Science and Star Wars · 2:33pm Dec 30th, 2015
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away—or maybe not—master world-builder George Lucas crafted a new type of fairy-tale universe where the laws of physics were uniquely tailored to provide the maximum entertainment value for cinema-goers.
Most universes are decidedly uncooperative in this respect. To start with, in our own, sound does not travel through the vacuum of space, as it is transmitted by the vibrations of air molecules. But if you want to make a blockbluster space epic, that won’t do at all! How can we enjoy the whoosh of passing starships, the zap of laser blasters, the beeping of cute droids, and the elephant call of TIE fighters? Got to fix that.
Having fixed sound, it’s time to move on to light. In our world, light travels at—well—the speed of light. Laser weapons would look instantaneous to humans. An observer to the side wouldn’t see a beam passing through space unless there was an enormous amount of dust to scatter the light. And anyway it would make more sense to use invisible radiation for a laser weapon.
That’s no good. You want your laser guns to shoot nice bright pulses, moving slow enough for the audience to follow, and colour-coded so you know whether they came from one of the good or bad guys. Fixed. Now having mastered the art of controlling light, you can introduce the ultimate weapon in Star Wars cool—the lightsaber. Why use efficient weaponry when old-style fencing is so much cooler? You just need to command your light beam to stop after a metre or so, and make it forget that light does not interact with other light. It would be very boring if the lightsabers just passed through each other.
Now turn your attention to spaceship trajectories. An amateur world-builder might be tempted to stick to Newtonian dynamics and let objects keep moving in a straight line unless acted upon by an external force. When they want to turn, spin your ship around, fire your thrusters in the opposite direction, and let it decelerate to a halt, then accelerate in the other direction.
That’s way too boring! You want your fighters to do cool bank-turns like the aircraft in WWII dog fights. No doubt the Stormtrooper pilots are specially trained to perform such stunts as if they were flying in an atmosphere, as the Empire (or First Order) understands the importance of style.
What exciting new physics-defying magic do we get in The Force Awakens? Recharging the New and Improved Death Star by sucking the energy out of the sun (until it goes dark) deserves a mention. So does that convert all the hydrogen in a star to heavier elements in a few minutes?
Altogether, it was a fun film. I fully recommend it, unless you are bothered by small details like having a plot with more holes than Queen Chrysalis. Although if that does bother you, go and see it anyway, then you can have hours of fun telling everyone on fimfiction what’s wrong with it.
Heh! Well, Star Wars has never been realistic sort of SF, and hasn't pretended otherwise either.
More importantly, what were they going to do after that?
Aside from the fact that they now have no ammo, don't they need that to... not die?
The thing with Star Wars, is that it is pure fantasy. IN SPACE of course, but honestly Science Fiction really doesn't fit the films at all. Science Fantasy is probably the term that would be used, but really the Science part of that just isn't there. And that's okay! If you wanted speculative science fiction you would watch Star Trek. I have heard people wonder why some people favour Star Wars so heavily, and other favour Star Trek, with the implication, (unless they just outright state it) that they are both very similar, when they really only have the whole space thing in common. Star Wars really has far more in common with Dune, or even LotR.
But hey, I love me some fantasy, and I love cool looking space planes. Star Wars just does it for me. I cannot wait to finally see the new film.
(Though I do love Star Trek too. Just sayin'. 
)
You can pretty much do all the light show stuff with plasmas, not light.
As for the so called Newtonion, they use thrusters, you just dont have gas particles ejecting and glowing when you have a space drive that a low powered hyperjump.
Of course they are pushing against smething. They are pushing aganst spacetime, just like matter, energy, gravity.
Taking a whole star is rediculous. They can already take out a planet, why turn the weapon down?
unexcusedabsences.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/caution-rant.jpg
I'm not up to speed on all the Star Wars tech, but I do believe their weapons aren't supposed to be lasers at all.
And then there are the people who try to explain Star Wars from a scientific point of view...
They're fun to argue with.
Done and done!
3651778
Science fantasy is merely fantasy that tries to pretend the bullshit things they pull are powered by sufficiently advanced technology. Of course, we all know that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
About lasers, the weapons in Star Wars, do not seem to be lasers at all:
George Lucas is not a physicist, but he knew what he wanted. Reverse-engineering the weapons based on visual and audio evidence seems to lead to the conclusion that the weapons are almost all jacketed plasma:
If it fires something, it is a ball of plasma in a forcefield. The forcefield collapses on impact, thus releasing the plasma.
Lightsabers seem to be ellipsoids of plasma in a forcefield allowing nonionized matter to penetrate and touch the plasma. The forcefields repel other forcefields, so one can stop a lightsaberblade with another lightsaberblade.
I wrote about the new movie. It is horseapples:
My review of the movie.
Physics is a wonderful thing. Thanks for the post ;)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zt4h9YmCJQU