The Alderaan Argument

The Alderaan Argument refers to the debate on how the Death Star destroyed Alderaan.

Some attempt to argue that the Death Star did not directly destroy Alderaan, and that it instead catalyzed something in/on the planet to have it destroy itself (that is, some kind of mysterious chain reaction rather than direct energy transfer). This is often used as an attempt to devalue the actual destructive power of the Death Star. Many variants of this theory call for the gravitational binding energy of the planet to be ignored.