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How Star Wars Trumped Star Trek For Scientific Accuracy

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the set-phasers-to-awesome dept.

An anonymous reader writes "When George Lucas added the 'ring around the Death Star' effect to his 1997 re-release of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, the revision was almost as hated as Greedo shooting first, and to boot was seen as a knock-off of the seminal 'Praxis effect' in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991). But a debunking astronomer claims that the Federation got it wrong and the fan-boys should thank Lucas for adding some scientific accuracy to his fictional universe."

14 of 495 comments (clear)

  1. FanFight! by _Sprocket_ · · Score: 4, Funny

    Cue the guys with pointy latex ear extensions flipping off the guys with the neon glowing plastic swords.

    1. Re:FanFight! by killmenow · · Score: 4, Funny

      The only problem is the most interesting fan fights will be argued in Klingon and whatever the fuck Chewbacca's language is called so nobody outside of the master debaters will understand a word.

  2. Hadn't Noticed by Rary · · Score: 4, Funny

    Ring around the Death Star? Greedo shooting first? You mean, people actually watch the butchered editions of Star Wars?

    I had no idea.

    --

    "You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein

    1. Re:Hadn't Noticed by PincushionMan · · Score: 3, Funny

      Your copy from Chinatown does not count.

  3. Yeah, that bullshit by hsmith · · Score: 3, Funny

    Just made Star Wars totally unrealistic.

    1. Re:Yeah, that bullshit by psyclone · · Score: 4, Funny

      VrrrrrWhooosh!

      (That's the "sound" of a TIE fighter flying over your head, in space.)

  4. Re:But the real question is: by oodaloop · · Score: 5, Funny

    Neither, due to mismatched physics.

    http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1759

    --
    Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
  5. Re:I don't care about science in this case by Minwee · · Score: 4, Funny

    Acceptable? Getting rid of the matte outlines that were visible in VHS Star Wars IV. Not acceptable? Adding a CGI tauntaun.

    Of course not. Everybody knows that the Tauntauns all live on Hoth, and they didn't even go there until episode V.

  6. Re:And So Offered Another Inaccuracy by mcgrew · · Score: 4, Funny

    How Vi trumped Emacs!

    Have I been here too long?

    --
    Free Martian Whores!
  7. Re:Greedo shooting first is far more hated ... by Opie812 · · Score: 3, Funny

    The other problem with having Greedo shoot first is that they were, what . . . about 2-3' feet from each other? Across the table? Greedo is an experienced bounty hunter. How the hell does he miss from that distance??

    He likely went to the same shooting range as every stormtrooper in the galaxy.

    --
    I'm not a nerd. Nerds are smart.
  8. Re:And So Offered Another Inaccuracy by spazdor · · Score: 5, Funny

    I think you must've been! C'mon out of your vault, the war is long over and we all use nano now.

    --
    DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
  9. Re:And So Offered Another Inaccuracy by Red+Flayer · · Score: 3, Funny

    Maybe it's just nostalgia for summers of library cards and fishing poles.

    What did you use the fishing poles for? To reach the books on the high shelves, to lift the librarians skirt, or something else entirely?

    --
    "Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
  10. Re:Greedo shooting first is far more hated ... by Kehvarl · · Score: 3, Funny

    Greedo missing from 3 feet away, stormtroopers unable to hit anything, and Obi-wan's comment "Only Imperial Stormtroopers are so precise," can all be explained away by another of Kenobi's comments: "...clumsy or random as a blaster."

    From all this, I can only conclude that "blasters" have an intentionally random directional shift applied each time the weapon is fired. Such randomness would mean that they constitute a galaxy-spanning game of Russian roulette, and would also make them ideal terror weapons.

    This feature can be used to explain the Stormtrooper precision based on the standardization of their equipment. If all Imperial blasters have an identical random-deflection-generator installed and seeded with the same value, then shots taken at the same time would have identical deflection and all strike the same area, despite having completely unpredictable accuracy.

  11. Re:And So Offered Another Inaccuracy by MadKeithV · · Score: 5, Funny

    So you are saying it's an Eastern?