Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tex stuff from dot com.
Speaker 1: He there text stuff fans. This is Jonathan Strickland and
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren Wold OBAM and today we want to present
Speaker 1: you a little drama. So I will be taking on
Speaker 1: a roll and Lauren will be taking on a roll
Speaker 1: and this plays into what we'll be talking about today.
Speaker 1: So here we go, man, red leather, yellow leather, red leave,
Speaker 1: yellow leather. All right, here we go, Han Solo, I'm
Speaker 1: captain of the Millennium Falcon. Chewy here tells me you're
Speaker 1: looking for passage to the Alboron system. Yes, indeed, if
Speaker 1: it's a fast ship fast ship, You've never heard of
Speaker 1: the Millennium Falcon, should I have? It's the ship that
Speaker 1: made the Kessel run in less than twelve parsecs. I've
Speaker 1: outrun Imperial starships, not the local bulk cruisers mind you.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about the big Karelian ships. Now, she's fast
Speaker 1: enough for you, old man? What's the cargo? Usually I
Speaker 1: am the one calling you old man. Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to turn that around a little bit.
Speaker 1: I also didn't go full Christopher walk In, despite the
Speaker 1: fact that I love that Saturday Night Live skit. So
Speaker 1: we are talking about the Kessel Run and hyper drives
Speaker 1: in the Star Wars universe and uh, and then kind
Speaker 1: of comparing it to what we would like to call
Speaker 1: real life. Right. We're doing this, by the way, because
Speaker 1: this is our five first episode and we are we
Speaker 1: 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, all right, and it's not really mentioned in
Speaker 1: um in any of the three original films, right, or
Speaker 1: even the fictional prequels that supposedly exist. No, we should
Speaker 1: also point out, according to everything I've ever read, Lucas
Speaker 1: considered anything that was in the movies cannon correct. Anything
Speaker 1: outside the movies was just extra stuff that may or
Speaker 1: may not line up with what is canon. So there's
Speaker 1: no um. You know, the stuff that we'll be talking
Speaker 1: about a lot of this is things that other writers
Speaker 1: have kind of expounded upon in in the novels. Are
Speaker 1: the comics and of the video games, yeah, some of
Speaker 1: the cartoons, etcetera. And so the stuff that we're talking
Speaker 1: about this is this is mostly people trying to explain
Speaker 1: away what Lucas created in a in a manner that
Speaker 1: makes kind of sense, because a lot of the stuff
Speaker 1: that you watch in Star Wars, if you really think about,
Speaker 1: you're like, wait a minute, it's not science. So the
Speaker 1: Kessel Run in particular is a route in Star Wars,
Speaker 1: at least this is the way it's explained. In the
Speaker 1: Expanded Universe. It's it's a smuggling run, right, which is
Speaker 1: exactly what you know. Han Solo is a smuggler, and
Speaker 1: so this is a particular route through space that smugglers
Speaker 1: would take. And uh. And one of the big complaints
Speaker 1: or criticisms of this particular section of dialogue is that
Speaker 1: Han Solo talks about doing a Kessel Run in less
Speaker 1: than twelve parts x, which seems to suggest that he
Speaker 1: thinks par sex is a measure of time, right, And
Speaker 1: it's not, and it's it's certainly not, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: I think that my my strongest um explanation of this
Speaker 1: is just that Han Solo was just saying words he
Speaker 1: was just talking and trying to sound impressive. My my
Speaker 1: explanation is Lucas thought that parsex sounded futuristic and that
Speaker 1: it sounds like a measurement of time. That was mine,
Speaker 1: which puts the onus on the writer, not the character.
Speaker 1: But hey, you know, I'm a writer. That's kind of
Speaker 1: how I think. Like sometimes I make mistakes too. I'm
Speaker 1: just saying that if you're going to excuse the character saying,
Speaker 1: and I think that that is not a poor right
Speaker 1: if you want to be an apologist. Sure, So, so
Speaker 1: what a what a par sec actually is? It is
Speaker 1: a unit of distance. It technically based upon uh the
Speaker 1: uh the Sun and Earth and and and a second
Speaker 1: of arc uh. It involves some pretty complex uh concepts
Speaker 1: that are not that complex, but they're difficult to explain
Speaker 1: an audio format. But ultimately it translates to about three
Speaker 1: point to six light years, right, And and it's specifically,
Speaker 1: by the way, tied to to the distance of the
Speaker 1: Sun from the Earth and another object and another object
Speaker 1: that makes up one sec. And so you know, forgiving
Speaker 1: the fact that we're talking about a galaxy far far away,
Speaker 1: and that perhaps as a phil plate of that astronomer
Speaker 1: pointed out that might not be the most valid measurements.
Speaker 1: Why would think why would another why would people in
Speaker 1: another galaxy use a unit of measurement that's dependent upon
Speaker 1: the Earth's position relative to another object and the sun.
Speaker 1: That makes no sense at all. But anyway, so it's
Speaker 1: it's equivalent to about three point to six light years,
Speaker 1: And of course that just makes things even more confusing
Speaker 1: for people who don't know what a light year is
Speaker 1: and they think light year is also a measurement of time.
Speaker 1: It's not. But at any rate, the description Han Solo
Speaker 1: makes is very confusing if you think about parsecs being
Speaker 1: a distance, like, how can you take a route and
Speaker 1: say that your ship made it in less than twelve
Speaker 1: units of distance for that route and make that the
Speaker 1: a measurement of its speed. So here's how we're gonna
Speaker 1: try and explain this well. And also I should mention
Speaker 1: uh in the novelization of a New Hope, Han Solo
Speaker 1: does not say par sex recond that real quick. He
Speaker 1: said standard time units twelve less than twelve standard time units.
Speaker 1: I have no idea how long the standard time unit is,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't really matter, I guess. But anyway, so
Speaker 1: kessel run. You've got this route. It's usually if you
Speaker 1: are taking the quote unquote safe approach, eighteen par sex long,
Speaker 1: which is about years. Yeah. So the reason why it's
Speaker 1: that long is because the route takes you through an
Speaker 1: area of space that has black holes in it. It's
Speaker 1: called the mall and the maw in aw would destroy
Speaker 1: a ship if you got too close to it. It's
Speaker 1: you know, it's a black hole. There bad times for ships, right,
Speaker 1: you know, you know you do? You have you heard
Speaker 1: what the term is for something that gets pulled through
Speaker 1: a black hole, the term of what is happening to
Speaker 1: it spaganification. It's my favorite thing in the world, yes,
Speaker 1: because it gets pulled into these long, thin strands as
Speaker 1: it's being uh infinitely thin strands hypothetically being pulled towards
Speaker 1: this center of intense density or intensity as I like
Speaker 1: to call it. Anyway. So usually this route would be
Speaker 1: eighteen parsex long, but if one were to be a
Speaker 1: little daring or perhaps insane, completely crazy, one might be
Speaker 1: able to plot a route that goes closer to the
Speaker 1: black holes. He kind of scarred around it, and you know,
Speaker 1: Han Solo, being the guy that he is, he's he says,
Speaker 1: you know, time is money or distance his money, or
Speaker 1: money is money or something I don't know. Anyway, he
Speaker 1: wanted to be able to take a more direct route,
Speaker 1: which would shave off about six or so parsex for
Speaker 1: this eighteen parsic long route, and that means that you know,
Speaker 1: he's he's essentially instead of going like a curved line,
Speaker 1: he's making a straight line. Not quite like that dramatic,
Speaker 1: but close to it. So in other words, he's taking
Speaker 1: a route and making it more efficient, but it is
Speaker 1: much more dangerous. There's no direct relationship between the Millennium
Speaker 1: Falcon's speed and this route immediately, but one could argue,
Speaker 1: and one has. In fact, Kyle Hill of Wired wrote
Speaker 1: a great article how the Star Wars Kessel run turns
Speaker 1: Hans Solo into a time traveler. Fantastic articles. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: entertaining and uh and also and it starts to build
Speaker 1: in some chronological problems in the Star Wars universe, but
Speaker 1: we'll get into those. But anyway, he points out that
Speaker 1: that you could end up thinking, oh, well, the Millennium
Speaker 1: Falcon has to be a fast ship because it has
Speaker 1: to be able to escape that pull of the black hole.
Speaker 1: So Therefore, that's what tells you that it's fast. It's
Speaker 1: not only that heat and only is the pilot capable
Speaker 1: of making a more efficient route to go through the
Speaker 1: Kessel run, but there's also in a ship fast enough
Speaker 1: to a state black roles, right right? Yeah, Well, according
Speaker 1: to a Wikipedia, which is one of the best wikis ever,
Speaker 1: I just said that on the air, it was wonderful. Um.
Speaker 1: In the commentary for Star Wars episode for a New
Speaker 1: Hope DVD, George Lucas said that the Millennium Falcons navigational
Speaker 1: computers were highly advanced and that that was why the
Speaker 1: parsic thing works out the way that it does. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's yeah. So essentially then you just make Han Solo
Speaker 1: a Guo flips switches a really good flip switcher. There's
Speaker 1: also a great thing that was at the Smithsonian for
Speaker 1: the Star Wars exhibit where uh, Harrison Ford was actually
Speaker 1: talking about the first time they shot uh seen in
Speaker 1: the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon, and George Lucas gave
Speaker 1: him the direction of your flying the ship and he says, Okay,
Speaker 1: how do I do that? Because there are just all
Speaker 1: these dials and switch is that they didn't. There was
Speaker 1: no rhyme or reason to it. And Chus was like,
Speaker 1: I don't know. So there was 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 Kestle 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 not film expanded universe, so not
Speaker 1: Cannon Kessel was a planet that had these minds on
Speaker 1: it for something called glitter stem spice, which was a
Speaker 1: substance created by spice spiders, and it's a photoactive substance,
Speaker 1: so it activates when light hits it, so it had
Speaker 1: to be mined in complete darkness. It could not be
Speaker 1: exposed to light in anyway or else it would lose
Speaker 1: its potency. And the spice was essentially a drug. Uh.
Speaker 1: As cheery as that is, I do want to point
Speaker 1: out that I'm pretty sure the word castle comes from
Speaker 1: during World War Two. You know that you Rman's got
Speaker 1: themselves really good and surrounded by a group of Russians,
Speaker 1: and UH and some of their compatriots were trying to
Speaker 1: get supplies and aid to uh their their surrounding colleagues leagues.
Speaker 1: Yeah sure, and this failed completely. But but the word
Speaker 1: kessel means that like pocket in German cat or cattle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: dossi rishtish uh So the glistone 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 Han Solo an
Speaker 1: even darker character in a way because he's smuggling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he runs drugs, um so, yeah, that's kind of grim.
Speaker 1: But in the during the Galactic Republic, which is the
Speaker 1: period that proceeds A New Hope, that's back when there
Speaker 1: was a the Old Republic was around. It was being
Speaker 1: used medically, but then the Republic fails and then the
Speaker 1: black market takes over. Smugglers start selling this I guess
Speaker 1: more like recreational drug as opposed to medical things, and
Speaker 1: the Empire outlaws it. And so that's why it's important
Speaker 1: to be able to avoid imperial entanglements, as Obi Wan
Speaker 1: says in a New Hope. So that's why it's important
Speaker 1: that there's the explanation of shaving off some of the
Speaker 1: distance that it would normally take you to to travel
Speaker 1: in order to get there, and also the fact that
Speaker 1: the Falcon would have to be a little faster than
Speaker 1: most ships. Now, all of that is kind of cool.
Speaker 1: I can. I can kind of handle most of that,
Speaker 1: even though I think that the PARSEC thing is really
Speaker 1: an apologist. It's a red coon or retroactive continuity, where you,
Speaker 1: after you've made a mistake, you go back and try
Speaker 1: to justify the fact that a mistake is there. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is, by the way, in no way 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 hundred million, seven four hundred fifty eight meters per
Speaker 1: second or around one six thousand, two d eighty two
Speaker 1: miles per second. That's through the vacuum of space and
Speaker 1: solos ship. If you assume it could go half again
Speaker 1: faster than the speed of light would have its tough
Speaker 1: speed at somewhere around four hundred forty nine million million
Speaker 1: Si eight thousand, six eighty seven per second or two
Speaker 1: four hundred twenty four miles per second. That's really fast.
Speaker 1: And of course it is faster than anything we can
Speaker 1: we we know of besides some theoretical particles that we'll
Speaker 1: talk about in a little bit. It's faster than anything
Speaker 1: we know of can go. That makes it really problematic
Speaker 1: because 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 you go, if you nudge right up
Speaker 1: to the speed of light, they would take about thirty
Speaker 1: nine years travel twelve that that would be. That would
Speaker 1: be due to an independent observer though correct because special relativity.
Speaker 1: But we'll talk about that. Yeah, I don't want to
Speaker 1: get into that right now, but special relativity will play
Speaker 1: a part in our second part of our conversation because
Speaker 1: also we should go ahead and say it. According to
Speaker 1: Star Wars, and again this is a retcon type thing.
Speaker 1: All ships have a stasis field stabilizer thing that keeps time.
Speaker 1: It's the universal constant of time amongst the Empire, which
Speaker 1: is really convenient because otherwise Han Solo would be older
Speaker 1: than Yoda after he had taken what I don't know,
Speaker 1: like like two or three trips yet four or five
Speaker 1: trips on the Kestle run. But it does sound like
Speaker 1: he's done it multiple times, which means that if he's
Speaker 1: done the Kestle run multiple times, that special relativity problem,
Speaker 1: which again we'll talk about in a minute just to right.
Speaker 1: So So here's here's the thing the stasis is supposed
Speaker 1: to keep everything constant. Uh. Time is a tricky thing
Speaker 1: because it doesn't matter that it's not just if you're
Speaker 1: traveling nearer or at or above the speed of light,
Speaker 1: where you have to take it into account. Every single
Speaker 1: planet that's in the entire galaxy of Star Wars has
Speaker 1: time pass at a different rate according to any according
Speaker 1: to physics. And again it's relative. So if Lauren's on
Speaker 1: one planet and I'm on another planet, each of us
Speaker 1: are going to feel as if time is passing at
Speaker 1: the same speed individually, like a second will feel like
Speaker 1: a second to me, a second will feel like a
Speaker 1: second to Lauren. However, depending upon the planet's mass and
Speaker 1: the speed at which it travels through space, the actual
Speaker 1: passage of time is going to be different relative to
Speaker 1: each other. So if we match our 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 this idea of hyperspace and
Speaker 1: hyper drive, 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 lads just floating free in space, like well,
Speaker 1: that was a bad idea. Um that kind of this
Speaker 1: kind of happens in far Escape. But 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, all 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 chips under under normal speed constraints are
Speaker 1: moving around it and then and then yeah, apparently these
Speaker 1: these hypermatter reactor drives with hypermatter implosion cores. I mean
Speaker 1: it sounds a little bit like a like a wormhole
Speaker 1: or a test react something like. Yeah. 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 star 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 was
Speaker 1: definitively set down in the movies as this is how
Speaker 1: hyper drive works or hyperspace, so we have a lot
Speaker 1: of different things to choose from and uh. And it
Speaker 1: seems to me that a lot of the people who
Speaker 1: write 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 Berman did about Star Trek,
Speaker 1: specifically the uh Eisenberg uncertainty compensators and the transporters, and
Speaker 1: someone was like, well, how did those work? And he
Speaker 1: was like, very well, thank you, next question. Yeah. Whereas
Speaker 1: you know, the holidack works very poorly, or at least
Speaker 1: it breaks down once a year. But again, within the
Speaker 1: lore of Star Wars, hyperspace itself is first discovered by
Speaker 1: a race called the Ricotta, and they create ricotta like
Speaker 1: the cheese. No, it's our A K A T A Okay,
Speaker 1: just checking. You gotta 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: create 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 then 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 is 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: something that's force space, then that's except that then within
Speaker 1: again the expanded lore. The Karelians Karelias, one of the
Speaker 1: planets in the Star Wars universe, and the Euros both
Speaker 1: found these starship drives and using reverse engineering, determined how
Speaker 1: they 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 uh what now, now we have a technological explanation
Speaker 1: for how hyperspace works, except there's no actual explanation there.
Speaker 1: It's just that it is technological. Now this is what
Speaker 1: drives me crazy because then I'm like, okay, wait now,
Speaker 1: so if there is a technical way to make it happen,
Speaker 1: how does it work? Um? And and really we have
Speaker 1: more about the process than anything else. So uh. In
Speaker 1: the movies, when they were going to make a jump
Speaker 1: to hyperspace, they would activate the ship's navigational computer, which
Speaker 1: would calculate whatever the route needed to be. And this
Speaker 1: was important because, as Han Solo explains to Luke, who
Speaker 1: is an impatient little brat in a New Hope, he
Speaker 1: explains like, he can't hurry this stuff because if you do,
Speaker 1: you pass too close to a star or a planet,
Speaker 1: it pulls you out of hyperspace and you could die. Yeah. Yeah. Now, now,
Speaker 1: this to me creates another problem, because if hyperspace is
Speaker 1: in fact a parallel universe, why do things that exist
Speaker 1: in our meat space affect you when you're in the
Speaker 1: parallel universe, unless, of course, they also have a presence
Speaker 1: 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 so you're you're
Speaker 1: thinking more along the lines of this parallel universe has
Speaker 1: has certain anchor points to real space that it does
Speaker 1: pass through, even if it's not a one to one ratio.
Speaker 1: Is that kind of what you're talking about, or yeah,
Speaker 1: or kind of like I don't know, like like there's
Speaker 1: just certain sections of space that you can go much
Speaker 1: faster through and and unfortunately, you know, sometimes as sun
Speaker 1: gets in the way, so you're about like the auto
Speaker 1: bawn of space. Yeah, and and that's another thing that
Speaker 1: I was reading on Wikipedia. I was was saying, I
Speaker 1: was saying that there maybe about eight of these, according
Speaker 1: to the Star Wars universe, kicking around and that that
Speaker 1: are super safe roots and then there's some that are
Speaker 1: pretty shady and wind 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 jump to this end point right now,
Speaker 1: we'd 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, how the hyperdrive 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, totally, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: let mean, come on, he was kind of dreamy, you know,
Speaker 1: we just we just bought anything, he said, uh yeah.
Speaker 1: And 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 at 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. But we should really
Speaker 1: kind of talk about again. We'll we'll get into special
Speaker 1: relativity in general relativity and also some other discussions about
Speaker 1: the whole hyperspace idea and just a little bit. But
Speaker 1: first before we do that, let's take a quick moment
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsored Alright, so let's get back to hyperspace.
Speaker 1: So we mentioned in the first half nothing can go
Speaker 1: faster than the speed of light, this universal speed look correct, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's smart. People such as Einstein have talked a
Speaker 1: lot about that, right, and that that speed and time
Speaker 1: themselves actually have a relationship. And so this gets us
Speaker 1: into special relativity. There are a lot of different aspects
Speaker 1: of special relativity, but the one that interests me the
Speaker 1: most in this discussion is the fact that as objects
Speaker 1: move faster, time dilates on that object relative to a
Speaker 1: stationary observer. So again, in other words, like if I
Speaker 1: if I'm standing perfectly still in space, so I'm not,
Speaker 1: I'm not on a planet, I'm not moving at all,
Speaker 1: hopefully in space? Yes, sure, why not? I'll give it
Speaker 1: to you at this time, all right, And Lauren, you
Speaker 1: are in a a zippy little ship that's going at
Speaker 1: near the speed of light. Again, to you, time seems
Speaker 1: to be passing at the normal rate. Like if you
Speaker 1: were to have a watch watch, it would be taking
Speaker 1: along at one second pertick according to my eyeballs right,
Speaker 1: and it would feel exactly like it was as long
Speaker 1: as a second should be. My watch would also to
Speaker 1: me be it would appear to be moving at exactly
Speaker 1: the correct speed. Now, if I were to to be
Speaker 1: able to see what's happening in your little world, it
Speaker 1: would look to me like a time had slowed way
Speaker 1: down for you, and that more time was passing for
Speaker 1: me than it was for you. So you could do
Speaker 1: like a quick joy ride around the Solar system. And
Speaker 1: let's say we're just going to make an argument that
Speaker 1: that you take an hour long trip around the Solar system.
Speaker 1: And now we're according to me to to your to
Speaker 1: your watch, so your watch, you start the timer as
Speaker 1: soon as you engage the drive, and an hour has
Speaker 1: gone by, and you you come back and pick you
Speaker 1: come back to see me, and uh, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: say that you're going at a speed so that we
Speaker 1: won't make it ridiculous. Well, you're going at a speed
Speaker 1: where a year of time has gone by for me.
Speaker 1: I'm going to Chris speed. So so an hour of
Speaker 1: times gone by for Lauren, a year has gone by
Speaker 1: for me. Um And and that's the special relativity. It's
Speaker 1: that idea that again relative to me, less time has
Speaker 1: passed for Lauren. Relative to Lauren, more time has passed
Speaker 1: for me. And and that's because that's because speed and
Speaker 1: mass both have speed and gravity both have an effect
Speaker 1: on time, as though time is a substance itself. So
Speaker 1: now the the gravity mass thing, that's really more general relativity.
Speaker 1: But that's that's also playing a part in all of
Speaker 1: our calculations when it comes to space. Faring. By the way,
Speaker 1: if you were to do something like Carrie an atomic clock,
Speaker 1: uh and have it synchronized with another atomic clock. So
Speaker 1: to atomic clocks are side by side on a table
Speaker 1: here on Earth, and you take one of those and
Speaker 1: you get on an air elevator line is not not
Speaker 1: even a space elver. You just get an airplane. And
Speaker 1: as an airplane is going at top speed and it's
Speaker 1: flying as far as it possibly can and then it lands.
Speaker 1: By the time it lands, those two clocks that were
Speaker 1: in perfect sink before will no longer be in perfect sink.
Speaker 1: And the reason is is that you were traveling a
Speaker 1: little faster. There's also some uh, the element of general relativity,
Speaker 1: which means that when you're further away from the center
Speaker 1: of the Earth, and therefore the closer you are to
Speaker 1: a large mass object, the slower time passes for you
Speaker 1: relative to something that's further out from that massive object. Again,
Speaker 1: it's all relative because from your individual experience, it seems
Speaker 1: like time is passing at the same rate unless you're,
Speaker 1: you know, waiting on an important phone call, right, in
Speaker 1: which case, yeah, like you know that that dreamy that
Speaker 1: dreamy person you met at that party is supposed to
Speaker 1: call and you're just staring at the phone. Tie. Every
Speaker 1: second is an eternity, no matter whether you're traveling at
Speaker 1: the speed of light or not. But anyway, yeah, we
Speaker 1: can observe asn't it in satellites that we've launched into orbit.
Speaker 1: They have to they have to mathematically correct. 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 to hit me, and took the amount
Speaker 1: of time for the signal from this third satellite to
Speaker 1: hit me. Based upon all of that and the position
Speaker 1: of those satellites, I know that I must be on
Speaker 1: this point on the Earth. Well, obviously the time stamp
Speaker 1: is really important for the information to work needs to
Speaker 1: be pretty precise. Yeah, otherwise it's going to give you
Speaker 1: the wrong location on the Earth. The thing about the
Speaker 1: satellites is that they are traveling faster than a point
Speaker 1: relative on the surface of the Earth. So that means
Speaker 1: that time is passing again at a different rate relative
Speaker 1: to us here on Earth on the on the surface.
Speaker 1: But they are also further out from the mass of
Speaker 1: the Earth, which means they're going faster. So that means
Speaker 1: times passing more slowly relative to us. But they are
Speaker 1: further out, so time is passing faster than relative to us.
Speaker 1: This gets really complicated, but if you were talking about
Speaker 1: just special relativity, because the satellites are moving so fast,
Speaker 1: they have about a lag of about seven micro seconds
Speaker 1: per day on the satellites clock. So remember they're they're
Speaker 1: traveling faster than the relative point on the surface of
Speaker 1: the Earth, so that means that less time is passing
Speaker 1: on the satellite seven microseconds per day as a as
Speaker 1: a result. But because they're further out from the mass
Speaker 1: of the Earth, then a clock would be here, you know,
Speaker 1: close to the surface, their clocks are actually running faster
Speaker 1: by about forty five micro seconds per day because of
Speaker 1: general relativity. So if you take those two numbers the
Speaker 1: the lag of second seven microsecon and the surplus of
Speaker 1: forty five microseconds, and then you know, combine the two
Speaker 1: to cancel them out. You are still left with a
Speaker 1: thirty eight microseconds surplus per day on the satellites clock
Speaker 1: compared to one on Earth. So that means that you
Speaker 1: actually have to correct for that. All right, that's one
Speaker 1: satellite that's orbiting Earth. Now imagine that on all the
Speaker 1: spaceships traveling everywhere all the time. And that's why you
Speaker 1: get to the point where keeping track of time is
Speaker 1: an impossible act level. Yeah. So in the case of
Speaker 1: Han Solo, again going back to that that Wired article
Speaker 1: that Kyle Hill wrote, he started pointing out that assuming
Speaker 1: that you're going at near the speed of light. He
Speaker 1: went ahead and said, okay, you can't go faster than
Speaker 1: speed of light. Yeah, let's let's that's right out. And
Speaker 1: going at the speed of light is also impossible because
Speaker 1: you would at that point have infinite density, density and mass.
Speaker 1: So so that would be bad your mass. Your mass
Speaker 1: increases as you get closer to the speed of light.
Speaker 1: But if we say at infinitum, yeah, so it's going
Speaker 1: a ballast pass. As as as that was close to
Speaker 1: his speed of light as you possibly can imagine, this
Speaker 1: is probably not ever it's probably not ever going to
Speaker 1: be possible physically, but if you can imagine it um that,
Speaker 1: then the castle run would take about half a day,
Speaker 1: about so sixteen hours on the on the Millennium Falcon.
Speaker 1: But then galactic time, assuming the galactic time is passing
Speaker 1: at a standstone, forty years, so forty years would pass
Speaker 1: in galactic time while on board the falcon, sixteen hours passes.
Speaker 1: So they started to figure out, like, how much time
Speaker 1: has passed in the gal in the galaxy since Han
Speaker 1: Solo made his Kessel run, And then he started saying, well,
Speaker 1: yeahs probably made a castle run more than once, so
Speaker 1: if you start adding up the number of Kessel runs,
Speaker 1: how much time has passed. And that's when he said, like,
Speaker 1: you know, you do two castle runs. And then he
Speaker 1: had to have been born before characters who like you know,
Speaker 1: So then you've got Han Solo predating all the characters
Speaker 1: who were in the prequels. Uh, And it's because of
Speaker 1: this special relativity problem. So, by the way, if he
Speaker 1: were in fact able to travel faster than the speed
Speaker 1: of light, it would mean that he would arrive at
Speaker 1: his destination before he left math is fun. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: so he would actually he would be on Kessel before
Speaker 1: he had decided to make the Kessel run due to
Speaker 1: the way this works. Not granted, nothing can go faster
Speaker 1: than the speed of light. But you know, assuming they
Speaker 1: have they have those those drives, those the hyper drives,
Speaker 1: ret red con drives, the red con drives. Yes, those
Speaker 1: work really well. Um where you just say, hey, look impossible,
Speaker 1: let's change it. Let's look at the Wookie. Yeah, 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 sons 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 Fridays, 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 hyper space, which I thought
Speaker 1: was so yeah, yeah, there there was a study that
Speaker 1: was done by we did that study, I don't have
Speaker 1: it in front of some students that Riley Connor's, Katy Dexter,
Speaker 1: Joshua Argyle and Cameron's school are, and they said that
Speaker 1: if you were to travel at the speed of light,
Speaker 1: and not only would you not see those stars become streets,
Speaker 1: they would become a cone of light. So the center
Speaker 1: would be the brightest, and the further out from the cone,
Speaker 1: the darker it would get. And uh and part of
Speaker 1: that is because of the Doppler effect essentially, right, right,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's blue shift and redshift. And yes, when
Speaker 1: you're when you're when you're moving near the speed of
Speaker 1: light or at the speed of light towards something, Um,
Speaker 1: everything is going to shift towards the blue. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: waves compressed because you're you're traveling toward the emanation of
Speaker 1: those waves, so they are being compressed further and further.
Speaker 1: In fact, they would be compressed so much as to
Speaker 1: move outside the visible spectrum and then you would start
Speaker 1: getting hit by lots of X rays, which would tell
Speaker 1: you that your spaceship needs to have some real protection
Speaker 1: built into it or else people are not going to
Speaker 1: feel so great when they get to where they're going. U.
Speaker 1: And that's an interesting point too. Yeah, And I didn't
Speaker 1: even think about that until I read this little study
Speaker 1: and I thought, well, that's pretty clever. Yeah, I guess.
Speaker 1: So the doubler effect would would be something you'd have
Speaker 1: to take into account, so it wouldn't look like those
Speaker 1: stars flying by the way they do in the movies. UM.
Speaker 1: So we wanted to talk a little bit conclude with
Speaker 1: a discussion about some actual real propulsion systems besides chemical rockets.
Speaker 1: Now we don't have a hyperdrive, which is unfortunate. We
Speaker 1: would love to have one obviously, would be really handy,
Speaker 1: you guys, get on that. Yeah, but right now we
Speaker 1: don't have one. So some of the propulsion systems have
Speaker 1: been proposed for for for space travel beyond. We're getting
Speaker 1: outside the whole thing about launching off the Earth. I
Speaker 1: mean that that part. You still pretty much need chemical rockets,
Speaker 1: solid fuel rockets, uh to to provide the propulsion you
Speaker 1: need to get off the planet, right, because the amount
Speaker 1: of power involved what we can do with chemical right
Speaker 1: now is a lot more. Um well, it gives a
Speaker 1: lot more. A lot more, that's the that's the astronomical term,
Speaker 1: and there's a plenty in a chemical rocket. These other
Speaker 1: drives would be very useful once you do get up
Speaker 1: into space where you don't have to have the considerations
Speaker 1: of escaping a planet's gravity or battling its atmosphere in
Speaker 1: order to maneuver right, because the thing about about these
Speaker 1: chemical drives is that they are extremely wasteful in a
Speaker 1: grand universal kind of scheme. You have to carry a
Speaker 1: lot of fuel. They pack a lot of power, but
Speaker 1: you have to carry an awful lot of It's not
Speaker 1: terribly efficient. Uh, so they wouldn't last very long in
Speaker 1: the grand scheme of things. If you're talking about trying
Speaker 1: to travel vast different distances, not differences, but distances, then
Speaker 1: the chemical uh rockets end up being really heavy and
Speaker 1: that limits how much you can carry, which in turn
Speaker 1: limits how far you can go. So without just coasting
Speaker 1: like for example, the voice your satellites right right, which, hey,
Speaker 1: just left the Solar system. Actually they didn't. They come back. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they puto um no they that was that was a
Speaker 1: little bit of a mismisquote 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. I 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 gives 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 atom
Speaker 1: that's either either has an excess of electrons or a
Speaker 1: deficit in electrons. So either way to got 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 plasma, 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, and
Speaker 1: so they can last ages. And they use that they
Speaker 1: have solar energy to provide that. Yeah, they get the
Speaker 1: solar energy to provide electricity to help create these reactions
Speaker 1: that will create the ions that that propel it. So
Speaker 1: they have these big solar panels that will unfold from
Speaker 1: the spacecraft. We've already launched some spacecraft using ion engines.
Speaker 1: The Dawn spacecraft, which launched on September twenty seven, two
Speaker 1: thousand seven, has ion engines and uses the solar panels
Speaker 1: to get the electricity UM it's destination had to actually,
Speaker 1: but the second destination, the ultimate destination, is a dwarf
Speaker 1: planet series and it's scheduled to arrive there in February.
Speaker 1: Uh So, visiting the NASA pages about this spacecraft, I
Speaker 1: saw some interesting figures. One was that it is a
Speaker 1: six point three billion kilometer journey, and just so that
Speaker 1: you get an idea of how far that is compared
Speaker 1: to a light year. A light year is nine point
Speaker 1: four trillion kilometers, so six point three billion kilometers still
Speaker 1: nowhere near a light year. So it assuming that it
Speaker 1: arrives on the first of February, in which you know,
Speaker 1: that's I just took as an arbitrary it will have
Speaker 1: flown for seven years, five months, and two days to
Speaker 1: go those six point three billion kilometers. So I did
Speaker 1: some I did some silly little math which was that
Speaker 1: six million, six point three billion kilometers ends up being
Speaker 1: six point three trillion meters. And then you have to
Speaker 1: figure out how many seconds are in seven years, five months,
Speaker 1: and two days. So I did two hundred three six
Speaker 1: million hundred seconds. So if you do the math, then
Speaker 1: that means that the average speed, and this is you know,
Speaker 1: just an average because it does change, is twenty six
Speaker 1: five nine seven meters per second. Based on the information
Speaker 1: that I was able to find, so uhby I mean
Speaker 1: not shabby, but still nowhere near the schools of the falcon. Uh.
Speaker 1: But it also used about uses. The Dawn's engine used
Speaker 1: fos of xenon fuel, being a neutral ly charged yeah,
Speaker 1: and it used that the solar array to to ionize
Speaker 1: everything's uh. And the solar array at one astronomical unit
Speaker 1: provided about ten point three kilowatts of power. Uh. An
Speaker 1: astronomical unit, by the way, is one million, seven thousand
Speaker 1: and seventy one KOs. And you might say, well, what
Speaker 1: the heck kind of measurement is that, Well, that's the
Speaker 1: mean distance between the Earth and the Sun. Because the
Speaker 1: 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. Yeah, 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 parsex 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 produces 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 is plenty enough. And uh
Speaker 1: so it says that the thrust changes the space crest
Speaker 1: velocity about oh ten to the negative five meters per
Speaker 1: second every second, and after about a thousand days, it
Speaker 1: 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 thousand seven per second. Obviously, again that's a that's
Speaker 1: just averaging it out over the full distance. In fact,
Speaker 1: it's just constantly accelerating, uh, not always at that particular speed.
Speaker 1: But it will be or at that particular rate. I
Speaker 1: shouldn't say it's accelerating at that speed. That's totally 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 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 again. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why I never go outside. I don't like getting
Speaker 1: pushed around by the sun or by nobody. And so, uh,
Speaker 1: then I wanted to mention there's a theoretical engine. There's
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 solve
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 electro magnet, essentially
Speaker 1: a rotating ring above a super conducting coil, and then
Speaker 1: they would pump a lot of electricity through the coil,
Speaker 1: which would then create a magnetic field. Because we know
Speaker 1: about the relationship between coils, electricity and then magnets magnets,
Speaker 1: you know you can you can either if you run
Speaker 1: electricity through a coil, you'll create a magnetic field. If
Speaker 1: you run a coil through a magnetic field that's alternating
Speaker 1: or that's that's uh, that's changing over time, a dynamic
Speaker 1: magnetic field, you will induce current to flow through the coil.
Speaker 1: That's this relationship between electricity and magnets. Thus the electro
Speaker 1: magnetism that magnetic field will quote reduce the gravitational pull
Speaker 1: on the ring to the point where it floats free
Speaker 1: end quote. Uh. And that theoretically you could go from
Speaker 1: Earth to Mars and about three hours using this in
Speaker 1: a way that makes no sense to me. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's talking about a The math requires that you
Speaker 1: actually have extra dimensions to make it all makes sense.
Speaker 1: And you know, in the in the standard model, we
Speaker 1: essentially think of four dimensions, three in space and one
Speaker 1: in time. But this would require two more dimensions, would
Speaker 1: also end up in requiring extra fundamental forces besides the
Speaker 1: strong and weak nuclear force, electromagnetic and gravity that we
Speaker 1: are familiar with, there be two more and uh. And
Speaker 1: it's possible that these things exist, but it's so far
Speaker 1: exists as far as math goes, and not observation right right,
Speaker 1: even even lower down or even though it drowning down
Speaker 1: on the scale. There's a few other things that people
Speaker 1: have kind of theorized about. One one is called um
Speaker 1: this is probably not how you say it. Qber's warp
Speaker 1: drive is the thing that NASA has talked about a
Speaker 1: little bit, which which kind of kind of is similar
Speaker 1: to the Doppler effect. It says that if you can
Speaker 1: get space time to expand behind you in contract in
Speaker 1: front of you, you can just kind of warp straight
Speaker 1: through it. So, in other words, think of it this way.
Speaker 1: You've gotta like imagine you have a map in front
Speaker 1: of you, all right, a paper map, and you have
Speaker 1: put a figuring on the leftmost edge of the paper map,
Speaker 1: and your job is to get the figuring to the
Speaker 1: right most edge and the least number of die rolls,
Speaker 1: and there their spaces there that that represent how far
Speaker 1: you can go. So uh, normally there would be a
Speaker 1: hundred spaces between you and the and the right side,
Speaker 1: and you're only able to roll the die x number
Speaker 1: of times. Right, but you can just pick up right
Speaker 1: if you were able to fold the edge of the
Speaker 1: map so that it's right next to you, and you
Speaker 1: roll a one and you move one space, and then
Speaker 1: you unfold the map, you have just moved one space,
Speaker 1: but you've traveled all that distance. That's the magic of
Speaker 1: warp drive. People. We're talking about folding all of the
Speaker 1: galaxy around us to accommodate our travel needs. And people say,
Speaker 1: I'm a demanding traveler, but so so that's that's one.
Speaker 1: You know, it sounds super easy on paper. Um, I
Speaker 1: just explained that. Um. And the other being a being
Speaker 1: creating wormholes. Um. You know, you know, a wormhole being
Speaker 1: kind of a pokey thing through its shortcut on a
Speaker 1: paper map. If you, if you, if you took instead
Speaker 1: of a little figuring, you had a pointy figuring or
Speaker 1: a pencil or something, and you and you stuck that
Speaker 1: pencil straight through the two points in the map that
Speaker 1: you wanted to travel between, and then sort of hit
Speaker 1: hopped through the holes. So there's still some travel time,
Speaker 1: but it's much more reduced. It's this is where we
Speaker 1: get wibbly wobbly timmy whimy right right. But but hypothetically,
Speaker 1: all we would have to do is build two super
Speaker 1: dense rings giant super dense rings, charge them somehow, and
Speaker 1: spin them near the speed of light. Oh that's easy, Yeah,
Speaker 1: no problem. So the interesting thing here, by the way,
Speaker 1: is that when we're talking about warping space, when we're
Speaker 1: talking about actually moving or manipulating the space time continuum
Speaker 1: or however you want to fabric break of space itself,
Speaker 1: we actually get around the special relativity problem because your
Speaker 1: actual speed doesn't need to be light speed. You are
Speaker 1: just changing the distance and not changing You're not going
Speaker 1: at this incredible speed. So time is still gonna travel
Speaker 1: or stimes. Time is still going to pass differently relative
Speaker 1: to someone on a different ship or a different planet,
Speaker 1: but not at the amazing differences. You wouldn't need an
Speaker 1: infinite amount of energy to move yourself, and you wouldn't
Speaker 1: have an infinite amount of masks. And you also wouldn't
Speaker 1: find out when you call back home that everyone you
Speaker 1: know is forty years older. Uh, they might be, you know,
Speaker 1: a few micro seconds older than you, but it would be,
Speaker 1: you know, so small as to not as to be negligible,
Speaker 1: except for things like communication and stuff where you have
Speaker 1: to have exact timing. Obviously you have to have computers
Speaker 1: to correct those calculations. But when it comes to, you know,
Speaker 1: missing someone's birthday, you don't have to worry so much.
Speaker 1: Daylight saving time would probably interesting. So anyway, Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: there are people who are working on these theoretical drives.
Speaker 1: It may turn out that the theories are just they're
Speaker 1: they're not truly like theories in the sense of this
Speaker 1: is really established stuff. We're just working more hYP they're
Speaker 1: more like hypotheses that we have yet to prove um.
Speaker 1: So it'll be interesting to see if we ever do
Speaker 1: develop anything beyond the propulsion systems that we're currently looking into. Uh.
Speaker 1: I mean, it would obviously be very helpful for anything
Speaker 1: involving colonization or exploration, because otherwise it's going to take
Speaker 1: us a really long time to get Yeah, you you
Speaker 1: would have to build spacecraft capable of supporting multiple generations
Speaker 1: of people aboard that with a very limited number of supplies,
Speaker 1: because you know, you pretty much you have what you
Speaker 1: take with you. You know, you know, most we don't
Speaker 1: know of any shopping malls out there beyond Earth. You
Speaker 1: have to have to grow it yourself up. So anyway,
Speaker 1: that that kind of wraps up this discussion about uh,
Speaker 1: Star Wars and hyperspace, the Kessel Run, what we're actually
Speaker 1: looking into as means of propulsion in space. It's a
Speaker 1: really interesting topic. I'm glad that we we grabbed this
Speaker 1: one as our first episode, and hey, to all my
Speaker 1: Star Wars fans out there, I just have to say,
Speaker 1: live long and prosper. So yeah, if you guys want
Speaker 1: to send in any emails, I'm sure lots of you
Speaker 1: are thinking that you want to right now, I recommend you,
Speaker 1: uh you use our mudd ass that's tech stuff at
Speaker 1: Discovery dot com. Or let us know on Facebook or
Speaker 1: Twitter that I was making a Babylon five reference. Just
Speaker 1: now are handled there and say that I think pretty
Speaker 1: sure it was the master. Um. Just drop me a
Speaker 1: little note my handle at both Twitter and Facebook text
Speaker 1: stuff hs W Lauren and I will talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon for more on this and bouthands of
Speaker 1: other topics. Does it has to works dot com? This
Speaker 1: is Tis