Lit Death Star Superlaser and Hyperspace

I found an unsourced factoid on Alderaan's Wookiepedia page that I wanted to verify here. Could anyone testify as to the authenticity of this line:

"The beam pushed a large part of Alderaan's mass into hyperspace, causing the planet to nova."

My main gripe with the line is that it labels Alderaan's explosion as a "nova," which it isn't, nor have I ever seen it described as such in any official work. And the only things I can think of involving the Death Star warping realspace are the wormholes that the Glove of Darth Vader traveled through. Do any of you know anything about this?

 

Wasn't that a Saxton thing? It sounds kind of like a Saxton thing. Dunno if he ever got the chance to make it canon, though.

 

No, Saxton was straight up power generation.
Pushing part into hyperspace sounds like something from the Death Star novel or the DS Owner's Manual.

 

I want say it was the Death Star novel as well, though I think it came up somewhere else too.

 

The quote in question:

At full charge, the hyper-matter reactor provided a superluminal 'boost' that caused much of the planet's mass to be shifted immediately into hyperspace. As a result, Alderaan exploded into a fiery ball of eye-smiting light almost instantaneously, and a planar ring of energy reflux—the 'shadow' of a hyperspatial ripple—spread rapidly outward.

 

How is shifting a planetary mass into hyperspace less resource-demanding than just blowing it up into pieces like a normal SW turbolaser?

Also, note the "Legends" tag. As in, "Not Canon".

 

Thank you; that's just what I was looking for.

Also, thank you. I was quite sure we had all forgotten that. It's a good thing we have fine, upstanding members of the canon police around to ensure that we don't fall into the trap of not remembering that stuff "doesn't count." Keep up the good work, sir.

 

You're welcome, poodoo.

 

In Lost Stars, it says that the superlaser is "fuelled by a kyber crystal array" which provides "nearly limitless power".

 

That's why Sidious commissioned it. So that he could have Unlimited Power!

 

The storygroup and their stupid crystals.

What happened to "don't be too proud of this technological terror"?

 

The Emperor outvoted him on the subject and build another one?

 

The association between Crystals and Superweapons goes back a long way in the EU - it's not all that much of a surprise that it would carry over to the newcanon.

 

I see his point. Star Wars used to be a hard sci-fi series, now it's turned into something with wizards and magic powers.

 

Actually, that was Vader's opinion, and given how Sidious commissioned not one but two of those terrors, it was a point of view that he clearly didn't share with his apprentice. Vader could huff all he wanted about the power of the Force, but his master clearly believed in the overwhelming power of technological weapons. And it was Sidious's will that governed the Empire and all it's works.

 

And here I thought one of the points of StarWars was the contrast between cold, soulless technology on one side and nature and spirituality on the other.

 

Why would blowing up a planet directly require more energy or suspension of disbelief than pushing much of its mass into hyperspace?

 

Because hyperspace is fictional, but lasers themselves are not?

 

SW lasers are.

 

Actually even within the fictional technology of SW pushing the mass into hyperspace wouldn't require less energy, than simply blowing up the planet. Not with quotes like "there were entire planets, that throughout their history, did not expand as much power as an Imperial-class ship did in one hyperspacejump." according to SWTJ.
If a - compared to a planetary mass - tiny ISD requires that much energy to get into hyperspace, imagine what would be needed for a considerable fraction of Alderaan.

 

True dat. Though I hate to say it, technically neither of those are canon anymore so we don't have to consider either quote. The new canon has it as a mystery other than the Kyber thing.

Spoiler

Then there's the new thing on the SW Databank... Just don't go searching for it if you don't want to be spoiled.

 

I find the easiest explanation is that it is a spherical shockwave but only appears planar thanks to the viewing angle, like how a rainbow appears as a curve.

 

I can't see how that would work - the "planar" part of the wave stands out so much from the rest of it - being a slightly different shade as well.

 

Though of course nothing about this explains why Alderaan actually explods twice in the film.