The Science of Star Wars

anonymous lion writes "National Geographic has an interesting interview with a couple of scientists on the scientific reality of Star Wars. For example, related to the cohabitation of humans and Gungans on NabooSeth Shostak states, "So maybe it's possible to share, as long as neither species has the technology to obliterate, enslave, or merely cook and eat each other.""

Re:Can the Death Star travel at lightspeed?

[MixmastaKooz]

Yes it did! From what I read, it did have a hyperdrive, but was on the slow end of the sprectrum (although going faster than light can't be considered slow...unless we're talking Ludicrous Speed!) as hyperdrives go in the SW universe. If I remember the first novelation correctly, it took the Death Star a while to get to Yavin but not too long for the Rebels to evacuate. But the added time allowed the Alliance to analyze the Death Star and mount an effective attack.

If you watch Ep. IV, you do get the hint that the Death Star is moving during certain shots, but since it was in space (and due to a limited budget, I bet)there were not many landmarks to measure relative speed.

the book

[cryptoz]

There was a book published with this exact title many, many years ago.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0312 209584/103-6435152-7840603?v=glance [amazon.com]

In short, there's no science in the movies at all. None. And everyone should know that.

Re:Better option

[jspoon]

That's still iffy. Even a neutron bomb will create a lot of heat and spread around a fair amount of un fissioned material. There's an obvious clean solution if you think about it. If you can go into space, just haul in some appropriately sized asteroids to drop on them, a la The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

Re:Can the Death Star travel at lightspeed?

[Trogre]

I don't know.

Perhaps it takes a couple of hours to recharge/calibrate its hypermatter reactor before it can fire off a second shot.

Maybe this is why the second Death Star is deemed "More powerful than the first". A faster recharge rate allowing what we see in ROTJ, where two large Rebel cruisers are destroyed by the superlaser within minutes of each other.

Re:Cool article, but a few issues.

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest problem with Coruscant is illustrated in this comic strip:

http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/cgi-bin/comic.pl? comic=386 [irregularwebcomic.net]

Also a TV Special

[ErikTheRed]

There was also a National Geographic 'Science of Star Wars' TV special on (I think) Discovery HD. It was basically a 3-hour infomercial with no useful information, at least not for anyone who makes any reasonable effort to keep current in tech.

Re:Cohabitation

[poor_boi]

Yeah, it does seem as though the authors are making the assumption that all species are going to beat the crap out of each other.

I think if you just plopped down the Naboo and the Gungans in their pictured state of technological development, with all their gadgets and what-not, they could probably get along.

If we're talking about co-evolution, it seems rather unlikely, unless -- like other /.ers have said -- they consumed extremely different resources and inhabited incompatible / inaccessible areas of the planet.

Had the two races come into contact with each other somewhere earlier down the evolutionary chain, one would have competed with and severely stunded the evolutionary process of the other. That's not to say 'driven to extinction', but rather 'driven stall at a less intelligent stage of evolution'.

But the universe is a big place, and the only life and ecosystems we know are our own. So hey. Yea. It could happen. Why not?

Re:Cohabitation

[Rude Turnip]

It is quite obvious in my mind that the humans living on Naboo are not native to the planet. They might have arrived there 100 years ago or 5,000 years ago for all we know. There are humans living all over the Star Wars galaxy. The reason the two races get along is because by the time they met they were both highly civilized cultures.

Science of Star Wars Muesum Exhibit!!!

[nervebox]

The Museum of Science in Boston is opening a Science of Star Wars exhibit in October. They've been building it for 2 years! It's going to be huge and very cool. The website is here: http://starwars.mos.org/>

Re:The sad part is

[terrymr]

Tatooine is a town in Tunisia (north africa) near the sahara desert, It's pretty dry and hot there.

Luke skywalkers cave house is an example of the kind of homes you find in southern Tunisia, I forget the name of the town.

Those Jedi robes are worn by a lot of people because of the cold nights in the area.

Lucas recycled most of this into the movie, because it was already there and therefore cheap.

Re:The sad part is

[StikyPad]

I was suspect of your claims (sounds too much like an urban legend), but a quick Google search confirms this.

Here's a great slideshow: http://ianandwendy.com/OtherTrips/Tunisia/Tatooine /slideshow.htm [ianandwendy.com]
(Pops up in a new window). Note the Jedi robe in the second to last photo. Hopefully we don't melt poor Ian and Wendy's webserver.

Except theyre herbivores...

[Cyno01]

According to this book [amazon.com], tauntauns generally live in underground caves and grottos pretty well stocked with lichens. Remember, Lukes died out in the open at night, they werent built to survive much on the surface.

Re:Technological developement

[kbahey]

Human civilization is approx. 4000 years old.

Actually, more like 5,000 years old. You see, Egypt had kings and starting a writing system in the Predynastic era, which is a century or so before around 3,000 BC, making it 5,000 years old at least.

The Pyramids were build around 2450 BC, during the Old Kingdom.

Manetho traces the list of kings, and that has been corroborated by the Palermo stone. Read more on this great site [ancient-egypt.org], which is still incomplete. Here is the early Dynastic period [ancient-egypt.org], and Dynasty 1 [ancient-egypt.org] from that site.

Re:Cohabitation

[bckrispi]

Unless the resources required for two life forms is remarkably different or there is a truly symbiotic relationship...

OBI-WAN : You and the Naboo form a symbiont circle. What happens to one of you will affect the other. You must understand this.

I think that clears up that question. :)

The gungans were ocean-dwelling amphibians. The naboo were urban humans. It stands to reason that there would be a demarcation of the resources that they consumed. Their differences appeared to be totally social. The Naboo didn't trust the Gungans because they kept a standing army. And the Gungans thought the Naboo thought themselves superior.

Fuck "...humans and Gungans on NabooSeth..."

[tonywestonuk]

We want to know about about Makeing REAL Light sabres. Check this out for info http://www.exn.ca/starwars/plasmasaber.cfm [www.exn.ca]

Re:Cohabitation

[builderbob_nz]

Check out the game Star Wars Battlegrounds. It has a bit of back-story relating to this. Essentially most Gungans lived above land. After a cival war which united the Gungan tribes, they made their capital the 'ancient' city of Otah Gunga... which is under water.

Re:Star Wars is Philosophy & Star Trek is Tech

[Anonymous Coward]

The technology of science fiction is not "just" anything - it's what defines it as sci-fi as opposed to space opera / speculative fiction.

Umm, the two things you named are considered sub-genres of science fiction. This definition is shared not only by most readers, but most authors as well. I'm a geek, but I am not misanthropic enough to read 500+ novel where I can't connect on a human level to anyone or anything.

Science fiction should engage the reader on a personal level just like any other genre. On way to do it is by exploring how people react to situations far outside what is available in real life. Technology might be more than the backdrop in science fiction, but focusing on tech to the exclusion of all else is missing the point.