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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.'"
...and not Star Trek, but in this vein, The Physics of Star Trek is one of my favorites. It's written by Lawrence Krauss, a theoretical physicist from Case Western Reserve University. Beyond Star Trek was another good one from him.
He dissects, from a scientific standpoint, some of the common plot elements and familiar staples (such as warp travel, transporters, phasers, etc.) to determine whether they'd be physically possible. An example of some interesting diversions along the way are demonstrating exactly how much data is contained in a human body, and how much bandwidth would be required for a "transporter" to work. It's a fun and interesting read, and includes content that would satisfy anyone from laymen to scientists. Being a fan of Star Trek is a prerequisite, though...
The website is navagating automatically for me? What the hell?
BUT THE JEDI RELIGION IS A HOAX! Read The Force Skeptics Page! :)
Man, I love the way that guy writes, so seriously
You've gotta be a speed reader to read each mini-article at the slideshow's default speed. What dope at Forbes decided how fast his readers should read?
That slideshow could make the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs.
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Hello?? McFly?? Did you miss the first line of every single movie??
A LONG TIME AGO IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY...
It's already happened, thus it's feasability is already established.
Man, Forbes must be desperate for readers to jump on the Star Wars bandwagon now.
Lightsabers are not lasers or simply light, they are directed concentrated energy fields that can cut better than a Ginsu knife.
A better reason for saying lightsabers are not feasible is due to the problems encountered when accidentally firing up one. Many Jedi and Sith limbs have been lost due to carelessness and showing off. Lightsaber safety is a serious issue, and people should not dismiss their potential dangers!
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
The U.S. could destroy the middle east from orbit, but they have troops in there fighting with simple hand held weapons. Sometimes you don't want to kill every one. It's bad PR. And who would pump your oil when you're done?
Ships and weapons make sound in a vacuum in the Star Wars/Star Trek universes. Defying the physical laws of this universe.
Never quite go over this. However, the 1968 movie 2001 space odyssey, got it right!
You're assuming they want you to read the article. They could care less. They care about ad impressions, and flipping from one page to the next automatically cranks them out faster.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
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.
Since the Jedi have superhuman reflexes (possibly due to premonition skills if Qui-Gon's explanation in Episode 1 is to be accepted), hand-to-hand combat is commonly decided in their favor vs. a small number of armed opponents. However, as will likely be seen in Episode 3, the Jedi fall when systematically hunted down by large forces. When they no longer enjoy backing by the ruling powers, they are reduced essentially to the Star Wars version of ronin (rogue samurai), who are deadly in single combat, and influential in reputation (and in the case of the Jedi, powerful in the supernatural skills they learn), but aren't a formidable military force.
(as for the Minbari, a similar thing is the case; the Rangers were not front-line troops, but rather couriers, clandestine agents, later diplomatic representatives, etc; the "Warriors" had suitably high-tech weapons)
Try this. That should effectively stop the slide show.
Iesus Christus magnus est.
If we were to arm our military like they do in star wars, we'd be giving every soldier their normal equipment plus a crossbow, a pack of bolts, a knife, AND a sword. And then telling them to close in as quick as possible and engage in hand to hand combat.
You know, I'm not even a Star Wars geek and I've gotta mix it up a little on this one...
First of all, the whole idea of the Jedi is that they are not just elite soldiers, they are practically Gods. Before Lucas went with this whole ridiculous "mitochondria" nonsense, the Jedi were basically a religious sect that understood how to harness a mysterious force that nobody else understood. So, first, you're already suspending disbelief to hell and back because you've got to believe that these guys could control time and space to some extent.
Now, once you accept that premise - that these are not just "foot-soldiers" (remember that the regular soldiers all throughout the Star Wars movies just carry blasters, from the droid armies on eps. 1-3 to the Imperial Army and the rebels in 4-6), but instead ultra-elite combination soldiers/priests/shamen/wizards, then you can start to see how on the one hand, conventional weapons would be entirely ineffective against them (something Lucas has demonstrated time and time again), and hand-to-hand fighting would be their most effective weapon against you. Conversely, it is also the only real way to kill them.
The other thing that a lot of people who argue this point seem to miss is that the Jedi do die out in the end! I mean, it is a parallel to what happened in real life to the knights on this planet, and purposely so. It's the end of chivalry in Star Wars just as it was here, and it happens in Star Wars for some of the very same reasons.
Its kind of rediculous to think anyone at all would ever try to engage anyone else in melee weapon combat as a battle tactic.
Unless that's what you're really good at. If you're a trained swordsman who's so good that he can both dodge bullets and deflect them without fail, why wouldn't you try to engage your enemy in melee combat? Your opponent would be basically defenseless in such a situation, unless he was as well-trained in melee combat as you are.
(The best shooter can't do anything more than shoot straight and accurately, so if there was such a person who could deflect bullets with a sword, it wouldn't matter how good of a shooter he was facing - they'd be just as ineffective. The problem is the mass of real swords makes it impossible to use one that way, but that's why light sabers are supposedly made of light... which is a whole other discussion.)
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