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The Feasibility of Star Wars Tech
pwnage writes "Forbes Magazine, not usually the the web's premiere source of all things geekish, has posted an interesting summary of Star Wars technology and its scientific feasibility. As a bonus, they also include a great set of Star Flops, including the infamous Jedi Arena Atari 2600 video 'game.'"
BUT THE JEDI RELIGION IS A HOAX! Read The Force Skeptics Page! :)
Man, I love the way that guy writes, so seriously
Yes, this idiotic article is set up as a slide show! Utterly stupid for an article thats mostly text! I would like to take this oportunity to tell the web designers who did this: "You suck". This is one of the true atrocities of the web, only surpassed by web sites that play music or sound effects.
To stop the slide show click the stop button. Oh yeah, it starts the slide show _again_ when you click the "next" button. So to read the article you have to click "stop" every time you click "next" or "Previous". One of the most mis-featured pages I've ever seen!
This sig kills fascists.
Ok, I found a way to slow it down: Click here. It doesn't stop the slide show, just gives you 600 seconds per page instead of 6. That should be enough time (and you can always click next and previous, anyway).
light sabers.
he doesn't get it, they aren't "made of light", they just look like they are. take a 1mK ion source, have it output out of the long end, give the blade a very strong magnetic field that bends that ion stream along the blade but does not touch it. place a weak magnet on the hilt to reabsorb the ions to be charged again.
a. this thing would probably about as hot as the sun, so touching would be double-plus ungood, even on the hilt. the charged ions would repel each other like in the movies, as long as the charge density was high enough.
b. omfg the power needed would be huge to create a blade of any intensity, ion plasma streams have been created in a tokamak, but not for any length of time or intensity, so youd need a serious cryonic ion storage tech, and that would be used up fast, and youd still get an arc-ing effect if it came near anything. think ball-lighting on crack.
c. i doubt you could move it easily, and if it touched a solid object the charge would be dissipated and the blade and other object would explode... a lot.
so the photon blade idea, no, and the gluon idea was pure 100% columbian grade crack from someone who never finished reading that neat book about physics, cause gluons don't really work that way. i'm sure someone could fix the engineering problems i have so far with a little effort.
The first rule of USENET is you do not talk about USENET.
A sword/lightsabre offers the user more options too.
You can choose to just defend with it - protect yourself without threatening your opponent.
You can also selectively wound with it as well, giving you the ability to disarm (heh, literally) your opponent without killing him. As a lightsabre cauterizes as it cuts, the opponent won't bleed to death (although I bet he goes into shock pretty hard...)
It can also be used as a general purpose cutting tool - good for cutting through doors, cables, or whatnot.
By comparison, a gun (or blaster) is an all-or-nothing deal. You can kill with it by blowing a hole in someone... and that's about it. You cannot parry with a gun. It's nearly impossible to selectively wound with a gun. And aside from its intended purpose, a gun can't do anything else.
The gun's big advantages are ease of use (a gun does not rely on the strength or size of its wielder, at least not for reasonable calibres), its ability to kill at an extended range, and its near-unblockability. But given that Jedi can parry gunfire with their lightsabres (neat trick, that - how do you practice?) and are trained enough that "ease of use" isn't a factor... the lightsabre starts to look pretty good.
In real life, sword loses to gun at all except close quarters - especially if the gun wielder doesn't know the sword is there. But against all other weapons, the sword's ability to parry and defend without necessarily inflicting lethal damage make it pretty attractive.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Clearly they've not seen this article: http://www.howstuffworks.com/lightsaber.htm/
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
Try this. That should effectively stop the slide show.
Iesus Christus magnus est.
Actually, the scientists didn't make light go faster than c, they made its group velocity go faster than c. There's a big difference, the main one being that no information can be transmitted this way. One useful analogy is a line of people saying a word to each other. If each person says the word the precise moment they hear it from the person before them, then the information (the word) obviously travels at the speed of sound. On the other hand, if everyone has a watch, and is told to say the word at a precise time, you can make it appear that the "signal" travels much faster than the speed of sound. If you could do it precisely enough, you could even make it look like it is traveling faster than c! However, no information is actually transmitted this way: everyone already had the information.
Another good analogy is spinning a light source around, so that a focused beam sweeps out a circle. When the light source is millions of light years away, it will appear to the alien viewer there that the beam is travelling much faster than c. However, once again, no usable information travels this way, as any info encoded in the beam of light is travelling from the light source to the alien, and not from one alien to another.
To avoid having the pages advance, turn off JavaScript, and try these links individually:
r warscienceslide.html r warscienceslide_2.html r warscienceslide_3.html r warscienceslide_4.html r warscienceslide_5.html
http://forbes.com/technology/2005/05/10/cx_mh_sta
http://forbes.com/technology/2005/05/10/cx_mh_sta
http://forbes.com/technology/2005/05/10/cx_mh_sta
http://forbes.com/technology/2005/05/10/cx_mh_sta
http://forbes.com/technology/2005/05/10/cx_mh_sta
There is a slide 6 but it's devoid of useful content, and broken to boot.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Never underestimate social forces. Yes, the knights went out of business, but they did not do so overknight. Long bows, crossbows, and yes, even firearms had been in use for centuries before the knightly orders were disbanded.
We have tactical nuclear weapons right now, but we do not use them because of social forces. The use of depleted uranium in ordnance is highly controversial, to say the least. The same went for the crossbow for some time. It was internationally recognized as an "unethical" weapon, and those who went against the social stricuture were likely to find themselves in a world of enemies for having done so.
Read about the Battle of Thermopylae. Yeah, ultimately the 300 Spartans, who eschewed the use of bows on chivalric grounds, were cut down by archery fire, but not until the battle had raged hand to hand for some days. There was a purely social aversion to winning with archers, even amongst those who valued and used them. Relying on them impuned ones ablity to win by merit of force.
It was considered important not simply to win, but to do so by physically beating the crap out of your opponant, and Xerxes only resorted to archers when the 300 proved an embaressment by successfully opposing his hundreds of thousands by pure might of arm. In other words the embaressment of using archers eventually became a lesser embaressment than than being shown to be physically (and by implication, morally, in a might makes right society) weak.
The first known military unit commisioned and armed with handheld firearms was formed in the early 1300s. The knightly orders lasted for another 300 years or so, and the concepts of chivalry were at their peak at that later time.
And then they fell. Almost overnight. Not because of the existence of crossbows and firearms, but because there was a great change in society that made chivalry a pathetic and dead concept. Even the concept of an aristocracy was dealt a mortal blow, and it should be noted that projectile weapons are weapons of the "masses."
We call that social change "The Plauge."
KFG
The Dune series of books makes heavy use of knives over projectile weapons as well. The main reason given is that personal body shields had been developed that could deflect almost any energy blast or even a very fast moving piece of metal (such as a bullet or a knife that was frantically swung). This required completely subdueing an opponent and slowly "pushing" through his energy shield with a metal blade. Seemed like a nice explanation for it.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
As an ex marine, I have to disagree with you about knives. There are several reasons all marines are issued bayonets and/or k-Bars (a nice hunting knife-like combat knife).
:)
First, when you're trying to infiltrate an enemy base, or you're stuck behind enemy lines and have to get past somebody, or you see an enemy who hasn't seen YOU yet -- in other words, you have to kill an enemy quietly and quickly -- the safest, most effective way to do this is with a sharp knife (I'm not going to go into the actual how-tos, but we trained on, and practiced, several good ways of doing this).
There WERE ways of doing this without a knife, but they were a lot trickier. For example, if you have some wire, you can make a garrotte, but that kills more slowly and the target might get a shot off, bringing all his friends down on you. Or you can break his neck in one of a few ways, but if you screw up the guy's gonna be pissed and try to kill you, or at least make a ton of noise and let his friends do it for him.
Also, as far as "utility uses" you forgot boobytraps. Hard to sharpen a punji spike with your rifle...
Finally, supposedly, during Viet Nam something like 50% of the firefights fought in jungle locations had at least SOME hand-to-hand component. It's really easy to close the distance when you can't see too far. This is why bayonet training is still considered important. It's kind of like staff fighting, but more streamlined.
I'm quite delighted to say that my unit wasn't actually used in combat, so I never had to actually DO any of this... It was all pretty gruesome, very gory.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
Just after boot camp, there was a demonstration of several of our weapons, with a parallel demonstration of soviet weapons (done by these weird Army guys who showed up). There were a bunch of civilians around, it was pretty weird, but fun for all.
Anyway, several interesting highlights:
One Army guy dropped the pistol he was showing us, and a smartass in my unit yelled "follow it down!" (meaning he'd better just go ahead and get started on those push-ups).
Another fired an AK-47, but couldn't control the climb and ended up firing half the rounds into the air. There was some scattered laughter.
One of our guys fired a Dragon (I think that's what it was, it was way bigger than a SMAW), but the wire broke and the missle went haywire, slamming into the ground only about a hundred feet away. Nobody was hurt, but it was kind of cool and weird.
An LAV-25 shot the hell out of an old rusty Amtrak, with the announcer quipping, "By the way, boys, you'll be riding to the beach in those." Meaning the Amtracks, not the LAV's. We didn't laugh at THAT one.
Finally, and this was cool, an old Staff Sergeant walked up to the firing line with an M-60 (the newer model, with the forward handle) and fired off about a hundred rounds, standing, with the weapon under his arm. The rounds hit in a perfect, horizontal arc about a hundred yards out, near the Amtrack. He'd been a machine gunner for years, and was now a trainer.
It's possible. I've fired them during cross-training (I was a mortarman), although I did it from prone, and I didn't think the recoil was that bad. Shoulder was a little sore afterwards, that's all.
They're not quite as impressive as they are in the movies, but they DO make that great "thump thump" sound. And they're really accurate. We used to trace into targets six hundred yards away within a second or two.
They're nice weapons.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!