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Putting Star Wars to the MythBusters Test

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the jamie-i-am-your-father dept.

DangerTenor writes "The cast of the show MythBusters chat about their pasts with ILM, talk about some Star Wars myths (Can you avoid freezing to death in a blizzard overnight by gutting a dead animal like a tauntaun and getting into its carcass?) and why R2-D2 is the perfect sidekick." Not as cool as our interview, but pretty neat.

9 of 386 comments (clear)

  1. That Tauntaun thing... by cnelzie · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...wasn't how they survived the entire evening. It was just to keep Luke warm while Han built the shelter... Geeze.

        (Yeah, I am a Star Wars Geek.)

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    1. Re:That Tauntaun thing... by Fishstick · · Score: 3, Informative

      >those are just interns

      They've elevated the others on the show this season. They used to be referred to as "the build team" or "Myth-terns", but they get billing as "MythBusters" the same as Adam and Jamie this season.

      I don't think you're going to get Kari to crawl inside an animal carcas (she's a veggie). She could hardly stand it when they brought back a pig neck/spine with meat still on it to use inside a ballistics gel model.

      The other thing is they seem to do is go out of their way to get animals that have died on the farm of "natural causes" as opposed to going to a slaughterhouse and carting away a freshly-killed carcass. I kind of doubt they are going to go get a horse or cow and kill it for a myth like this.

      --

      There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
      Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.

    2. Re:That Tauntaun thing... by ArsonSmith · · Score: 5, Informative

      As someone who grew up hunting and skinned many a deer and elk I can say that the insides will stay rather warm for quite some time. While bow hunting you often have to track an animal the next morning because a bow wont kill it right away. While I think Hoth was suppose to be something like -60 or more I know that an Elk will hold heat for well over 12 hours in 0-10degree weather.

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  2. A 50 footer? by Otter · · Score: 5, Informative
    Could you survive a 50-foot fall into a snow bank like Luke Skywalker did?

    Huh? Jamie Pierre just broke the skiing cliff-drop record with a 245-footer in Grand Targhee. I haven't seen the video yet, but supposedly he didn't even land it cleanly. (The New Zealander who previously held the record hit a 225-footer into slush, landing on his back with a backpack full of foam.)

    C'mon, a 50-footer won't even get you into a movie nowadays unless you throw at least a 720...

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  3. Water Phase Diagram by everphilski · · Score: 4, Informative

    Water Phase Diagram

    Note regions VIII-XI. With enough pressure yes, water will solidify. HOWEVER there is a temperature point at which the water will no longer solidify (not shown on this scale although you can see the "liquid dome" is increasing as temperature increases. Eventually if you go far enough to the right there is a point where only vapor exists, regardless of pressure.

    So while GP is correct that pressure will solidify water there is also extreme temperature that will counteract the pressure. One must wonder why water cores don't exist in real life...

  4. Re:The Real Myth by MutantHamster · · Score: 5, Informative
    "English is VSO (Verb Subject Object)."

    No, is not English VSO. Is English SVO. Sound VSO languages retarded.

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  5. Fifty foot fall by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    My dad was in the paratroopers (I was born at Ft Campbell). On one jump, one of his fellow paratrooper's chute didn't open, and neither did the reserve.

    Dad says the fellow fell 2000 feet (divide by three for meters), landed in a muddy, plowed field, and didn't break a single bone! He was in the hospital for his bruises for only 2 days (this was in 1951).

    OTOH my Grandfather worked for Purina, and went four floors down an elevator shaft onto a concrete bottom (roughly fifty feet) in 1959. He lived, but he would have beeen better off if he'd died; he was a complete cripple and severely brain damaged, but he lived. But he didn't land in snow or a plowed, muddy field.

    So yes, it's completely plausable to not only fall fifty feet into a snowdrift, but to get up and ride that funny looking horse.

    -mcgrew

  6. Re:The Real Myth by TekPolitik · · Score: 3, Informative
    Does talking backward smarter make you sound? Hmmmmm?

    As somebody else mentioned already, some languages have the word ordering Yoda uses. Yoda is based on a blend of Japanese mystics, Samurai and martial-arts masters. Guess what word order is used in Japanese.

  7. Re:The lightsaber myth... by SETIGuy · · Score: 5, Informative
    Even the most uninformed fan knows that it's not just the light, but it's plasma being shaped into a cylindrical shape approximately 1 meter in length (according to the Episode III novel) that gives the lightsaber its power. (Yes, and the Force, but let me just talk about the saber for the moment...)

    I have a device that is very much like a light saber that uses no power at all. It consists of a thermal electron plasma which is contained by a matrix of positively charged ions. I can't get it to glow like a "light saber" unless I supply a lot of energy to it, but doing so weakens the ion matrix to the point where it might fail to stand up use.

    Electrostatic repulsion and the strength of the ion matrix prevent it from penetrating another saber of similar design, but the same electrostatic repulsion, when focused to specific parts of the blade, is quite adept at slicing through flesh.

    There is a picture of a saber of the type I describe right here.

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