The Feasibility of Star Wars Tech 712
pwnage writes "Forbes Magazine, not usually the the web's premiere source of all things geekish, has posted an interesting summary of Star Wars technology and its scientific feasibility. As a bonus, they also include a great set of Star Flops, including the infamous Jedi Arena Atari 2600 video 'game.'"
I realize we're talking about Star Wars... (Score:5, Interesting)
He dissects, from a scientific standpoint, some of the common plot elements and familiar staples (such as warp travel, transporters, phasers, etc.) to determine whether they'd be physically possible. An example of some interesting diversions along the way are demonstrating exactly how much data is contained in a human body, and how much bandwidth would be required for a "transporter" to work. It's a fun and interesting read, and includes content that would satisfy anyone from laymen to scientists. Being a fan of Star Trek is a prerequisite, though...
Jedi Arena (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I don't know about their technology... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Jedi Arena (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What the hell? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The Forbes slideshow format ... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Regarding Lightsabers (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Regarding Lightsabers (Score:5, Interesting)
In tight quarters (like on a spaceship), someone armed with a knife actually stands a pretty good chance against someone with a gun. Police officers are trained not to let someone with a knife get within 21 feet of them, because within that radius it's pretty likely that the guy with the knife will cut them before they can draw their sidearm and get off an aimed shot.
In the Star Wars universe, the only reason the Jedi can get away with using lightsabers is because the Force gives them the ability to see a little bit into the future. This lets them block a shot before it's actually fired.
Ok, at the risk of being called a moron (stationar (Score:4, Interesting)
Why can't (in theory, the engineering behind it is another matter) we keep a stationary wave of light with poles coincident with the ends of the blade and thus create a lightsaber? I know it would not *look* like a lightsaber (you wouldn't see the light coming through) but I'm pretty sure that if you could make such a wave, out of ,say, CO2 very powerful laser.... anything that goes in the middle would be badly burned.
thoughts?
Re:Regarding Lightsabers (Score:4, Interesting)
Second, there is a certain "don't fuck with me" value in a hand-to-hand weapon, that tends to intimidate the unintiated. That's one reason why mundane cops carry billy-clubs.
As to whether lightsabres make sense in a physics context [puts on cartoon physics hat] -- one could postulate a "mirror field" that reflects photons, and if you thus capture enough of 'em, you could wind up with enough mass to be "solid", but still with enough energy to burn the crap out of anything it touches.
Re:I realize we're talking about Star Wars... (Score:2, Interesting)
We had to get our topics approved and I was going to write about Star Trek. I got turned down with "Star Trek is science fiction, not science fact" phrase. Well I wasn't going to talk about warp speed or beaming but about communication, computing, and the turbo lift. I forget what topic I ended up with but it really pissed me off.
It pissed me off because he let another kid write about Star Wars with blasters, artificial gravity, and bionic limbs.
Nedless to say, communication as depicted in Star Trek is here and now and computing has far surpassed what was imagined in the 1966 series.
How about the feasibility of their language skills (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What the hell? (Score:2, Interesting)
The worst of it is that this seems to be the standard for articles at Forbes. I've seen several other Forbes links that all work this way over the last few months.
Re:Regarding Lightsabers (Score:5, Interesting)
You know, I'm not even a Star Wars geek and I've gotta mix it up a little on this one...
First of all, the whole idea of the Jedi is that they are not just elite soldiers, they are practically Gods. Before Lucas went with this whole ridiculous "mitochondria" nonsense, the Jedi were basically a religious sect that understood how to harness a mysterious force that nobody else understood. So, first, you're already suspending disbelief to hell and back because you've got to believe that these guys could control time and space to some extent.
Now, once you accept that premise - that these are not just "foot-soldiers" (remember that the regular soldiers all throughout the Star Wars movies just carry blasters, from the droid armies on eps. 1-3 to the Imperial Army and the rebels in 4-6), but instead ultra-elite combination soldiers/priests/shamen/wizards, then you can start to see how on the one hand, conventional weapons would be entirely ineffective against them (something Lucas has demonstrated time and time again), and hand-to-hand fighting would be their most effective weapon against you. Conversely, it is also the only real way to kill them.
The other thing that a lot of people who argue this point seem to miss is that the Jedi do die out in the end! I mean, it is a parallel to what happened in real life to the knights on this planet, and purposely so. It's the end of chivalry in Star Wars just as it was here, and it happens in Star Wars for some of the very same reasons.
Its kind of rediculous to think anyone at all would ever try to engage anyone else in melee weapon combat as a battle tactic.
Unless that's what you're really good at. If you're a trained swordsman who's so good that he can both dodge bullets and deflect them without fail, why wouldn't you try to engage your enemy in melee combat? Your opponent would be basically defenseless in such a situation, unless he was as well-trained in melee combat as you are.
(The best shooter can't do anything more than shoot straight and accurately, so if there was such a person who could deflect bullets with a sword, it wouldn't matter how good of a shooter he was facing - they'd be just as ineffective. The problem is the mass of real swords makes it impossible to use one that way, but that's why light sabers are supposedly made of light... which is a whole other discussion.)
Re:tech talk (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Oh! My Dear Lord!! (Score:4, Interesting)
The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978) [imdb.com] is classic. You can only find bootleg copies of it, but the IMDb site has a link to this site [starwarsho...pecial.com] which is devoted to the show. (There was also a funny April Fool's story about this movie being released on DVD [slashdot.org].)
Re:Sounds in outer space (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Regarding Lightsabers (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:tech talk (Score:3, Interesting)
Look at how many times battles have been fought now where one side never had to look in the eyes of a SINGLE enemy, and yet thousands of the 'enemy' are dead. It used to mean something to go to war. You really had to think hard and long about doing it because you had to go into it FACE TO FACE. You had to live with consequences of your actions. Even to win, you had to loose. That alone made it very VERY unlikely that battles would be fought on a whim.
Now what do we do? We push buttons. People whom are personally responsible for killing dozens or more, never once have to actually deal with those deaths. In my opinion, that is unacceptable, uncivilized, and entirely pathetically cowardly.
I'd rather a world with no war, but I'd take real battles over video game deaths any day.
Just imagine if Bush had to go personally battle all those people in the mid east whose lives he is responsible for ending. Shit, imagine if his soldiers had even had to do that.
Think about it, compare world war 1&2 with every major conflict in the past 25 years. Were the world wars gruesome and horrible? Yes, of course. We took a HUGE toll in those wars. We know EXACTLY what that war cost, and I don't mean financially. What about the more modern battles like the war in Iraq? Nah, no where near as bad right? Bullshit. We just don't hold ourselves accountable for those actions because...well...we're not even there! Out of sight, out of mind.
We will most certainly be the end of ourselves. We're so blind we can't see.
Truth (Score:5, Interesting)
All our science is realtive to our observations up to this point. I would assume that until we find the grand unifcation equation, or the Hitchihikers Guide to the Galaxy, that it's more likely that the fact that we can imagine it, implies (or is it infers in this context)that there is some possibility of it just based on the fact that we can conceptualize it.
Remeber that within some of the readers lifetimes space travel was sciene fiction and impossible. There was such impossibilities as Nukes came to be. Who would, 80 years ago fathomed that 2 softball sized chunks of material could in fact blow a city away? And long before those, the world was flat, the sky a dome, and the stars in the sky jewels set in the dome of heaven by Gods who had nothing better to do then turn into swans and have sex with hotties.
"With one language (math) that which man could imagine was..."
Re:Regarding Lightsabers (Score:4, Interesting)
ground transportation (Score:2, Interesting)
Levitating carts pulled by animals.
Star travel and anti-gravity and they need animals for propulsion?!
Re:Regarding Lightsabers (Score:4, Interesting)
The idea was (as it was explained to me):
1. A couple of guys would go in and kill the guards so they couldn't start any trouble. Then they would wave in the rest of the unit.
2. One group would go in and kill everyone in the barracks so they couldn't interfere with the operation. Since noise wouldn't be a problem anymore, this group would probably use M-60's or SAWs and just chew everybody up.
3. Another group would blow up whatever they were supposed to blow up using C-4 or SMAWs.
4. Everybody would haul ass back to the beach, jump in the zodiacs, and head off to the LPD before the enemy could organize any sort of response.
I don't know if they still train 'em that way, but that's what WE were told our job was.
Luckily, my unit wasn't used in combat, so the issue never came up. At least not while I was in it...
I wonder how they're doing things now? Another poster says marines don't even get bayonets anymore. Shocking!
Best place as any to ask this.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Regarding Lightsabers (Score:4, Interesting)
Firstly, it's silent - or at least a whole lot quieter than gunfire. So it has use when you are infiltrating enemy areas and trying not to alert the whole world to where you are the way gunfire and muzzle flashes do.
Secondly, if you study infantry combat, you'll be suprised at just how often fighting reverts to bashing each other's brains out. Once you get into close quarters, it gets suprisingly hard to shoot somebody. Put a bayonet on the rifle, and now you have a short spear which is a VERY effective close-quarters weapon.
Thirdly, it has been shown time and again that there is a psychological effect to hearing the enemy fix bayonets. It scares the shit out of people. For some reason, being shot is OK, but the idea of somebody jamming a blade into you is much more frightening. There are reports from WW2 of units, holed up in a stong point and awaiting assault, surrendering when they heard the bayonets being fixed - and you can hear that very well, by the way.
We didn't spend a tremendous amount of time training in the use of the bayonet, but we DID train with it.
*thrust* and step and *thrust* and step and *jab* and *buttstroke* and move to next target....
DG
Forbes: Do your research a little MORE! (Score:2, Interesting)
Lightsabers
Not possible? I think most StarWars geeks, physics buffs, and George Lucas already understood the properties of light. That's why most techie sites refer to it as an "wave arc" weapon. Meaning it's not a "laser sword" more of some kind of energy/matter stream that loops onto it self. More probable, yes? PS, with all the ILM technology, why are not the lightsaber shadows removed, hmm?Do a google search on building a lightsaber, lightsaber physics. You'll find ton's of pages.
Hyperdrives
So so SO many theories on this one. Most won't work. Some are really really probable. Yes, look at the Physics of Star Trek [amazon.com]. Read Michio Kaku [mkaku.org]. Do your homework!
3D Spacial Holograms Not Possible?! WHAT! Like almost here! A guy has already built a floating 2D projection monitor. Read this article [impactlab.com]
IO2 Techlology [io2technology.com]
FogScreen Inc. [fogscreen.com]
Let me spell it out for you (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's examine the (hypothetical of course) case where you and I come across each other, and we're both armed.
In most non-open-battlefield encounters, the distance between us is going to be somewhere between 10 to 25 metres.
Let's start with swords. Could be epee, could be sabre, could be katana, could be lightsabre - it doesn't really matter.
Barring misfortune, both of us should be able to unsheath our swords and come en garde before the other could close the distance. At 10m maybe if one of us is an iado expert perhaps that's close enough to attack straight out of the draw.... but in any case, odds are that we we be able to come en garde before closing the distance.
And that means that we will have the opportunity to defend against an attack made by the other. And in swordfighting, defense is stronger than attack - more points are made on the riposte than on the initial attack, as you tend to be more open during the attack than while defending.
That means we are going to have the opportunity to size each other up, come up with a plan, perhaps even *talk* to each other before commiting ourselves to a plan of action. A lot depends on relative skill of course; but if we are similarly skilled and I don't plan on making an attack, I can probably hold you off for quite some time if I restrict myself to defence only. Accordingly, if I decide to wound or disable only, I can withold the attack until such time as an opportunity to wound/disarm presents itself.
If your skill level is higher than mine, perhaps that opportunity will never come. Perhaps my clumsy defence will open up an avenue, and I wind up skewered.
Now same scenario, but we have pistols instead of swords.
This is a different story. There is NO way for me to parry a pistol shot. There is NO need to close distance - at 10m, I can fire 5 shots in 3 seconds and keep all 5 rounds in an 1" circle (at least, I could once upon a time...) At 25m, that circle expands to about 3" - which still fits nicely on your chest. Plus the only physical effort you need to plug me is to point the gun at me and sucessfully pull the trigger - unlike the sword, which requires more physical effort and skill to execute a successful attack.
In this scenario, my only hope is to get my gun on line and firing before you can do the same, and do devestating, incapacitating damage that puts you down and keeps you down, without having the ability to get a shot off at me.
In real-world terms, that means shooting you centre of mass as many times as I can as soon as I can. Bullets are funny; sometimes a little
Now I do have a few other shots availible to me other than just centre of mass. I can shoot for kneecap, hip, head, and the old Western standby, gun.
Shooting at the gun is a ridiculously low percentage shot. I might be able to make that shot if you struck a Charlie's Angels pose and held it for a second or two, but there's no way I'm hitting your gun if it is coming out of a holster and being pointed at me. That only happens in the movies.
Hip and kneecap are attactive because a solid hit on either drops you - and you won't be running after me any time soon. But neither option stops you from shooting me once you are on the floor - or even on the way down to the ground.
And head is lethal, and a lower percentage shot than centre of mass.
That (if you'll pardon the pun) is the double-edge of the gun.