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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.""
...by the Bad Astromer. Still, I can never get enough of nitpicking sessions on Hollywood science. :-)
Human civilization is approx. 4000 years old. In that time we have pretty much closed the technology gap of the vairous tribes of humanity. We can all forge metal, we can all make things move via petroleum based products, we can kill each other with projectiles ect...
In 10,000 the technology gap of a community of star systems that communicate with each other woudl also close. So it's not such a huge issue. Technology doesn't have to spread directly, even the rumor of something being possible can send other cultures into a frenzy to find out how. The stories marco polo brought back from china were more useful then the inventions and products he brought back. It sent europe into a frenzy into trying to mimic these items.
In the proccess of trying to mimic these products they derived their own innovations and advanced further. Over 10,000 this would equilize the technologies of the various intelligent life forms. As for the robots, perhaps innovation in robot designed leveled off long ago and even 100 year old droid are useful. Or AI requires some rare material that is now in short supply so even old droids must be maintained.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Well, that would be largely inevitable or highly improbable.
Survival will be the primary goal of any form of life, and survival will require consumption of resources.
Unless the resources required for two life forms is remarkably different or there is a truly symbiotic relationship, it is quite likely that the two forms of life will be fighting with each other for resources. It may not even be intentional, but survival would require a fight at least at a very abstract level (deer and zebras sharing the same grasslands). And when you introduce complex factors into the equation, you can be rest assured that there will be a need for survival as you move up the food chain.
If you do not kill, you will be killed - this is a very likely scenario, and if sentience is to evolve, it would need safe and secure surivival first and foremost.
Learning to share resources is possible in only one scenario - symbiosis. Otherwise, it is quite unlikely given the nature of life, at least as we know it.
I agree with king-manic that technological gulfs, while huge, could be reduced significantly through interstellar trade. What is more signficant -- and I never see mentioned in these types of discussions -- are the huge gulfs in intelligence and mental abilities. There are going to be species out there that are vastly more intelligent or have incredible memories. In the movies and TV shows, all aliens have pretty much the same brainpower. That's just unrealistic.
Consider the following scenario: a race of technologically advanced reptiles are being attacked by intelligent insects from another world. The insects are more intelligent than the reptiles and have the same level of technological development. The reptiles are fucked unless they can get some help. They approach a world called Earth that contains intelligent bipedial mammals named humans. These mammals show promise but are relatively young and do not have sophisticated technology. They also are highly unpredictable and warlike. Knowing the risks, the reptiles make an offer: if the humans agree to enter the war by serving as tactical officers onboard their warships, the reptiles will provide the humans with advances in medicine, communications, power generation, and warp drive. Humans, eager for a chance to obtain technologies necessary to solve problems on their planet, leap at the chance. The highly-logical insects are used to the methodical, logical battleplans of the reptiles and are baffled by the unconventional tactics of the humans. They are quickly and easily defeated. Fearing they have created a monster, the reptiles quickly sever ties with the humans but not before they have transfered a signficant amount of technological know-how. Within a few decades, humans become a threat to the very reptiles who kick-started their space exploration.
Technology gaps are easily solved. Huge gaps in cognitive function are what make long-duration star wars unlikely.
GMD
watch this
My favorite "among other things" is the existance of life. A couple possibilities on why we haven't seen aliens (apart from those aliens who strangely only visit drunken hillbillies). In a galaxy with probably trillions of planets, where are the aliens? There should be countless species, all with plenty of time and tech to find us.
1) They're trying to conceal themselves from us. Of course, the questions of A) How, and B) Why immediately come up. They're furthered by the questions of "if one species is concealing itself, why are the others as well?", "how are they blocking all life-indicating radio signals/etc from us that originated hundreds, thousands, or millions of light years away?", etc. In short, it's possible, but raises questions.
2) We're the first. Yeay for us - we'll be the evil aliens invading the planets of others to colonize or strip them of their resources (until one of them uploads a macintosh virus into our computer). Of course, the odds against this seems quite extreme.
3) FTL is, sadly, impossible, and all other signs of life (radio, light, death stars blowing up planets, etc) are either taking too long to get to us, or are too weak to be received by the time that they reach us.
4) Life is extremely rare, and we're freaks of the universe. May raise questions about the existance of a deity (or not).
All of these are pretty big issues with a lot of questions associated with them. I'd love to know the answer, although all possibilities are a bit disturbing to me.
P.S. - I don't want to post AC (and am trying first as a different IP, about to give up), but I get this:
Slashdot requires you to wait 2 minutes between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.
It's been 19 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
Sigur RÃs: I didn't know that Heaven had a rock band.
Fighters make sound in a vacuum.
Wrong. The space between stars in Star Wars is not a vacuum. There is evidently some background gas suffusing all of it, although probably not breathable.
Evidence:
1. Vehicles are audible even far from a planet's surface.
2. When the Falcon landed in a "cave" inside a smallish asteroid (1 km radius), Han Solo got out and wandered around without a pressurized space-suit.
3. Small fighter-ships in space combat manuver as if they were airplanes, slicing through a medium which imposes a maximum speed to their movement, rather than being able to accelerate indefinately (until stopped by lightspeed or fuel exhaustion).
Just like Whales and Humans?
What I find extremely odd is that the Gungans breathed atmosphere, yet lived underwater in a seemingly unnatural (i.e. gungan-made) underwater city. Are they just the evolution of a penal colony?
> you've got to figure that with Vader's uberpowers, he'd have
> figured out Leia was his daughter when he captured her
You might as well argue that Yoda, hanging out in Papatine's office in Episode II, should have been able to notice that Palpatine was the Sith Lord. As Mace and Yoda said in Episode II, the Jedi were blind to the Dark Side. Maybe the deal is the dark side and the light side (being "opposite" sides of the Force) cannot see the other without knowing for sure where they should look, and one cannot sense someone with the Force until one has actually met the person.
That would explain why the Jedi would have to have a physical blood test to search for Force-sensitive individuals (Episode I). But once they know who that individual is, they can find them easily (e.g., Yoda finding Obi-Wan and Anakin in Episode II, foreseeing they were in danger from Dooku; Palpatine finding Vader in Episode III foreseeing he was in danger from Obi-Wan; Vader sensing Obi-Wan in Episode IV, etc).
In Episode VI, Vader says that Luke is on the moon of Endor, while Palpatine says that he didn't sense it -- and he questions Vader's "sight". Vader knew that Luke was his son and he had met him before (in Episode V). Vader couldn't "call to" Luke in Episode V until he actually met him; that's why he had to torture Leia, Han, and Chewbacca in Episode V to draw Luke to him.
So until Vader knew that Leia was his daughter (learning this from Luke in Episode VI), he wouldn't have known about it even with her standing right in front of him.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.