Magnetic Accelerator Cannon: Difference between revisions

A UNSC orbital platform typically mounts larger and more powerful version of the standard Magnetic Accelerator Cannon, nicknamed the ''"Super"'' MAC or the ''"big stick"''. At {{convert|802.2|m|ft}} long,<ref name="visual"/> these cannons fire a 3,000-ton ferric-tungsten rounds at .04''c'' or 4% of the speed of light, impacting with a massive amount of relativistic kinetic energy, which is of equivalent to 51.6 gigatons of TNT.<ref name="for283"/><ref name="big MAC yield" group="note">''The Halo Encyclopedia'' lists the Super MAC's yield around 9.98 teratons, fired at .5''c'' or 50% the speed of light. The explosive yield caused by this impact, (velocity aside), would be nearly 1/100th as powerful as the [[Wikipedia:Chicxulub crater|Chicxulub impactor]], which is widely theorized to have killed the dinosaurs. This would almost 20,000 times more powerful than the [[Wikipedia:Tsar Bomba|Tsar Bomba]], the largest nuclear device ever detonated, which had a yield of 57 megatons.</ref> No known UNSC or Covenant ship has been shown to survive the impact of one of these rounds, with shielded Covenant destroyers being shattered to "a million fragments" upon impact.<ref>'''Halo: The Fall of Reach''', ''page 297'' (2001 edition)</ref> Against Covenant shield technology, the rounds possess enough kinetic energy to punch through shields, cut through the ship and, upon exit, still retain enough energy to cripple or destroy a second ship. However, these guns, even with assistance from the UNSC Home Fleet, were not powerful enough to pierce the shields of the [[Ur-Didact]]'s flagship, [[Mantle's Approach]].<ref>'''Halo 4''', campaign level ''[[Midnight]]''</ref>