WEBVTT - Death Star Weaponry 0:00:04.160 --> 0:00:07.240 Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from House 0:00:07.280 --> 0:00:13.720 toff Works dot Com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:13.760 --> 0:00:17.320 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer here 0:00:17.360 --> 0:00:19.959 at House to Parks and I love all things tech 0:00:20.040 --> 0:00:22.959 and welcome to Part two of How the Death Star Works. 0:00:23.520 --> 0:00:25.800 In this episode, I'll talk about the main purpose of 0:00:25.840 --> 0:00:28.560 the Death Star, which was to act as a super 0:00:28.560 --> 0:00:31.400 weapon to keep the systems in line. According to grand 0:00:31.400 --> 0:00:35.680 Moff Tarkins cheerful strategy, sometimes called the doctrine of Terror 0:00:36.320 --> 0:00:40.680 or slightly less dramatically, the Tarkan doctrine. This reflected Tarkan's 0:00:40.760 --> 0:00:44.120 belief that fear and domination would keep the more rebellious 0:00:44.120 --> 0:00:46.840 systems in the Empire in check, and the Death Star 0:00:46.920 --> 0:00:50.160 would be the ultimate tool to bring about that fear 0:00:50.280 --> 0:00:55.320 and domination. The Death Star was no slouch for weaponry. 0:00:55.760 --> 0:00:58.360 For one thing, it had multiple vehicle bays with everything 0:00:58.400 --> 0:01:02.480 from Thai fighters. The original Death Stars supposedly had twenty 0:01:02.520 --> 0:01:04.880 Thai fighters ready to take off at a moment's notice. 0:01:05.280 --> 0:01:07.520 It also had a T E T S or ad 0:01:07.520 --> 0:01:09.840 ADS if you prefer, and a T S T S. 0:01:10.200 --> 0:01:13.200 In fact, according to the Death Star Technical Companion from 0:01:13.200 --> 0:01:16.479 West End Games. The station house some seven thousand, two 0:01:16.560 --> 0:01:21.399 hundred starfighters total, four strike cruisers, three thousand, six hundred 0:01:21.400 --> 0:01:25.319 assault shuttles T eight s and an equal number of 0:01:25.319 --> 0:01:27.839 A T S T S and one thousand, eight hundred 0:01:27.880 --> 0:01:31.920 sixty drop ships for troops, which is a lot. Now, 0:01:31.959 --> 0:01:34.280 I want to talk just about one of those because 0:01:34.400 --> 0:01:37.000 it's my favorite vehicle in Star Wars. That's the Thaie 0:01:37.040 --> 0:01:40.560 Fighter or a twin ion engine fighter that was the 0:01:40.640 --> 0:01:43.640 standard starfighter for the Empire during a New Hope and 0:01:43.720 --> 0:01:46.720 in several films after that. It was the basis for 0:01:46.800 --> 0:01:49.720 future starfighters and bombers like the Thai bomber of the 0:01:49.760 --> 0:01:53.200 Tie advanced the Thaie Interceptor. According to various source books, 0:01:53.320 --> 0:01:56.120 your standard Thai fighter measured about seven and a half 0:01:56.200 --> 0:01:59.280 meters or twenty five feet tall. It was six point 0:01:59.280 --> 0:02:01.960 four meters or twenty one feet from side to side 0:02:02.240 --> 0:02:04.640 and six point three meters or a little less than 0:02:04.680 --> 0:02:07.440 twenty one ft front to back. In the world of 0:02:07.440 --> 0:02:10.520 Star Wars, the Thai fighter is all about performance as 0:02:10.560 --> 0:02:13.760 an attack vehicle. The ships have no shields, there's no 0:02:13.840 --> 0:02:16.120 hyper drive, so they have to be carried in larger 0:02:16.160 --> 0:02:19.639 ships for interstellar travel. They don't even have life support 0:02:19.720 --> 0:02:22.320 according to some source books, which is why the pilots 0:02:22.320 --> 0:02:25.880 are in those big, fully enclosed suits. But we have 0:02:26.000 --> 0:02:29.839 seen characters inside the cockpit of Thai fighters who are 0:02:29.880 --> 0:02:33.480 not in fully enclosed suits pilot them. They're able to 0:02:33.520 --> 0:02:35.520 breathe without the aid of a special suit, so I 0:02:35.560 --> 0:02:38.320 suspect that idea of them being without life support is 0:02:38.360 --> 0:02:42.519 not completely cannon. They also had no landing gear or 0:02:42.560 --> 0:02:45.960 any moving parts at all. The end universe explanation for 0:02:46.040 --> 0:02:48.799 that is that it made the ships have less mass, 0:02:49.200 --> 0:02:51.960 which made them more maneuverable and made them cheap to 0:02:52.000 --> 0:02:54.800 turn out on a mass scale. The lack of shields 0:02:54.840 --> 0:02:59.040 also gives insight into the Empire's philosophy regarding the expendability 0:02:59.200 --> 0:03:02.920 of its military force. Now, in our last episode, I 0:03:02.960 --> 0:03:06.040 talked about ion thrusters and how they work. Such an 0:03:06.080 --> 0:03:09.480 engine could move around the starship like a tie fighter, 0:03:09.720 --> 0:03:11.800 but it would be a really poor choice for a 0:03:11.800 --> 0:03:16.040 starfighter due to the very slow acceleration rate. It would 0:03:16.080 --> 0:03:19.560 take a long time VERTI fighter to accelerate to attack 0:03:19.639 --> 0:03:22.760 speed if all it had to rely upon where ion engines. 0:03:23.200 --> 0:03:27.000 This comes down to simple physics shooting out sub atomic 0:03:27.040 --> 0:03:32.040 particles or or even atomic particles or molecular molecular particles 0:03:32.280 --> 0:03:34.960 that only transfers a tiny amount of momentum to something 0:03:35.000 --> 0:03:36.920 the size of a StarCraft, so you're not gonna get 0:03:37.000 --> 0:03:39.840 up to speed very quickly. Back to the Death Star, 0:03:40.360 --> 0:03:43.839 the station itself was really well armed all on its own. 0:03:43.960 --> 0:03:46.600 Part of the exterior of the Death Star is the 0:03:46.720 --> 0:03:52.040 big concave section that houses the stations super laser emitter. 0:03:52.520 --> 0:03:55.160 In addition to this massive laser, which I'll talk about 0:03:55.160 --> 0:03:59.160 more in a bit, the Death Stars armament included tractor beams, 0:03:59.600 --> 0:04:04.120 turbo lasers, super blessed or nine twenty, laser cannons, and 0:04:04.720 --> 0:04:09.520 ion cannons. And I think starting at you know, looking 0:04:09.560 --> 0:04:11.560 at all these different ones would be really helpful. So 0:04:11.600 --> 0:04:13.520 let's let's take them turn by turn. I'm gonna start 0:04:13.520 --> 0:04:17.040 with ion cannons first. These are a cool idea and 0:04:17.200 --> 0:04:21.520 ion cannon in Star Wars fires out charged particles a 0:04:21.680 --> 0:04:24.880 k A ions. So an ion is an atom or 0:04:24.960 --> 0:04:28.159 molecule that holds a net electric charge because it either 0:04:28.240 --> 0:04:32.479 has more or fewer electrons than it has protons, So 0:04:32.520 --> 0:04:36.520 electrons are negatively charged subatomic particles and protons are positively 0:04:36.640 --> 0:04:39.479 charged subatomic particles. So if you have an equal number 0:04:39.520 --> 0:04:41.880 of each in an atom or a molecule, your net 0:04:41.960 --> 0:04:45.000 charge is neutral. But if you have more electrons than protons, 0:04:45.040 --> 0:04:47.039 the particle will have a negative charge. If you have 0:04:47.080 --> 0:04:49.640 more protons than electrons, then you get yourself a net 0:04:49.680 --> 0:04:53.360 positive charge. So in star wars, ion cannons fire off 0:04:53.440 --> 0:04:57.040 beams of these charged particles. Whether they're positive or negative, 0:04:57.080 --> 0:05:00.240 I don't know, And the intent is to disrupt the 0:05:00.320 --> 0:05:04.479 electrical systems at the target. So ion cannons do not 0:05:04.800 --> 0:05:10.000 cause direct physical damage typically, rather they disrupt electrical systems 0:05:10.120 --> 0:05:14.640 like shields, which allows other weapons to do the heavy blasting. Now, 0:05:14.680 --> 0:05:17.719 this isn't that different from something that does happen in 0:05:17.760 --> 0:05:21.719 the real world called an electromagnetic pulse. There are actually 0:05:21.880 --> 0:05:25.280 electromagnetic pulse weapons or e m p s. Now e 0:05:25.400 --> 0:05:28.400 MPs don't have to be weapons. There there are natural 0:05:28.400 --> 0:05:32.840 phenomena out there that will generate electromagnetic pulses, but they 0:05:32.920 --> 0:05:37.360 are also created through stuff like nuclear weapon detonations. We 0:05:37.400 --> 0:05:40.640 didn't know this necessarily when we were first building nuclear weapons, 0:05:40.640 --> 0:05:43.839 but we found out about it. These pulses can overload 0:05:43.880 --> 0:05:48.520 electronics with a voltage surge from electromagnetic energy, which effectively 0:05:48.600 --> 0:05:52.360 can fry electronic circuits if the force is strong enough 0:05:52.400 --> 0:05:56.320 and the circuits are not protected. The larger the circuits 0:05:56.360 --> 0:05:58.960 you're using here, the more likely you're going to see 0:05:58.960 --> 0:06:02.320 an impact. So if you're talking about a relatively simple, 0:06:02.400 --> 0:06:05.440 small circuit, it may not have enough of a voltage 0:06:05.440 --> 0:06:08.880 surge to cause any damage. Also, if it's an operation, 0:06:09.080 --> 0:06:12.360 it's more likely to to be damaged than something that 0:06:12.440 --> 0:06:16.640 has turned off. So any MP blast over like a 0:06:16.680 --> 0:06:20.040 power grid could cause massive damage that. That's essentially one 0:06:20.120 --> 0:06:23.840 gigantic circuit, and you've got a lot of big conductors there, 0:06:24.320 --> 0:06:28.280 and a powerful e MP blast would definitely cause a 0:06:28.320 --> 0:06:31.839 massive surge through that system. Now, we don't have ion 0:06:31.960 --> 0:06:34.719 cannons in the real world, though there have been experiments 0:06:34.720 --> 0:06:38.159 with particle beam weaponry, which would fire charged particles at 0:06:38.200 --> 0:06:40.880 high velocity at a target. Such weapons would have been 0:06:40.880 --> 0:06:43.839 tested with the possibility of using them in anti missile 0:06:43.920 --> 0:06:47.680 defense systems, for example, with the intent of rendering missiles 0:06:47.760 --> 0:06:51.919 useless or blowing them up before they reach their intended target. Essentially, 0:06:52.160 --> 0:06:55.640 these weapons deliver billions of charged particles at high velocity 0:06:55.680 --> 0:06:59.440 to targets to disrupt their atomic or molecular structures. It 0:06:59.520 --> 0:07:03.159 technically delivers kinetic energy to the target, which is the 0:07:03.200 --> 0:07:06.000 same as a conventional weapon like a gun or a rifle, 0:07:06.080 --> 0:07:08.479 only the bullets in this case are on the atomic 0:07:08.600 --> 0:07:13.480 or molecular scale. There are some challenges to designing these 0:07:13.520 --> 0:07:16.560 since they tend to fire charged particles and particles with 0:07:16.600 --> 0:07:20.080 a similar charge will repel each other. So inside a 0:07:20.080 --> 0:07:23.440 particle accelerator, for example, you've got these really powerful magnets 0:07:23.480 --> 0:07:27.720 that generate a magnetic field that keep those charged particles 0:07:27.760 --> 0:07:31.000 focused in a tight beam. They can't wander because you're 0:07:31.040 --> 0:07:35.480 using this other very massive magnet to keep them in line. 0:07:35.640 --> 0:07:37.760 But if you were to fire the beam outside of 0:07:37.800 --> 0:07:40.880 those magnetic fields, then the fact that you have all 0:07:40.920 --> 0:07:44.040 these similarly charged particles, they're gonna push against each other 0:07:44.120 --> 0:07:46.600 and the beam would spread out rapidly, and that would 0:07:46.640 --> 0:07:50.640 reduce its effectiveness. Plasma weapons are sometimes referenced as a 0:07:50.680 --> 0:07:53.760 possible alternative when it comes to energy based weapons, but 0:07:54.080 --> 0:07:57.640 these come with their own restrictions. Plasma is a conductive gas, 0:07:57.680 --> 0:08:00.800 meaning there are free roaming electrons in the gases. The 0:08:00.840 --> 0:08:04.440 most plentiful form of matter in the universe. It's typically 0:08:04.520 --> 0:08:07.800 low density stuff and at very high temperatures it's it's 0:08:07.800 --> 0:08:11.560 the stuff of stars. But it's not ideal for any 0:08:11.560 --> 0:08:14.800 sort of distance weapon, as the gas will expand and 0:08:14.880 --> 0:08:17.720 disperse outside of containment. If you have a high pressure 0:08:17.760 --> 0:08:21.080 plasma gas and you release it into the general environment, 0:08:21.240 --> 0:08:23.520 that high pressure is going to cause the gas to 0:08:23.600 --> 0:08:27.040 expand as it enters the lower pressure environment, and it 0:08:27.160 --> 0:08:30.480 starts to become less cohesive. It starts to lose energy rapidly, 0:08:30.840 --> 0:08:32.880 so you would have trouble finding a way to direct 0:08:32.880 --> 0:08:35.800 the plasma to a target at a high enough speed 0:08:35.920 --> 0:08:40.079 and coherence for it to actually do anything. Plasma does 0:08:40.120 --> 0:08:43.360 work great in short range applications, such as plasma torches. 0:08:43.559 --> 0:08:46.079 We can use powerful electrodes to ionize gas as it 0:08:46.120 --> 0:08:49.040 passes through a nozzle and create a very powerful cutting 0:08:49.080 --> 0:08:51.280 tool this way, but it's not going to become the 0:08:51.280 --> 0:08:54.320 new long range weapon for space. Now I've got more 0:08:54.600 --> 0:08:57.800 technology I want to discuss before I hit the really 0:08:57.880 --> 0:09:02.560 big topic lasers, and that's tractor beams. The tractor beam 0:09:02.559 --> 0:09:04.280 plays a big part in a New Hope, as the 0:09:04.320 --> 0:09:07.520 Empire uses it to immobilize and capture the millennium falcon. 0:09:07.960 --> 0:09:11.360 So could such a thing actually exist? While I'll tell 0:09:11.400 --> 0:09:14.280 you right after we take this quick break to thank 0:09:14.280 --> 0:09:25.120 our sponsor, So what exactly is a tractor beam? While 0:09:25.120 --> 0:09:27.319 a tractor beam is some form of energy that can 0:09:27.400 --> 0:09:30.760 draw objects closer to the source of the beam, which 0:09:30.840 --> 0:09:34.880 defies common sense as typically if you send anything out 0:09:35.080 --> 0:09:38.520 toward an object, it tends to push that object away 0:09:39.040 --> 0:09:42.040 rather than pull the object closer. But we do have 0:09:42.120 --> 0:09:45.200 experiments that mimic the tractor beams we see in science fiction, 0:09:46.000 --> 0:09:49.719 but they only work on a teen Italianese scale. So 0:09:49.800 --> 0:09:53.320 optical trap traps and optical tweezers are kind of in 0:09:53.320 --> 0:09:56.800 this category. They use beams of light to immobilize or 0:09:56.880 --> 0:10:01.360 manipulate very small objects such as individuals cellular components, in 0:10:01.400 --> 0:10:04.000 a noninvasive way. So if you needed to move things 0:10:04.080 --> 0:10:08.280 around within a a an organic cell, but you didn't 0:10:08.320 --> 0:10:11.040 want to cut into the cell, you might use optical 0:10:11.040 --> 0:10:14.280 tweezers to isolate a particular part of the cell and 0:10:14.320 --> 0:10:16.480 move it to where you needed it to be. But 0:10:16.559 --> 0:10:19.800 these methods are more about pushing a particle around, not 0:10:19.960 --> 0:10:24.080 pulling it towards the source of the energy, so it's 0:10:24.120 --> 0:10:26.800 really again, tweezers is the right term for it. It's 0:10:26.840 --> 0:10:30.240 not like you are magically latching on and harpooning it 0:10:30.280 --> 0:10:33.200 and pulling it towards you. But there are some that 0:10:33.240 --> 0:10:37.040 are closer to the concept of tractor beams. Bessel beams 0:10:37.280 --> 0:10:40.920 can draw a particle towards the source under specific circumstances. 0:10:40.960 --> 0:10:43.320 A bessel beam is a type of laser beam that, 0:10:43.480 --> 0:10:47.920 rather than forming a single coherent beam, manifests as a 0:10:47.960 --> 0:10:52.920 series of concentric circles surrounding a central dot. So think 0:10:52.960 --> 0:10:55.920 of your typical bulls eye target like in a dartboard. 0:10:56.280 --> 0:10:59.920 The center the bull's eye is the dot of the laser, 0:11:00.280 --> 0:11:03.600 and then the concentric circles around that dot represent the 0:11:03.679 --> 0:11:08.599 various circles of light around that laser dot. So the 0:11:08.720 --> 0:11:11.880 light of the dot is not diffracted, and diffraction is 0:11:11.920 --> 0:11:16.120 the spreading of waves around obstacles. This happens with sound, light, 0:11:16.240 --> 0:11:19.960 and other electromagnetic radiation, as well as with subatomic particles 0:11:20.000 --> 0:11:23.480 in motion because they display wave like properties. But the 0:11:23.600 --> 0:11:27.800 dot in a vessel beam comes from those concentric circles. 0:11:27.880 --> 0:11:30.440 So let's say you've got a very tiny object, and 0:11:30.480 --> 0:11:35.640 the object's size is actually smaller than the larger of 0:11:35.679 --> 0:11:38.640 the concentric circles in this vessel beam, and you direct 0:11:38.640 --> 0:11:42.160 a vessel beam towards this object, you would think that 0:11:42.200 --> 0:11:44.760 the little dot on the center of the vessel beam 0:11:44.760 --> 0:11:48.520 would just touch the the surface closest to the beam, 0:11:49.040 --> 0:11:51.160 and that would be that. But in fact what will 0:11:51.200 --> 0:11:54.040 happen is as long as there's at least one concentric 0:11:54.080 --> 0:11:57.840 circle that's larger than the object, the dot will actually 0:11:57.880 --> 0:12:02.520 reform on the back side of that object rather than 0:12:02.559 --> 0:12:05.400 on the front side of it. Uh, the considering circles 0:12:05.640 --> 0:12:08.960 will allow for this to happen, and you can actually 0:12:09.040 --> 0:12:12.720 use that to pull or manipulate an object to come 0:12:12.800 --> 0:12:17.160 toward the source of the energy to Physicists named David 0:12:17.200 --> 0:12:21.120 Grief and David Ruffner demonstrated this back in by using 0:12:21.120 --> 0:12:24.160 a pair of vessel beams and a lens that caused 0:12:24.200 --> 0:12:27.200 the two beams to overlap, and that way they could 0:12:27.200 --> 0:12:30.240 generate enough power to actually move stuff. They could direct 0:12:30.320 --> 0:12:32.720 the beams at an object and use a strobe like 0:12:32.840 --> 0:12:35.719 pattern of turning the beams on and off, and that 0:12:36.000 --> 0:12:38.319 doing this would cause the dot to reform on the 0:12:38.360 --> 0:12:40.720 back of the particle and create enough force to push 0:12:40.720 --> 0:12:44.040 the particle towards the source of the beam. So could 0:12:44.080 --> 0:12:47.160 we ever build a vessel beam big enough to tow 0:12:47.240 --> 0:12:51.360 a spaceship? No, and that scale the lasers would require 0:12:51.520 --> 0:12:54.640 an enormous amount of energy, more than what we could 0:12:54.679 --> 0:12:58.720 easily generate. And if we could generate that force to 0:12:59.080 --> 0:13:02.040 create or that inner g rather to create a vessel 0:13:02.080 --> 0:13:05.599 being powerful enough to do it, it would just burn 0:13:05.720 --> 0:13:08.640 up the target. It would be such an intense laser 0:13:08.720 --> 0:13:12.960 beam that the the energy it would be imparting to 0:13:13.080 --> 0:13:15.439 the object would actually cause it to catch fire, as 0:13:15.440 --> 0:13:17.840 opposed to pulling it toward you. If it did pull 0:13:17.880 --> 0:13:20.520 it towards you, you would suddenly be pulling a an 0:13:20.559 --> 0:13:23.040 object that was currently on fire towards you, which is 0:13:23.040 --> 0:13:25.760 not ideal. It turns out, if if there's an object 0:13:25.840 --> 0:13:31.199 on fire, my first advice is don't go toward it. 0:13:32.040 --> 0:13:35.680 Move further away. Now, if we found a way to 0:13:35.720 --> 0:13:39.480 create a similar device using a different energy intensive source, 0:13:39.960 --> 0:13:43.080 a macro sized tractor beam could be possible. In theory, 0:13:43.520 --> 0:13:46.000 other options would be to create some sort of gravitational 0:13:46.160 --> 0:13:49.360 or electromagnetic pull on the object, But to use a 0:13:49.360 --> 0:13:53.120 gravitational beam would require warping spacetime itself, which we can't 0:13:53.240 --> 0:13:57.240 yet do, and which would require again enormous amounts of 0:13:57.320 --> 0:14:00.200 either mass or energy in order to warp this face 0:14:00.240 --> 0:14:05.920 time matter or spacetime continuum sufficiently, and that's not something 0:14:05.960 --> 0:14:09.320 we could do. Electromagnetic fields would be easier to generate, 0:14:09.679 --> 0:14:13.680 so you could create an electromagnetic field to attract spacecraft 0:14:13.720 --> 0:14:15.560 towards you, but it would also be pretty easy to 0:14:15.600 --> 0:14:18.199 avoid because if you just made your spacecraft I'll stuff 0:14:18.240 --> 0:14:21.640 that wasn't magnetic, you wouldn't really be affected, though your 0:14:21.720 --> 0:14:26.160 electronic systems might be at least temporarily affected. So if 0:14:26.160 --> 0:14:29.760 it were a normal permanent magnet kind of approach, it 0:14:29.760 --> 0:14:32.360 wouldn't really affect your electronic systems too much. But if 0:14:32.400 --> 0:14:34.880 it were an alternating current approach where you've got a 0:14:34.960 --> 0:14:38.640 varying electromagnetic field, it would be back to that electromagnetic 0:14:38.640 --> 0:14:41.040 pulse issue I talked about earlier. Now this brings us 0:14:41.040 --> 0:14:45.360 to lasers. The Death Star has tons of lasers. Most 0:14:45.360 --> 0:14:48.400 of them are for the purposes of defense, but there's 0:14:48.440 --> 0:14:51.240 the really big one that's for the purposes of blowing 0:14:51.320 --> 0:14:54.080 up planet's real good. So how do these work? And 0:14:54.160 --> 0:14:56.160 would such a super weapon really be able to blow 0:14:56.240 --> 0:14:59.920 up a planet. Well. First, lasers are devices that create 0:15:00.280 --> 0:15:05.160 light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation. That's what laser means. 0:15:05.520 --> 0:15:08.120 To create a laser, you first need a special substance 0:15:08.160 --> 0:15:11.200 to serve as your lazing medium. This can come in 0:15:11.240 --> 0:15:14.240 lots of different forms. Some lasers use crystals, some use 0:15:14.280 --> 0:15:17.920 special types of glass, some use certain gases. But in 0:15:17.960 --> 0:15:21.560 any case, you have this lazing medium and then its 0:15:21.640 --> 0:15:25.040 job is to absorb energy, typically from either a powerful 0:15:25.120 --> 0:15:29.160 electric current or from another laser. So as you direct 0:15:29.200 --> 0:15:33.560 this energy toward this lasing medium, the electrons inside that 0:15:33.640 --> 0:15:37.400 medium get excited. It's a party. They begin to push 0:15:37.480 --> 0:15:40.760 out from their normal energy state around the nuclei of 0:15:40.800 --> 0:15:44.240 their respective atoms, so they start to occupy higher energy 0:15:44.280 --> 0:15:46.400 states that normally they wouldn't be able to be in. 0:15:46.880 --> 0:15:50.280 But when you stop pumping energy into the medium, that 0:15:50.360 --> 0:15:54.080 allows those electrons to return to their normal rest energy state, 0:15:54.360 --> 0:15:57.320 the lowest one that they would occupy around their respective 0:15:57.400 --> 0:16:01.600 nuclei under normal conditions. However, all that energy you pumped 0:16:01.600 --> 0:16:04.520 into the medium has to go somewhere, right, you have 0:16:04.600 --> 0:16:07.320 to have the law of conservation take effect. Energy can 0:16:07.360 --> 0:16:10.840 be neither created nor destroyed, but it can be converted 0:16:10.880 --> 0:16:14.440 from one form to another. So you pumped this lasing 0:16:14.480 --> 0:16:17.760 medium full of energy, the electrons have taken that and 0:16:17.760 --> 0:16:20.760 they've gone into higher energy states. You remove that source 0:16:20.800 --> 0:16:23.240 of energy, the electrons come down. They have to give 0:16:23.280 --> 0:16:26.720 off that energy somehow, So in this case, those formally 0:16:26.800 --> 0:16:30.320 hyperactive electrons release all that excess energy in the form 0:16:30.400 --> 0:16:33.840 of photons, the basic particles of light. The type of 0:16:33.880 --> 0:16:36.800 medium will determine the color of the emitted photons. So, 0:16:36.920 --> 0:16:40.440 for example, ruby lasers amid a dark red beam, no 0:16:40.520 --> 0:16:45.120 big surprise there, Helium cadmium lasers will blast out blue beams. 0:16:45.600 --> 0:16:50.720 Green beams might come from a neodymium doped atrium aluminum 0:16:50.760 --> 0:16:53.400 garnet laser. What the heck is that, Well, it's a 0:16:53.440 --> 0:16:57.920 crystal in which a small amount of triplele ionized neodymium 0:16:57.960 --> 0:17:01.360 replaces about one percent of the utter um ions in 0:17:01.400 --> 0:17:03.640 a host crystal. And the reason I bring it up 0:17:03.760 --> 0:17:06.399 is that the super laser of the Death Star is green, 0:17:06.640 --> 0:17:09.680 although they don't use that as their lasing medium. See 0:17:09.720 --> 0:17:13.200 in the world of Star Wars, special weapons like lightsabers 0:17:13.280 --> 0:17:17.640 and the Death Stars super laser depended on these fictional 0:17:17.680 --> 0:17:22.199 materials called kaiber crystals, which are attuned to the force, 0:17:22.520 --> 0:17:26.440 which is that mystical power that binds all things together. 0:17:26.760 --> 0:17:30.320 So the Death Star super laser is kind of magic, 0:17:30.640 --> 0:17:32.920 I guess, But like I said in the last episode, 0:17:32.920 --> 0:17:34.960 Star Wars is really more of a fantasy than a 0:17:34.960 --> 0:17:39.399 science fiction story. The Death Star uses eight lasers aimed 0:17:39.440 --> 0:17:42.440 at a focal point to create the super laser. It's 0:17:42.480 --> 0:17:45.600 the combined laser that the Empire uses to blow up planets. 0:17:45.640 --> 0:17:49.560 And how powerful is that laser? According to Dr Patrick Johnson, 0:17:49.600 --> 0:17:52.240 who wrote the physics of Star Wars, it would have 0:17:52.320 --> 0:17:54.800 to be a real whopper. Now. Dr Johnson does not 0:17:55.000 --> 0:17:57.719 calculate how much energy the laser would need to destroy 0:17:57.720 --> 0:18:00.840 a planet, because real world physics don't work the way 0:18:00.840 --> 0:18:04.000 we see the events unfold in Star Wars. Hitting a 0:18:04.040 --> 0:18:07.880 planet with a laser, even a super powerful one, would 0:18:07.920 --> 0:18:10.560 not make it explode, as if the entire planet were 0:18:10.560 --> 0:18:12.960 made out of T and T. You could heat up 0:18:13.000 --> 0:18:17.480 the planet considerably, effectively killing off all life on that planet. 0:18:17.680 --> 0:18:19.760 And if you kept a powerful enough laser on a 0:18:19.800 --> 0:18:23.360 planet long enough, you could start to melt the planet, 0:18:23.760 --> 0:18:26.480 but you wouldn't cause it to explode into a billion pieces, 0:18:26.880 --> 0:18:29.400 and that makes sense. It's similar to how you can 0:18:29.480 --> 0:18:33.040 burn wood using a magnifying glass and sunlight. It takes 0:18:33.040 --> 0:18:35.359 a little bit to heat up the surface enough to 0:18:35.400 --> 0:18:38.639 start the process, so it doesn't instantaneously happen. If you 0:18:38.640 --> 0:18:41.840 have a really powerful magnifying glass and you have a good, 0:18:42.160 --> 0:18:45.600 uh good angle on the sun, you can start burning 0:18:45.600 --> 0:18:48.680 wood very quickly. But even then you're talking about heating 0:18:48.760 --> 0:18:51.359 up a substance to the point where it starts to burn. 0:18:52.280 --> 0:18:56.159 Even a super powerful laser would not instantaneously cause a 0:18:56.200 --> 0:18:59.719 planet to explode. Now, Dr Johnson did say that if 0:18:59.760 --> 0:19:02.399 you wanted to create a laser capable of packing the 0:19:02.440 --> 0:19:05.520 same punch as the most powerful collision we know about, 0:19:05.960 --> 0:19:09.160 you'd have to match the blast that Jupiter received when 0:19:09.240 --> 0:19:13.720 fragment g from the Shoemaker Levi comet hit the planet's surface. 0:19:14.280 --> 0:19:17.400 That impact was equivalent to one point one two times 0:19:17.520 --> 0:19:22.159 ten to the twenty seven power jewels of energy. One 0:19:22.240 --> 0:19:25.199 jewel is equivalent to one three thousand, six hundred of 0:19:25.240 --> 0:19:28.080 a what hour, and Dr Johnson points out that with 0:19:28.160 --> 0:19:30.679 one point one two times ten to the twenty seventh 0:19:30.720 --> 0:19:34.640 power jewels, you're talking more energy than all of humanity 0:19:34.680 --> 0:19:37.000 would be able to use over the course of three 0:19:37.040 --> 0:19:40.479 million years if you rely upon the use rates that 0:19:40.520 --> 0:19:45.280 were recorded in two thousand thirteen. So three million years 0:19:45.280 --> 0:19:47.679 of using energy the way we did in thirteen, and 0:19:47.720 --> 0:19:51.960 you would approach the amount of energy that was that 0:19:52.080 --> 0:19:55.680 was represented by this collision on Jupiter. And even that 0:19:55.840 --> 0:19:57.920 is not the same as what it would take to 0:19:57.960 --> 0:20:01.480 destroy a planet. Right, that's not even a full a 0:20:01.520 --> 0:20:04.880 full charge of this Death Star laser. It can't be 0:20:04.960 --> 0:20:08.560 if the if Jupiter still around, unless I checked it is. 0:20:09.160 --> 0:20:11.520 Then you would have to assume that whatever the Death 0:20:11.520 --> 0:20:14.160 Stars laser packs, it's got to be higher than that. 0:20:14.920 --> 0:20:16.560 So that means it's got to be more than the 0:20:16.680 --> 0:20:18.520 energy that we would use over the course of three 0:20:18.560 --> 0:20:21.040 million years. It's also equivalent, by the way, to the 0:20:21.160 --> 0:20:24.879 total amount of energy our Sun emits over the course 0:20:25.000 --> 0:20:28.360 of three minutes. And I don't mean the energy that's 0:20:28.359 --> 0:20:30.479 coming to Earth. I mean all the energy coming out 0:20:30.520 --> 0:20:33.639 of the Sun for three minutes. That's a lot of energy. 0:20:34.560 --> 0:20:39.520 So again makes the Death Star pretty unrealistic, but fine 0:20:39.560 --> 0:20:42.080 for a fantasy. So when we come back, we'll talk 0:20:42.119 --> 0:20:44.760 about the Death stars weak point and the super weapons. 0:20:44.800 --> 0:20:47.520 The bad guys built to replace the Death Star once 0:20:47.520 --> 0:20:50.320 it done got exploded. But first, let's take a quick 0:20:50.359 --> 0:21:02.320 break to thank our sponsor. So ventilation shaft. What the 0:21:02.359 --> 0:21:05.560 heck was that about? Well, as we learn in Rogue one, 0:21:06.040 --> 0:21:08.240 one of the engineers who worked on the Death Star 0:21:08.440 --> 0:21:12.120 created this vulnerability on purpose. He was compelled to work 0:21:12.119 --> 0:21:14.679 on the station by the Empire, and he managed to 0:21:14.720 --> 0:21:18.400 sneak in a severe design flaw that apparently no one 0:21:18.480 --> 0:21:22.320 else Q aid during the entire construction process, which speaks 0:21:22.320 --> 0:21:25.800 poorly on the Empire's quality control system. I would say 0:21:26.040 --> 0:21:30.000 the engineering question was galen Urso, the father to jen Urso, 0:21:30.240 --> 0:21:34.160 that's the main protagonist of Rogue One. Galen Urso's design 0:21:34.240 --> 0:21:37.280 had a ventilation shaft running from the exterior surface of 0:21:37.320 --> 0:21:40.760 the Death Star directly down to the very core of 0:21:40.800 --> 0:21:44.480 the hyper matter power reactor, and a direct hit on 0:21:44.520 --> 0:21:47.960 the ventilation shaft would send energy down to overload this reactor, 0:21:48.240 --> 0:21:51.880 causing a catastrophic chain reaction within the reactor core, which 0:21:51.880 --> 0:21:54.080 would lead to the destruction of the Death Star as 0:21:54.119 --> 0:21:59.360 the reactor would explode in an uncontained massive explosion. This 0:21:59.440 --> 0:22:02.800 is similar to a nuclear meltdown in some ways, and 0:22:03.000 --> 0:22:06.200 a nuclear meltdown. You go with a controlled nuclear reaction 0:22:06.880 --> 0:22:10.320 which then turns into an uncontrolled one. Technically, that usually 0:22:10.320 --> 0:22:13.480 means that the dampening techniques you would use to restrict 0:22:13.640 --> 0:22:17.840 nuclear activity within a reactor would fail, and so these 0:22:17.960 --> 0:22:21.640 reactions would continue to happen and they would accelerate, and 0:22:22.040 --> 0:22:25.560 a nuclear reactor would then therefore get really really hot 0:22:25.600 --> 0:22:28.520 and a lot of radiation would be released. It typically 0:22:28.600 --> 0:22:32.159 wouldn't explode, but things might start to melt if it 0:22:32.240 --> 0:22:35.720 got hot enough, and uh, the containment system could fail, 0:22:35.760 --> 0:22:38.600 and that could release a lot of radiation in the process. 0:22:38.640 --> 0:22:40.520 This has happened a couple of times, or radiation has 0:22:40.560 --> 0:22:44.919 been vented into various areas um or has otherwise been 0:22:44.960 --> 0:22:48.400 able to leak out from a nuclear facility. You still 0:22:48.440 --> 0:22:51.439 wouldn't see a massive explosion, really, You would just have 0:22:51.800 --> 0:22:55.440 a lot of very deadly radiation leaked into the environment, 0:22:55.480 --> 0:22:58.080 which is pretty darn bad all by itself. But the 0:22:58.080 --> 0:23:01.280 Death Star, of course, relied on hyper matter, which apparently 0:23:01.359 --> 0:23:03.520 is extremely volatile, So I'm going to give this one 0:23:03.520 --> 0:23:07.639 a pass. Now, some quick discussion about the successors to 0:23:07.680 --> 0:23:11.080