Speaker 1: Welcome to tex Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and I love all things tech And
Speaker 1: with time for us to listen to another classic episode,
Speaker 1: it means it's a Friday, so let's all enjoy ourselves
Speaker 1: and and dive back into the archives of tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: You know, I've got more than episodes at this point,
Speaker 1: so some of these are probably brand new to you guys.
Speaker 1: This episode originally aired on April two, thousand thirteen. It
Speaker 1: is called tex Stuff Leaps into hyper Space. Let's listen.
Speaker 1: Red leather, yellow leather, red, yellow leather. All right, here
Speaker 1: we go, Han Solo, I'm captain of the Millennium Falcon.
Speaker 1: Chewy here tells me you're looking for passage to the
Speaker 1: Alton System. Yes, indeed, if it's a fast ship fast ship,
Speaker 1: you've never heard of the Millennium Falcon ship I have.
Speaker 1: It's the ship that made the Kessel run in less
Speaker 1: than twelve par secs. I've outrun Imperial starships. Not the
Speaker 1: local bulk cruisers, mind you. I'm talking about the big
Speaker 1: Correlian ships. Now she's fast enough for you, old man?
Speaker 1: What's the cargo? Usually I'm the one calling you old man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. I just wanted to turn that around a
Speaker 1: little bit. I also didn't go full Christopher walk In,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that I love that Saturday Night Live skit.
Speaker 1: So we are talking about the Kessel Run and hyper
Speaker 1: drives in the Star Wars universe and uh, and then
Speaker 1: kind of comparing it to what we would like to
Speaker 1: call real life. Right. And we're doing this, by the way,
Speaker 1: because this is our five first episode and we are
Speaker 1: we we are big fans of the five of first legion.
Speaker 1: That's right, That's right, that's the Uh. This is props
Speaker 1: going out to our Star Wars buddies. So you five
Speaker 1: hundred and first members out there, this one's for you.
Speaker 1: So now, in the original context, we need to talk
Speaker 1: about what the Kessel Run is within the mythology of
Speaker 1: Star Wars, right, and it's not really mentioned in um
Speaker 1: in any of the three original films, right, or even
Speaker 1: the fictional prequels that supposedly exist. No, we should also
Speaker 1: point out, according to everything I've ever read, Lucas considered
Speaker 1: anything that was in the movies cannon correct. Anything outside
Speaker 1: the movies was just extra stuff that may or may
Speaker 1: not line up with what is canon. So there's no
Speaker 1: you know, the stuff that we'll be talking about, a
Speaker 1: lot of this is things that other writers have kind
Speaker 1: of expounded upon in in the novels. Are the comics,
Speaker 1: some of the video games, yeah, some of the cartoons, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And so the stuff that we're talking about this is
Speaker 1: this is mostly people trying to explain away what Lucas
Speaker 1: created in a in a manner that makes kind of sense,
Speaker 1: because a lot of the stuff that you watch in
Speaker 1: Star Wars, if you really think about, you're like, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, it's not science. So the Kessel Run in
Speaker 1: particular is a route in Star Wars, at least this
Speaker 1: is the way it's explained in the Expanded Universe. It's
Speaker 1: it's a smuggling run, right, which is exactly what you know.
Speaker 1: Han Solo is a smuggler, and so this is a
Speaker 1: particular route through space that smugglers would take. And uh.
Speaker 1: And one of the big complaints or criticisms of this
Speaker 1: particular section of dialogue is that Han Solo talks about
Speaker 1: doing a Kessel Run in less than twelve par sex,
Speaker 1: which seems to suggest that he thinks par sex is
Speaker 1: a measure of time, right, and it's not, and it's
Speaker 1: it's certainly not. You know, you know, I think that
Speaker 1: my my strongest um explanation of this is just that
Speaker 1: Han Solo was just saying words. He was just talking
Speaker 1: and trying to sound impressive. My my explanation is Lucas
Speaker 1: thought that parsex sounded futuristic and that it sounds like
Speaker 1: a measurement of time. That was mine, which puts the
Speaker 1: onus on the writer and not the character. But hey,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm a writer. That's kind of how I think.
Speaker 1: Like sometimes I make mistakes too. I'm just saying that
Speaker 1: if you're going to excuse the character saying and I
Speaker 1: think that that is not a poor right if you
Speaker 1: want to be an apologist. Sure, so, So what a
Speaker 1: what a par sec actually is? It is a unit
Speaker 1: of distance and technically based upon UH the uh the
Speaker 1: sun and earth and and and a second of arc. Uh.
Speaker 1: It involves some pretty complex UH concepts that are not
Speaker 1: that complex, but they're difficult to explain an audio format.
Speaker 1: But ultimately it translates to about three point to six
Speaker 1: light years, right, and and it's specifically, by the way,
Speaker 1: tied to to the distance of the Sun from the
Speaker 1: Earth and another object and another object that makes up
Speaker 1: one sec. Yeah, and so you know, forgiving the fact
Speaker 1: that we're talking about a galaxy far far away, and
Speaker 1: that perhaps, as a phil plate of that astronomer pointed out,
Speaker 1: that might not be the most valid measurement. Why would
Speaker 1: another why would people in another galaxy use a unit
Speaker 1: of measurement that's dependent upon the Earth's position relative to
Speaker 1: another object and the Sun. That makes no sense at all.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so it's it's equivalent to about three point
Speaker 1: to six light years, And of course that just makes
Speaker 1: things even more confusing for people who don't know what
Speaker 1: a light year is, and they think light year is
Speaker 1: also a measurement of time. It's not. But at any rate,
Speaker 1: the description Han Solo makes is very confusing if you
Speaker 1: think about parsex being a distance, like, how can you
Speaker 1: take a route and say that your ship made it
Speaker 1: in less than twelve units of distance for that route
Speaker 1: and make that the a measurement of its speed. So
Speaker 1: here's how we're gonna try and explain this well. And
Speaker 1: also I should mention uh in the novelization of a
Speaker 1: new hope. Han Solo does not say Parsex recond that
Speaker 1: real quick. He said standard time units twelve less than
Speaker 1: twelve standard time units. I have no idea how long
Speaker 1: the standard time unit is, but that doesn't really matter,
Speaker 1: I guess. But anyway, so Kessel run, you've got this route.
Speaker 1: It's usually if you are taking the quote unquote safe approach,
Speaker 1: eighteen par sex long, which is about fifty nine light years. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the reason why it's that long is because the
Speaker 1: route takes you through an area of space that has
Speaker 1: black holes in it. It's called the mall. And the
Speaker 1: mall in a w would destroy a ship if you
Speaker 1: got too close to it. It's you know, it's a
Speaker 1: black holes. There are bad times for ships, right you know?
Speaker 1: You know you do? Have you heard what the term
Speaker 1: is for something that gets pulled through a black hole?
Speaker 1: The term of what is happening to it? Spaganifications my
Speaker 1: favorite thing in the world. Yes, because it gets pulled
Speaker 1: into these long, thin strands as it's being uh infinitely
Speaker 1: thin strands hypothetically being pulled towards this center of intense
Speaker 1: density or intensity as I like to call it. Anyway,
Speaker 1: So usually this route would be eighteen par sex long.
Speaker 1: But if one were to be a little daring or
Speaker 1: perhaps insane, completely crazy, one might be able to plot
Speaker 1: a route that goes closer to the black holes, you
Speaker 1: kind of skirt around it. And you know, Han Solo,
Speaker 1: being the guy that he is, he's he says, you know,
Speaker 1: time is money, or distance is money, or money is
Speaker 1: money or something I don't know. Anyway, he wanted to
Speaker 1: be able to take a more direct route, which would
Speaker 1: shave off about six or so parsecs from this eighteen
Speaker 1: parsec long route, and that means that you know, he's
Speaker 1: he's essentially instead of going like a curved line, he's
Speaker 1: making a straight line. Not quite like that dramatic, but
Speaker 1: close to it. So in other words, he's taking a
Speaker 1: route and making it more efficient, but it is much
Speaker 1: more dangerous. There's no direct relationship between the Millennium Falcon's
Speaker 1: speed and this route immediately, but one could argue, and
Speaker 1: one has. In fact, Kyle Hill of Wired wrote a
Speaker 1: great article how the Star Wars Kessel Run turns Hans
Speaker 1: Solo into a time traveler. Fantastic article. It's really well
Speaker 1: link it. It's great. Yeah, it's entertaining and uh and
Speaker 1: also it starts to build in some chronological problems in
Speaker 1: the Star Wars universe, but we'll get into those. But anyway,
Speaker 1: he points out that that you could end up thinking, oh, well,
Speaker 1: the Millennium Falcon has to be the fast ship because
Speaker 1: it has to be able to escape that pull of
Speaker 1: the black holes. So therefore that's what tells you that
Speaker 1: it's fast. Is not only that heating only is the
Speaker 1: pilot capable of making a more efficient route to go
Speaker 1: through the Kessel Run, but it's also in the ship
Speaker 1: fast enough to a black roles, right right? Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: according to a Wikipedia um, which is one of the
Speaker 1: best wikis ever, I just said that on the air
Speaker 1: it was wonderful. Um. In the commentary for Star Wars
Speaker 1: episode for a New Hope DVD, George Lucas said that
Speaker 1: the Millennium Falcons navigational computers were highly advanced and that
Speaker 1: that was why the parsic thing works out the way
Speaker 1: that it does. Yeah. Yeah, so essentially then you just
Speaker 1: make Han Solo a guyo flips switches, a really good
Speaker 1: flip switcher. There's also a great thing that was at
Speaker 1: the Smithsonian, one of the Star Wars exhibit where uh,
Speaker 1: Harrison's It was actually talking about the first time they
Speaker 1: shot uh seen in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon
Speaker 1: and George Lucas gave him the direction of your flying
Speaker 1: the ship and he says, Okay, how do I do that?
Speaker 1: Because there are just all these dials and switches and
Speaker 1: they didn't There was no rhyme or reason to its
Speaker 1: was like, I don't know the buttons pull that lever
Speaker 1: pushed the button frank, So anyway you might wonder, well,
Speaker 1: why what's the big deal of the Kessel run? Anyway
Speaker 1: was what was the significance? Like it's a smuggling route,
Speaker 1: but it's a smuggling route for what? And within the
Speaker 1: lore again this again nothing films expanded universe, so not Cannon.
Speaker 1: Kessel was a planet that had these mines on it
Speaker 1: for something called glitter stem spice, which was a substance
Speaker 1: created by spice spiders, and it's a photoactive substance, so
Speaker 1: it activates when light hits it, So it had to
Speaker 1: be mined in complete darkness. It could not be exposed
Speaker 1: to light in anywhere or else it lose its potency.
Speaker 1: And the spice was essentially a drug. Uh As Cheery
Speaker 1: as that is, I do want to point out that
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure the word castle comes from during World
Speaker 1: War Two. You know, the Germans got themselves really good
Speaker 1: and surrounded by a group of Russians and uh and
Speaker 1: some of their compatriots were trying to get supplies and
Speaker 1: aid to uh their their surrounding colleagues colleagues. Yeah sure,
Speaker 1: and this failed completely. But but the word kessel means
Speaker 1: that like pocket in Germany, thint cattle, yeah, dosson thrish
Speaker 1: dish uh So the Gli stump spice stuff. What it
Speaker 1: was supposed to do within the realm of Star Wars
Speaker 1: is boost your mental capacity and even give you perhaps
Speaker 1: telepathic powers for a short amount of time. It was
Speaker 1: also incredibly addictive. This is this makes Hanselo an even
Speaker 1: darker character in a way because he's smuggling. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: runs drugs. Um so, yeah, that's kind of grim. But
Speaker 1: in the during the Galactic Republic, which is the period
Speaker 1: that proceeds a New Hope, that's back when there was
Speaker 1: a the Old Republic was around. It was being used medically.
Speaker 1: But then the republic fails and then the black market
Speaker 1: takes over. Smugglers start selling this. I guess more like
Speaker 1: recreational drugs as opposed to medical things, and the Empire
Speaker 1: outlaws it. And so that's why it's important to be
Speaker 1: able to avoid imperial entanglements, as Obi Wan says in
Speaker 1: a New Hope. So that's why it's important that there's
Speaker 1: the explanation of shaving off some of the distance that
Speaker 1: it would normally take you to to travel in order
Speaker 1: to get there, and also the fact that the Falcon
Speaker 1: would have to be a little faster than most ships. Now,
Speaker 1: all of that is kind of cool. I can. I
Speaker 1: can kind of handle most of that, even though I
Speaker 1: think that the parseec thing is really an apologist. It's
Speaker 1: a redcon or retroactive continuity where you after you've made
Speaker 1: a mistake, you go back and try to justify the
Speaker 1: fact that a mistake is there. Uh, this is the
Speaker 1: way in no way unlimited to Star Wars. It's extraordinarily common. Um, yes, everywhere, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's yeah. So the other thing that Hans Solo says
Speaker 1: is that can go at point five beyond light speed.
Speaker 1: So I interpret that to mean half again faster than
Speaker 1: the speed of light. I I interpreted it as as
Speaker 1: a as point five percent of light speed. Above light speed.
Speaker 1: But but but your sounds much more impressive. But that
Speaker 1: would be much mind would be much more impressive. Either way,
Speaker 1: you're violating the laws of physics as we understand them.
Speaker 1: Because as we as we understand the speed of light
Speaker 1: through a vacuum is the universal speed limit. Nothing can
Speaker 1: go faster than light through a vacuum physically impossible. Now
Speaker 1: we should also mention light itself does not necessarily travel
Speaker 1: at the same speed through all media. You know, through
Speaker 1: a vacuum, it travels at an incredible clip. It's about
Speaker 1: two d million, seven fifty eight meters per second, or
Speaker 1: around one six thousand, two eighty two miles per second.
Speaker 1: That's through the vacuum of space and solos ship. If
Speaker 1: you assume it could go half again faster than the
Speaker 1: speed of light would have its top speed, it's somewhere
Speaker 1: around four hundred forty nine million, million, six eight thousand
Speaker 1: six or eighty seven per second, or two thousand, four
Speaker 1: hundred twenty four miles per second. That's really fast, And
Speaker 1: of course it is faster than anything we can we
Speaker 1: we know of, besides some theoretical particles that we'll talk
Speaker 1: about in a little bit. That's faster than anything we
Speaker 1: know of can go. That makes it really problematic because
Speaker 1: if we just talk about parsecs and shaving off distance,
Speaker 1: you know, Okay, I can see that we still have
Speaker 1: the problem of a parsec is a really long distance, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So how you know, if Han Solo made the kessel run,
Speaker 1: how long would it take him to do it? Assuming
Speaker 1: that he's traveling at around the speed of light? And yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean if if you're if you nudge right up
Speaker 1: to the speed of light, they would take about thirty
Speaker 1: nine years travel twelve par sex that that would be.
Speaker 1: That would be due to an independent observer though correct
Speaker 1: because special relativity. But we'll talk about that. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't want to get into that right now, but special
Speaker 1: relativity will play a part in our second part of
Speaker 1: our conversation because also we should go ahead and say it.
Speaker 1: According to Star Wars, and again this is a retcon
Speaker 1: type thing, all ships have a stasis field stabilizer thing
Speaker 1: that keeps time. It's a universal constant of time amongst
Speaker 1: the Empire, which is really convenient because otherwise Han Solo
Speaker 1: would be older than Yoda right after he had taken
Speaker 1: what I don't know, like like two or three trips
Speaker 1: yea four or five three trips on the Kestle run.
Speaker 1: But it does sound like he's done it multiple times,
Speaker 1: which means that if he's done the Kestle run multiple times,
Speaker 1: that special relativity problem, which again we'll talk about in
Speaker 1: a minute just to Paine. Right. So, so here's here's
Speaker 1: the thing. The stasis is supposed to keep everything constant. Uh.
Speaker 1: Time is a tricky thing, but it doesn't matter. It's
Speaker 1: not just if you're traveling nearer or at or above
Speaker 1: the speed of light where you have to take it
Speaker 1: into account. Every single planet that's in the entire galaxy
Speaker 1: of Star Wars has time pass at a different rate
Speaker 1: according to any according to physics. Yeah, and again it's relative.
Speaker 1: So if Lauren's on one planet and I'm on another planet,
Speaker 1: each of us are going to feel as if time
Speaker 1: is passing at the same speed individually, like a second
Speaker 1: will feel like a second to me, a second will
Speaker 1: feel like a second to Lauren. However, depending upon the
Speaker 1: planet's mass and the speed at which it travels through space,
Speaker 1: the actual passage of time is going to be different
Speaker 1: relative to each other. So if we match our watches up,
Speaker 1: we'll see that they're not keeping exact synchronized time. And
Speaker 1: again more on that and just a bit. I have
Speaker 1: to I have to preface it because it's it makes
Speaker 1: my head swim, all right. So the other element in
Speaker 1: this Star Wars universe is the idea of hyper space
Speaker 1: and hyperdrive. And so this is when, and if you've
Speaker 1: watched the Star Wars movies, you know, they engage the
Speaker 1: hyperdrive and then suddenly all the stars start streaking towards
Speaker 1: them in this beautiful display. And from from the outside
Speaker 1: it looks like the ship just suddenly gets an enormous
Speaker 1: speed boost, and yet no one is is slammed back
Speaker 1: against the back of the the Millennium falcon like and
Speaker 1: ejected into space because of the massive acceleration. That would
Speaker 1: be a pretty pretty lame trip. It would be really
Speaker 1: would be funny to see, like the the activation of
Speaker 1: the first hyper drive and then you just see a
Speaker 1: bunch of a leads just floating free in space like well,
Speaker 1: that was a bad idea, um because that kind of
Speaker 1: this kind of happens in Fire Escape. That's for for
Speaker 1: you kids out there. We need to make Jonathan watch that. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I've never watched it, so so it's it's not very
Speaker 1: well defined hyperspace, and in the Star Wars universe, even
Speaker 1: in the expanded universe a right, right, it's hyperspace is
Speaker 1: kind of placed in contrast to real space. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: real space being of course what we're kind of moving
Speaker 1: around and the under under normal speed constraints are moving
Speaker 1: around it. And then and then yeah, apparently these these
Speaker 1: hypermatter reactor drives with hypermatter implosion cores. I mean, it
Speaker 1: sounds a little bit like a like a wormhole or
Speaker 1: a tests or act something like that. Like, again, it's
Speaker 1: not very well explained. So some of there's like it
Speaker 1: could be a parallel universe where you open up a
Speaker 1: gate and you travel into a new universe, and then
Speaker 1: you open up a second gate and you re emerge
Speaker 1: into quote unquote our universe the start, or at least
Speaker 1: the Star Wars universe real space, but you are you know,
Speaker 1: in a different point of real space than you were
Speaker 1: when you started. Um Or it could be an extra
Speaker 1: dimension in space, which is kind of like warp drive
Speaker 1: where you're warping space around you. It could be an
Speaker 1: alternate mode of physical existence, which I said is kind
Speaker 1: of like an astral plane for those of you who
Speaker 1: play fantasy games where you can travel to that um
Speaker 1: or it could just be traveling faster than the speed
Speaker 1: of light, and all of that is difficult to to
Speaker 1: get your head around. Again, none of that was definitively
Speaker 1: set down in the movies as this is how hyper
Speaker 1: drive works or hyperspace. So we have a lot of
Speaker 1: different things to choose from and uh, and it seems
Speaker 1: to me that a lot of the people who write
Speaker 1: in the Star Wars universe or who have tried to
Speaker 1: explain the Star Wars universe have kind of fudged around
Speaker 1: with this a lot. No one has really come out
Speaker 1: with what is the definitive answer as to what this is? Right? Sure,
Speaker 1: and and this I used this example about about once
Speaker 1: a week with Jonathan, but it always reminds me of
Speaker 1: this one terrific interview that Rick Burman did about a
Speaker 1: Star Trek, specifically the UH Eisenberg uncertainty compensators and the transporters,
Speaker 1: and someone was like, well, how did those work? And
Speaker 1: he was like, very well, thank you, next question. Yeah,
Speaker 1: whereas you know, the holidack works very poorly, or at
Speaker 1: least it breaks down once a year. But again within
Speaker 1: the lore of Star Wars. Hyperspace itself is first discovered
Speaker 1: by a race called the Raccotta, and they create ricata
Speaker 1: like the cheese. No, it's our a k A t A. Okay,
Speaker 1: just checking. You're gonna remember that Star Wars often the
Speaker 1: pronunciations are exactly the same as very silly stuff here
Speaker 1: on Earth. Funny about that, um. But anyway, they they
Speaker 1: created force powered drives, so they were tapping into the
Speaker 1: power of the Force to travel through space at incredible speeds.
Speaker 1: And there there, I have no problem because the force
Speaker 1: is magic, and and magic means you do not have
Speaker 1: to explain how something works technologically, physics, it's right out
Speaker 1: the windows, right, Yeah, you know it's a fairy tale.
Speaker 1: You don't question the physics of a fairy tale, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean if you sit there and say, well, wouldn't
Speaker 1: prints climbing Rapunzel's hair, scalp her and leave her screaming
Speaker 1: in pain, that doesn't make the fairy tale very much fun.
Speaker 1: Uh would have been a very short movie. Tangled would
Speaker 1: have been very grim and not in a fairy tale
Speaker 1: kind of Okay, anyway, I'm getting off track. But they
Speaker 1: used the force, and I thought, oh, well, if it's
Speaker 1: thing that's force space then except that then within again
Speaker 1: the expanded lore. The Karelians Karelias, one of the planets
Speaker 1: in the Star Wars universe, and the Euros both found
Speaker 1: these starship drives and using reverse engineering, determined how they
Speaker 1: worked and created technological versions of these force driven drives.
Speaker 1: So they use technology to replicate what the force did.
Speaker 1: And now now we have a technological explanation for how
Speaker 1: hyperspace works. Except there's no actual explanation there. It's just
Speaker 1: that it is technological. Now this is what drives me
Speaker 1: crazy because then I'm like, okay, wait no, So if
Speaker 1: there is a technical way to make it happen, how
Speaker 1: does it work? Um? And and really we have more
Speaker 1: about the process than anything else. So uh. In the movies,
Speaker 1: when they were going to make a jump to hyperspace,
Speaker 1: they would activate the ship's navigational computer, which would calculate
Speaker 1: whatever the route needed to And this was important because,
Speaker 1: as Han Solo explains to Luke, who is an impatient
Speaker 1: little brat in a New Hope, he explains, like, you
Speaker 1: can't hurry this stuff because if you do, you pass
Speaker 1: too close to a star or a planet, it pulls
Speaker 1: you out of hyperspace and you could die. Yeah. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: now this to me creates another problem because if hyperspace
Speaker 1: is in fact a parallel universe, why do things that
Speaker 1: exist in our meat space affect you when you're in
Speaker 1: the parallel universe, unless, of course they also have a
Speaker 1: presence in that parallel universe. I I do, I don't know.
Speaker 1: And it sounds much more like a like a like
Speaker 1: a wormhole, like like you're somehow jumping from from point
Speaker 1: to point along kind of a like like an conveyor
Speaker 1: belt sort of thing, which is another concept that we
Speaker 1: can talk about in a minute. So you're you're thinking
Speaker 1: more along the lines of this parallel universe has has
Speaker 1: certain anchor points to real space that it does pass through,
Speaker 1: even if it's not a one to one ratio. Is
Speaker 1: that kind of what you're talking about or yeah, or
Speaker 1: kind of like I don't know, like like there's just
Speaker 1: certain sections of space that you can go much faster
Speaker 1: through and and unfortunately, you know sometimes as some gets
Speaker 1: in the way. So you're talking about like the auto
Speaker 1: bawn of space. Yeah, and that's another thing that I
Speaker 1: was reading on Wikipedia, was was saying, was saying that
Speaker 1: there maybe about eight of these, according to the Star
Speaker 1: Wars universe kicking around and that are super safe roots,
Speaker 1: and then there's some that are pretty shady and wind
Speaker 1: up getting me stuck in an asteroid. Wow. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: at any rate, it does make me sit there and
Speaker 1: think this parallel universe explanation is is harder to get
Speaker 1: my mind wrapped around if things in real space can
Speaker 1: affect you're traveling through the parallel universe, unless, of course, uh,
Speaker 1: it's just talking about how where your output is going
Speaker 1: to be, like where your stopping point is going to be,
Speaker 1: then obviously would be important if if it um maybe
Speaker 1: it has to calculate all right, well, during the process,
Speaker 1: like right now, if we were to leave, if we
Speaker 1: were to instantaneously jumped to this endpoint right now, we'd
Speaker 1: be fine. But by the time we actually get there,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be a planet in the way because of
Speaker 1: the rotation of the planets. Then I'm like, okay, all right,
Speaker 1: I got it. Now that makes sense. It was to me.
Speaker 1: It was the stuff that was on the pathway that
Speaker 1: made no sense. But anyway, the hyper drive would create
Speaker 1: ripples in the time space matrix using a fusion reaction
Speaker 1: and gamma radiation and then the ripples would propel the
Speaker 1: ship into hyperspace. And none of that makes any sense,
Speaker 1: but then again, it sounds really impressive if you're just
Speaker 1: not thinking at all. If if you're just if Han
Speaker 1: Solo were reading that, I would be like, yeah, total, yeah,
Speaker 1: well let me come on. He was kind of dreamy,
Speaker 1: just we just bought anything, he said, uh yeah. And
Speaker 1: and this also reminds me of warp drive as well,
Speaker 1: where you're you're warping the time space. In this case
Speaker 1: it's the time space matrix and in star check could
Speaker 1: be the space time continuum. But either way, it's the
Speaker 1: idea of warping the dimensions themselves in order to propel
Speaker 1: you across vast distances that incredible speeds. And uh and
Speaker 1: so that's kind of the breakdown of how it worked
Speaker 1: within the lore of Star Wars. All Right, guys, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna interrupt this classic episode for just a moment so
Speaker 1: that we can take a quick break to thank our sponsors. Alright,
Speaker 1: so let's get back to hyperspace. So we mentioned in
Speaker 1: the first half nothing can go faster than the speed
Speaker 1: of light, this universal speed. Look, yeah, it's it's smart
Speaker 1: people such as Einstein have talked a lot about that, right,
Speaker 1: and that that speed and time themselves actually have a relationship.
Speaker 1: And so this gets us into special relativity. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of different aspects of special relativity, but the
Speaker 1: one that interests me the most in this discussion is
Speaker 1: the fact that as objects move faster, time dilates on
Speaker 1: that object relative to a stationary observer. So again, in
Speaker 1: other words, like if I if I'm standing perfectly still
Speaker 1: in space, so I'm not, I'm not on a planet,
Speaker 1: I'm not moving at all, hopefully in space suit Yes, sure,
Speaker 1: why not? I'll give it to you at this time,
Speaker 1: all right, And Lauren, you are in a zippy little
Speaker 1: ship that's going at near the speed of light. Again,
Speaker 1: to you, time seems to be passing at the normal rate.
Speaker 1: Like if you were to have a watch watch, it
Speaker 1: would be taking along at one second partick according to
Speaker 1: my eyeballs, right, and it would feel exactly like it
Speaker 1: was as long as a second should be. My watch
Speaker 1: would also to me be it would appear to be
Speaker 1: moving at exactly the correct speed. Now, if I were
Speaker 1: to to be able to see what's happening in your
Speaker 1: little world, it would look to me like a time
Speaker 1: had slowed way down for you, and that more time
Speaker 1: was passing for me than it was for you, so
Speaker 1: you could do like a quick joy ride around the
Speaker 1: solar system. And let's say we're just going to make
Speaker 1: an argument that that you take an hour long trip
Speaker 1: around the solar system and to me, to to your
Speaker 1: to your watch, so your watch, you start the timer
Speaker 1: as soon as you engage the drive, and an hour
Speaker 1: has gone by, and you you come back and pick
Speaker 1: you up, you come back to see me, and uh,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna say that you're going on a speed
Speaker 1: so that we won't make it ridiculous. So were you're
Speaker 1: going at a speed where a year of time has
Speaker 1: gone by for me? I'm going to Chris speed. Sorry, So,
Speaker 1: so an hour of time has gone by for Lauren,
Speaker 1: a year has gone by for me. Um, And that's
Speaker 1: the special relativity. It's that idea that again relative to me,
Speaker 1: less time has passed for Lauren. Relative to Lauren, more
Speaker 1: time has passed for me. Right, And then that's because
Speaker 1: that's because speed and mass both have speed and gravity
Speaker 1: both have an effect on time, as time is a
Speaker 1: substance itself. So now the gravity mass thing that's really
Speaker 1: more general relativity. But that's that's also playing a part
Speaker 1: in all of our calculations when it comes to space faring.
Speaker 1: By the way, if you were to do something like
Speaker 1: Carrie and a my clock, uh, and have it synchronized
Speaker 1: within another atomic clock. So two atomic clocks are side
Speaker 1: by side on a table here on Earth, and you
Speaker 1: take one of those and you get on an air elevator.
Speaker 1: Is not even a space all there. You just get
Speaker 1: an airplane. And as an airplane is going at top
Speaker 1: speed and it's flying as far as it possibly can
Speaker 1: and then it lands. By the time it lands, those
Speaker 1: two clocks that were in perfect sink before will no
Speaker 1: longer be in perfect sinc And the reason is is
Speaker 1: that you were traveling a little faster. There's also some uh,
Speaker 1: the element of general relativity, which means that when you're
Speaker 1: further away from the center of the Earth and and
Speaker 1: therefore the closer you are to a large mass object,
Speaker 1: the slower time passes for you relative to something that's
Speaker 1: further out from that massive object. Again, it's all relative
Speaker 1: because from your individual experience, it seems like time is
Speaker 1: passing at the same rate unless you're you know, waiting
Speaker 1: on an important phone call, in which case, yeah, like
Speaker 1: you know that that dreamy, that dreamy person you met
Speaker 1: at that party is supposed to call and you're just
Speaker 1: staring at the phone. Tie. Every second is an eternity,
Speaker 1: no matter whether you're traveling at the speed of light
Speaker 1: or not. But anyway, yeah, we can observe this in
Speaker 1: it in satellites that we've launched into orbit, they have
Speaker 1: to they have to mathematically correct for that sort of Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: in fact, both special and general relativity play a part
Speaker 1: in this. So the Global Positioning System GPS, the GPS
Speaker 1: device you have picks up signals that are beamed down
Speaker 1: from satellites, and the satellites part of the signal is
Speaker 1: a time stamp, and the way your GPS figures out
Speaker 1: where you are is by saying, all right, well, it
Speaker 1: took X amount of time for for this one signal
Speaker 1: to come from this satellite to hit me, It took
Speaker 1: x amount why amount of time from the signal from
Speaker 1: this other satellite hit me, and took the amount of
Speaker 1: time for the signal from this third satellite to hit me.
Speaker 1: Based upon all of that and the position of those satellites,
Speaker 1: I know that I must be on this point on
Speaker 1: the Earth. Well, obviously the time stamp is really important
Speaker 1: for the information to work. It needs to be pretty precise, yeah,
Speaker 1: otherwise it's going to give you the wrong location on
Speaker 1: the Earth. The thing about the satellites is that they
Speaker 1: are traveling faster than a point relative on the surface
Speaker 1: of the Earth, so that means that time is passing
Speaker 1: again at a different rate relative to us here on
Speaker 1: Earth on the on the surface. But they are also
Speaker 1: further out from the mass of the Earth, which means
Speaker 1: they're going faster, So that means times passing more slowly
Speaker 1: relative to us. But they are further out, so time
Speaker 1: is passing faster than relative to us. This gets really complicated,
Speaker 1: but if you were talking about just special relativity, because
Speaker 1: the satellites are moving so fast, they have about a
Speaker 1: lag of about seven micro seconds per day on the
Speaker 1: satellites clock. So remember they're they're traveling faster than the
Speaker 1: relative point on the surface of the Earth, so that
Speaker 1: means that less time is passing on the satellite seven
Speaker 1: micro seconds per day as a as a result. But
Speaker 1: because they're further out from the mass of the Earth,
Speaker 1: then a clock would be here, you know, close to
Speaker 1: the surface. Their clocks are actually running faster by about
Speaker 1: forty five microseconds per day because of general relativity. So
Speaker 1: if you take those two numbers, the the lag of
Speaker 1: second seven microseconds and the surplus of forty five microseconds,
Speaker 1: and then you know, combine the two to cancel them out,
Speaker 1: you are still left with a thirty eight microseconds surplus
Speaker 1: per day on the satellites clock compared to one on Earth.
Speaker 1: So that means that you actually have to correct for that.
Speaker 1: All right, that's one satellite that's orbiting Earth. Now imagine
Speaker 1: that on all the spaceships traveling everywhere all the time.
Speaker 1: And that's why you get to the point where keeping
Speaker 1: track of time is an impossible actic level is Yeah,
Speaker 1: So in the case of Han Solo, again going back
Speaker 1: to that that Wired article that Kyle Hill wrote, he
Speaker 1: started pointing out that assuming that you're going at near
Speaker 1: the speed of light. He went ahead and said, okay,
Speaker 1: you can't go faster than speed of light. Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: let's that's right out. And going at the speed of
Speaker 1: light is also impossible because you would at that point
Speaker 1: have infinite density, density, and and mass. So that would
Speaker 1: be bad mass. Your mass increases as you get closer
Speaker 1: to the speed of light. But if we say ad infinitum, yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's going about as fast as it as as
Speaker 1: as close to the speed of light as you possibly
Speaker 1: can imagine. This is probably not it's probably not ever
Speaker 1: going to be possible physically, but if you can imagine
Speaker 1: it um that, then the Kessel run would take about
Speaker 1: half a day, about sixteen hours yea, so sixteen hours
Speaker 1: on the on the Millennium Falcon. But then galactic time,
Speaker 1: assuming the galactic time is passing at a stands to
Speaker 1: forty years, So forty years would pass in galactic time
Speaker 1: while on board the Falcon, sixteen hours passes. So they
Speaker 1: started to figure out like how much time has passed
Speaker 1: in the gal and the galaxy since Han Solo made
Speaker 1: his Kessel run, And then he started saying, well, yeahs
Speaker 1: probably made the Kessel run more than once, so if
Speaker 1: you start adding up to of Kessel runs, how much
Speaker 1: time has passed. And that's when he said, like, you know,
Speaker 1: you do two Kestle runs. And then he had to
Speaker 1: have been born before characters who like cook. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: then you've got Han Solo predating all the characters who
Speaker 1: were in the prequels. Uh, and it's because of this
Speaker 1: special relativity problem. So, by the way, if he were
Speaker 1: in fact able to travel faster than the speed of light,
Speaker 1: it would mean that he would arrive at his destination
Speaker 1: before he left math is fun. Yeah, so so he
Speaker 1: would actually he would be on Kessel before he had
Speaker 1: decided to make the Kessel run due to the way
Speaker 1: this works. Now, granted, nothing can go faster than the
Speaker 1: speed of light. But you know, assuming they have they
Speaker 1: have those those drives, those that the hyper drives, ret
Speaker 1: red con drives, the red con drives. Yes, those work
Speaker 1: really well. Um where you just say, hey, it's impossible,
Speaker 1: let's change it. Let's look at the wookie. Uh. And
Speaker 1: and so the stasis field was sort of the answer
Speaker 1: to that, saying that the time does not pass differently
Speaker 1: aboard the ship as it does in the outside galaxy,
Speaker 1: which is fine except for the fact that again, remember,
Speaker 1: every single planet has its own passage of time. Like
Speaker 1: you know, a second feels like a second no matter
Speaker 1: where you are, but it lasts shorter or longer depending
Speaker 1: upon the planet's mass and its speed that it moves
Speaker 1: through space. And also technically, I think that it would
Speaker 1: be a little bit confusing to try to, you know,
Speaker 1: call days out on a whole system of planets that
Speaker 1: have different suns and different orbits, and yeah, and and tattooing.
Speaker 1: You've got two sons, one of them might always be up.
Speaker 1: You never know, I mean, it's it gets complex and
Speaker 1: uh yeah, And then you have all these other people
Speaker 1: who are traveling around at nearer or faster than the
Speaker 1: speed of lights, so time gets messed up for them too,
Speaker 1: So time would be meaningless in this universe, which you know,
Speaker 1: one could argue it's kind of meaningless now, but I
Speaker 1: don't get that cynical except on Friday's and it's a Thursday,
Speaker 1: so I'm all right. Then again, there are also some
Speaker 1: criticisms to things like the visual representation of what it
Speaker 1: looks like to go into hyperspace, which I thought was awesome. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there there was a study that was done by did
Speaker 1: that study I don't have it in front of some
Speaker 1: students Riley Connor's, Katie Dexter, Joshua Argyle and Cameron's school
Speaker 1: are and they said that if you were to travel
Speaker 1: at the speed of light, not only would you not
Speaker 1: see those stars become streaks, they would become a cone
Speaker 1: of light, so the center would be the brightest and
Speaker 1: the further out from the cone, the darker it would get.
Speaker 1: And uh, and part of that is because of the
Speaker 1: Doppler effect essentially, right, right, that's that's that's blue shift
Speaker 1: and redshift. And yes, when you're when you're when you're
Speaker 1: moving and near the speed of light or at the
Speaker 1: speed of light towards something, um, everything is going to
Speaker 1: shift towards blue. Yeah. The waves compressed because you're you're
Speaker 1: traveling toward the the emanation of those waves, so they
Speaker 1: are being compressed further and further. In fact, that would
Speaker 1: be compressed so much as to move outside the visible
Speaker 1: spectrum and then you would start getting hit by lots
Speaker 1: of X rays, which would tell you that your spaceship
Speaker 1: needs to have some real protection built into it or
Speaker 1: else people are not going to feel so great when
Speaker 1: they get to where they're going. Uh. And that's an
Speaker 1: interesting point too. Yeah, And I didn't even think about
Speaker 1: that until I read this little study, and I thought, well,
Speaker 1: that's pretty clever. Yeah, I guess. So the Doubler effect
Speaker 1: would would be something you'd have to take into account,
Speaker 1: so it wouldn't look like those stars flying by the
Speaker 1: way they do in the movies. UM, So we wanted
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit conclude with a discussion about
Speaker 1: some actual real propulsion systems besides chemical rockets. Now we
Speaker 1: don't have a hyperdrive, which is unfortunate. We would love
Speaker 1: to have one, obviously, would be really handy, you guys,
Speaker 1: get on that. Yeah, but right now we don't have one.
Speaker 1: So some of the propulsion systems have been proposed for
Speaker 1: for for space travel beyond. We're getting outside the whole
Speaker 1: thing about launching off the Earth. I mean that that part.
Speaker 1: You still pretty much need chemical rockets, solid fuel rockets
Speaker 1: to provide the propulsion you need to get off the planet,
Speaker 1: right because the amount of power involved what we can
Speaker 1: do with chemical right now is a lot more. Um
Speaker 1: it gives a lot more, a lot more. That's this
Speaker 1: astronomical term, and there's a plenty in a chemical rocket. Guys.
Speaker 1: We just popped out of hyperspace for just a moment,
Speaker 1: so we can take another quick break, but we'll be
Speaker 1: right back. These other drives would be very useful once
Speaker 1: you do get up into space where you don't have
Speaker 1: to have the considerations of escaping a planet's gravity or
Speaker 1: battling its atmosphere in order to maneuver, right, because the
Speaker 1: thing about about these chemical drives is that they are
Speaker 1: extremely wasteful in a grand universal kind of scheme. You
Speaker 1: have to carry a lot of fuel. They pack a
Speaker 1: lot of power, but you have to carry an awful
Speaker 1: lot of it's not terribly efficient. Uh So they wouldn't
Speaker 1: last very long in the grand scheme of things. If
Speaker 1: you're talking about trying to travel vast different distances, not differences,
Speaker 1: but distances, then the chemical uh rockets end up being
Speaker 1: really heavy and that limits how much you can carry,
Speaker 1: which in turn limits how far you can go so
Speaker 1: without just coasting like for example, the voice your satellites
Speaker 1: right right, which, hey, just left the Solar system. Actually
Speaker 1: they didn't. They come back. Yeah, you have left something
Speaker 1: on Pluto. Um no, they that was that was a
Speaker 1: little bit of a miss misquote in the press. Oh nice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Well I'm glad you. I'm glad you caught up on that,
Speaker 1: because obviously I did not failed to tweet about it,
Speaker 1: so well, I'm that's bad. Hey, No, it's okay, you
Speaker 1: caught it on the podcast. So now our listeners can
Speaker 1: say that vogo bomb she keeps Strickland on task. So
Speaker 1: one of the ones we want to talk about where
Speaker 1: ion engines. Now ion engines, they're using ions, and so
Speaker 1: that's charged particles. Um. You know, think of an them
Speaker 1: that's either either has an excess of electrons or a
Speaker 1: deficit in electrons, so either way to either a negative
Speaker 1: or positive charge. Plasma is an ionic gas, So it's
Speaker 1: a gas that has these free ions moving through. It
Speaker 1: means that you can actually pass electric current through the
Speaker 1: gas itself. That's what a plasma is. A positible, of course,
Speaker 1: is the most plentiful of the states of matter in
Speaker 1: the universe as far as we are aware. And um.
Speaker 1: And so the ion engines use electric fields rather than
Speaker 1: chemical reactions to create propulsion, and they're not as powerful
Speaker 1: as chemical engines, so they don't give you that the
Speaker 1: chemical engines do, but they are way more efficient, so
Speaker 1: they can last ages, and they use the solar energy
Speaker 1: to provide that. Yeah, they get the solar energy to
Speaker 1: provide electricity to help create these reactions that will create
Speaker 1: the ions that that propel it. So they have these
Speaker 1: big solar panels that will unfold from the space craft.
Speaker 1: We've already launched some spacecraft using ion engines. The Dawn spacecraft,
Speaker 1: which launched on September twenty seventh, two thousand seven, has
Speaker 1: ion engines and uses the solar panels to get the electricity.
Speaker 1: UM it's destination it had to actually, but the second destination,
Speaker 1: the ultimate destination, is a dwarf planet series, and it's
Speaker 1: scheduled to arrive there in February. Uh So, visiting the
Speaker 1: NASA pages about this spacecraft, I saw some interesting figures.
Speaker 1: One was that it is a six point three billion
Speaker 1: kilometer journey, and just so that you get an idea
Speaker 1: of how far that is compared to a light year.
Speaker 1: A light year is nine point four trillion kilometers, so
Speaker 1: six point three billion kilometers still nowhere near a light year.
Speaker 1: So it assuming that it arrives on the first of February,
Speaker 1: in which you know, that's I just took as an arbitrary. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it will have flown for seven years, five months, and
Speaker 1: two days to go those six point three billion kilometers,
Speaker 1: so I it's him. I did some silly little math
Speaker 1: which was that six million, six point three billion kilometers
Speaker 1: ends up being six point three trillion meters, and then
Speaker 1: you have to figure out how many seconds are in
Speaker 1: seven years five months and two days, So I did
Speaker 1: two hundred six million, hundred seconds. So if you do
Speaker 1: the math, then that means that the average speed, and
Speaker 1: this is you know, just an average because it does change,
Speaker 1: is twenty six thousand, five nine seven per second based
Speaker 1: on the information that I was able to find. So uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, not shabby, but still nowhere near the streets
Speaker 1: of the falcon. Uh. But it also used about uses.
Speaker 1: The Dawn's engine used fos of xenon fuel being a
Speaker 1: neutral ly charged yeah, and it used that the solar
Speaker 1: array to to ionize everything's uh. And the solar array
Speaker 1: at one astronomical unit provided about ten point three kilowatts
Speaker 1: of power. UH. Astronomical unit, by the way, is one million,
Speaker 1: seven thousand and seventy one kilometers. And you might say, well,
Speaker 1: what the heck kind of measurement is that, Well, that's
Speaker 1: the mean distance between the Earth and the Sun. Because
Speaker 1: the distance actually changes throughout the Earth's rotation around the Sun,
Speaker 1: it's not always exactly that far away. That's the mean.
Speaker 1: So that's what we decided to define as an astronomical unit.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure any aliens will be happy to take
Speaker 1: us up on a discussion of why that's very human centric. Yes,
Speaker 1: an astronomical unit is exactly the distance between your star
Speaker 1: and your planet. Really enlightened, guys, I mean I think
Speaker 1: that they'll really take onto it, like parsex. Yeah, they'll
Speaker 1: be right up there. They're like I was having this
Speaker 1: discussion with my buddy eight parsecs ago, like, oh, come on, Like, hey,
Speaker 1: I know how this goes because I watched your Star
Speaker 1: Wars documentary. So at the maximum thrust, Don's ion engine
Speaker 1: expands about point to five ms of xenon per day,
Speaker 1: and that produced is a thrust of ninety two million Newton's,
Speaker 1: which NASA explains is about the amount of force you
Speaker 1: feel when you put a piece of paper on your
Speaker 1: open hand. That's the amount of force which sounds so
Speaker 1: incredibly unimpressive when you write, but in the in the
Speaker 1: in the environment of space, it is plenty enough. And
Speaker 1: uh so it says that the thrust changes the space
Speaker 1: cust velocity about oh ten to the negative five meters
Speaker 1: per second every second, and after about a thousand days
Speaker 1: it would achieve a velocity of a thousand meters per second.
Speaker 1: So because there's no dragon space exactly. Yeah, So anyway, yeah,
Speaker 1: about a thousand meters a second after a thousand days.
Speaker 1: So that that that speed I gave you the twenty
Speaker 1: six seven per second. Obviously, again that's a that's just
Speaker 1: averaging it out over the full distance. In fact, it's
Speaker 1: just constantly accelerating, not always at that particular speed, but
Speaker 1: it will be or at that particular rate. I shouldn't
Speaker 1: say it's accelerating at that speed, that's totally it's not misleading,
Speaker 1: but at that rate. So yeah, that's that's one of
Speaker 1: the ones that we're looking at. Now. There's also other
Speaker 1: forms of propulsion that have been proposed, like solar sales. Again,
Speaker 1: not something that's going to get you from Earth's solar
Speaker 1: system to a distant solar system anytime quickly. Um, it's
Speaker 1: more of a very efficient means of travel by harnessing photons.
Speaker 1: The photons hit the solar sale and that's what provides
Speaker 1: the propulsion to move the craft forward, which sounds kind
Speaker 1: of incredible you think about that. You know, how much
Speaker 1: kinetic energy can a photon have? Uh, And and it
Speaker 1: may surprise some of you to know that photons have
Speaker 1: kinetic energy, but that's true. I mean the Earth actually
Speaker 1: when the sun is hitting you you weigh a little
Speaker 1: more because the light is actually hitting Yeah. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: why I never go outside and only getting pushed around
Speaker 1: by the sun or by nobody. And so, uh, then
Speaker 1: I wanted to mention there's a theoretical engine. There's a
Speaker 1: there's a few theoretical engines. Yeah. The one that I
Speaker 1: came across was an electromagnetic gravity drive by Yachoum Howser.
Speaker 1: That's just a guess because I don't know how to
Speaker 1: pronounce that name. I do not either. That sounds great
Speaker 1: to me. Well, he's a physicist and a professor of
Speaker 1: computer science at the University Applied Sciences in a soul
Speaker 1: skitter and uh. And then he worked with Volter Drusher,
Speaker 1: who was an Austrian patent officer, and they came up
Speaker 1: with an idea that would use an electromagnet, essentially a
Speaker 1: rotating ring above a super conducting coil, and then they
Speaker 1: would pump a lot of electricity through the coil, which
Speaker 1: would then create a magnetic field. Because we know about
Speaker 1: the relationship between coils, electricity and the magnets. Magnets, you
Speaker 1: know you can you can either if you run electricity
Speaker 1: through a coil, you'll create a magnetic field. If you
Speaker 1: run a coil through a magnetic field that's alternating or
Speaker 1: that's that's uh, that's changing over time. A dynamic magnetic field,
Speaker 1: you will induce current to flow through the coil. That's
Speaker 1: this relationship between electricity and magnets. Thus the electro magnetism
Speaker 1: that magnetic field will quote reduce the gravitational pull on
Speaker 1: the ring to the point where it floats free end
Speaker 1: quote uh. And that theoretically you could go from Earth
Speaker 1: to Mars in about three hours using this in a
Speaker 1: way that makes no sense to me. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's talking about a The math requires that you actually
Speaker 1: have extra dimensions to make it all makes sense. And
Speaker 1: you know, in the in the standard model, we essentially
Speaker 1: think of four dimensions, three in space of one in time.
Speaker 1: But this would require two more dimensions would also end
Speaker 1: up in requiring extra fundamental forces besides the strong and
Speaker 1: weak nuclear force slectro magnetic and gravity that we are
Speaker 1: familiar whe there be two more and uh. And it's
Speaker 1: possible that these things exist, but it's so far it
Speaker 1: exists as far as math goes, and not observation right right,
Speaker 1: even even lower down or even though down and down
Speaker 1: on the scale. There's a few other things that people
Speaker 1: have kind of theorized about when one is called, um,
Speaker 1: this is probably not how you say it all. Qbres
Speaker 1: warp drive is the thing that NASA has talked about
Speaker 1: a little bit, which which kind of kind of is
Speaker 1: similar to the Doppler effect. It says that if you
Speaker 1: can get space time to expand behind you in contract
Speaker 1: in front of you, you can just kind of warp
Speaker 1: straight through it. So, in other words, think of it
Speaker 1: this way. You've gotta like, imagine you have a map
Speaker 1: in front of you, all right, a paper map, and
Speaker 1: you have put a figuring on the leftmost edge of
Speaker 1: the paper map, and your job is to get the
Speaker 1: figuring to the right most edge and the least number
Speaker 1: of die rolls, and there their spaces there that that
Speaker 1: represent how far you can go. So uh, normally there
Speaker 1: would be a hundred spaces between you and the and
Speaker 1: the right side, and you're only able to roll the
Speaker 1: die x number of times, right, But if you can
Speaker 1: just pick up the right if you were able to
Speaker 1: fold the edge of the map app so that it's
Speaker 1: right next to you, and you roll one and you
Speaker 1: move one space and then you unfold the map, you
Speaker 1: have just moved one space, but you've traveled all that distance. Right.
Speaker 1: That's the magic of warp drive. People. We're talking about
Speaker 1: folding all of the galaxy around us to accommodate our
Speaker 1: travel needs. Right, And people say, I'm a demanding traveler.
Speaker 1: But so so that's that's one. You know, it sounds
Speaker 1: super easy on paper. I just explained that. Um, and
Speaker 1: the other being a being creating wormholes. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, a wormhole being kind of a pokey thing through.
Speaker 1: It's shortcut on a paper map. If you if you,
Speaker 1: if you took instead of a little figuring, you had
Speaker 1: a pointy figuring or a pencil or something, and you
Speaker 1: and you stuck that pencil straight through the two points
Speaker 1: in the map that you wanted to travel between, and
Speaker 1: then sort of hit hop kit holes. So there's still
Speaker 1: some travel time, but it's much more reduced. It's this
Speaker 1: is where we get wibbly wobbly timmy wimy right, right.
Speaker 1: But but hypothetically, all we would have to do is
Speaker 1: build two super dense rings a giant super dense rings,
Speaker 1: charge them somehow, and spin them near the speed of light.
Speaker 1: Oh that's easy. Yeah, no problem. So the interesting thing here,
Speaker 1: by the way, is that when we're talking about warping space,
Speaker 1: when we're talking about actually moving or manipulating the space
Speaker 1: time continuum or however you want to fab break of
Speaker 1: space itself, we actually get around the special relativity problem
Speaker 1: because your actual speed doesn't need to be light speed.
Speaker 1: You are just changing the distance. You're not changing you.
Speaker 1: You're not going at this incredible speed. So time is
Speaker 1: still going to travel or stimes. Time is still going
Speaker 1: to pass differently relative to someone on a different ship
Speaker 1: or a different planet, but not at the amazing different
Speaker 1: You wouldn't need an infinite amount of energy to move yourself,
Speaker 1: and you wouldn't have an infinite amount of mass. And
Speaker 1: you also wouldn't find out when you call back home
Speaker 1: that everyone you know is forty years older. Uh, they
Speaker 1: might be, you know, a few micro seconds older than you,
Speaker 1: but it would be so small as to not has
Speaker 1: to be negligible, except for things like communication and stuff
Speaker 1: where you have to have exact timing. Obviously you have
Speaker 1: to have computers to correct those calculations. But when it
Speaker 1: comes to, you know, missing someone's birthday, you don't have
Speaker 1: to worry so much daylight saving time would probably interesting.
Speaker 1: So anyway, Yeah, I mean, there are people who are
Speaker 1: working on these theoretical drives, and it may turn out
Speaker 1: that the theories are just they're they're not truly like
Speaker 1: theories in the sense of h this is really established
Speaker 1: stuff just workingematical theories. More, they're more like hypotheses that
Speaker 1: we have yet to prove um. So it'll be interesting
Speaker 1: to see if we ever do develop anything beyond the
Speaker 1: propulsion systems that we're currently looking into. Uh. I mean,
Speaker 1: it would obviously be very helpful for anything involving colonization
Speaker 1: or exploration, because otherwise it's going to take us a
Speaker 1: really long time. Generations. You you would have to build
Speaker 1: spacecraft capable of supporting multiple generation stions of people aboard
Speaker 1: that with a very limited number of supplies because you know,
Speaker 1: you pretty much you have what you take with you.
Speaker 1: You know, you know, most we don't know of any
Speaker 1: shopping malls out there beyond Earth. You have to have
Speaker 1: to grow out yourself. Ye. So anyway, that that kind
Speaker 1: of wraps up this discussion about star Wars and hyper space.
Speaker 1: The Kessel run, what we're actually looking into as means
Speaker 1: of propulsion in space it's a really interesting topic. I'm
Speaker 1: glad that we we grabbed this one as our first episode.
Speaker 1: And hey, to all my Star Wars fans out there,
Speaker 1: I just have to say, live long and prosper. I
Speaker 1: hope you guys enjoyed this classic episode tech Stuff about hyperspace.
Speaker 1: I think that's a pretty awesome science fiction topic that
Speaker 1: I find particularly fascinating. Don't know if we're ever going
Speaker 1: to see any meaningful manifestation of that idea, or maybe
Speaker 1: we just ultimately you find out that there's no real
Speaker 1: way to achieve that particular flight of fancy. I hope otherwise,
Speaker 1: but we'll see. If you guys have any suggestions for
Speaker 1: future tech Stuff topics, let me know. Contact me on
Speaker 1: Facebook or Twitter. The handle for both is text stuff
Speaker 1: H s W and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Text Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit
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