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Star Wars City Doomed By Sand Dunes

Posted by samzenpus on from the and-nothing-was-lost dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The buildings and set of the fictional city Mos Espa are set to be swallowed by migrating sand dunes in the Tunisian desert. From the article: 'Ralph Lorenz, from Johns Hopkins University, US, together with Jason Barnes, from the University of Idaho, and Nabil Gasmi, of the University of Sousse, Tunisia, visited the Mos Espa site in 2009, and noted that part of a nearby set used in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope had already been overrun. Using satellite images of the site, they were able to determine the speed of dune movement, which is approaching the buildings once inhabited by such luminaries as Anakin, his slave owner Watto, and rival podracer Sebulba.'"

38 of 166 comments (clear)

  1. And then in a thousand years by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Archaeologists will study these homes, and come up with all sorts of explanations for their features or lack thereof.

    1. Re:And then in a thousand years by Teresita · · Score: 4, Funny

      "Sweep the sand out of the garage? But Uncle Owen, I was going to Toshi Station to hang out with Koo Stark!"

    2. Re:And then in a thousand years by tibman · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I thought it was normal for construction workers to take dumps all over the property and unfinished buildings?

      --
      http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
    3. Re:And then in a thousand years by xstonedogx · · Score: 4, Funny

      Or it will lead them to discover Episode I and they will finally understand why the Second Dark Ages occurred.

    4. Re:And then in a thousand years by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Based on the movement of the dune, it looks like it will pass over and within decades the city will be uncovered again.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    5. Re:And then in a thousand years by RabidReindeer · · Score: 2

      I thought it was normal for construction workers to take dumps all over the property and unfinished buildings?

      I understand that when the David Lynch version of "Dune" was filmed in Mexico, they had to sweep cigarette butts, food wrappers, and other such detritus out of the dunes to get that "deep desert" look.

  2. those horrible prequels by KernelMuncher · · Score: 5, Funny

    if only the sand could swallow up those horrible prequels as well . . .

    1. Re:those horrible prequels by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Bad StarWars is like bad pizza; it's better than no pizza and I still finish it.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
    2. Re:those horrible prequels by Seumas · · Score: 4, Informative

      More like all Star Wars is like a bad long-term relationship. Everyone else knows you should get out and experience more things in life. Better things. Far more amazing and creative and imaginative things. Unfortunately, you've invested so much time in it that it is all you know and you stick around taking the whacks and insults rather than venturing out.

    3. Re:those horrible prequels by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      Bad StarWars is like bad pizza; it's better than no pizza and I still finish it.

      It must suck to be starving. Personally, if I met a pizza as bad as the prequels, I'd drive it back to the store and start complaining. I could not finish Episode III. For my money, that was by far the worst of the movies. I had the same feeling for the entire half of that movie that I watched that I had when Legolas went shield-surfing.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  3. Sand dunes caused by set? by MatthiasF · · Score: 4, Interesting

    From the series of photos and shape of the dune, it seems like the set itself altered the wind pattern and caused the very same dune that is going to engulf it?

    1. Re:Sand dunes caused by set? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Dunes are always crescent shaped like that.

  4. Why was the set left? by thorbsd · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why was the set left in the desert? Was the film crew asked to leave it, or could they just be bothered to spend money removing their trash when they were finished shooting?

    1. Re:Why was the set left? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Why was the set left in the desert? Was the film crew asked to leave it, or could they just be bothered to spend money removing their trash when they were finished shooting?

      Because it is a tourist attraction and brings money to the area.

  5. Duned, not Doomed by guttentag · · Score: 2, Funny

    It seems a new hope was duned from the beginning. I thought everything looked a little grainier from Episode IV onward. Hope they can clear things up in the future.

    1. Re:Duned, not Doomed by guttentag · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Dunes don't move that quickly. It took a few years.

    2. Re:Duned, not Doomed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      That's no dune!

  6. Let the city be buried by Scoldog · · Score: 2

    I've was reading a thread last week were some bloke said about how when his dog died, he buried it wearing a paid of swimming googles and a towel wrapped around the dogs neck like a cape. He then went to his shed and got a whole pile of assorted metal pieces and welded them together in a few different collections of strange shapes and parts. Then he buried them around his dog.

    In the future when the dune moves and this city is uncovered, hopefully we could really screw with some archaeologists head!

    --
    This space for rent
  7. Dune by The+Evil+Atheist · · Score: 5, Funny

    That's no dune.

    --
    Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
  8. What??? by HotNeedleOfInquiry · · Score: 2

    They weren't required to restore the dunes to their native state after the shoot?

    --
    "Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
    1. Re:What??? by siride · · Score: 3, Informative

      Which native state would that be? They're always moving, reshaping and disappearing.

    2. Re:What??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Hollywood has left a lot of its garbage lying around over the years. Something I stumbled on this morning was a YouTube video of a guy visiting the site where they filmed the train/bus crash & derailment scene from the 1993 version of The Fugitive. The locomotives and remains of the bus were just shoved off to the side and have been left sitting there for 20 years.

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvizgSKTaVE

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJWdMm8J0lc

  9. The spice flows!!! by rts008 · · Score: 2

    The sandworms are back!

    Oh wait, wrong story.

    Maybe they should have put the Dune set there instead. ;-)

    --
    Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
  10. or watch the movie? more documents than people by raymorris · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I wonder about future historians and archeologists.TThere are now more web pages than people. Several 24/7 news channels document everything in excruciating detail. Will people in the future wonder about anything that happened in the 21st century, or will they merely need to decide which stories are interesting enough to tell in history books?

    With the technologies Facebook is developing and knowledge graphs being pioneered for Google Now, will historians of the future even need to compile narratives, or will Google 3000 interpret the database and narrate the story in real time when you query it? "Siri, tell me about my great-great-great-grandfather."

    1. Re:or watch the movie? more documents than people by osu-neko · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Yeah, the latter is more likely. In the far future, the start of the information age will be considering the effective start of history. Knowledge of events prior to the 21st century will be considered semi-mythical, due to the fact that they weren't recorded at the time and all we have are essentially second hand accounts recorded in files with timestamps from the 21st or late 20th century at the very earliest. They'll (correctly) consider any "historical" texts of time before that as the theories and opinions on history given by later scholars, whereas from the 21st century forward they'll have actual historical records, rather than speculation.

      --
      "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
    2. Re:or watch the movie? more documents than people by Opportunist · · Score: 2

      I'm somehow certain that you won't get an exemption for such petty things like archaeology from the ban on breaking DRM. So... good luck finding a device that can play that content back.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    3. Re: or watch the movie? more documents than people by Simon+Brooke · · Score: 2

      So the writers of the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, for example, were theorising and speculating, were they?

      --
      I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
    4. Re:or watch the movie? more documents than people by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      That's outright bullshit and I can't see how it got modded up with anything besides funny.

      It's going to be the complete opposite. There's going to be a gap in history of things lost due to unreadable formats and hardware failures where the data isn't even there to read, and that's not even counting things like DRM and data in the cloud that just gets deleted when the company fucks up or closes. The loss is can already be experienced daily, and it can pretty much only get worse.

    5. Re:or watch the movie? more documents than people by jbolden · · Score: 2

      Paper records were frequently lost too. Losing 3% of the data per year for a century leaves: 6% behind. 6% of what we produce now is far more than was produced a century ago.

    6. Re:or watch the movie? more documents than people by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 2

      We've already bitten the bullet for early TV show loss because nobody pointed a camera at the broadcast video to capture it, or erased early video tapes after they were finally invented because they needed to reuse those expensive things (hey, it was just a stupid little throwaway play performance, gosh! What the hell would people in the time of flying cars want with it?)

      --
      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
    7. Re:or watch the movie? more documents than people by Sockatume · · Score: 2

      Err, Attic. Attic Attac is something else.

      --
      No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
    8. Re: or watch the movie? more documents than people by AJH16 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Because that is totally different from news reporting today...

      --
      AJ Henderson
    9. Re:or watch the movie? more documents than people by steelfood · · Score: 2

      Yes, the Library at Alexandria burned to the ground. But there are dozens upon dozens of tomes buried under the ground that have survived for thousands of years.

      I guarantee that none of the information stored only in a digital medium will survive in a thousand years, much less two or three thousand.

      --
      "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
  11. Lost something in the desert? No problem... by madmarcel · · Score: 2

    They need one of these...

    http://imgur.com/gallery/7s0ALeF

  12. Mos Espa? Who cares? by ildon · · Score: 2

    Everyone knows Mos Eisley is where it's at.

  13. Disney by Tablizer · · Score: 4, Funny

    Disney's freaking out: "Quick, buy the Dune franchise!"

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  14. God wants to forget the prequels too! by ukemike · · Score: 4, Funny

    Mos Espa? That must be from episode 1. God wants to forget the prequels too!

    --
    -- QED
  15. Re:Location, location, location by rossdee · · Score: 2

    "Who builds in a dune anyway? "

    The Fremen