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...
Hey (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I realize we're talking about Star Wars... (Score:4, Funny)
What I want to know is: What kind of offspring do Kirk and the Green Woman have?
Re:I realize we're talking about Star Wars... (Score:5, Funny)
I... don't know. But... it would... talk like... this!
Re:I realize we're talking about Star Wars... (Score:3)
With out the random highlights it just doesn't read like he says it.
Re:I realize we're talking about Star Wars... (Score:5, Funny)
[Somewhere in space, ca 2400 AD]
"Captain, the screen reads Downloading...\|/-\|/-\|/-\|/ 37% # Connection aborted."
"Scotty, what happened down there?"
"Just a minor glitch. I'll have it repaired in about 2 hours."
"Sir, if I may interject. Sensors indicate that someone is war trekking in this part of the galaxy."
"So you're saying that someone else got the other 63% of that new guy in the red shirt? KHHAHHAHHAHHAHANN!"
What the hell? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What the hell? (Score:5, Informative)
To stop the slide show click the stop button. Oh yeah, it starts the slide show _again_ when you click the "next" button. So to read the article you have to click "stop" every time you click "next" or "Previous". One of the most mis-featured pages I've ever seen!
It's not a bug, it's a feature (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What the hell? (Score:5, Funny)
I second the motion that this is a true atrocity of web design.
Re:What the hell? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What the hell? (Score:3, Funny)
Never underestimate the power of the FORBES
Re:What the hell? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What the hell? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What the hell? (Score:5, Informative)
Here are the links to each slide (Score:3, Informative)
http://forbes.com/technology/2005/05/10/cx_mh_star warscienceslide.html [forbes.com]
http://forbes.com/technology/2005/05/10/cx_mh_star warscienceslide_2.html [forbes.com]
http://forbes.com/technology/2005/05/10/cx_mh_star warscienceslide_3.html [forbes.com]
http://forbes.com/technology/2005/05/10/cx_mh_star warscienceslide_4.html [forbes.com]
http://forbes.com/technology/2005/05/10/cx_mh_star warscienceslide_5.html [forbes.com]
There is a slide 6 but it's devoid of usefu
I don't know about their technology... (Score:5, Informative)
Man, I love the way that guy writes, so seriously
Re:I don't know about their technology... (Score:5, Interesting)
Regarding Lightsabers (Score:5, Insightful)
"The combination of medieval chivalry and modern lethal technology is pretty ridiculous," says Wilczek. "In real history, gunpowder--or even good crossbows--pretty much put knights out of business."
And therein lies one of the problems I've always had with Star Wars and Star Trek. Are you telling me that in a world with hand-held weapons that can supposedly level/vaporize small mountains you are going to pull out your bat'leth or lightsaber and duke it out hand to hand? Heck -- forget the hand phasers/blasters -- you could kill them from orbit fairly easily with either SW or ST level technology.
Yeah, yeah, I know, dramatic license and effect. I miss Babylon 5. Wait -- they had the Minbari using melee weapons too. *Sigh*
Re:Regarding Lightsabers (Score:2, Funny)
Uh huh...And then I suppose you're going to tell me they could make a planetoid thing that can blow up other planets, too, right?
Re:Regarding Lightsabers (Score:2)
Uh huh...And then I suppose you're going to tell me they could make a planetoid thing that can blow up other planets, too, right?
Actually I have a hard time buying the Death Star just on the basis of the sheer amount of energy it would take to completely destroy an Earth-like planet. Somebody calculated it out once -- it would take the entire output of the Sun for one week. I don't see how you can possibly generate that much energy and still be within the laws of physics.
But as far as killing people f
Re:Regarding Lightsabers (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Regarding Lightsabers (Score:3, Informative)
Moff Tarkin and Darth Vader placed a tracking beacon on Han's ship. They then had to allow them to escape in order to track the ship back to the rebel base. The deathstar is a huge place. After falling into a gabage compator and ending up on some unknown level they were able to find their way back to the ship rather quickly. This was because the stormtroopers were hearding them back to the hanger. They we
Re:How So? (Score:3, Informative)
The D-5 guidance system is also due for an update in the next few years, IIRC, to shave a bit more off of that number. Even at 90m, though, that's an impressive accuracy for firing at something you can't see from 12,000km away.
Re:Regarding Lightsabers (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Regarding Lightsabers (Score:4, Insightful)
Now in the case of the Bat'leth seems much less feasable given it's size. I mean a good knife isn't going to be over 12 inches total. That's easy to carry, and easy to use for non-combat operations. A bigass curved sword really isn't, you can't do much fine work with it and it's big enough to be a significant problem to carry.
Re:Regarding Lightsabers (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Regarding Lightsabers (Score:5, Funny)
Next question?
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
Re:Regarding Lightsabers (Score:4, Informative)
First, when you're trying to infiltrate an enemy base, or you're stuck behind enemy lines and have to get past somebody, or you see an enemy who hasn't seen YOU yet -- in other words, you have to kill an enemy quietly and quickly -- the safest, most effective way to do this is with a sharp knife (I'm not going to go into the actual how-tos, but we trained on, and practiced, several good ways of doing this).
There WERE ways of doing this without a knife, but they were a lot trickier. For example, if you have some wire, you can make a garrotte, but that kills more slowly and the target might get a shot off, bringing all his friends down on you. Or you can break his neck in one of a few ways, but if you screw up the guy's gonna be pissed and try to kill you, or at least make a ton of noise and let his friends do it for him.
Also, as far as "utility uses" you forgot boobytraps. Hard to sharpen a punji spike with your rifle...
Finally, supposedly, during Viet Nam something like 50% of the firefights fought in jungle locations had at least SOME hand-to-hand component. It's really easy to close the distance when you can't see too far. This is why bayonet training is still considered important. It's kind of like staff fighting, but more streamlined.
I'm quite delighted to say that my unit wasn't actually used in combat, so I never had to actually DO any of this... It was all pretty gruesome, very gory.
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!
Re:Regarding Lightsabers (Score:4, Informative)
Anyway, several interesting highlights:
One Army guy dropped the pistol he was showing us, and a smartass in my unit yelled "follow it down!" (meaning he'd better just go ahead and get started on those push-ups).
Another fired an AK-47, but couldn't control the climb and ended up firing half the rounds into the air. There was some scattered laughter.
One of our guys fired a Dragon (I think that's what it was, it was way bigger than a SMAW), but the wire broke and the missle went haywire, slamming into the ground only about a hundred feet away. Nobody was hurt, but it was kind of cool and weird.
An LAV-25 shot the hell out of an old rusty Amtrak, with the announcer quipping, "By the way, boys, you'll be riding to the beach in those." Meaning the Amtracks, not the LAV's. We didn't laugh at THAT one.
Finally, and this was cool, an old Staff Sergeant walked up to the firing line with an M-60 (the newer model, with the forward handle) and fired off about a hundred rounds, standing, with the weapon under his arm. The rounds hit in a perfect, horizontal arc about a hundred yards out, near the Amtrack. He'd been a machine gunner for years, and was now a trainer.
It's possible. I've fired them during cross-training (I was a mortarman), although I did it from prone, and I didn't think the recoil was that bad. Shoulder was a little sore afterwards, that's all.
They're not quite as impressive as they are in the movies, but they DO make that great "thump thump" sound. And they're really accurate. We used to trace into targets six hundred yards away within a second or two.
They're nice weapons.
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:Regarding Lightsabers (Score:3, Insightful)
How do you kill a jedi with blaster fire? Shoot 3 or more blaster shots at them. Most jedi use a single saber so they could block two at the same time but not 3+. For jedi with more than 1 saber just shoot 2n+1 bolts at them. Or just toss a bomb next to them. I don't understand why they don't have hand grena
Re:Regarding Lightsabers (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, I never really understood the whole "Midichlorian Bashing" nonsense that prequel haters continuously spout. All it does is give a name and a little elaboration on what we already knew from the OT:
Obi-Wan: It is an energy field created by all living things
Yoda: Life creates it, makes it grow.
Qui-Gon: Midi-chlorians are a microcopic lifeform that reside within all living cells... Without the midi-chlorians, life could not exist, and we would have no knowledge of the Force. They continually speak to us, telling us the will of the Force.
Noone bitched or moaned when Both Yoda and Obi-wan mention a link between Life and the Force. But as soon as Qui-gon gives a name to that link, all the fair-weather-fans start rioting in the streets.
Re:Regarding Lightsabers (Score:3, Informative)
The other odd thing is that it should be possible to disengage a block by turning your light saber off momentarily or shortening it. It also shouldn't matter how much momentum a light saber has when making a cut, so fights should look like fencing matches, where
Re:Regarding Lightsabers (Score:3, Insightful)
(Someone nerdier than me can feel free to correct me if I missed something)
Re:Regarding Lightsabers (Score:3, Funny)
Just like Han Solo. Although he wasn't a Jedi, he was still DEFENDING himself! Oh, wait, nevermind....
And there's more.... (Score:4, Informative)
You can choose to just defend with it - protect yourself without threatening your opponent.
You can also selectively wound with it as well, giving you the ability to disarm (heh, literally) your opponent without killing him. As a lightsabre cauterizes as it cuts, the opponent won't bleed to death (although I bet he goes into shock pretty hard...)
It can also be used as a general purpose cutting tool - good for cutting through doors, cables, or whatnot.
By comparison, a gun (or blaster) is an all-or-nothing deal. You can kill with it by blowing a hole in someone... and that's about it. You cannot parry with a gun. It's nearly impossible to selectively wound with a gun. And aside from its intended purpose, a gun can't do anything else.
The gun's big advantages are ease of use (a gun does not rely on the strength or size of its wielder, at least not for reasonable calibres), its ability to kill at an extended range, and its near-unblockability. But given that Jedi can parry gunfire with their lightsabres (neat trick, that - how do you practice?) and are trained enough that "ease of use" isn't a factor... the lightsabre starts to look pretty good.
In real life, sword loses to gun at all except close quarters - especially if the gun wielder doesn't know the sword is there. But against all other weapons, the sword's ability to parry and defend without necessarily inflicting lethal damage make it pretty attractive.
DG
Re:And there's more.... (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, but the phaser...
You could blast through things, use it to heat a rock for warmth, stun, hit somebody over the head with it...
Re:And there's more.... (Score:3, Informative)
I guess you've never seen Star Wars, where Luke trains with a hovering droid on the Millenium Falcon?
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.
Re:Regarding Lightsabers (Score:2)
There's plenty of scope for chivalry and general heroics in an environment of lethal ranged weaponry. The flying aces of world war 1 -- the tank aces of world war 2 -- the assassins of the Cold War -- the mercenaries of the Biafran war -- the guy that just manages to sprint to within grenade distance of a machine-gun nest.
As long as the two sides are roughly evenly matched, there's scope for both honor and ingenuity in deciding the conflict. It's only when the sides are mismatched that it becomes a metho
Re:Regarding Lightsabers (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Regarding Lightsabers (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Regarding Lightsabers (Score:3, Informative)
Vulcan, from "Baron Munchausen" (Score:5, Insightful)
It kills the enemy. All of the enemy. And allof his family, and all of his oxen, and all of his cattle, and all of his manservents, and all of his maidservents...
The point of WMDs, be they yielded by nations or terrorists, (distinction left to the reader) is that they conquer nothing, because they leave nothing. If there's a good purpose, they demoralize the enemy into surrendering, and prevent further bloodshed. The fearsome thing about the neutron bomb was that it would make nuclear war practical again, which was why Jimmy Carter cancelled it.
Re:Regarding Lightsabers (Score:5, Insightful)
Since the Jedi have superhuman reflexes (possibly due to premonition skills if Qui-Gon's explanation in Episode 1 is to be accepted), hand-to-hand combat is commonly decided in their favor vs. a small number of armed opponents. However, as will likely be seen in Episode 3, the Jedi fall when systematically hunted down by large forces. When they no longer enjoy backing by the ruling powers, they are reduced essentially to the Star Wars version of ronin (rogue samurai), who are deadly in single combat, and influential in reputation (and in the case of the Jedi, powerful in the supernatural skills they learn), but aren't a formidable military force.
(as for the Minbari, a similar thing is the case; the Rangers were not front-line troops, but rather couriers, clandestine agents, later diplomatic representatives, etc; the "Warriors" had suitably high-tech weapons)
Re:Regarding Lightsabers (Score:3, Funny)
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.
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:Regarding Lightsabers (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Regarding Lightsabers (Score:5, Informative)
We have tactical nuclear weapons right now, but we do not use them because of social forces. The use of depleted uranium in ordnance is highly controversial, to say the least. The same went for the crossbow for some time. It was internationally recognized as an "unethical" weapon, and those who went against the social stricuture were likely to find themselves in a world of enemies for having done so.
Read about the Battle of Thermopylae. Yeah, ultimately the 300 Spartans, who eschewed the use of bows on chivalric grounds, were cut down by archery fire, but not until the battle had raged hand to hand for some days. There was a purely social aversion to winning with archers, even amongst those who valued and used them. Relying on them impuned ones ablity to win by merit of force.
It was considered important not simply to win, but to do so by physically beating the crap out of your opponant, and Xerxes only resorted to archers when the 300 proved an embaressment by successfully opposing his hundreds of thousands by pure might of arm. In other words the embaressment of using archers eventually became a lesser embaressment than than being shown to be physically (and by implication, morally, in a might makes right society) weak.
The first known military unit commisioned and armed with handheld firearms was formed in the early 1300s. The knightly orders lasted for another 300 years or so, and the concepts of chivalry were at their peak at that later time.
And then they fell. Almost overnight. Not because of the existence of crossbows and firearms, but because there was a great change in society that made chivalry a pathetic and dead concept. Even the concept of an aristocracy was dealt a mortal blow, and it should be noted that projectile weapons are weapons of the "masses."
We call that social change "The Plauge."
KFG
Yes and no (Score:3, Informative)
There's a reason why in all independence war movies you see them walking up to 100 paces, lining up, firing from there, then charging with the bayonets. Because that was the range of those muskets, and even at that range it was so inaccurate as to make the whole thing mostly for suppression.
It also took a long time for those guns to start to penetrate a knight's armo
Re:Regarding Lightsabers (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Regarding Lightsabers (Score:2)
The only place that needs Badgers is Wisconsin.
Re:Regarding Lightsabers (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Regarding Lightsabers (Score:5, Funny)
i.e. Luke learned to whine in the wild. The tots probably were trained in the ancient Jedi skills of nagging to get what they wanted.
Oh! My Dear Lord!! (Score:5, Funny)
The Jedi Arena!! Two rectangles swinging sprites at an orange glob!!!
Christmas in the Stars!! featuring "What Can You Get a Wookiee for Christmas (When He Already Owns a Comb?)" and R2-D2 dishing out "We wish you a Merry Xmas"!!!
It all makes sense now!!!
But LUMPY!!! If I ever came up with a character name as "Lumpy", I would wilfully get eaten by a Dianoga [starwars.com]!!
Re:Oh! My Dear Lord!! (Score:3, Funny)
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].)
cute slideshow. (Score:5, Funny)
That slideshow could make the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs.
ummm (Score:2, Funny)
What the... (Score:5, Funny)
A LONG TIME AGO IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY...
It's already happened, thus it's feasability is already established.
Re:What the... (Score:3, Funny)
It doesn't say that Galaxy was in our Universe. Could have been in a completely different Universe where the laws of physics are slightly different, allowing for photos to interact somehow.
Maybe it takes place in the Universe where flightless birds are not affected by the laws of gravity, but witless canines are only when they realize they're not standing on solid ground.
Jedi Arena (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Jedi Arena (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Jedi Arena (Score:2)
tech talk (Score:5, Funny)
And Ben Kenobi referred to laser beam swords weapons of a more civilized age.
I dunno, if blasters are supposed to be "more random", how come Jedis are still able to block their shots?
This makes as much sense as Chewbacca, a wookie, living with Ewoks on Endor.
Re:tech talk (Score:2, Insightful)
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 ve
Re:tech talk (Score:2)
Yeah, beheading someone with a laser sword is very civilized. You have the honour of watching someone die while covered in their blood. It's so civilized, indeed.
Re:tech talk (Score:4, Interesting)
"humans will suffocate at speeds exceeding 30mph" (Score:2)
Maybe in a thousand years . . . (Score:5, Funny)
"Twenty miles . . . twenty miles . . . twenty miles. Eight thousand cube miles of rackspace, powered by fifty sub-atomic reactors, all designed to respond to the subconcious urges of the ancient Krell web-surfers."
Stefan
Gluons are not what lightsabers are made of (Score:5, Funny)
Lightsabers are not lasers or simply light, they are directed concentrated energy fields that can cut better than a Ginsu knife.
A better reason for saying lightsabers are not feasible is due to the problems encountered when accidentally firing up one. Many Jedi and Sith limbs have been lost due to carelessness and showing off. Lightsaber safety is a serious issue, and people should not dismiss their potential dangers!
Re:Gluons are not what lightsabers are made of (Score:4, Funny)
Obvious link (Score:2)
The Forbes slideshow format ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Have they ever actually done any usability studies on it?
ObTopic: I always assumed a "real" lightsabre would be something closer to magnetically-bottled plasma, which would explain its ability to deflect other lightsabres.
Glad It Is Nearly Over (Score:4, Insightful)
It would have been nice to have lived through only one Star Wars flood of commercial crap, but instead we have had to live through decades of Star Wars toys, drink cups, board games, etc.
I'm glad it is nearly over. Now I only have to tolerate the nostalgia periods that will pop up every decade or so.
Sounds in outer space (Score:5, Insightful)
Never quite go over this. However, the 1968 movie 2001 space odyssey, got it right!
Re:Sounds in outer space (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Sounds in outer space (Score:3, Insightful)
Also along those lines in X-Wing and Tie Fighter, your ship manuvers more like a plane or a sub than a spacecraft. Your engines must be on to continue forward motion, otherwise you'll slow to a stop as though there was friction. If you alter your course, your old momentum dies out quickly and you are moving only in the direction you ar
Re:Sounds in outer space (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, and another thing that annoys me...where's all that damn music coming from?
Seriously, that's what we call dramatic license.
Re:Sounds in outer space (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Sounds in outer space (Score:3, Funny)
wow, engage bs factor 8 (Score:5, Informative)
he doesn't get it, they aren't "made of light", they just look like they are. take a 1mK ion source, have it output out of the long end, give the blade a very strong magnetic field that bends that ion stream along the blade but does not touch it. place a weak magnet on the hilt to reabsorb the ions to be charged again.
a. this thing would probably about as hot as the sun, so touching would be double-plus ungood, even on the hilt. the charged ions would repel each other like in the movies, as long as the charge density was high enough.
b. omfg the power needed would be huge to create a blade of any intensity, ion plasma streams have been created in a tokamak, but not for any length of time or intensity, so youd need a serious cryonic ion storage tech, and that would be used up fast, and youd still get an arc-ing effect if it came near anything. think ball-lighting on crack.
c. i doubt you could move it easily, and if it touched a solid object the charge would be dissipated and the blade and other object would explode... a lot.
so the photon blade idea, no, and the gluon idea was pure 100% columbian grade crack from someone who never finished reading that neat book about physics, cause gluons don't really work that way. i'm sure someone could fix the engineering problems i have so far with a little effort.
Come on! (Score:4, Insightful)
Last I checked.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I read the first slide about these, and I loved the comment about how it isn't possible to make light do things without a large gravity source or some thing to redirect it through.
That being the case then... Why does the road or a desert horizon shimmer on a hot day? Heat from the road or the sand is causing the light to shift.
And the whole faster than light travel thing.... Didn't some french researchers prove that warp drive (ala Star Trek style) was possible just a couple years back? Haven't scientists just lately made light travel at speeds faster than light in a lab (in the USA I believe)? If it's impossible, then did all these researchers lie?
I'm thinking that maybe Forbes should get a real science writer that will actually do a bit of research into things before he/she/they start putting things to print.
Further... They said that teleportation (ala Star Trek transporters) were impossible just 10 years ago. Just last year, researchers teleported light particles across a laboratory on multiple occasions. As I recall reading, there were going to start working with more massive particles on larger scales this year.
All I'm saying is that people should really stop and think before they say something is impossible. Flying was supposed to be impossible. Landing on the moon (or even people in space) was supposed to be impossible. Lasers were impossible. Your everyday microwave oven was born from science fiction and most people that work in an office setting have printers, copiers, scanners or even fax machines that all use lasers to do what they do. That bar code scanner at the grocery store uses a laser, so does the one at the fuel station and the scanner that the freindly UPS and FedEx people use.
People keep saying things are impossible, and then 5 or 50 years later someone makes it reality. Writers should think before they start labeling things like that, or they should really be prepared to get laughed right out of town when they are suddenly shown to be quite wrong. I'm not saying that any Star Wars technology is possible today, or even 50 years from today, but someone will make it or something very much like it work one day. I'd rather not be the guy that said (very publicly) that it was impossible.
Re:Last I checked.... (Score:5, Informative)
Another good analogy is spinning a light source around, so that a focused beam sweeps out a circle. When the light source is millions of light years away, it will appear to the alien viewer there that the beam is travelling much faster than c. However, once again, no usable information travels this way, as any info encoded in the beam of light is travelling from the light source to the alien, and not from one alien to another.
Lightsabers not possible? (Score:3, Informative)
Stupid slide show (Score:5, Informative)
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?
Can I force-choke the web designer? (Score:4, Funny)
[Fade into dream sequence]
"You are part of the Frontpage Alliance and a hack! *cough* *choke* *gasp* [web designer's corpse thrown to the floor] "Take him away!"
[Fade out of dream sequence]
*sigh* Back to work I guess.
Re:Can I force-choke the web designer? (Score:3, Funny)
Perhaps you're looking for Jockstrap.org News for oafs. Stuff that itches.
How about the feasibility of their language skills (Score:3, Interesting)
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..."
We're way ahead on some things... (Score:5, Insightful)
Best place as any to ask this.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Samaurai/lightsabers (Score:3, Insightful)
A samurai vs. a peasant with an arquebus == a dead peasant. A horde of mounted samurai vs. a disciplined, experienced firing line properly arranged == a lot of dead samurai.