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Putting Star Wars to the MythBusters Test
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.
(Yeah, I am a Star Wars Geek.)
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Does talking backward smarter make you sound? Hmmmmm?
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Does the Deathstar run Linux?
Indeed, the pressure *would* be significant, and the water would either be in a solid or supercritical liquid phase - it'd be pretty unlikely that you'd find it possible to drive a submarine through it in either case, though, even if the submarine itself would be constructed to withstand the pressure and temperature at the core.
Of course, IANAP, though, so YMMV.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Practical jokes? I'm thinking the SW angle is an excuse to get Kari into a slave Leia outfit.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
because third grade english, pass I did not.
I kind of like this article on howstuffworks.com, on how light sabers work: http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/lightsaber5.h tm
This is the page on practical uses of the light saber around the home.
"Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. Contrary to what you've just seen, war is neither glamorous nor fun. There are no winners, only losers. There are no good wars, with the following exceptions: The American Revolution, World War II, and the Star Wars Trilogy. If you'd like to learn more about war, there's lots of books in your local library, many of them with cool, gory pictures." -- Bart Simpson
Developers: We can use your help.
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...
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Could you survive a 50-foot fall into a snow bank like Luke Skywalker did?
;)
"It's plausible, depending on the exact conditions," Imahara explains. "You could survive, but you'd be pretty badly hurt. Let's just say you probably wouldn't be jumping up on a tauntaun and riding to the next outpost, if you know what I mean."
*cough*cough*
I must be weird. I just watch the movies and don't talk about them much if at all. Tech and stuff in Star Wars is just too much of a stretch, what I'd refer to as fantasy, rather than Sci-Fi. Trying to explain stuff from Fantasy, down that path madness lies.
so, y'see, if greedo shot first, han wudda been blinded anyway, so...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Can a weapon like a lightsaber actually exist?
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...)
One of the problem has to do with the state of the plasma, often called the fourth state of matter. It is by no means solid, and yet the fact that the lightsaber has a distinct shape when activated and the fact that two lightsabers can clash in a duel mean that there is a solid-like boundary to the blade that is inviolable. On the contrary, often we see the blade cutting through other objects and body parts with frightening ease. (Just ask Count Dooku.)
Which brings me to another issue: The power required to confine the plasma in a blade-like configuration (be it magnetic or otherwise) may well exceed the power to generate the blade in the first place. It seems almost redundant for a weapon of this type to be built, as the builder can control and direct the flow of plasma with a device no more than 30 centimeters in length. As someone else said regarding construction of Dyson Spheres, "If you can build it, you don't need it."
The first Death Star held 27,048 officers, 774,576 crew including troopers, pilots and crewers, 400,000 support workers and over 25,000 Imperial stormtroopers. It also carried assault shuttles, Skipray Blastboats, strike cruisers, drop ships, land vehicles, and support ships as well as 7,200 TIE fighters.
As one can see, it's heavily armed. Imagine a botnet of Death Star zombies!
For surface protection it sported 2,000 Turbolaser batteries, 2,500 ion cannons and at least 700 tractor beam projectors, plus, of course, the superlaser.
There we have it! Anti-spyware protection, anti-virus protection, anti-adware protection... The whole lot!
Clearly, we're talking about Windows.
Join the anonymous, help develop the network: http://www.i2p2.de
Would it be possible to have something as big as a death star? How about Star Destroyers?
Imagine, a Beowulf Cluster of Death Stars.
Purple, because ice cream has no bones.
The tauntaun was already dead.
Of course you could always try washing it...
The deer guts manages to find itself into various areas that is near impossible to wash without taking the car apart. In my case, because I had to drive my car home, enough of the deer stuff got in the ventilation system.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
I'm going to ruin it for you... In episode IV, the Storm Troopers set their blasters for stun and fill the room up with blaster energy (it was represented as concentric circles), and capture Princess Leia. Why on Earth wasn't this the default setting? Much is made in the movies about the Jedi's ability to block blaster fire with their light sabers, (and in Vader's case his hand). It seems like the obvious tactic against a Jedi is set for stun, knock the Jedi out, set for kill, kill the Jedi. No muss, no fuss. But they never do this...
My other sig is extremely clever...
assuming you can use The Force.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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...
by then there weren't any Jedi around. It being a sad ancient religon and all.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
(Personally I suspect some post-Imperial propagandist doctored the data).
I think the real goal would be to dump the animal's viscera and use the large rib cage and fat/hide as a sort of shelter or smelly windbreak. The damp gutsy stuff in an opened-up belly would very quickly be a big old heatsink in the sort of wind and temps portrayed in the movie.
If you really a fun portrayal of this sort of thing, watch the evade-the-British-captors scene in the 1995 version of Rob Roy, starring Liam Neeson. That's a great movie, even without light sabers. Ye Old Ferrous Cutlery does just fine for those Baroque combatants. Tim Roth does a particularly slimy job as the primary villain. Highly recommended.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
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
2000 Turbolasers and 2500 laser cannons isn't that much when you consider the size of the deathstar. A sphere with a diameter of 120km (according to Wikipedia) would have a surface area of over 45,000 sq.km. That leaves more than 10 sq. km. per weapon.
I guess that's why Darth Vader had to send out the TIE fighters...
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"I spent the night in a Tauntaun and all I got was this lousy lightsaber!"
www.linuxpenguin.net
Exactly my thought. However, I'm wondering how they could imitate this kind of situation. Afterall there's no chance they'll kill some animal in some cold place and put one of their interns in it over night. That would be pretty cruel taking into account that it's just done "to be sure"...
My understanding is that Buffalo were shot and gutted as emergency shelters in pioneering days, a bio lean-to, but maybe that's urban, uh no, non-urban myth. Further, that was to get out of the wind and rain, which seems quite plausible, not to get at a blanket of guts which seems to contradict the general survival rule of don't get wet.
As far as getting a Buffalo carcass, that may actually be easily. Some Buffalo are raised and harvested as meat on private ranches. Catalina Island for example, not far from the Los Angeles area, offers Buffalo burgers at some of the local shops.
What's creepier -- flirting with her brother, or flirting with the guards?
as well as 7,200 TIE fighters.
"Sir. We are being attacked by approximately a dozen rebel fighters. But they're so small they're avoiding our turbo lasers"
"Very well. We will attack them ship to ship. Launch 6 Tie Fighters"
"6 sir? You do realise that we have another 7194 don't you?"
"Good point. Get another 3 ready for launch".
Can you survive overnight in a blizzard by gutting a dead animal and getting into its carcass?
"It would have to be a pretty big animal, but have you ever smelled the insides of a dead animal?" Belleci asks. "I think I'd rather freeze to death."
Hmmm, yes I have. It smelled like chicken or fish, depending on whether i was smelling a dead chicken or a dead fish.
Boy, that was a tough one but I think we have that myth busted!
What about ftl (faster-than-light) travel? I think they might want to ask about that.
Weeks of coding save hours of planning
You are right, its not like han squeezed in there too, and as much as Han is the man I doubt he would survive the night out in the opened on Hoth.
Now a side note from a pissed off Star Wars fan. Why is it that R2 has these really cool thrusters in the past (Ep 1-3) but then he falls in the swamp on Dagobah? Why didn't he just fly to land? That has been bothering me since I saw him with the thrusters. Someone please tell me or I will have to personally hunt george lucas down.
No mention of the absolute Worst. Star Wars tech. Ever. I suppose midichlorians are so bad they needn't be dignified with a debunking.
I nearly walked out on Episode I because of them. Reducing The Force to a symbiotic critter in your bloodstream is just plain wrong. I don't know what kind of crack Lucas was smoking when he came up with that concept. But I suspect it would do permanent brain damage, hence the quality of the Prequel Trilogy.
Lack of exposure to this substance would explain why Genndy Tartakovsky actually did a good job on the Clone Wars shorts.
Midichlorians. I hate those guys.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
...Dig a cave in a snowbank, pack the snow down nice and hard, wrap up in as many blankets as you can, and light candles. The temperature will get up around 40 or 50 and you'll be ok. It's an old trick, but a good trick -- snow is an excellent insulator.
:)
An alternate technique, if the snow is deep enough, is to dig a circular pit around a tree, down to the base of the tree, and tie a tarp around the top of the hole to keep the wind out. The snowbank trick is better, though, especially because you can pile up your own snowbank, pack it, and tunnel into it.
Can mobs of various primitive, semi-sentient beings repeatedly defeat large imperial armies (presumably with state of the art training and equipment), by throwing random objects at them?
Can ships exploding in space not only make a lot of noise, but also not annihilate other ships in close proximity?
Can you really cover the same distance in varying numbers of parallax seconds?
Can all religion be explained with symbiotic micro-organisms?
sic transit gloria mundi
...cannibalism is gastronomy.
Bullfighting is like Gladiators and the day it disappears I'll be happy. And I'm Spaniard.
Do ANY of the myths they debunk involve Kari wearing that bronze bikini princess leia wore in Ep 6? If not then I really don't see the point in any further discussion.
And if any of the discussion DOES involve that bikini for GOD sake please take pictures!
Polymorphism -- It's what you make of it.
I assume, for the sake of argument, that the Tauntaun was more-or-less suited to the ice planet envirnment. If it had been out in the elements long enough to die, then Han probably (and reasonably!) figured that Luke had been out in the elements too long already. Thus, his first priority was to put several layers of insulating Tauntaun fat, flesh, and innards between Luke and the elements. Especially since the core of the Tauntaun's torso would be the last thing to cool off, and Luke would stay warmer longer the closer he was to it.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
In their experiments, did they consider that the characters in Star Wars are not human beings, but members of an alien race with unspecified physiologies?
Here in Central Illinois, the story is well known of a circuit riding preacher who was caught out in the sub-sero temperatures of the initial blizzard that started on December 20th, 1830. He managed to survive the night by killing his horse and using it's body warmth. For over two weeks the temperature stayed below -12 degrees F. The article here doen't have that story, but it does describe the conditions that Winter.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
BORING! Why don't we do the first round of tests MY way:
HYPOTHETICAL SATIRICAL SITUATION:
Lab Technician: "Hello, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, are you ready to participate in the test?"
Bush: "I dunno. Guess so."
Cheney: "Get on with it!"
Lab Tech: Yessss.... Allllrighty, then. Here are your implements, gentlemen..." (Hands each of the men a plastic serrated butterknife and a spork).
Bush: "What're these for? Is it lunchtime? I like lunchtime."
Lab Tech: "NOT exactly, although it COULD be. It depends. We'll see how it goes. Ok, gentlemen, in your hands are a plastic picnic knife and spork. Once I leave the room, we'll dial the temperature down to around 50 below, and you'll use your implements to cut open and prepare a large, hairy animal to use as an emergency sleeping bag. We'll open the doors in the morning. Good luck!" (dashes out of the room and slams a door).
Cheney: "Hey, FUCK YOU! What the hell's going on around here? This was supposed to be a meeting with lobbyists!"
Bush: "I'm ascared, Mr. Cheney. Somethin's not right around here..."
Cheney: "Oh, for God's sake, grow a spine already. HEY! LAB NERD! WHAT ARE YOU UP TO UP THERE??"
Lab Tech (in a glass enclosed observation deck): "Ah! You noticed me! Well, I'm preparing your sleeping bag."
Cheney: "What the hell are you babbling about?"
Lab Tech: "Look to your left, gentlemen, I'd like you to meet Mama Jones. She's a 1,000 pound polar bear who has been chased out of her environment by your energy policy. She hasn't been fed in several weeks and we've put her cubs in a room a few hundred yards from here. We took the liberty of spraying you with some of their scent, just to make things more interesting."
Bush: "Wait; you what?"
Cheney: "Bullshit! This is nuts. Open the door or I'm going to rip your nuts off and feed them to you!"
Lab Tech: "That's the spirit! Well, good luck, gentlemen. Ah, here's Mama Jones now."
Mama Jones: "ROOOOOAOR!"
Lab Tech (to fellow grad students): "Ok, I've got twenty to one that Cheney shoves Bush at the bear within the first five minutes, do i have any takers? Yes! Apu, for fifty! I can cover that...
Sound of music? Yes, that's quite a good idea, really. I'd finally be able to find out once and for all if the absurd myth of children obeying other people can possibly be true.
I always wondered why Luke didn't just stick his light sabre in the snow to create a nice, toasty light sabre Jacuzzi.
No Inflation Taxation without Representation
Questions for you as a Spaniard:
While I would rather skip the bullfight also, my ethical sense says that a winning bull should go to pasture (like a few lucky turkeys here in the States that get a "pardon" from the President every year), and that a losing bull should get eaten rather than wasted - as pet food if health regulations won't allow it for human consumption.
Things to know about Chuck Norris: 1. Chuck Norris' tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried. 2. Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits. 3. Chuck Norris is currently suing NBC, claiming Law and Order are trademarked names for his left and right legs. 4. The chief export of Chuck Norris is pain. 5. Chuck Norris defines love as the reluctance to murder. If you're still alive, it's because Chuck Norris loves you. 6. Chuck Norris isn't hung like a horse. Horses are hung like Chuck Norris. 7. If you can see Chuck Norris, he can see you. If you can't see Chuck Norris you may be only seconds away from death. 8. Rather than being birthed like a normal child, Chuck Norris instead decided to punch his way out of his mother's womb. 9. There are no disabled people. Only people who have met Chuck Norris. 10. Chuck Norris can win a game of Monopoly without owning any property. 11. There is no theory of evolution, just a list of creatures Chuck Norris allows to live.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." ~The Honorable Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Thank you
> Instead, Lucas et al came up with the concept of a laser beam focused through some special crystal. Uh huh. Yeeeeaaah. Good idea, George.
Funny you can pull something out of your butt and label it "better" than something pulled out of someone else's butt. OK, then my take is that firing a laser beam through this special crystal causes a plasma, EM or gravitic reaction in the crystal that creates the energy field we see as the "blade". That works just fine, eh?
> And what about "midichloreans"???
I like to look at midichloreans as a kind of "18th century elements" view of the Force. Back in Earth's past, scientists believed that there were only four elements, those being earth, air, fire and water. Drilling a hole produced heat, they said, by releasing the fire element from the material. It was workable, fit the evidence they had at the time, and turned out to be entirely wrong. The fact that Yoda and Obi-Wan never mentioned midichloreans to Luke late in their lives seems to indicate that they discovered that this view of the Force was incorrect, and therefore they rejected it, but in the old Republic's Jedi heyday, it was a popular theory.
Virg
I believe this is precisely what they were insinuating.
I don't necessarily *like* it, but it does seem to be what they were insinuating.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.