Luke Skywalker and the curse of the blue lightsaber!

In all the Star Wars movies no one has ever won a duel with a blue lightsaber when their opponent had another color.

 

Starting off from the beginning:

Episode 4. Not much lightsaber action here, only Obi-Wan’s duel with Vader and blue lightsaber starts off with a loss (unless you count the “more possible than you can imagine” thing)

Episode 5. One duel Luke Vs. Vader. Vader wins and Luke gets emotionally traumatized so win for other colors.

Episode 6. Luke manages to win against both Darth Vader and the Emperor. Whoo score one for… wait green. nope blue has yet to score.

Episode 1. Obi-Wan gets his butt kicked by maul until he manages to call Qui-Gon’s green lightsaber to him. Score another for green.

Episode 2. Obi-Wan and Anakin both get beat by maul until Yoda with a green lightsaber comes to rescue their sorry selves.

Episode 3. The most controversial fight to this whole theory is the duel between Anakin and Count Dooku. Dooku is winning until Anakin manages to cut off Dooku’s hand and steals his red lightsaber. So kinda a win for blue and kinda a win for red. I’m calling it a draw. The next fight with a blue lightsaber is the attempted arrest of Palpatine where he kills the unlucky dude who thought he could take on the Emperor with a blue lightsaber (at least he thought ahead enough to bring backup). Even after Palpatine is hurt and Windu is at laserpoint of Anakin palpatine still gets the killing blow. Scoring another kill for red. The final fight is even between blue and blue so one of them has to win so I’m not counting that. The only “fight” a blue lightsaber wins in the entire franchise is when Anakin murdered the children and i wouldn’t call that fair.

Thanks for reading, Jack

Civilized weapons from a more civilized age…

Particle beam weapons are the subject of ongoing research throughout the world. In the Star Wars universe they have been perfected and given the name blasters.

Blasters however work much differently than how we think that beam weapons will work, mostly due to the principle that most particles would travel faster than visible light and as such we would only see the effects of the weapon on what you targeted. Other changes from fiction include that a particle beam weapon does not need to be focused in one singular bolt and can be held like a laser on a target and the fact that with one gigajoule (six of these equals the energy of a barrel of oil exploding) of kinetic energy behind it almost all means of protection are negated. Particle beam weapons work by using a particle accelerator with (10^9) volts in the chamber to accelerate ions to almost 300,000 kilometers per second (i.e. close to the speed of light). Fun fact: Nikola Tesla was working on creating a beam weapon through the use of high-frequency-electric and alternating current technology as early as 1937. He called his weapon (built with vacuum tubes no less) the Teleforce.

Now for what you’ve been waiting for:

Lightsaber’s are commonly referred to as the coolest weapon fiction has ever come up with to date. This may be due to the fact that people use them to take down people they have no right to beat. Just look at the math: Farmboy+lightsaber>Dark Lord

Lightsabers are scientifically proven to be 100% awesome but also at the same time we have no real idea why they work the way they do. For all intents and purposes a lightsaber works like a laser by focusing a beam of light through some crystals and a few lenses.<how it works (pseudo)SCIENCE!

However lasers don’t work that way. In fact according to Wikipedia there are five issues with that line of reasoning:

1.Lasers have the necessity of something to reflect the end of the beam

2.Having a compact and powerful enough power source

3.Lasers do not clash when their beams cross (also beams could be reflected by a simple mirror, This would be bad in combat)

4.Lasers are silent (and lightsabers would be much less cool without the noises)

5.There are some materials that can withstand a lightsaber, some can even deactivate one upon contact (really shouldn’t happen with a beam of light)

Doing more research indicates that most of these problems would be solved by replacing “laser”blade with “plasma”blade (wookiepedia does). Still you end up with the problem of a power source small enough to fit into the handle yet powerful enough to eclipse a nuclear reactor (which we don’t have yet) and the problem with containment (possibly solved by a magnetic field generator- which we don’t have yet). In the future this might be more clear cut as we determine the limits of micro batteries but for now the lightsaber is still a galaxy far far away..

Thanks for reading, Jack

 

 

 

Revenge of the sixth- Millennium Falcon

For part two of Star Wars week I’m going to look at one of the most recognizable spaceships in existence- The Millennium Falcon.

According to what we see in the star wars movies the Millennium Falcon is the most useful ship in the galaxy (though that may just be for the sake of plot). The Falcon is able to jump into hyperspace and lightspeed (which is currently impossible due to the cosmic speed limit imposed by Einstein) as are most of the other ships in the star wars franchise, but what makes it special is it’s ridiculously agile sublight engine (which means the engine it uses when not going hyperspeed) which instead of acting like a real starship would in the vacuum of space  acts as if it is still under the pull of gravity (most notably banking while turning which is unnecessary while in space due to the lack of gravity affecting the passengers) and has air to back up its range of movement. This already shows that the Millennium Falcon does not obey the normal laws of physics, however the biggest evidence is yet to come. The Falcon has artificial gravity without a real way to crate it. This combined with its ridiculously large windows in the vacuum of space proves that Star Wars physics is not our physics. Also the Falcon is bigger on the inside…

Bonus: In “A New Hope” Han Solo states that “[the Millennium Falcon is] the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs.”  a common criticism for the star wars movies is that a parsec is a unit of space not time. To combat this the writers of star wars made an interesting save : Kessel is surrounded by black holes (don’t think to hard how that works) and any attempt to lower the standard distance is usually met with a horrifying death. Solo some how managed to lower the distance much further than thought possible, or you know he could just be lying (smugglers have a tendency to do that) to the old man and the kid to make them pay more for their trip.

Thanks for reading, Jack

May the 4th be with you (give or take a day)

Starting a blog by examining the technology of one of my favorite franchises has to be the best way to start. In star wars there are many pieces of technology that you could easily dismiss as impossible and absurd (though with a few you would be correct) I’m going to go over four of them and the actual science that could make them a reality. To make this less lengthy I’m going to split this up into three parts, one over R2-D2, the next over the Millennium Falcon, and finally one over the humble blaster and the number one weapon from a more civilized age-The Lightsaber. Lets begin shall we:

5. R2-D2

Don’t be fooled by his unassuming exterior in that blue and white shell is the heart of a hero and enough gadgets to put Bond’s arsenal to shame. This little guy is the pinnacle of industrial technology and artificial intelligence. Through the use of SCIENCE!! (by which I mean science fiction) R2 is able to lift himself off the ground with leg mounted boosters, is able to project a hologram from a projector in his dome, and most importantly he can think for himself. Any one of the previous examples of technology is beyond our grasp, but what makes him special is that he has all this and more. I’m not going to go into too much detail with all his bits and pieces so lets look at just the previous three examples of how R2 combines the best science has to offer. One- The leg mounted boosters by studying the physics behind flight we can determine that according to physics as we currently know it R2 should not be able to fly. At the velocity at which he moves and the size and shape he is R2 would need to have a density of Styrofoam to be able to move the way he does. Two- R2 is able to project a three dimensional image from a small projector in the side of his head, This would need to either bend the physics of light itself or he would need to project both light and a suitable medium through which it would travel. Today we can project lifelike (pseudo)holograms through the use of stage lasers, complex stage systems, and a few parlor tricks. Putting all this into something the size of R2 would be next to impossible (let alone something smaller than R2 which I would hope exists in Star Wars because having an R2 that is almost all projector takes the fun out of it). Three- Artificial intelligence in the star wars universe is both more advanced than what we have now but less than what we expect to have in the future. By the above statement I mean to say that the A.I. in Star Wars is at about the level of human intelligence to do this you would need a computers much more complex than what we have today (the best way to simulate a human brain is with a system of artificial neurons which is still much to complex to fit in that tiny shell). Yet the A.I. in Star Wars is limited by their human counterparts and as such they don’t reach the level we expect of artificial intelligence in the future.  These small pieces or R2 put our current level of robotics to shame and as such R2 is what all engineers dream of (so much that MIT built a giant version of him out of one of their buildings).

Thanks for reading, Jack

 

Call me Jack.

This year for a class project in entrepreneurship I had to create a business and I chose web design. All these amazing thoughts filled my head about what I could do with a website, but one idea stood above the rest. I’m going to talk about things that interest me, mostly educational stuff but just about anything hence the name of the blog and my handle. I don’t know everything, but I try. If you have any questions or an idea for a post feel free to leave it in the comments.

Thanks for your time, Jack