Speaker 1: Get in text with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works and I love all things tech and
Speaker 1: May the Fourth be with you. This episode is originally
Speaker 1: airing on May fourthen sometimes known as Star Wars Day
Speaker 1: for the whole May the fourth pun and on May
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven, Star Wars later known as Star Wars
Speaker 1: Episode for a New Hope hit the theaters, and that
Speaker 1: movie introduced a massive weapon capable of destroying planets, and
Speaker 1: it was no moon. It was a space station and
Speaker 1: it was called the Death Star. So in honor of
Speaker 1: May the four, we are going to take a look
Speaker 1: at the Star Wars mythos around the Death Star and
Speaker 1: compare it to what it would take to make some
Speaker 1: thing like that for real, Zase. And this is part
Speaker 1: one of a two parter on the Death Star. Because
Speaker 1: there are a lot of different systems to cover in
Speaker 1: this episode, I'm gonna be looking mainly at support systems
Speaker 1: aboard the Death Star, and in part two we're gonna
Speaker 1: look at the bim Bam boom bang Bangs, also known
Speaker 1: as the weapons aboard the Death Star, not to mention
Speaker 1: a particular flaw that for a long time people said
Speaker 1: was the result of Imperial oversight, and later on as
Speaker 1: the movies came out, it was revealed to have been
Speaker 1: a planned vulnerability in the Death Star design. We'll also
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the Death Star to sequel
Speaker 1: to Death Star, and of course Star Killer Base. So
Speaker 1: for those of you who aren't Star Wars fans, first
Speaker 1: of all, this episode is probably not gonna mean a
Speaker 1: whole lot to you, but if you want to listen,
Speaker 1: I would love to have you along for the ride.
Speaker 1: But the original Death Star appears in three films as
Speaker 1: an actual thing in progress. Those three films would be
Speaker 1: in chronological order of release, Star Wars For a New Hope,
Speaker 1: Star Wars three, Revenge of the Sith, which of course
Speaker 1: came out decades after Star Wars four did, and Rogue One,
Speaker 1: a Star Wars story. But there's also a hologram of
Speaker 1: the Death Star that appears briefly in Star Wars two
Speaker 1: Attack of the Clones. Then there's also the second Death
Speaker 1: Star that one appears in Star Wars six Return of
Speaker 1: the Jedi, And there's the Big Brother to the Death
Speaker 1: Star a k a. The Star Killer Bass, which shows
Speaker 1: up in Star Wars seven The Force Awakens, and I'll
Speaker 1: chat about all of them in these episodes. Now, before
Speaker 1: I jump into this, I need to talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about cannon versus expanded universe. So Star Wars is
Speaker 1: a peculiar thing. There are movies, There are television specials,
Speaker 1: there are cartoons, there are comic books, there are novels.
Speaker 1: There ton of different forms of media that all tie
Speaker 1: into the Star Wars universe. However, if you want to
Speaker 1: go with absolute canon, as in the stuff that is
Speaker 1: the only really concrete cannon in the Star Wars universe,
Speaker 1: you have to go with just the films, which means
Speaker 1: that stories, characters, and even established facts created and other
Speaker 1: Star Wars media can be contradicted by the films and
Speaker 1: that's that. So you could have a very popular novel
Speaker 1: series that creates a whole mythology around Star Wars and
Speaker 1: then the next movie comes out and contradicts that. Well,
Speaker 1: the movies trump everything else, So just keep that in mind.
Speaker 1: Now that being said, we're gonna look at some expanded
Speaker 1: universe sources because the movies, while they are canon, do
Speaker 1: not go into exhaustive detail about how stuff works, because
Speaker 1: that's not what the movie is about. The movies are
Speaker 1: adventure stories. They're really they're more like epic fantasy set
Speaker 1: in a science fiction setting. Then they are a hard
Speaker 1: science fiction film. So they concerned themselves with the story elements,
Speaker 1: the hero's journey, that kind of stuff, not the particulars
Speaker 1: of how the technology works. So a lot of the
Speaker 1: stuff I'm gonna talk about comes from expanded universe sources.
Speaker 1: Just know that a future Star Wars movie could come
Speaker 1: out and they say, well, it turns out that the
Speaker 1: Star Wars Death Stars laser was powered by elves. Well,
Speaker 1: that's gonna contradict everything else. But if that's what the
Speaker 1: movie says, that's what that's what it means. I don't
Speaker 1: think that will happen, but just need to say it.
Speaker 1: Within the canon of Star Wars, the design of the
Speaker 1: Death Star came from a race of creatures called the Genosians,
Speaker 1: who were working on behalf of a separatist group attempting
Speaker 1: to splinter off from the Galactic Republic, or at least
Speaker 1: appearing to. These are the events that happened in the
Speaker 1: prequel trilogies. So Star Wars one, two, and three, and
Speaker 1: the Genosans were working on what they dubbed the Ultimate
Speaker 1: Weapon Project, and they entrusted their plans to Count Dooku,
Speaker 1: who appeared to be the leader of the separatists. Dooku
Speaker 1: was in reality Darth Tyrannis, a Sith lord a k a.
Speaker 1: A big bad guy who passed the plans along to
Speaker 1: his boss, Darth Sidious, also known as Chancellor and then
Speaker 1: later on Emperor Palpatine. Palpatine was essentially controlling both sides
Speaker 1: of this galactic conflict, both the Galactic Republic and the
Speaker 1: separatist group. He was manipulating both sides, and he was
Speaker 1: orchestrating the whole thing in an attempt to grab power.
Speaker 1: He was able to use that conflict to convince the
Speaker 1: Republic side to fund the construction of this space station.
Speaker 1: He was able to play on fears that the Separatists,
Speaker 1: who you got to remember he was also controlling, they
Speaker 1: were just a puppet group. But he was trying to
Speaker 1: convince the republic people, but the folks who were in
Speaker 1: charge of the purse strings for the Galactic Republic, that
Speaker 1: the Separatists were already working on building a space station
Speaker 1: of similar capability, so there was gonna be a space
Speaker 1: station app so it's kind of like an arms race
Speaker 1: in a way, and so that was kind of the
Speaker 1: selling point. Palpatine goes to the Galactic Republic with he says,
Speaker 1: we need to build this thing. You need to be
Speaker 1: able to give me the funds do it. And that's
Speaker 1: where the initial funding for the Death Starter took off
Speaker 1: before the Chancellor became the Emperor, and once he became
Speaker 1: the Emperor, he pretty much had to. Boy, he got
Speaker 1: the right to boss everybody around and get the money
Speaker 1: no matter what. Now, by the time of the Revenge
Speaker 1: of the Sixth storyline, construction had progressed to the point
Speaker 1: that the basic form of the Death Star was taking shape.
Speaker 1: Is kind of the framework for the Death Star. It
Speaker 1: would apparently take nearly twenty more years to finish, as
Speaker 1: Rogue One takes place nineteen years after the Revenge of
Speaker 1: the Sith, and it's in Rogue one that a group
Speaker 1: of spies attempt to steal the plans for the space
Speaker 1: station so that the rebellion can look for a possible weakness,
Speaker 1: and then in a new hope, the rebellion blows it
Speaker 1: all up. Specifically, Luke sky eye Walker blows it up
Speaker 1: by firing a weapon called a you know or torpedo
Speaker 1: weapon down a ventilation shaft that sets off a chain
Speaker 1: reaction within the station's reactor core, leading to catastrophic failure. Now,
Speaker 1: one thing I should mention that's a conflict between Cannon
Speaker 1: and the former Expanded Universe is that some works had
Speaker 1: established that the Death Star was constructed in orbit around
Speaker 1: a planet called Despair. Because Star Wars is subtle, Despair
Speaker 1: is spelled d E s p A y r E
Speaker 1: because that's how clever people writing for Star Wars can be.
Speaker 1: But Despare was populated by slave labor and criminals. They
Speaker 1: were all working for the Empire. And further, the Expanded
Speaker 1: Universe goes on to explain that the Death Stars Commander
Speaker 1: Grand mof Tarkan chose to test a not yet fully
Speaker 1: capable super laser against this planet Despair, blowing it up
Speaker 1: after hitting it with three blasts from the super laser,
Speaker 1: which conflicts with other accounts of the Death Star's history.
Speaker 1: Rogue one tells us the Death Star was moved from
Speaker 1: Genosia to our Genosis rather, I should say, to a
Speaker 1: planet called Scariff, rather than to despair. So the whole
Speaker 1: despair backstory that was created for the Death Star appears
Speaker 1: to have been contradicted by later films, And that's an
Speaker 1: example of what I was talking about earlier. So there
Speaker 1: there are branching pathways of the history of the Death Star,
Speaker 1: and they do can contradict one another in some versions.
Speaker 1: The Genosis version of the Death Star was actually a
Speaker 1: prototype space station and not the actual first death Star.
Speaker 1: But there's no official Cannon explanation that really lays it
Speaker 1: out and says definitively this it's this version, not that version. Anyway,
Speaker 1: let's talk about what it actually is. The Death Star
Speaker 1: is a space station. It's spherical in shape, and it's
Speaker 1: called the size of a moon. People refer to it
Speaker 1: as I mean, that's the big line from a New
Speaker 1: Hope is that's no moon, that's a space station. That
Speaker 1: particular detail is not terribly handy, however, because moons do
Speaker 1: not come in a standard size. They vary in size.
Speaker 1: So for example, the moon around Earth, our moon is
Speaker 1: three point seven times smaller than the Earth. It has
Speaker 1: an equatorial circumference of six thousand, seven hundred eighty three
Speaker 1: and a half miles or ten thousand, nine d seventeen kilometers,
Speaker 1: and it's also not as dense as the Earth. The
Speaker 1: surface gravity on our moon has an acceleration of one
Speaker 1: point six to four meters per second squared, compared to
Speaker 1: Earth's surface gravitational acceleration of nine point eight zero six
Speaker 1: six five, or we usually say nine point eight one
Speaker 1: per second squared. But the Earth's moon is only the
Speaker 1: fifth largest in our solar system. The largest moon in
Speaker 1: our system is gay Mead, which is one of jupiter
Speaker 1: As moons. It's just two point four times smaller than
Speaker 1: the Earth, so it's equatorial circumference is ten thousand, two
Speaker 1: hundred seventy three miles or about sixteen five thirty three kilometers.
Speaker 1: It's actually larger than the planet Mercury. So the only
Speaker 1: reason it's a moon and not a dwarf planet is
Speaker 1: because it's in orbit around Jupiter rather than orbit around
Speaker 1: the Sun. So saying the Death Star is the size
Speaker 1: of a moon is not super helpful. The films don't
Speaker 1: really give any details about the Death Star space station
Speaker 1: or the star Killer base. We don't really learn about
Speaker 1: the specs from them. From the movies. Necessarily, we see
Speaker 1: they're huge, but we don't really get much of a
Speaker 1: frame of reference as to how huge they are, but
Speaker 1: there have been plenty of books and supplemental materials that
Speaker 1: have attempted to fill in the gaps of our knowledge.
Speaker 1: So while it may not be pure canon, we have
Speaker 1: to have some reference for our discussions. So we're gonna
Speaker 1: go with some information supplied by official Star Wars supplemental sources,
Speaker 1: such as the Ultimate Visual Guide for Star Wars Rogue
Speaker 1: one that comes in pretty handy for the Death Star
Speaker 1: in particular. According to that guide, the Death Star is
Speaker 1: a hundred sixty kilometers wide. Now that also is a
Speaker 1: discrepancy with other sources. Some of them put the death
Speaker 1: stars diameter at a hundred twenty kilometers and some say
Speaker 1: a hundred forty kilometers, But the most recent response I
Speaker 1: could see was a hundred and sixties. So that's what
Speaker 1: I'm going with. Hundred sixty kilometers is about nine miles,
Speaker 1: all right. So if we use the handy formula that
Speaker 1: circumference equals two times pie times the radius, not the
Speaker 1: diameter as I initially calculated this figure, we get a
Speaker 1: figure of about five two kilometers of circumference, or three
Speaker 1: hundred twelve miles around the equator of this sphere. So
Speaker 1: in other words, that's less than one the circumference of
Speaker 1: Earth's moon, and that's going with the larger of the
Speaker 1: measurements for the Death Star, so it's the size of
Speaker 1: a moon, but a pretty small one. The original Death
Speaker 1: Star had three D fifty seven levels as in floors
Speaker 1: and it according to at least one source book, the
Speaker 1: number of people aboard the space station varies depending upon
Speaker 1: the source you're looking at. One suggested that there were
Speaker 1: around two point twenty five million people aboard, and another
Speaker 1: set it was more like one point one six million people.
Speaker 1: So I guess the answer ultimately is there were a
Speaker 1: lot of fictional people aboard that space station. And uh
Speaker 1: some say that even up to a billion people could
Speaker 1: have technically fit on the station. I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's true or not. I haven't actually run the geometric
Speaker 1: calculations to find out how packed it would be if
Speaker 1: that were happening. I also don't know the full density
Speaker 1: of the Death Star, so it would be hard to do.
Speaker 1: But there you go. According to the house Stuff Works
Speaker 1: article on how the Death Star works, the interior sections
Speaker 1: of the space station consists of twenty four zones, with
Speaker 1: half of them in the northern hemisphere of the station
Speaker 1: and the other half in the southern hemisphere. And each
Speaker 1: zone has six sectors which include General Command, Military Security, Service,
Speaker 1: and technical sectors, Officers overseas sectors, and Zone captain's overseas officers.
Speaker 1: And the Death Star commander is at the top of
Speaker 1: the food chain on the station unless the Emperor himself
Speaker 1: is on board, and in the case of the original
Speaker 1: Death Star, that would be the Grand mof Tarken. And
Speaker 1: because this wasn't just a weapon, but also a battle
Speaker 1: station and a movable base of operations, there need to
Speaker 1: be plenty of space for crew quarters, vehicle bays, and
Speaker 1: recreational facilities. As it turns out, it also had a
Speaker 1: detention block as seen in a New Hope, because that's
Speaker 1: where they put Princess Leiah after Darth Vader catches her.
Speaker 1: Spoiler in a Moment will look at some of the
Speaker 1: basic systems aboard the Death Star, will explore how they
Speaker 1: work within the mythology of Star Wars, and we'll talk
Speaker 1: about if there's any connection to what we call reality
Speaker 1: a figure. We can start by talking about the death
Speaker 1: Stars artificial gravity, how do that do well find out
Speaker 1: right after we take this quick break to thank our sponsor. Now,
Speaker 1: most sources I find try to reconcile the discrepancies we
Speaker 1: see in the Star Wars movies by explaining that the
Speaker 1: Death Star actually has two different artificial gravity systems aboard it.
Speaker 1: So imagine that the Death Star is a big old
Speaker 1: orange and the peel part of the orange is a
Speaker 1: layer that has artificial gravity pulling down towards the center
Speaker 1: of the station. It would be like surface gravity like
Speaker 1: you would experience if you were on a normal planet
Speaker 1: or moon, except it's also artificial gravity because it's meant
Speaker 1: to give you the sense of gravity you would have
Speaker 1: on a planet like Earth. We we assume that it's
Speaker 1: about one G of gravitational force on the Death Star
Speaker 1: because people move around like it's on Earth because that's
Speaker 1: where they shot the movie. But we're assuming it's one G. So, uh,
Speaker 1: everything is being pulled in towards the center. But because
Speaker 1: of the size of the Death Star it's mass, there's
Speaker 1: no way it has enough mass to generate one G
Speaker 1: of gravity on its own, so it has to be
Speaker 1: artificially boosted just logically speaking, So the way we feel
Speaker 1: when we're on Earth is technically the surface we are
Speaker 1: on pushing back against us essentially. So if you are
Speaker 1: in one of those levels that's in this outer layer
Speaker 1: of the Death Star, the peel of the Orange, you
Speaker 1: would stand as if you were on the surface of
Speaker 1: a planet, so your feet would be pointing towards the
Speaker 1: core of the plant, your head would be pointing towards space, essentially,
Speaker 1: except that doesn't seem to work based upon what we've
Speaker 1: actually seen in the movies, because if you watch a
Speaker 1: New Hope, when the Millennium Falcon gets captured by a
Speaker 1: tractor beam and pulled in toward the Death Star, it
Speaker 1: enters the equatorial trench that separates the station into northern
Speaker 1: and southern hemispheres. So it's like a belt right around
Speaker 1: the middle of the Death Stars this trench, and the
Speaker 1: Millennium Falcon is clearly coming into the trench into a
Speaker 1: vehicle bay, and in that sequence you see people standing
Speaker 1: in an orientation that's in line with the north and
Speaker 1: south poles of the Death Star, where the north pole
Speaker 1: would be up and the south pole would be down. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, imagine that the Death Star is a
Speaker 1: ball that has a top and a bottom and corresponding gravity. Now,
Speaker 1: the sources I looked at suggests that below this outermost layer,
Speaker 1: below the peel of the Orange, the Death Star is
Speaker 1: made up of floors that are in that orientation, this
Speaker 1: top bottom orientation, with north pole being the top and
Speaker 1: south pole being the bottom, and gravity just pointing towards
Speaker 1: the south pole side of the station. This would mean
Speaker 1: that once you get past that outermost layer with the
Speaker 1: UH the orange peel section, the orientation of gravity would
Speaker 1: change unless you were standing at the very north pole
Speaker 1: of the Death Star, in which case the two fields
Speaker 1: would be aligned. I imagine transitioning between one field of
Speaker 1: gravity and another would be really disorienting to go from
Speaker 1: where your feet are essentially facing out or are facing
Speaker 1: the core of the planet, to where your feet are
Speaker 1: facing down with respect to the south pole UH. I
Speaker 1: don't know how you would make that transition in a
Speaker 1: way that wouldn't totally mess you up in the process.
Speaker 1: I think it would be very disorienting. However, a lot
Speaker 1: of sources suggest that this is the way it has
Speaker 1: to work based upon the design of the Death Star
Speaker 1: as we see it in the films. The contradiction doesn't
Speaker 1: really matter in context with the story of Star Wars,
Speaker 1: but it does make it darn tricky to explain how
Speaker 1: stuff actually works aboard this space station. The movies again
Speaker 1: don't concern themselves with this, that's not what the purpose
Speaker 1: of the movies are for. It falls to fanboys like
Speaker 1: myself to try and justify it. So we see gunners
Speaker 1: manning cannons that are mounted on the surf of the
Speaker 1: station itself, and they appear to be oriented in such
Speaker 1: a way that it's similar to a normal planet's surface gravity,
Speaker 1: and yet everything else seems to suggest gravity has that
Speaker 1: specific north south orientation. So how would we create artificial
Speaker 1: gravity if we wanted to do it in real life? Well,
Speaker 1: since we still don't have a full understanding of the
Speaker 1: nature of gravity, we can't harness it in any meaningful way.
Speaker 1: But we can create a system that simulates gravity through rotation,
Speaker 1: except it would manifest as something very different than what
Speaker 1: you see in the Star Wars movies. So imagine you
Speaker 1: have a death Star sized hollow sphere, So it's the
Speaker 1: exact same size of the Death Star, but there's nothing
Speaker 1: inside it. It's just a big hollow ball, and you
Speaker 1: are inside that hollow ball. You're standing on the inside
Speaker 1: of that sphere. If we rotate the sphere, it will
Speaker 1: create a velocity that will curve around in a line
Speaker 1: along that rotation. It's a rotational velocity. This, in turn
Speaker 1: will create an acceleration pointing inwards a nine degree angle
Speaker 1: from the velocity at any given moment toward the death
Speaker 1: stars center. Your mass and the acceleration into the center
Speaker 1: of the death star creates a virtual force, which we
Speaker 1: refer to as a centrifugal force. Now, remember I say
Speaker 1: it's a virtual force, it's what would feel like weight.
Speaker 1: This is what would hold you to the interior wall
Speaker 1: of the hollow death star, so your feet would be
Speaker 1: closer to outer space and your head would be closer
Speaker 1: to the core of the death star. So the opposite
Speaker 1: of what the various sources suggest for the death Star.
Speaker 1: Because again this is just one way we could simulate
Speaker 1: gravity is through this rotation and the creation of a
Speaker 1: virtual force and centrifugal force. Now, to create enough of
Speaker 1: that virtual force to simulate the gravity that you would
Speaker 1: experience on a planet like Earth, you need to spin
Speaker 1: to create an acceleration of one g. Now we'd use
Speaker 1: the formula to that would be acceleration equals velocity square
Speaker 1: divided by the radius, and the radius in this case
Speaker 1: is the radius of the Death Star. Now, we know
Speaker 1: that the radius of the death Star is eighty kilometers
Speaker 1: if we're working off the most recent version of the
Speaker 1: Death Star spec since others suggest it could be seventy
Speaker 1: or sixty kilometers, but we're going with eighty. And we
Speaker 1: know the acceleration that we want is nine point eight
Speaker 1: one per second squared, because that's the gravitational acceleration we
Speaker 1: have here on Earth and that's what we want to simulate.
Speaker 1: So using that formula, we know it's nine point eight
Speaker 1: one equals velocity square divided by eighty thousand meters. Right,
Speaker 1: we take eighty kilometers, We multiply it by a thousand
Speaker 1: meters because that's a thousand meters to a kilometer. We
Speaker 1: get eighty thousand meters. We multiply both sides by eighty
Speaker 1: thousand meters, and we get seven eighty four thousand, eight
Speaker 1: hundred meters squared by second squared. We take the square
Speaker 1: root of that to get the velocity, and we end
Speaker 1: up with approximately eight hundred eighty six meters per second.
Speaker 1: So within a minute in i'd this sphere. You're traveling
Speaker 1: fifty three thou sis in a circular motion on the
Speaker 1: inside of this death star. Now, in order to figure
Speaker 1: out how many revolutions per minute we need, we take
Speaker 1: the circumference of the death Star. That's that five kilometers
Speaker 1: or five two thousand meters, and that means that we
Speaker 1: would need point eleven rotations per minute to simulate one
Speaker 1: g of gravity on the inside surface of the death Star,
Speaker 1: which means the death Star would have to rotate one
Speaker 1: full time every ten minutes or so. So a day
Speaker 1: on the Death Star would be around ten minutes long
Speaker 1: if it were a body orbiting star with that speed
Speaker 1: of rotation. Now, that would only really apply along the equator,
Speaker 1: I should add, because it's a right angle to the
Speaker 1: axis of rotation. As you would move away from the equator,
Speaker 1: things would get really wonky and along the outermost layer
Speaker 1: as well, because as you go up or inward in
Speaker 1: the death Star, you'd be on the floor that's technically
Speaker 1: moving at a slower of a locity than the floor
Speaker 1: that was below you or outer on the death Star.
Speaker 1: Because you're in a concentric circle, each circle makes the
Speaker 1: same number of revolutions per unit of time. Right, if
Speaker 1: you're doing ten revolutions in a minute on the outside,
Speaker 1: you're still doing ten revolutions of a minute on the inside.
Speaker 1: But if the circle is smaller, you are traveling less
Speaker 1: distance but in the same amount of time, so your
Speaker 1: velocity is lower. This would also mean that your acceleration
Speaker 1: that you would experience, and therefore the centrifugal force you
Speaker 1: would experience, would also be lower. So as you move
Speaker 1: towards the core, you would experience lower gravitational acceleration, and
Speaker 1: you'd feel lighter as you move towards the middle. So
Speaker 1: for a space station the size of the Death Star,
Speaker 1: this could work out pretty well if you had the
Speaker 1: means to rotate the station that way. With smaller space stations,
Speaker 1: you would run into other problems because smaller scales, this
Speaker 1: method of simulating gravity presents other challenges. For example, once
Speaker 1: you get really small, different parts of your body are
Speaker 1: going to experience different gravitational accelerations. Because your height represents
Speaker 1: enough distance uh compared to the radius of the station
Speaker 1: itself that it will make a difference. You'll actually be
Speaker 1: able to feel it. The amount of gravity you experience
Speaker 1: is dependent upon the radius of the rotating structure. So
Speaker 1: if you're tall enough for that to be in effect,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have these different forces or different magnitudes of
Speaker 1: force acting on you, and that's really gonna make it
Speaker 1: weird when you try to move around. Uh. Also, the
Speaker 1: Coriolis effect can wreak havoc with our sense of balance. Essentially,
Speaker 1: this becomes a problem when we are moving inward or
Speaker 1: outward from the axis of rotation, so in other words,
Speaker 1: we're changing levels in the Death Star right, we're moving
Speaker 1: up or down. Experiments have shown that at lower revolutions
Speaker 1: per minute this is rarely a problem, and the Does
Speaker 1: Stars rotation of point one one revolutions per minute is
Speaker 1: slow enough to probably slip below our ability to detect it,
Speaker 1: and therefore we wouldn't get space sick every time we
Speaker 1: hopped into a lift. But other or wise, as we
Speaker 1: change that orientation, as we get closer to the center
Speaker 1: or further away from the center, than the amount of
Speaker 1: gravity we would experience would fluctuate, and that could really
Speaker 1: make us feel pretty wonky. Now, the film's never really
Speaker 1: address how artificial gravity works. We only even know that
Speaker 1: there's micro gravity in the Star Wars universe because of
Speaker 1: the way ships move through stuff like debris or asteroids
Speaker 1: out in space, not to mention the Mary Poppins Princess
Speaker 1: Leia sequence from The Last Jedi or General Leiah. I
Speaker 1: suppose I should say there's no real need to address
Speaker 1: it within the plot of the movies, and the challenges
Speaker 1: of making a movie involving space battles and micro gravity
Speaker 1: are such that having artificial gravity is really a thing
Speaker 1: of convenience for the sake of the plot of the
Speaker 1: films and the making of the movies. Next we'll learn
Speaker 1: about how the Death Star gets around round, get around,
Speaker 1: It gets around, But first let's take another break to
Speaker 1: thank our sponsor. So the Death Star has two main
Speaker 1: means of propulsion, ion thrusters and hyperdrive, and we actually
Speaker 1: have developed one of those two things. Hint, it's not
Speaker 1: the hyper drive. So let's talk about ion thrusters. So,
Speaker 1: ion thrusters are a really interesting method of moving through space,
Speaker 1: and the ideas that you have an engine that can
Speaker 1: fire out positively charged particles at high velocity out of
Speaker 1: one end of a spacecraft using electricity in some way.
Speaker 1: There are a couple of different methods, but the important
Speaker 1: thing to look at is just the principle of it,
Speaker 1: and because momentum within a system must be conserved, this
Speaker 1: creates thrust moving the spacecraft forward. Newton's laws emotion imply
Speaker 1: this concept. So momentum equals mass times velocity, and both
Speaker 1: momentum and velocity are vectors. That means that they have
Speaker 1: a direction associated with their values, and the conservation of
Speaker 1: momentum tells us the momentum of a system in its
Speaker 1: initial phase must equal the momentum of the system and
Speaker 1: its final phase, assuming all external forces that could act
Speaker 1: upon the system zero out. In other words, it's an
Speaker 1: isolated system. So if you have other stuff acting on
Speaker 1: a system that changes things, we're talking about an isolated system.
Speaker 1: So a spacecraft in spaces is pretty isolated. So before
Speaker 1: you initiate an ion thruster, let's say you've got a spacecraft.
Speaker 1: You are not moving with respect to space around you,
Speaker 1: at least not in any real meaningful way. You're just
Speaker 1: kind of hanging in space. There's no momentum here, right,
Speaker 1: The craft is not moving, the ions are not moving.
Speaker 1: But then you turn on the drive and the drive
Speaker 1: starts spinning out ions behind the spacecraft. That represents a
Speaker 1: change in momentum. The velocity of those particles is very
Speaker 1: high and their mass is incredibly small. However, momentum must
Speaker 1: be conserved within the system, so your spacecraft represents it's
Speaker 1: the system. So that means the spacecraft itself has to
Speaker 1: move in the opposite direction of the particles you're shooting
Speaker 1: out the back. Now, the spacecraft's mass is way, way,
Speaker 1: way bigger than the particles that are flying out of
Speaker 1: the ion thruster, so that means the velocity of the
Speaker 1: spacecraft will be relatively low compared to the particles. However,
Speaker 1: if you keep the drive going, this will act as
Speaker 1: an accelerator for the spacecraft. It's not gonna accelerate quickly,
Speaker 1: but it will do so gradually, and eventually you'll start
Speaker 1: reaching very high speeds if the drive is on for
Speaker 1: the entire time. Now, with rocket fuel, you can create
Speaker 1: thrust until you run out of fuel, and then you're
Speaker 1: essentially traveling at top speed until you hit something. But
Speaker 1: with ion thrusters, you can keep accelerating steadily for a
Speaker 1: much longer time, reaching a vastly higher top speed in
Speaker 1: the process. It just takes you longer to get to
Speaker 1: your top speed, but your top speed is going to
Speaker 1: be much higher than if it were a rocket based spacecraft.
Speaker 1: But the Death Star could also move at superliminal speeds,
Speaker 1: which means it could go faster than light, using a
Speaker 1: concept in Star Wars called hyper space. Now we know
Speaker 1: this must be the case because the Death Star fires
Speaker 1: upon Alderan at the beginning of a new Hope and
Speaker 1: then moves into position to fire upon Yavn four at
Speaker 1: the end. Well, Alderon is a planet in the core
Speaker 1: of the Galactic Empire, meaning the core of the galaxy itself,
Speaker 1: whereas yaven four is a moon around a gas giant
Speaker 1: planet called Yavin that's in the outer Rim territory, so
Speaker 1: on the outer side of this galaxy. To get a
Speaker 1: battle station that far from the center of a galaxy
Speaker 1: to the outer edge has to need some form of
Speaker 1: faster than light travel. In the Star Wars universe, spacecraft
Speaker 1: do this by tapping into an alternate dimension called hyperspace,
Speaker 1: which helps get around a big problem. Because if you
Speaker 1: talk to Einstein, well, it's gonna be pretty boring. Guy's
Speaker 1: been dead for a while, but his theories tell us
Speaker 1: that matter cannot travel as fast as light, let alone
Speaker 1: faster than the speed of light. Light is the fastest
Speaker 1: stuff there is. It is the universal speed limit. Light
Speaker 1: through a vacuum is as fast as it gets. If
Speaker 1: you could travel faster than light, you could potentially travel
Speaker 1: to a destination fast enough so that if you turned
Speaker 1: around and looked at where you came from, you'd see
Speaker 1: yourself leaving from your starting point because you got there
Speaker 1: before the light did from the place that you left,
Speaker 1: So faster than light travel would violate causality. In the
Speaker 1: Star Wars universe, you could have a situation where you're
Speaker 1: looking for a place to land on Alderan. Suddenly, i'll nowhere,
Speaker 1: a laser comes in from outer space, hits the planet,
Speaker 1: and plant done blowed up real good. So then you
Speaker 1: travel faster than the speed of light toward the direction
Speaker 1: that the laser came from, and you actually get to
Speaker 1: the death Star before it fires the laser. That would
Speaker 1: give you an opportunity to stop the laser from firing
Speaker 1: and stop Aldon from exploding, which you have already actually
Speaker 1: witnessed yourself, which isn't cool because it violates causality. Generally,
Speaker 1: that means that effects follow causes, not the other way around.
Speaker 1: You shouldn't be able to have a cause come after
Speaker 1: the effect it makes because tim don't work like that.
Speaker 1: Star Wars still has problems with the ramification of causality,
Speaker 1: but at least it gets around the issues of faster
Speaker 1: than light travel by using alternate dimensions. So instead of
Speaker 1: hitting a speed that violates Einstein's precious theories, you just
Speaker 1: decrease the distance between you and your destination. So in
Speaker 1: this case, you hop into a dimension that's sort of
Speaker 1: like a shortcut between two points. You're traveling at a
Speaker 1: good clip, but well below the speed of light. However,
Speaker 1: your new route shaves off light years of distance between
Speaker 1: you and your destination, so you get there faster than
Speaker 1: if you had taken the scenic route, and a lot
Speaker 1: of people like to use this analogy, including me. Imagine
Speaker 1: you've got a big paper map, so you find Atlanta
Speaker 1: on the map, that's where I am. Then you find
Speaker 1: London on the map. That's where they shot a lot
Speaker 1: of Star Wars, and you draw a line between the two.
Speaker 1: You've got a ruler. You connect the Atlanta to London
Speaker 1: using the ruler, and then you draw a line from
Speaker 1: Atlanta to London. Now consider that a virtual trip between
Speaker 1: the two cities. The travel time is how long it
Speaker 1: takes you to draw that straight line. Now, imagine you
Speaker 1: take an identical map to the first one and so
Speaker 1: it doesn't have a line on it, and you fold
Speaker 1: it so that Atlanta and London are touching each other.
Speaker 1: When you have this folded map, then you poke a
Speaker 1: hole through the map at that point with your pencil,
Speaker 1: and it leaves a little bit of a mark both
Speaker 1: in Atlanta and London. That kind of represents this idea
Speaker 1: of using hyperspace. Uh in our universe, we would call
Speaker 1: it a wormhole to connect to dissent points in space together,
Speaker 1: you'd reduce the distance between your start point and your endpoint,
Speaker 1: but you're not moving any faster necessarily between the two.
Speaker 1: You might be going at your top speed, but you're
Speaker 1: going at top speed in an alternate dimension. That just
Speaker 1: reduces the distance. It warps space time so that your
Speaker 1: destination is close to your starting point. Now, in Star Wars,
Speaker 1: that all has to do with a fictional stuff called
Speaker 1: hypermatter and fictional technologies called hyper drives. We obviously don't
Speaker 1: have access to that in the real world. And as
Speaker 1: for warping spacetime, that itself is largely theoretical, since it
Speaker 1: would require such enormous amounts of energy that nothing we
Speaker 1: have ever done comes even close. However, that does lead
Speaker 1: me to the last bit I want to cover in
Speaker 1: part one of how the Death Star works, which is
Speaker 1: the dust Stars reactor. Now, a space station, that huge
Speaker 1: one that's capable of moving through space at high speeds
Speaker 1: and firing an incredibly powerful laser would need a truly
Speaker 1: tremendous power source. The Death Star has a hyper matter
Speaker 1: implosion core which used that fictional stuff of hyper matter
Speaker 1: as fuel to produce huge amounts of energy. And the
Speaker 1: close this thing we might ever be able to make
Speaker 1: would be a fusion reactor. Fusion power generates electricity by
Speaker 1: fusing to relatively light atomic nuclei to form a heavier nucleus.
Speaker 1: This reaction releases energy as a result. It's an exothermic
Speaker 1: reaction as long as the nuclei are light nuclei. This
Speaker 1: is the way that stars emit energy. Fusion requires incredibly
Speaker 1: high temperatures and the millions of degrees kelvin, and because
Speaker 1: of this it is really challenging to pull it off
Speaker 1: here on Earth. We've done it, but not in the
Speaker 1: way that is economical. For sustainable power, the expense of
Speaker 1: operating the system is greater than the value of the
Speaker 1: energy we get out of it. For now, So what
Speaker 1: is going on? Well, at an atomic level, we are
Speaker 1: forcing these nuclei to get close enough so that the
Speaker 1: nuclear force kicks in and overrides the electrostatic force that
Speaker 1: would normally be forcing the two nuclei apart from each other. Now,
Speaker 1: these are both fundamental forces in nature, or at least,
Speaker 1: electromagnetic force is a fundamental force. Electrosthetic relates to that.
Speaker 1: The nuclear forces, both the strong and weak nuclear force,
Speaker 1: are stronger than the electromagnetic force, but only at very
Speaker 1: very close distances I'm talking about on the atomic scale.
Speaker 1: The electromagnetic force is weaker, but it has a greater
Speaker 1: scale of effect or a greater range of effect. So
Speaker 1: if you can get the two smaller nuclei close enough
Speaker 1: so that the nuclear force takes over, it will counteract
Speaker 1: that electrostatic force that's pushing the two nuclei apart, and
Speaker 1: for lighter nuclei, that creates that exothermic reaction I was
Speaker 1: talking about, and thus it releases energy. Now, if we
Speaker 1: ever find an efficient way to harness fusion, it could
Speaker 1: potentially solve many major energy problems here on Earth. Fusion
Speaker 1: doesn't rely on heavier radioactive particles the way fission does.
Speaker 1: Fission is the basis of our nuclear power today, but
Speaker 1: we just have to find a way to make it work,
Speaker 1: which granted, is easier said than done. We may never
Speaker 1: find a way to do this economically. If we could, however,
Speaker 1: it would be an enormous boon because even though fusion
Speaker 1: is technically a non renewable energy source, we have so
Speaker 1: much of those lighter elements at our disposal it would
Speaker 1: take millions of years for us to consume all of it,
Speaker 1: which means we would have a lot of time to
Speaker 1: start coming up with alternatives for our energy needs, and
Speaker 1: in the foreseeable future, possibly long before humanity itself dies out,
Speaker 1: we would have plenty of energy. Uh. That is kind
Speaker 1: of the summary of how the Death Star works with
Speaker 1: its supplemental systems. In our next episode, we're gonna look
Speaker 1: more at how it becomes a truly operational battle station
Speaker 1: with all the weaponry involved, and we'll talk a little
Speaker 1: bit more about the Death Star too, and the star
Speaker 1: Killer base as well on the differences between them. Death
Speaker 1: Star two was much bigger than the original Death Star,
Speaker 1: even though it didn't look like much in the film
Speaker 1: Return of the Jedi, But we learn a lot about
Speaker 1: its capabilities in that movie, so we'll talk more about
Speaker 1: that in the next episode. It also give us an
Speaker 1: opportunity to talk about things like force fields, because there
Speaker 1: was one around the Death Star too. If you guys
Speaker 1: have suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, whether it's
Speaker 1: a real technology of fictional technology. Maybe it's a person
Speaker 1: or a company in tech that you would like me
Speaker 1: to talk about. Maybe there's someone you would want me
Speaker 1: to interview or have on as a guest host, let
Speaker 1: me know. Send me a message. The email address for
Speaker 1: the podcast is tech Stuff at how stuffworks dot com.
Speaker 1: You can drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter.
Speaker 1: The handle of both of those is tech Stuff hs W.
Speaker 1: Make sure you follow us on Instagram, and remember you
Speaker 1: can watch me record these shows live on Twitch dot
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Speaker 1: I realize in horror as I record a show that
Speaker 1: I made an error in calculations and I have to
Speaker 1: stop everything, recalculate and start up again. Because the people
Speaker 1: who were in today's chat room got to see that happen,
Speaker 1: and you guys didn't because you're not there, So change it.
Speaker 1: Go there, Go to twitch dot tv slash tech stuff.
Speaker 1: There's a schedule there. I record on Wednesdays and Friday's.
Speaker 1: Hope to see you in there, and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. For more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics. Is that how stuff works dot com