Deathlyphil said:
In a similar vein, I still don't understand why either side doesn't use relativistic weaponry. They have the ability to travel faster than light, so they have the ability to create truly terrifying weapons of mass destruction.
Rule of cool I expect. There have been some sci fi things that mess with it, but it's more a hard sci fi thing.
For example: take an X-wing, point it at a target, jump to light speed, disable whatever safeties return it to "safe" speeds when it drops out of light speed, and boom. Target (and probably planet) annihilated. Cost to the rebellion? One fighter ship.
In terms of explosive power, if we assume an X-Wing is 2 metric tons that's 2,000,000grams.
E=mc^2
E = 2,000,000 x (3x10^8)^2
E = 1.8 x 10^23 Joules or about 43021032 megatonnes of TNT...
To paraphrase Mass Effect, "and that is why Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein are the baddest mother*****s in space."
I'm fairly sure your physics there is wrong. What you have there is the energy contained in the mass, but the mass isn't being annihilated. Even after the collision we'd expect to see some mass. Even if it were a nuclear reaction, you'd have a resultant, with the difference between the two being the energy emitted (Like your basic fission and fusion equations). What you should want there is the kinetic energy, which is T=0.5*mv^2, which is half of that, i.e, still a metric fuckton of hurt, 9*10^22 Joules of unstoppable, unblockable, undodgeable hurt.
