energy it receives from the Sun at a temperature
of only 300 K. The Earth receives energy from the
Sun at a rate of

Of this, about 10% will be structural (more than 1%,

less than 100%) with a density of
The Death Star needs to radiate 1015 times the power
giving it a mass of (but only for one second) with a surface area

The heat capacity of pretty much anything is about 0.1 4000 times smaller. Since power radiated is propor-
that of water so tional to A and to T 4, this means that the surface tem-
perature needs to be

and the increase in temperature of the Death Star will

be
At this temperature the Death Star will be rapidly
reduced to its component electrons, protons and neu-
trons. This will make the emperor very very unhappy.
We could reduce the temperature increase by increasing
the superlaser efficiency. Unfortunately, reducing the
temperature increase by about 1010 implies an increase
in efficiency from 50% to 99.99999995%. This seems
unlikely.
Now lets estimate the surface temperature needed to
radiate this energy (since conduction and convection
do not work too well in vacuum). If we remember the
Stefan-Boltzmann constant s = 6310-8 Wm-2K-4, then
we can calculate the surface temperature directly using
Alas, we got the same answer.
Lets reduce our inefficiency by four orders of mag-
nitude, so that the superlaser efficiency is 99.95%.
That reduces the energy radiated to only 1028 J.
Unfortunately, because of that pesky fourth root, that
only reduces the needed temperature by a factor of 10
to a still rather hot 106 K. Increasing the time to radi-
ate the energy from 1 s to 108 s (three years) reduces
the power by a factor of 108 but only reduces the
surface temperature by a factor of 102 to a mere 104 K.
Unfortunately for the emperor, the melting point of
all metals (not to mention the boiling point of all
humans) is well below the resulting 104 K.
This is not terribly surprising. Even a small fraction
of the energy needed to vaporize an entire planet
will have rather unfortunate consequences for a mere
Death Star.
Copyright 2015, Lawrence Weinstein.

The surface area A of the Death Star is A = 4pR2 =

1011m2. The time t must be very short so we will calcu-
late it for 1 s. This gives

Oops. This will still make the emperor very very

unhappy.

20 The Physics Teacher Vol. 53, March 2015