Fact or fi? Here’s the scoop on the science behind ‘Star Wars.’
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Version 0 of 1. “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” came out last week. Oh, you heard? Okay, enough about the movie. The entertainment we’ll talk about here is the outpouring of analysis by real scientists — and real journalists who cover real science — who have been fascinated by connecting the galactically successful, apparently immortal sci-fi franchise with sci-facts. This has been going on for a while, but it was particularly noticeable in the days leading up to the premier. From National Geographic: “The real science inspired by Star Wars” describes how the movies not only make science appealing and intriguing but also lead to real experiments. For example, Guy Walker, a civil engineering professor in Scotland, obtained plans for the Death Star from an “official technical manual” — written by a group of artists and toy designers — and had a team analyze it for engineering flaws that would make it vulnerable to a Rebel Alliance attack. Two of the analyses will be published in the journal Theoretical Issues in Ergonomic Science. From Wired: “I Calculated the Mass of a Star Wars Blaster Bolt for You” shows a film clip of Han Solo shooting a stormtrooper, sending him flying backward. Then, using calculations involving force, momentum, dimensions and the amount of time the stormtrooper is in the air (0.835 seconds), the author figures that Han had to be firing a projectile weighing at least four pounds. This is obviously a problem in a portable weapon. From Popular Science: A Q&A with the designers who created BB-8, the ball droid that’s made not with computer graphics but with three-dimensional props. Beginning with a quickly slapped-together polystyrene model, they ended up building seven versions of BB-8 for different scenes in the film — plus another model that could appear at red-carpet events. From the Wall Street Journal: A blog post explores “How the science in ‘Star Wars’ is actually real.” The “real world version” of stormtroopers’ armor, for example, is “the Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit, or TALOS, a project involving 10 national laboratories, 13 universities, 16 government agencies and 56 companies, all working together to build the powered armor suit for U.S. Special Forces of the future.” From Popular Mechanics: A scornful essay headlined “5 Reasons ‘Star Wars’ Spaceships make absolutely no sense” points out cockpit design that obscures the pilot’s view, weapons too small for the starships carrying them, no backup controls, no reverse thrusters or ability to change direction . . . You end up feeling it’s amazing that the series ever got off the ground. And from the Guardian: “Star Wars: The Clickbait Awakens” brings Brit-style mockery to the media attention. The author imagines several science-related stories that he might have written, including figuring out where the Force actually comes from, why furry Ewoks need to wear clothes and whether R2-D2 could function as the trash can it clearly resembles. “Yeah,” he concludes wearily, “probably not.” |