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The Science of Star Wars
anonymous lion writes "National Geographic has an interesting interview with a couple of scientists on the scientific reality of Star Wars. For example, related to the cohabitation of humans and Gungans on NabooSeth Shostak states, "So maybe it's possible to share, as long as neither species has the technology to obliterate, enslave, or merely cook and eat each other.""
related to the cohabitation of humans and Gungans on NabooSeth Shostak states, "So maybe it's possible to share, as long as neither species has the technology to obliterate, enslave, or merely cook and eat each other.""
Doesn't that qualify more as "The Sociology of Star Wars"?
That's all you need to know about the "science" of Star Wars.
We can't even get on with others that have diffent skin and cultures than us, let alone genes...
Lets say the republic is 10,000 years old (as is alluded to in the movies). Thats mean they've had 10,000 years to turn Us and them to just Us. Culture shares a large part in that, The europeans went from backward thridworld area continually warring with itself to a fairly unified entity in less then 1000 years. It's not hard to imagine, given 10,000 years the various races of the republic would start identifying themselves as a hetrogenous whole rather then a group of distinct peoples.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
The secret's out, people. Now everyone knows that Star Wars is not actually "hard" science fiction!
At least they didn't do a study or anything.
So Obi and Qui Gon find Anakin infested with force bacteria. Qui Gon says he's make a good Jedi. Yoda says hell no he's to freaking old. The kid is what? four.
Well, spoiler coming, turns out that wasn't the best idea. As Yoda predicted he went to the dark, a bunch Jedis got it in scenes reminiscent of the original Godfather.
Somehow Obi makes it. Hooks up with Luke eighteen years later and says, basically, screw it four years old may be too old to be a Jedi but eighteen is no problem. No freakin way a half assed jedi could get turned to the dark side and make things even efffin worse. I'll train Luke.
Fake science I can live with, clear jedi incompetence is a bit harder.
They make a few good points, but they're missing some of the Star Wars facts. A few that come to mind:
1. Yoda knew Luke was coming. It wasn't coincidence that he lost control of his fighter and landed in Yoda's back yard. That was the Force. They mention that it might be the case, but aren't sure. Well, it is.
2. There's very little or no liquid water on Tatooine, which they say. But they neglect the fact that this is obvious. Uncle Owen runs a moisture farm, which collects water vapor through a series of vaporators spread across the desert. They grow crops underground in tunnels.
3. Chemists correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't the molecular weight determine where oxygen might occur in an atmosphere? If Tibanna, a gas used in heavy blasters in the Star Wars galaxy, weighs more than oxygen, isn't it very possible that there would be oxygen above it? Maybe it's something that's common in the upper atmosphere (we see mining pods floating around), but is breathable in its natural form, sort of like how nitrogen makes up a good part of our breathable atmosphere?
4. They totally copped out on Coruscant. They worry too much about the location. I'd figure that all this intense development on Coruscant might have started long before anybody decided it would be the seat of galactic government. Sure they risk a lot by being there, but you don't want to make the trash on the other side of the outer rim fly all the way across the galaxy, do you? Location, location, location!
5. I don't think Hoth is right in the asteroid field. The Falcon had to fly for a while before they got to it, and eventually (it seems conceivable that the trip took weeks) made it to Bespin. Even at sublight speeds, space vessels in the Star Wars galaxy have got to be pretty fast. All kinds of junk from space makes its way to Earth's atmosphere every day, and it hasn't stopped us from developing civilization. I don't see why the occasional small meteorite would stop animals from living on Hoth.
It seems that for a couple of scientific types, those guys didn't really ask enough of the right questions. That's all I've got.
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As much as the next scientist, I like to find ways to conduct outreach and bring science to the public. But I have my limits, and Star Wars is about as far from science as you can get. There are plenty of other, better vehicles. We may as well do the "science" of Sex and the City or the "science" of American Idol. Really.
Lucas and/or some non-scientific Hollywood writer types made some shit up that they thought would fly. It's just dumb for scientists to sit around and come up with justifications for it after the fact when so much of it is so dumb to start with. It doesn't serve the cause of education.
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
You can travel fast, in space, but at the price that you're going to be subject to more intense radiation. So, the faster you go, the more effort you need to put in to shielding (by whatever means), which means more mass, which means more energy is needed, which means a larger percentage of the vehicle is going to need to hold engines and fuel. Which means that if you plan on having enough oxygen and supplies to go round, you're going to have less range.
This means that, for any given technology, speed is going to be pitted against range. With chemical rockets and lead shielding, the limits are going to be fairly low, as the effectiveness of the rockets isn't great but the mass of the shields is. With antimatter and some sort of shielding based on QM exclusion, your limits are much higher, but they'll still be there.
You can travel slowly, not get so much radiation, but would need a much larger vessel to do so. In order to maintain the integrity of anything large enough, against little things such as gravity wells or even the inertia when you want to make a turn at the lights, you need more infrastructure, which means more maintenance, which means more of your resources are spent on keeping together than going anywhere.
Now, we've got a minimum constraint - go too slowly, and you won't get there at all. Again, more advanced technology will make for better materials and all that, so this is a moving target, but they'll still have a lower limit.
A similar problem is faced with wormholes, assuming they can be made navigable. You need exotic matter of equal or greater mass than the vehicle planning on travelling. The more massive the vessel, the more exotic matter you need. Unless you're travelling from a fixed station (a-la the book version of "Contact"). you've got to lug around a generator capable of sustaining enough exotic matter that the wormhole doesn't spontaneously collapse along its entire length. And exotic matter doesn't last long - about 10^-30 seconds - so you need to be able to generate an awful lot of it, for long enough to do the travelling.
My proposition, then, was that any given type of technology MIGHT be able to travel between the stars, but that there would be upper and lower limits on how far or how fast. Below some level of achievement in a given technology, the bounds cannot be satisfied - the minimum would be greater than the maximum, so there is no value that will work.
However, there's an upper limit to what any technology can do, too. Antimatter can't supply more energy than the mass-equivalent posesses, no matter how good the conversion, for example. So, some technologies may NEVER be good enough to be used.
My proposition to the class was a simple one. Working from the idea of limits, is it possible to prove that a technology must (or, indeed, cannot, through a non-existance proof) exist that can satisfy all of the constraints?
In other words, is it possible to show that no technology - even technologies we know nothing about - could ever be sufficient to travel between the stars? Or is it possible to imagine such a technology, and perhaps even have some idea as to what properties that technology would need to have to make such travel possible?
The class seemed divided on this, but the answer seemed to be that it was unlikely that such travel was possible. The problem with the limits seemed to be unsolvable, although we couldn't find any obvious way of proving that by reasoning alone.
I suspect the reason aliens AREN'T here (or, if they are, at least not common) is that the difficulties are great enough as to put it beyond the reaches of any but the most advanced, assuming even they can. And by being so difficult, there would be really no interest in visiting a star u
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
WDPUAWTAGTWOTWPA?
(why do people use acronyms when they are going to write out the whole phrase anyway?
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