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Speaker 1: Technology with tech Stuff from staff works dot com. Hey there,

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Speaker 1: and welcome to text Stuff. I am your host, Jonathan Strickland.

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Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer here at How Stuff Works. And

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Speaker 1: I love technology, and I love science fiction, and I

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Speaker 1: love fantasy uh and I love the technology of science

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Speaker 1: fiction and fantasy worlds, and you guys do too. I

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Speaker 1: was just talking with one of the folks on our

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Speaker 1: team and she was telling me about how the tech

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Speaker 1: of episodes are some of the favorites of people out there,

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Speaker 1: and so I wanted to do another one. And the

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Speaker 1: day this show publishes should be the day that Star Wars,

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Speaker 1: the Last Jedi, hits theaters in the United States. And that,

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Speaker 1: coupled with a book that I received in the mail

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Speaker 1: that is titled The Physics of Star Wars, written by

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Speaker 1: Dr Patrick Johnson, inspired me to do another one of

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Speaker 1: these tech of episodes, this time, of course, the Tech

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Speaker 1: of Star Wars. And I say another Tech of Star

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Speaker 1: Wars because way back in Two Holy Cats seven years ago,

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Speaker 1: Chris Pallette and I tackled the concept of lightsabers and

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Speaker 1: how they work both within the Star Wars universe and

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Speaker 1: also how the actual effects were done in movies we

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Speaker 1: even talked a little bit about whether it might be

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Speaker 1: possible to ever build a similar device in our world.

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Speaker 1: I did a rerun with an update for that episode

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Speaker 1: in two thousand and fourteen. I also did a show

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Speaker 1: back in twenty thirteen titled tech Stuff Leaps into Hyperspace

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Speaker 1: to talk about the faster than light travel tech of

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Speaker 1: Star Wars. I'll touch on both of those things again

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Speaker 1: in this episode, because I think it's safe to say

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Speaker 1: that without the concepts of hyper drive and especially lightsabers,

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Speaker 1: you can't really call it Star Wars. So we're gonna

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Speaker 1: touch on those, but we won't go into as much

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Speaker 1: detail as those previous episodes. So if what I say

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Speaker 1: to you is interesting and you really want to learn more,

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Speaker 1: I recommend you look at the backlog of Tech Stuff

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Speaker 1: episodes and find those and you can check them out.

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Speaker 1: Let's get some basics out of the way before we

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Speaker 1: jump into any of the technology. Now, I'm fairly certain

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Speaker 1: almost all of you out there have at least heard

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Speaker 1: of Star Wars, if not seen all the major movies.

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Speaker 1: Some of you are probably hardcore fans who have seen

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Speaker 1: all the movies, read the comic books, you've watched the

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Speaker 1: television series, the animated series. You've got your own DVD

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Speaker 1: of the Star Wars Holiday Special, which George Lucas famously

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Speaker 1: wanted to destroy. You might have all the toys, you

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Speaker 1: might know the names of every single character, no matter

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Speaker 1: how minor or how briefly they appeared on screen. But

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Speaker 1: this episode is going to be for everybody. So if

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Speaker 1: you are a hardcore fan, just let me get through

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Speaker 1: this next little bit. So, the first film came out

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Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy seven, and after it came out. When

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Speaker 1: it first came out, it was just called Star Wars.

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Speaker 1: After it came out, it was later given the subtitle

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Speaker 1: Episode for a New Hope. After nineteen three, it seemed

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Speaker 1: like we were only going to get three movies. It

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Speaker 1: was just gonna be a trilogy. That would be Episode four,

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Speaker 1: A New Hope, Episode five, The Empire Strikes Back, an

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Speaker 1: episode six, Return of the Jedi, originally going to be

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Speaker 1: called Revenge of the Jedi. So for years we thought

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Speaker 1: that was all we're gonna get, at least officially. We

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Speaker 1: did get all these other supplemental pieces of media, including

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Speaker 1: comic books. There were some specials. There were a couple

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Speaker 1: of Ewok movies, the less said about the better, and uh,

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Speaker 1: then you had the sort of splintering of the Star

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Speaker 1: Wars universe. You had what most people considered canon, which

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Speaker 1: is the stuff that appears in the films, that's all

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Speaker 1: the official this is definitely part of the Star Wars

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Speaker 1: universe stuff. And then you had everything else that was

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Speaker 1: in the expanded universe that might or might not be

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Speaker 1: part of the official Star Wars universe. Some things might

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Speaker 1: get incorporated into stories, some things might be completely disregarded,

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Speaker 1: and there are also contradictions within that as well. But

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Speaker 1: generally speaking, fans like myself consider the things in the

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Speaker 1: films to be cannon and everything else is apocryphal. So

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Speaker 1: it might be true, but there's nothing until it's in

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Speaker 1: a movie, it's not. It's not law. Fast forward to today,

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Speaker 1: and now we've got a dang Star Wars movie coming

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Speaker 1: out every single year. Whether that's a good thing or not,

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Speaker 1: I'm going to leave it for some pop culture podcast.

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Speaker 1: That's not for me to say. I'm just going to

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Speaker 1: look at some of the science and tech within the

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Speaker 1: Star Wars universe. And that's where I turned to Dr

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Speaker 1: Patrick Johnson. Now, as I mentioned a moment ago, I

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Speaker 1: received a book written by him titled The Physics of

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Speaker 1: Star Wars and as the extremely cute tagline of may

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Speaker 1: the F equals m A be with you. F equals

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Speaker 1: in a being the formula to show force, So may

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Speaker 1: the force be with you. I'm sure you all picked

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Speaker 1: up on that. The book covers lots of different aspects

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Speaker 1: of physics and and technology. It covers stuff like time

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Speaker 1: dilation and planetary physics, so there's a ton of information

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Speaker 1: in the book. It's really easy to read, and it's

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Speaker 1: laid out in a way where it gives you the

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Speaker 1: context of the technology or concept in science within the

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Speaker 1: Star Wars universe. It then explains how that must work

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Speaker 1: within the Star Wars universe, and then there's a section

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Speaker 1: about how close are we able to match that in

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Speaker 1: our world, whether it is a process or a technology

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Speaker 1: or whatever. And uh, I really enjoy it, so if

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Speaker 1: you get a chance to check it out, you should.

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Speaker 1: So I used that as my primary source of research

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Speaker 1: for this episode. I'm going to focus on the tech. Obviously,

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Speaker 1: I could talk a lot about the physics and stuff

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Speaker 1: if I really wanted to, and some of the physics

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Speaker 1: information will come into this, but this is tech stuff.

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Speaker 1: Not stuff to blow your mind. So we're gonna focus

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Speaker 1: mostly on the technology part, knowing that technology is really

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Speaker 1: just applied science, right, you just take take that scientific

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Speaker 1: knowledge and you make it into something. So where to begin, Well,

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Speaker 1: I've done a full episode on it, and I even

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Speaker 1: did a rerun with some updates, But I think you

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Speaker 1: have to begin with lightsabers because I would argue it

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Speaker 1: is the most iconic out of all the technologies that

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Speaker 1: are related to Star Wars. Uh. It was something that

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Speaker 1: really struck a chord in viewers, and it makes sense.

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Speaker 1: You've got a hero who's wielding essentially a magic sword.

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Speaker 1: That's what George Lucas called lightsabers. He didn't really refer

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Speaker 1: to them as lightsabers that much. In casual conversation. You

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Speaker 1: talk about magic swords and bad guy's got a magic swords.

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Speaker 1: You get to have these great cool sword fights, which,

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Speaker 1: again in the early versions of Star Wars that the

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Speaker 1: original trilogy, there are a lot less acrobatic than later

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Speaker 1: sword lightsaber duels, but still pretty darn cool if you

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Speaker 1: happen to be a kid growing up and watching it

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Speaker 1: for the first time. Now, in the world of Star Wars,

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Speaker 1: lightsabers are a Jedi's weapon. Jedi are the force wielding

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Speaker 1: warriors that are able to control these mystical powers. Other

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Speaker 1: people can try to use lightsabers, but there's at least

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Speaker 1: an implication there that Jedi are the only ones who

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Speaker 1: are really able to be proficient with them, that perhaps

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Speaker 1: an affinity with the Force is necessary for you to

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Speaker 1: be able to use a lightsaber effectively, and not, I

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Speaker 1: don't know, lop your own limbs off. Lightsabers are never

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Speaker 1: really described in great detail in the films. We know

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Speaker 1: that Jedi build them because we know that Luke's father

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Speaker 1: built a lightsaber, than then Luke has and then Luke

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Speaker 1: himself has to go and build a lightsaber later on

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Speaker 1: in that original trilogy, but it doesn't really go into

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Speaker 1: the details of what makes up a lightsaber in the movies. Now,

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Speaker 1: the expanded Universe definitely addresses this, and some of that

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Speaker 1: element gets kind of leaked into the movies and little

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Speaker 1: casual bits and pieces, But again it depends on what

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Speaker 1: your tolerance is for apocryphal versus cannon. There's more information

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Speaker 1: like a power source essentially a battery pack, a crystal

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Speaker 1: that focuses energy and emitter that allows the blade to

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Speaker 1: come out of the hilt. But really, what you just

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Speaker 1: need to know is that a lightsaber is a weapon,

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Speaker 1: a blade made out of some form of luminescent energy.

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Speaker 1: So the blades tend to be about three ft long.

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Speaker 1: That varies depending upon the Jedi. I'm sure Yodas is

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Speaker 1: more like two and a half feet long. The blades

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Speaker 1: can be found in various colors. Jedi colors tend to

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Speaker 1: be blue or green, although Mace wind Up famously wields

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Speaker 1: a purple lightsaber. And Sith sabers as in the Bad

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Speaker 1: Guy Eyes Dark Jedi, well, let's not get two technical

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Speaker 1: Sith and dark Jedi are not synonymous. But Sith sabers

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Speaker 1: tend to be read and lightsabers can block blaster or

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Speaker 1: fire we'll talk more about blasters and just a little bit.

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Speaker 1: And they also will collide with other lightsabers. You can

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Speaker 1: have a duel with someone else and if your lightsaber

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Speaker 1: contacts their lightsaber, there's physical contact, as if you were

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Speaker 1: holding like a physical blade and it came into contact

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Speaker 1: with someone else's physical blade. So that presents itself some

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Speaker 1: challenges when you try to figure out how to explain

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Speaker 1: how this stuff actually works. Lightsabers can cut through metal,

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Speaker 1: they can cauterize wounds. They are clearly hot, the blade

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Speaker 1: itself is hot, or else it wouldn't make any sense.

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Speaker 1: Various sources in the Star Wars universe refer to them

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Speaker 1: as things like laser swords or plasma swords, which are

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Speaker 1: two very different things and both of them present very

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Speaker 1: complicated issues. If you want to talk about an actual

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Speaker 1: handheld weapon that can form a blade that you can

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Speaker 1: then use to cut through a metal door or lop

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Speaker 1: off snaughty little teenager's arms, I guess Anakin at that

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Speaker 1: point was actually probably older than a teenager. But anyway,

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Speaker 1: so if it's a laser sword, that's tricky because we're

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Speaker 1: not really good at getting light to stop at a

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Speaker 1: specific point three feet out from the hilt of an emitter.

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Speaker 1: Imagine having a flashlight and turning it on and just thinking, well,

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Speaker 1: I want the flashlight to only extend three ft and

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Speaker 1: then I want to stop. How do you do that?

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Speaker 1: How do you get the light to not continue on?

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Speaker 1: One way you could get around this is if you

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Speaker 1: had some sort of system that would hold a mirror

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Speaker 1: about three feet out from the hilt from the emitter

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Speaker 1: on your handle, and it would reflect the light back

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Speaker 1: down into the emitter and allow that light to bounce

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Speaker 1: back and forth between a mid and mirror. Uh, but

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Speaker 1: the movies don't seem to have that mirror. It's kind

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Speaker 1: of a moot point. You can actually see the when

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Speaker 1: a lightsaber is is sort of pointed directly at the camera,

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Speaker 1: there's a point of light there, So clearly there's not

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Speaker 1: some sort of dark spot, So it doesn't really work

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Speaker 1: in that case. Plus, a laser that's strong enough to

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Speaker 1: cut metal and cause massive damage would require a great

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Speaker 1: deal of power. The lasers you find and laser pointers

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Speaker 1: are not strong enough typically to cause very much damage,

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Speaker 1: although you can buy some that are strong enough to

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Speaker 1: maybe set fire to some matches or or maybe even

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Speaker 1: do some more severe damage to stuff if it's left

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Speaker 1: on a flammable surface long enough, if you if you've

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Speaker 1: concentrated the light on that spot long enough. But if

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Speaker 1: you want something that's gonna be so strong that can

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Speaker 1: do that sort of instantaneous damage, you're talking about a

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Speaker 1: massive requirement for power, and you would need a really

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Speaker 1: big cooling system something to keep all all that equipment

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Speaker 1: cool so that you could continue to use it. That's

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Speaker 1: probably not something that you really want with a handheld

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Speaker 1: blade system. So laser is also another big problem. They

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Speaker 1: can't physically stop other forms of energy like blaster fire

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Speaker 1: or lightsabers from passing through the blade. Again, if I

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Speaker 1: have a flashlight and you have a flashlight, and we

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Speaker 1: swing our flashlights and arcs so that the actual beams

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Speaker 1: would come into contact with one another, we don't feel

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Speaker 1: any resistance. The beams just pass right through. There's no

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Speaker 1: collision there. So if a lightsabers mail of a laser,

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Speaker 1: then you don't have this physical contact element that lightsabers

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Speaker 1: clearly have in the movies, so we can't really describe

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Speaker 1: it as a laser. And keeping in mind, yes, these

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Speaker 1: are fictional movies, obviously, right, it's fantasy. If you really

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Speaker 1: want to get down to it, it's more of a

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Speaker 1: fantasy film than a science fiction film. And there's nothing

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Speaker 1: wrong with that. We're just talking about if we wanted

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Speaker 1: to make one in the real world, could we do it?

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Speaker 1: So let's say that, all right, Well, lasers are clearly

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Speaker 1: a no go. What about plasma plasma is a real thing?

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Speaker 1: We can make plasma plasma being ionized gas, not the

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Speaker 1: component in our blood, but an ionized gas. It's it's

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Speaker 1: the most plentiful form of matter in the universe. Stars

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Speaker 1: are made of plasma, and ionized gas just means that

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Speaker 1: the gas is made up of charged particles. The atoms

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Speaker 1: have had electrons stripped from them, which means you've got

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Speaker 1: free flowing electrons within that gas. You've got charged particles

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Speaker 1: flowing within that gas. Typically, the way we do this

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Speaker 1: is that we can put it under a lot of

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Speaker 1: pressure and heat it up a whole bunch, and that

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Speaker 1: strips the electrons from these atoms and causes them to

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Speaker 1: move like crazy. When you add heat to material, you

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Speaker 1: cause more atomic motion. And so this is very fast

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Speaker 1: moving particles within a a gas, a big ionized hot,

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Speaker 1: hot gas, and we're talking about hundreds of thousands of

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Speaker 1: degrees in fahrenheit, like two degrees fahrenheit something like that.

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Speaker 1: In order to get the gas temperature where you're stripping

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Speaker 1: it and you've made this ionized format. That temperature is

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Speaker 1: definitely high enough to cut metal or to cauterize wounds.

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Speaker 1: There's no question about it. If you did get plasma,

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Speaker 1: then you could you could cause some serious damage, but

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Speaker 1: you also wouldn't be able to hold the lightsaber, because

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Speaker 1: it would be as if you're holding a handle from

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Speaker 1: which a substance that is the temperature of the surface

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Speaker 1: of the sun is coming out. You would have to

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Speaker 1: have some sort of incredible protection so that you don't

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Speaker 1: immediately get burned by it. Not to mention, there'd be

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Speaker 1: other forms of radiation besides just heat that you would

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Speaker 1: have to deal with. Potentially, so you might be able

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Speaker 1: to contain the blade using electro magnets. Because a ionized

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Speaker 1: gas having a charge, it does respond to magnetic fields.

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Speaker 1: In fact, that's actually a big problem because if it

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Speaker 1: comes into any range of any magnetic field of consequence,

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Speaker 1: it's going that magnetic field is going to uh to

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Speaker 1: bend the blade. If you're on a planet that has

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Speaker 1: a magnetic field, for example, Earth has one, then that's

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Speaker 1: anitial that's a problem. Immediately, the magnetic field of the

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Speaker 1: plant alone would distort the blade to the point where

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Speaker 1: you wouldn't be able to have an actual sword pop

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Speaker 1: out of the heilt. You might be able to have

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Speaker 1: it stop where you want it to using electro magnets,

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Speaker 1: so unlike lasers, where it's just going to shoot out

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Speaker 1: and keep going. Using electromagnetism, you might be able to

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Speaker 1: create like a cylinder, essentially a loop of plasma flow,

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Speaker 1: so that you have kind of this glowing torch of plasma,

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Speaker 1: and you could simulate having a blade that way. However,

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Speaker 1: just like lasers, you wouldn't be able to use this

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Speaker 1: aid to stop things from hitting you, like other lightsabers

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Speaker 1: or blaster fire. Uh. Dr Johnson and his book describes

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Speaker 1: it like this. If you think of plasma, plasma is

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Speaker 1: really kind of a soupy sort of substance. It's a

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Speaker 1: soupy substance of particles. So if you had two lightsabers

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Speaker 1: and a duel, it would be like two blades of

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Speaker 1: soup hitting each other. They don't clash, they would just

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Speaker 1: gloop in. Also, because they would both have these electromagnetic

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Speaker 1: fields around them, instead of it bouncing off of each other,

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Speaker 1: they more likely meld into one. You would have the

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Speaker 1: electromagnetic field twist in such a way where it becomes

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Speaker 1: one field instead of two, and you would end up

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Speaker 1: having your two blades merge into a single plasma mess,

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Speaker 1: which is more like something that happens in spaceballs than

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Speaker 1: in star Wars. But yeah, it would not work the

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Speaker 1: way it does in the movies, and so really the

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Speaker 1: final verdict is that lightsabers are works of fiction through

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Speaker 1: and through with only the most tangential relationships with real

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Speaker 1: gadgets and science. But we do have stuff that can

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Speaker 1: do some really impressive cutting or cauterizing. It's just that

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Speaker 1: it's not in that laser sword format. It's less visually

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Speaker 1: impressive than that. So we do have stuff that can

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Speaker 1: do some amazing things, but it's not like a light

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Speaker 1: sword that'll uh, really impress people when you turn it on,

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Speaker 1: and it certainly doesn't make that cool boom boom noise.

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Speaker 1: Blasters kind of a similar story, uh. In Star Wars,

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Speaker 1: blasters are guns. They can be cannon or they can

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Speaker 1: be handheld blasters, rifles, that sort of thing. They fire

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Speaker 1: out brightly lit projectiles. When I was a kid, I

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Speaker 1: just thought of them as laser guns. I just thought, no,

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Speaker 1: it's a laser gun. Even though they call them blasters

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Speaker 1: in the movies, I think in the scripts they refer

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Speaker 1: to them as laser guns. At least in some of

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Speaker 1: the early screenplays. They look a little like laser beams.

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Speaker 1: They're truncated. You can you get these kind of like

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Speaker 1: tiny dashes, So think of them maybe like as much

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Speaker 1: as a meter long and some shots, but usually it's

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Speaker 1: less than that. And they're just coming out of these

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Speaker 1: guns and you can see them. You can see this

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Speaker 1: distinct dash like line. Uh. They don't move like laser beams,

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Speaker 1: so they can't really be laser guns because if they

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Speaker 1: move like laser beams, they'd move at the speed of light,

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Speaker 1: which means we wouldn't be able to follow their progress.

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Speaker 1: We see if they were on or off, but we

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Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to see them move across the place

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Speaker 1: because light travels too fast for us to perceive it

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Speaker 1: that way. If you turn on a flashlight, you cannot

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Speaker 1: actually follow the beam as it leaves the flashlight and

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Speaker 1: heads out into the environment. For example, you know if

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Speaker 1: if you turn it on, it looks like the end

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Speaker 1: of the flashlight. Let's say that you're pointing out a

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Speaker 1: wall that's fifty ft away. You turn the flashlight on,

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Speaker 1: it looks like the light has instantaneously come on as

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Speaker 1: far as the onto the wall, so you didn't actually

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Speaker 1: see the light travel from the flashlight all the way

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Speaker 1: to the wall. It goes way too fast for that. Clearly,

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Speaker 1: blasters do not fire projectiles at that speed because we

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Speaker 1: can actually follow them with their eyes. In fact, not

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Speaker 1: only can we follow them, but characters can and do

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Speaker 1: dodge them or block them with lightsabers. So Jedi will

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Speaker 1: use their lightsabers to block blaster fire, and in at

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Speaker 1: least one altered scene we see a character dodge blaster

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Speaker 1: fire from just a few feet away. That would be

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Speaker 1: the awful retroactive edit to a New Hope, which I

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Speaker 1: don't like, and I don't know why you even brought

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Speaker 1: it up. It was tacky of you to do it.

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Speaker 1: You should know that that particular edit it really upsets me.

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Speaker 1: Han shot first, So, like lightsabers, blasters are not really

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Speaker 1: comparable to any real world technologies today. I mean, if

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Speaker 1: you think of it as something again like a plasma

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Speaker 1: weapon instead of a laser weapon, you run into some

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Speaker 1: of those same problems I was talking about with lightsabers,

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Speaker 1: mainly the idea that if you come into contact with

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Speaker 1: any magnetic field at all, it's going to warp the fire.

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Speaker 1: You can't you can't reliably hit anything, which I guess

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Speaker 1: could explain why stormtroopers are so bad at shooting stuff,

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Speaker 1: because the weapons they use are being affected by magnetic

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Speaker 1: fields of other materials, and therefore they are random, the

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Speaker 1: way Obi Wan refers to blasters, random and crude, unlike

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Speaker 1: a lightsaber, which would be just as random in the

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Speaker 1: face of magnetic fields if it too was made of plasma.

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Speaker 1: Lasers are used in weapons systems today, but they're more

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Speaker 1: frequently used for guidance and aiming. There are some militarized

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Speaker 1: lasers that can cause damage, but typically these are ones

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Speaker 1: that are mounted onto large mobile stations, like a trailer

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Speaker 1: that you would tow behind another vehicle, or sometimes mounted

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Speaker 1: to a militarized vehicle. Because they require so much energy

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Speaker 1: to operate and they're so heavy that you can't carry

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Speaker 1: them around by hand. Uh And even these are much

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Speaker 1: more limited obviously than anything we see in Star Wars. Plasma,

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Speaker 1: again as different, is difficult. If you were to shoot plasma,

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Speaker 1: I don't know how you would keep it in a

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Speaker 1: coherent beam the way the blaster fire is in Star Wars.

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Speaker 1: I don't think that that would really be possible. You

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Speaker 1: could get a blob of plasma and it could be

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Speaker 1: pretty dangerous. Propelling it at high speed would be a

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Speaker 1: little bit of a challenge. You could use electromagnetism, and

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Speaker 1: that would help a lot. But again, unless you had

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Speaker 1: some way of containing a very tight, narrow magnetic field

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Speaker 1: through which the plasma would travel, I don't know how

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Speaker 1: you would make it maintain its shape. And plasma once

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Speaker 1: it leaves the source of its energy loses energy very

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Speaker 1: very quickly. It starts to cool down immediately, so it

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Speaker 1: would not be a very destructive force for very long

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Speaker 1: once it left that source of energy. So again an

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Speaker 1: element of fantasy, but still pretty fascinating. Now this takes

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Speaker 1: us to another iconic piece of technology within the Star

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Speaker 1: Wars universe. It's no moon, it's a space station. Talking

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Speaker 1: about the Death Star, Dr Johnson did some calculations to

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Speaker 1: determine how much energy the Death Star would have to

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Speaker 1: emit in order to destroy a planet, and he did

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Speaker 1: this by comparing the amount of damage it would need

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Speaker 1: to do to destroy something like Alderon, which spoiler alert

387
00:22:39,960 --> 00:22:42,760
Speaker 1: if you haven't watched episode four, it gets blowed up.

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Speaker 1: He said, well, let's take a look at the largest

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Speaker 1: collision we have on record of anything, and that would

390
00:22:53,080 --> 00:22:57,280
Speaker 1: have been a fragment of the comet shoemaker late Levi nine.

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Speaker 1: When't it collided with Jupiter, and according to Dr Johnson,

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Speaker 1: to match the power of that impact, the Death Star

393
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Speaker 1: would need to fire a beam of three times ten

394
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Speaker 1: to the forty five power photons with an energy level

395
00:23:11,240 --> 00:23:13,679
Speaker 1: of one point one two times ten to the twenty

396
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Speaker 1: seven power jewels, which is about the same amount of

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Speaker 1: energy that our son omits in three seconds. Or, as

398
00:23:20,840 --> 00:23:23,879
Speaker 1: he points out, if you were to take the average

399
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Speaker 1: consumption rate that humans set in the year two thousand thirteen,

400
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Speaker 1: it would take three million years of human consumption to

401
00:23:31,400 --> 00:23:35,280
Speaker 1: equal that amount of energy. So it's a massive, massive

402
00:23:35,280 --> 00:23:38,240
Speaker 1: amount of energy. That's way more energy than we can

403
00:23:38,320 --> 00:23:41,760
Speaker 1: manage to generate at this point, and it brings to

404
00:23:41,880 --> 00:23:44,720
Speaker 1: question what the heck was the Empire using as an

405
00:23:44,840 --> 00:23:48,520
Speaker 1: energy source for the Death Star. At least for starkular base.

406
00:23:48,600 --> 00:23:51,159
Speaker 1: We know that it was siphoning power off of a

407
00:23:51,240 --> 00:23:54,280
Speaker 1: nearby star as well as the core of a planet,

408
00:23:54,920 --> 00:23:58,480
Speaker 1: and together that could provide an enormous amount of power

409
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Speaker 1: if you could actually figure out how to do that

410
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Speaker 1: sort of harnessing. But for the Death Star, I guess

411
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Speaker 1: they just have a whole lot of coal. Honestly, I

412
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Speaker 1: have no idea what the energy source was supposed to be,

413
00:24:09,560 --> 00:24:15,120
Speaker 1: but it's phenomenal. And he also points out that that's

414
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Speaker 1: just the energy requirements of the laser itself. If you

415
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Speaker 1: wanted to build the Death Star, that would require more

416
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Speaker 1: energy than we've ever expanded in our history as well.

417
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Speaker 1: Because you look at the the size of the Death Star,

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Speaker 1: you then start to figure out how much material you

419
00:24:33,080 --> 00:24:36,320
Speaker 1: would need to build the thing, how much oxygen you

420
00:24:36,320 --> 00:24:38,360
Speaker 1: would need to fill it so that people could live

421
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Speaker 1: inside of it um and those numbers start adding up

422
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Speaker 1: pretty quickly. Just getting stuff into space takes an enormous

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Speaker 1: amount of energy. Now you could get around that a

424
00:24:47,320 --> 00:24:52,919
Speaker 1: little bit by having some form of construction point out

425
00:24:52,960 --> 00:24:56,080
Speaker 1: in space itself. So, in other words, instead of constructing

426
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Speaker 1: stuff on a planet, sending it up into orbit, and

427
00:24:58,600 --> 00:25:02,000
Speaker 1: then assembling it out in space, if you had all

428
00:25:02,000 --> 00:25:04,439
Speaker 1: of your operations out in space already, maybe you're mining

429
00:25:04,480 --> 00:25:08,040
Speaker 1: asteroids for raw materials, maybe you have a manufacturing facility

430
00:25:08,400 --> 00:25:12,760
Speaker 1: with three D printing capabilities that's in orbit around the planet.

431
00:25:13,640 --> 00:25:16,320
Speaker 1: That would cut down on some of that energy requirement.

432
00:25:17,480 --> 00:25:20,840
Speaker 1: But in the real world right now, we don't have that,

433
00:25:20,920 --> 00:25:23,760
Speaker 1: not on a scale that would be anywhere remotely close

434
00:25:23,800 --> 00:25:27,280
Speaker 1: to being able to build something like the Death Star. Still,

435
00:25:27,320 --> 00:25:29,120
Speaker 1: I thought it was really fascinating to kind of look

436
00:25:29,119 --> 00:25:32,719
Speaker 1: at some actual numbers, you know, extrapolated from what we

437
00:25:32,800 --> 00:25:35,760
Speaker 1: know based on the information that's in the movies and

438
00:25:35,800 --> 00:25:40,080
Speaker 1: some from the expanded universe. Well, that just covers some

439
00:25:40,200 --> 00:25:44,479
Speaker 1: of the basic iconic weapons of Star Wars. But we've

440
00:25:44,520 --> 00:25:46,800
Speaker 1: got a lot more to talk about, and before I

441
00:25:46,920 --> 00:25:50,679
Speaker 1: jump into those topics, let's take a quick break to

442
00:25:50,840 --> 00:26:01,080
Speaker 1: thank our sponsor. All Right, we're back. Let's talk a

443
00:26:01,160 --> 00:26:06,320
Speaker 1: little bit about some of the ways that people use

444
00:26:07,040 --> 00:26:10,840
Speaker 1: to get around in the Star Wars universe, largely space

445
00:26:10,880 --> 00:26:16,600
Speaker 1: travel technologies, because that's obviously something that we have experience

446
00:26:16,640 --> 00:26:19,720
Speaker 1: with in real life too. We have gone up into

447
00:26:19,800 --> 00:26:23,439
Speaker 1: space and we've seen that the Earth is round, just

448
00:26:23,560 --> 00:26:28,240
Speaker 1: throwing that out there no reason, and there's lots of

449
00:26:28,280 --> 00:26:31,280
Speaker 1: different ways of doing it, and we've even seen several

450
00:26:31,320 --> 00:26:34,680
Speaker 1: different ways in the Star Wars universe. Again, it doesn't

451
00:26:34,720 --> 00:26:36,760
Speaker 1: tend to go into much detail because it's not important

452
00:26:36,800 --> 00:26:39,800
Speaker 1: for the story. The story is not about how did

453
00:26:39,840 --> 00:26:41,640
Speaker 1: we build an engine so that we can go out

454
00:26:41,640 --> 00:26:44,080
Speaker 1: into space. It's more about, you know, here are the

455
00:26:44,080 --> 00:26:46,919
Speaker 1: different points of interest, and let's get our characters from

456
00:26:46,960 --> 00:26:49,720
Speaker 1: point A to point B. However, there are some things

457
00:26:49,760 --> 00:26:52,320
Speaker 1: we can definitely talk about. For one thing, there are

458
00:26:52,400 --> 00:26:57,119
Speaker 1: ion thrusters and ion engines in star wars. That's typically

459
00:26:57,160 --> 00:27:01,160
Speaker 1: what they refer to as the engines that get them

460
00:27:01,200 --> 00:27:07,160
Speaker 1: around between uh planets. It's when you're not in hyperspace,

461
00:27:07,240 --> 00:27:10,359
Speaker 1: when you're just traveling at what star Trek would probably

462
00:27:10,400 --> 00:27:14,440
Speaker 1: refer to as impulse power, going on impulse drive. Well,

463
00:27:14,480 --> 00:27:18,040
Speaker 1: on ion engine is a real thing. We have ion engines,

464
00:27:18,480 --> 00:27:21,840
Speaker 1: and just as I said, with plasma being an ionized gas,

465
00:27:22,320 --> 00:27:25,040
Speaker 1: and ion engine gives you a clue as to what

466
00:27:25,240 --> 00:27:30,240
Speaker 1: the actual working element is here. And ion engine throws

467
00:27:30,280 --> 00:27:34,840
Speaker 1: out charged particles. That's how it generates thrust. Now engines

468
00:27:34,840 --> 00:27:37,600
Speaker 1: in general, this is kind of how they work, right.

469
00:27:37,680 --> 00:27:40,960
Speaker 1: You have to to generate forward momentum. You've got to

470
00:27:41,080 --> 00:27:44,560
Speaker 1: throw something out the back, right, is that that good

471
00:27:44,600 --> 00:27:47,359
Speaker 1: old law of thermodynamics. You need to have something going

472
00:27:47,359 --> 00:27:49,240
Speaker 1: out the back so that you can move forward. In

473
00:27:49,280 --> 00:27:54,480
Speaker 1: the case of ion engines, we're talking about charged particles atoms.

474
00:27:54,520 --> 00:28:00,760
Speaker 1: So you apply an extremely high voltage to some sort

475
00:28:00,880 --> 00:28:05,879
Speaker 1: of atomic substance, some sort of collection of atoms that

476
00:28:06,000 --> 00:28:10,280
Speaker 1: you have at your disposal, and that creates this ionized

477
00:28:10,960 --> 00:28:15,160
Speaker 1: ah uh substance that you can then direct out through

478
00:28:15,200 --> 00:28:19,000
Speaker 1: a nozzle essentially a thruster, and by ejecting that, you

479
00:28:19,040 --> 00:28:24,120
Speaker 1: create thrust. Now keep in mind that these are atoms

480
00:28:24,160 --> 00:28:27,400
Speaker 1: that you're throwing out there. So if we remember that

481
00:28:27,720 --> 00:28:32,920
Speaker 1: forces mass times acceleration, you can throw them out really

482
00:28:32,960 --> 00:28:36,320
Speaker 1: really hard, right, But they are very very tiny. They

483
00:28:36,359 --> 00:28:38,520
Speaker 1: don't have a lot of mass, So because they don't

484
00:28:38,560 --> 00:28:41,320
Speaker 1: have a lot of mass, they don't impart a lot

485
00:28:41,360 --> 00:28:47,280
Speaker 1: of momentum to something like a spacecraft. They do generate thrust,

486
00:28:47,560 --> 00:28:51,360
Speaker 1: but it's not like you go zero to sixty instantaneously.

487
00:28:51,480 --> 00:28:53,560
Speaker 1: It's more like you go to zero to sixty within

488
00:28:54,280 --> 00:28:57,719
Speaker 1: hours or days, depending upon the size of the thruster.

489
00:28:57,920 --> 00:28:59,960
Speaker 1: You have, the amount of mass you're trying to push,

490
00:29:00,160 --> 00:29:03,120
Speaker 1: and how much material you're throwing out of the thing.

491
00:29:04,120 --> 00:29:07,200
Speaker 1: So you would need lots and lots and lots of

492
00:29:07,240 --> 00:29:10,440
Speaker 1: atoms to make it work the way it works in

493
00:29:10,480 --> 00:29:13,360
Speaker 1: the Star Wars universe. But it would work. You could

494
00:29:13,400 --> 00:29:16,560
Speaker 1: have ion engines. It's just that you wouldn't accelerate nearly

495
00:29:16,640 --> 00:29:20,680
Speaker 1: so quickly. You would continue to accelerate well beyond what

496
00:29:20,840 --> 00:29:23,800
Speaker 1: you could use with chemical rockets. Chemical rockets, you burned

497
00:29:23,840 --> 00:29:27,120
Speaker 1: through that fuel pretty quickly and then you're just you're

498
00:29:27,120 --> 00:29:29,120
Speaker 1: going as fast as you were able to accelerate to.

499
00:29:29,240 --> 00:29:31,200
Speaker 1: But you're never going to go faster than that unless

500
00:29:31,240 --> 00:29:35,400
Speaker 1: you go within the gravitational pull of some other body.

501
00:29:35,640 --> 00:29:38,160
Speaker 1: With ion thrusters, you can just as long as you

502
00:29:38,160 --> 00:29:42,160
Speaker 1: still have atoms to ionize and throw out the back

503
00:29:42,200 --> 00:29:46,480
Speaker 1: of the engine, you can continue to accelerate. And you

504
00:29:46,520 --> 00:29:49,680
Speaker 1: could do this over the course of years or decades,

505
00:29:49,880 --> 00:29:54,080
Speaker 1: getting up to extremely high speeds over a long time.

506
00:29:54,760 --> 00:29:58,880
Speaker 1: So you would not have a fast rate of acceleration,

507
00:29:58,920 --> 00:30:01,440
Speaker 1: but it would be very steady and it would continue

508
00:30:01,880 --> 00:30:05,200
Speaker 1: until you were reaching the relative speed of what you

509
00:30:05,240 --> 00:30:09,560
Speaker 1: were firing out the back. Once you reach that equilibrium,

510
00:30:09,600 --> 00:30:15,760
Speaker 1: so you could go really wicked fast eventually, But it's

511
00:30:15,800 --> 00:30:18,720
Speaker 1: that eventually that is the problem. It means that you

512
00:30:18,840 --> 00:30:22,600
Speaker 1: better not be in a hurry to get where you're going. Also,

513
00:30:23,920 --> 00:30:28,120
Speaker 1: ion thrusters are are really good for traveling vast distances

514
00:30:28,200 --> 00:30:31,200
Speaker 1: where you don't have this crushing deadline that you have

515
00:30:31,280 --> 00:30:34,800
Speaker 1: to be there absolutely overnight by tomorrow. Uh. It is

516
00:30:34,920 --> 00:30:38,280
Speaker 1: better for if you're sending a probe, let's say out

517
00:30:38,360 --> 00:30:41,760
Speaker 1: to a distant planet in your Solar system, and you

518
00:30:41,800 --> 00:30:44,240
Speaker 1: want to be really conservative with the amount of fuel

519
00:30:44,280 --> 00:30:45,960
Speaker 1: you have to use, the amount of energy you have

520
00:30:46,000 --> 00:30:48,640
Speaker 1: to use, and ion thruster is an ideal way to

521
00:30:48,760 --> 00:30:52,120
Speaker 1: do that. But in the world of Star Wars it

522
00:30:52,160 --> 00:30:56,080
Speaker 1: doesn't make a whole lot of sense because there's also hyperdrive,

523
00:30:56,280 --> 00:30:58,920
Speaker 1: and if you have hyperdrive and you're talking about long distances,

524
00:30:59,320 --> 00:31:03,880
Speaker 1: hyperdrive is way better at getting you far away very

525
00:31:03,920 --> 00:31:08,320
Speaker 1: fast than an ion thruster would be. So while ion

526
00:31:08,400 --> 00:31:11,719
Speaker 1: thrusters are real, we actually have built them and we

527
00:31:11,800 --> 00:31:15,240
Speaker 1: have used them, they do not work the way they

528
00:31:15,240 --> 00:31:20,160
Speaker 1: work in Star Wars. Now, there is a related technology

529
00:31:20,160 --> 00:31:23,480
Speaker 1: in Star Wars that also uses ions, that would be

530
00:31:23,520 --> 00:31:28,080
Speaker 1: ion cannon. And the first time you see ion cannons

531
00:31:28,080 --> 00:31:30,560
Speaker 1: in use, in fact it maybe the only time, is

532
00:31:30,680 --> 00:31:34,400
Speaker 1: an empire strikes back during the siege of hath Haf,

533
00:31:34,480 --> 00:31:37,160
Speaker 1: being the ice planet that the rebellion has set up

534
00:31:37,280 --> 00:31:42,760
Speaker 1: base on, and so you've got the imperial forces gathering

535
00:31:42,800 --> 00:31:45,680
Speaker 1: around and on the surface of hot they start turning

536
00:31:45,720 --> 00:31:50,120
Speaker 1: these enormous guns, these guns that are on giant turrets

537
00:31:50,200 --> 00:31:53,280
Speaker 1: towards the sky and they start firing off ion beams,

538
00:31:54,440 --> 00:31:57,959
Speaker 1: and in the Star Wars universe, an ion beam doesn't

539
00:31:58,000 --> 00:32:02,680
Speaker 1: cause physical damage the way of laster or a lightsaber would. Instead,

540
00:32:02,760 --> 00:32:07,840
Speaker 1: it overloads electrical systems, so it shuts down electrical systems,

541
00:32:07,880 --> 00:32:10,720
Speaker 1: will shut down computers, it will shut down shields, it

542
00:32:10,720 --> 00:32:13,520
Speaker 1: will shut down navigation equipment, all that sort of stuff.

543
00:32:14,480 --> 00:32:18,239
Speaker 1: So it works in a similar way to what an

544
00:32:18,280 --> 00:32:22,280
Speaker 1: electromagnetic pulse or e MP would do here on Earth.

545
00:32:23,200 --> 00:32:26,320
Speaker 1: It doesn't really stretch the imagination too far. If you're

546
00:32:26,320 --> 00:32:32,960
Speaker 1: talking about an ionized material, you could presumably run a

547
00:32:33,120 --> 00:32:36,200
Speaker 1: very strong electrical current. You could apply a very strong

548
00:32:36,280 --> 00:32:41,200
Speaker 1: voltage to it and therefore overload any electronics that happened

549
00:32:41,200 --> 00:32:46,280
Speaker 1: to be within that that field. But we don't really

550
00:32:46,280 --> 00:32:49,480
Speaker 1: have anything that could do this um as far as

551
00:32:49,480 --> 00:32:51,520
Speaker 1: an actual cannon goes. If you wanted to talk about

552
00:32:51,560 --> 00:32:54,960
Speaker 1: electromagnetic pulse, we have covered that in tech stuff before,

553
00:32:55,160 --> 00:32:56,920
Speaker 1: but to give you a brief overview of what that

554
00:32:56,960 --> 00:33:00,800
Speaker 1: would be like. Typically, this is something that you would

555
00:33:00,800 --> 00:33:05,960
Speaker 1: find in the wake of a nuclear explosion. So nuclear explosions, Uh,

556
00:33:06,120 --> 00:33:09,959
Speaker 1: they're bad, it's not great. Uh, they'd cause an enormous

557
00:33:09,960 --> 00:33:16,120
Speaker 1: amount of damage. But on top of the immense devastation

558
00:33:16,200 --> 00:33:20,400
Speaker 1: they can reek in the point of explosion. They also

559
00:33:20,840 --> 00:33:26,080
Speaker 1: generate these massive electromagnetic pulses that can cause a lot

560
00:33:26,160 --> 00:33:30,400
Speaker 1: more damage further out. Uh In nineteen sixty two, there

561
00:33:30,560 --> 00:33:36,120
Speaker 1: was the testing of a nuclear bomb that ended up

562
00:33:36,840 --> 00:33:40,400
Speaker 1: affecting the elector the electrical systems of Hawaii, which was

563
00:33:40,480 --> 00:33:42,920
Speaker 1: miles and miles and miles away from the testing center.

564
00:33:43,880 --> 00:33:46,360
Speaker 1: But they had their traffic lights going out, they had

565
00:33:46,360 --> 00:33:48,800
Speaker 1: car alarms going off, they had all sorts of stuff happening, well,

566
00:33:48,840 --> 00:33:54,160
Speaker 1: burglar alarms, not car alarms. And if the same sort

567
00:33:54,440 --> 00:33:57,880
Speaker 1: of warhead had been detonated over the United States, it

568
00:33:57,920 --> 00:34:02,880
Speaker 1: would have been enough to cause power grids in numerous

569
00:34:02,880 --> 00:34:05,600
Speaker 1: states to overload, and that could lead to not just

570
00:34:05,680 --> 00:34:09,719
Speaker 1: power failures, but fires and other things. Electromagnetic pulses go

571
00:34:10,080 --> 00:34:14,399
Speaker 1: essentially in three phases. You have the first phase E one.

572
00:34:14,640 --> 00:34:17,640
Speaker 1: That's where you get a big release of gamma radiation.

573
00:34:17,719 --> 00:34:20,960
Speaker 1: This would be from your nuclear warhead. Gamma radiation is terrible.

574
00:34:21,080 --> 00:34:22,719
Speaker 1: You don't want to get hit by it. You will

575
00:34:22,760 --> 00:34:26,960
Speaker 1: not turn into the hulk. Don't go seeking gamma radiation.

576
00:34:28,000 --> 00:34:32,759
Speaker 1: This would also induce within electronics and enormous voltage well

577
00:34:32,840 --> 00:34:36,280
Speaker 1: beyond their capacity to handle it. So this would fry

578
00:34:36,320 --> 00:34:38,880
Speaker 1: a lot of electronics right off the bat. The next

579
00:34:38,920 --> 00:34:42,480
Speaker 1: phase is E two. This is essentially the same effect

580
00:34:42,520 --> 00:34:46,040
Speaker 1: as being hit by a bolt of lightning. And even

581
00:34:46,080 --> 00:34:50,040
Speaker 1: if you have your electronics on surge protectors, which would

582
00:34:50,040 --> 00:34:54,400
Speaker 1: normally insulate them from a lightning blast, the effects of

583
00:34:54,480 --> 00:34:57,960
Speaker 1: E one are probably so severe that there's no more

584
00:34:58,000 --> 00:35:01,120
Speaker 1: protection left, and so this would anything that was not

585
00:35:01,200 --> 00:35:03,359
Speaker 1: fried by E one is definitely gonna get fried by

586
00:35:03,360 --> 00:35:05,560
Speaker 1: E two. Then you got E three, which is more

587
00:35:05,600 --> 00:35:08,560
Speaker 1: of a distortion of the magnetic field. It's just kind

588
00:35:08,560 --> 00:35:13,440
Speaker 1: of like a temporary, temporary experience where the magnetic field

589
00:35:13,440 --> 00:35:16,279
Speaker 1: around there is all twisted up, and so things would

590
00:35:16,320 --> 00:35:18,920
Speaker 1: be like if the Earth were being hit by a

591
00:35:18,960 --> 00:35:23,600
Speaker 1: magnetic storm like a solar flare. So that's also can

592
00:35:23,640 --> 00:35:27,440
Speaker 1: cause some problems with electronics. But after the first two

593
00:35:27,560 --> 00:35:31,880
Speaker 1: waves you probably already as bad off as you're gonna get.

594
00:35:32,320 --> 00:35:36,080
Speaker 1: Maybe further out the magnetic distortion would be causing more

595
00:35:36,120 --> 00:35:39,200
Speaker 1: of an issue. It is not good. We don't want

596
00:35:39,239 --> 00:35:43,040
Speaker 1: it to happen. It would cause massive amounts of damage.

597
00:35:43,280 --> 00:35:47,040
Speaker 1: Moving on from ion cannons and ion thrusters, let's talk

598
00:35:47,040 --> 00:35:50,719
Speaker 1: about solar sales. I forgot that solar sales were even

599
00:35:50,719 --> 00:35:54,120
Speaker 1: a thing in Star Wars because they pop up in

600
00:35:54,239 --> 00:35:59,560
Speaker 1: the prequels. Count Dooku has a solar sale on his

601
00:35:59,760 --> 00:36:04,799
Speaker 1: space acecraft, and I try not to think about the prequels.

602
00:36:04,880 --> 00:36:09,320
Speaker 1: Are account Dooku at all costs. However, for the purposes

603
00:36:09,320 --> 00:36:12,840
Speaker 1: of this podcast, I was forced to do it. Shame

604
00:36:12,880 --> 00:36:16,719
Speaker 1: on you. But solar sales themselves are pretty awesome. A

605
00:36:16,760 --> 00:36:24,520
Speaker 1: solar sale uses the the momentum of photons two move

606
00:36:24,840 --> 00:36:29,040
Speaker 1: a spacecraft. So whereas a sale on a sailing boat

607
00:36:29,080 --> 00:36:34,760
Speaker 1: captures wind, a solar sale is a large reflective surface

608
00:36:35,440 --> 00:36:39,960
Speaker 1: upon which photons can bounce and thus transfer momentum to

609
00:36:40,040 --> 00:36:43,279
Speaker 1: a solar sale. Now that sounds pretty awesome, but it

610
00:36:43,320 --> 00:36:49,640
Speaker 1: also raises some questions. For example, photons photons are particles

611
00:36:49,680 --> 00:36:56,960
Speaker 1: of light, but they don't have mass. Momentum, however, is

612
00:36:57,080 --> 00:37:01,719
Speaker 1: defined as P equals M times V. Now p it

613
00:37:01,880 --> 00:37:06,440
Speaker 1: stands for momentum, M stands for mass, and V stands

614
00:37:06,480 --> 00:37:09,560
Speaker 1: for velocity, which is you know, a vector. Velocity is

615
00:37:09,600 --> 00:37:14,719
Speaker 1: a a speed and a and a direction. So photons

616
00:37:14,760 --> 00:37:17,680
Speaker 1: will have speed and a direction, but they don't have mass.

617
00:37:17,760 --> 00:37:22,240
Speaker 1: So how can they possess momentum if you've got a

618
00:37:22,239 --> 00:37:26,680
Speaker 1: particle that has no mass, How how could that possibly

619
00:37:26,760 --> 00:37:32,279
Speaker 1: push against anything? Well, photons do have momentum, but it's

620
00:37:32,360 --> 00:37:40,440
Speaker 1: relativistic momentum, photon momentum. We define that as a uh

621
00:37:40,480 --> 00:37:45,560
Speaker 1: An equation of plants constant divided by the photons wavelength.

622
00:37:46,680 --> 00:37:49,439
Speaker 1: All right, that gets a little complicated. So first of all,

623
00:37:49,840 --> 00:37:56,360
Speaker 1: my photons energy is equal to plants constant times the

624
00:37:56,480 --> 00:38:00,680
Speaker 1: frequency of the photon, which is measured and hurts banks constant,

625
00:38:00,719 --> 00:38:03,200
Speaker 1: by the way, is six point six three times ten

626
00:38:03,280 --> 00:38:07,080
Speaker 1: to the thirty four power big number. So you've got

627
00:38:07,120 --> 00:38:10,799
Speaker 1: the the momentum which is plucks constant divided by this

628
00:38:10,880 --> 00:38:13,880
Speaker 1: photon wavelength. That tells you, by the way, that different

629
00:38:14,520 --> 00:38:21,520
Speaker 1: colors of light have different relativistic momentum, right, because wavelength,

630
00:38:21,600 --> 00:38:25,680
Speaker 1: that's that's what determines the color, and the difference being

631
00:38:25,719 --> 00:38:30,120
Speaker 1: that if you've got uh, you know, wavelength of one size,

632
00:38:30,320 --> 00:38:32,520
Speaker 1: you're going to actually have more momentum than another. It

633
00:38:32,560 --> 00:38:36,360
Speaker 1: really tells you how much energy each wavelength of light has.

634
00:38:36,360 --> 00:38:40,200
Speaker 1: So red light has lower energy than blue light, and

635
00:38:40,320 --> 00:38:43,440
Speaker 1: so easy way of thinking about it, now, each photon

636
00:38:43,760 --> 00:38:48,320
Speaker 1: can only transfer part of its momentum to the actual

637
00:38:48,360 --> 00:38:52,160
Speaker 1: solar sail. So you're talking about a minuscule amount of

638
00:38:52,160 --> 00:38:59,560
Speaker 1: momentum being transferred by a massless particle to this large

639
00:39:00,040 --> 00:39:05,200
Speaker 1: reflective surface that's usually incredibly thin. I mean thinner than

640
00:39:05,239 --> 00:39:07,520
Speaker 1: a sheet of paper. If you really want an effective

641
00:39:07,560 --> 00:39:09,800
Speaker 1: solar sale, and it has to cover a massive amount

642
00:39:09,800 --> 00:39:13,839
Speaker 1: of area. If you're pulling a human being, it's you're

643
00:39:13,880 --> 00:39:17,080
Speaker 1: talking about something like the equivalent of five miles of material.

644
00:39:17,760 --> 00:39:20,920
Speaker 1: That's a lot of material. It's a huge solar sale. Also,

645
00:39:21,040 --> 00:39:23,520
Speaker 1: the way it's done in Star Wars, it looks like

646
00:39:23,520 --> 00:39:26,319
Speaker 1: this big curved sail. You wouldn't want a curved sail,

647
00:39:26,440 --> 00:39:29,120
Speaker 1: you want a flat surface. The reason for that is

648
00:39:29,160 --> 00:39:32,000
Speaker 1: if you have a curved surface, some of those photons

649
00:39:32,000 --> 00:39:34,160
Speaker 1: are going to be hitting that an angle, which means

650
00:39:34,160 --> 00:39:37,520
Speaker 1: it's not really pushing the spacecraft forward. It's pushing a

651
00:39:37,560 --> 00:39:39,080
Speaker 1: little to the left or a little to the right,

652
00:39:39,160 --> 00:39:42,000
Speaker 1: and it's those left and rights are canceling each other out.

653
00:39:42,040 --> 00:39:44,480
Speaker 1: It's just wasted energy. You would prefer to capture as

654
00:39:44,560 --> 00:39:48,320
Speaker 1: much of that, giving you forward momentum as possible. It does, however,

655
00:39:48,400 --> 00:39:50,920
Speaker 1: mean that whatever direction you're facing, you better want to

656
00:39:50,960 --> 00:39:53,920
Speaker 1: go that way because you don't really have a whole

657
00:39:53,920 --> 00:39:57,440
Speaker 1: lot of opportunities to change your direction. The reason why

658
00:39:57,480 --> 00:39:59,760
Speaker 1: this is an effective means of getting around in space

659
00:39:59,880 --> 00:40:02,520
Speaker 1: is because if you have a steady supply of photons,

660
00:40:02,680 --> 00:40:06,399
Speaker 1: while every individual photon is barely able to transfer any

661
00:40:06,440 --> 00:40:10,800
Speaker 1: momentum to your spacecraft, there are trillions of the little

662
00:40:10,840 --> 00:40:15,560
Speaker 1: suckers and they're constantly hitting that surface. So just through

663
00:40:15,600 --> 00:40:19,400
Speaker 1: the quantity alone, you will continue to accelerate. You'll do

664
00:40:19,440 --> 00:40:22,600
Speaker 1: it very slowly, so using a solar sale, again, like

665
00:40:22,640 --> 00:40:24,600
Speaker 1: an ion thruster, is not going to get you up

666
00:40:24,640 --> 00:40:27,600
Speaker 1: to super fast speeds right away, but over the course

667
00:40:27,760 --> 00:40:33,200
Speaker 1: of many, many years, you'll get pretty darn fast. Now

668
00:40:33,360 --> 00:40:36,839
Speaker 1: you may remember that there was uh this work being

669
00:40:36,880 --> 00:40:41,359
Speaker 1: done on tiny little satellites that are launched into space.

670
00:40:41,400 --> 00:40:44,960
Speaker 1: They're gonna be use solar sales to propel them toward

671
00:40:45,800 --> 00:40:50,719
Speaker 1: Alpha Centauri, and over the course of several years they

672
00:40:50,719 --> 00:40:54,160
Speaker 1: will get up to a speed of about the speed

673
00:40:54,200 --> 00:40:57,800
Speaker 1: of light. And while it would take us a really

674
00:40:57,840 --> 00:41:00,640
Speaker 1: long time for to get by alphason tory, if we

675
00:41:00,640 --> 00:41:04,120
Speaker 1: were using chemical rockets, we would take us hundreds of

676
00:41:04,200 --> 00:41:08,080
Speaker 1: years with a solar sale. We can get there within

677
00:41:08,120 --> 00:41:12,920
Speaker 1: about twenty years. And the payload they're pulling as these tiny, tiny,

678
00:41:12,920 --> 00:41:16,080
Speaker 1: tiny little satellites. It's essentially nothing more than a camera

679
00:41:16,800 --> 00:41:19,680
Speaker 1: and an antenna to send data back to Earth and

680
00:41:19,719 --> 00:41:24,040
Speaker 1: that's it. So it's very small and that's why it's

681
00:41:24,040 --> 00:41:30,200
Speaker 1: a viable technology for that particular application. But for Count

682
00:41:30,200 --> 00:41:34,439
Speaker 1: Dooku to go zoop zipping around the galaxy, not so much.

683
00:41:34,520 --> 00:41:36,440
Speaker 1: It wouldn't work the way it does in the movies.

684
00:41:37,040 --> 00:41:43,799
Speaker 1: Um sad to say that brings us to hyperdrive, and boy,

685
00:41:43,840 --> 00:41:46,240
Speaker 1: how they is this a tough one to talk about.

686
00:41:46,320 --> 00:41:49,840
Speaker 1: So hyper drives tries to get around the big problem

687
00:41:50,560 --> 00:41:54,680
Speaker 1: of getting around a galaxy that is many light years

688
00:41:54,719 --> 00:41:58,960
Speaker 1: across in a reasonable amount of time. Because, according to

689
00:41:59,000 --> 00:42:04,239
Speaker 1: Einstein's observations, and this has been borne out by all

690
00:42:04,680 --> 00:42:07,480
Speaker 1: all experimentation up to this point, the speed of light

691
00:42:07,600 --> 00:42:09,640
Speaker 1: is as fast as you can go in our universe.

692
00:42:10,040 --> 00:42:12,279
Speaker 1: And we assume that Star Wars is taking place in

693
00:42:12,320 --> 00:42:17,359
Speaker 1: our universe. It's just another galaxy within our universe. So

694
00:42:17,400 --> 00:42:19,919
Speaker 1: you can't go faster than the speed of light, and

695
00:42:20,000 --> 00:42:22,719
Speaker 1: yet things might be several light years apart, which means

696
00:42:22,719 --> 00:42:24,960
Speaker 1: it would take you even if you could go as

697
00:42:25,040 --> 00:42:29,200
Speaker 1: fast as light and anything with mass can't. But let's

698
00:42:29,239 --> 00:42:32,440
Speaker 1: say that somehow you found a way around that, you

699
00:42:32,480 --> 00:42:35,120
Speaker 1: would still take several years to get to your destination.

700
00:42:35,360 --> 00:42:38,520
Speaker 1: That's not great. If you want a rollicking adventure in

701
00:42:38,600 --> 00:42:43,160
Speaker 1: space where a farm boy takes down a militaristic empire,

702
00:42:44,160 --> 00:42:46,560
Speaker 1: you need something to get around that. That's something is

703
00:42:46,640 --> 00:42:50,480
Speaker 1: hyper drive. Now, in the world of Star Trek, the

704
00:42:50,480 --> 00:42:52,800
Speaker 1: way they get around this is using the warp drive,

705
00:42:52,840 --> 00:42:56,600
Speaker 1: and warp drive warps space time itself. You can think

706
00:42:56,600 --> 00:42:59,960
Speaker 1: of space time as being this kind of three dimension

707
00:43:00,080 --> 00:43:04,120
Speaker 1: nal really four dimensional soup around us, and it conforms

708
00:43:04,600 --> 00:43:08,040
Speaker 1: in some ways to all the objects that are present

709
00:43:08,160 --> 00:43:12,040
Speaker 1: within that spacetime. We warp spacetime. You are warping spacetime

710
00:43:12,160 --> 00:43:15,600
Speaker 1: right now, not on nearly as grand as scale as

711
00:43:15,640 --> 00:43:20,319
Speaker 1: something like Jupiter or the Sun, but you are warping spacetime.

712
00:43:21,360 --> 00:43:24,120
Speaker 1: If we could control that and warp it in such

713
00:43:24,160 --> 00:43:29,040
Speaker 1: a way that we're effectively making a distant point closer

714
00:43:29,080 --> 00:43:33,000
Speaker 1: to us, we can still travel at a reasonable speed

715
00:43:33,120 --> 00:43:36,840
Speaker 1: and get to that destination faster, not because we're moving faster,

716
00:43:37,000 --> 00:43:40,239
Speaker 1: but because we've pulled that point closer to where we are.

717
00:43:40,920 --> 00:43:45,000
Speaker 1: That's the concept behind warp drive. Hyperdrive is kind of similar,

718
00:43:45,040 --> 00:43:49,880
Speaker 1: but even more vaguely described. Hyperdrive is supposed to open

719
00:43:50,000 --> 00:43:54,040
Speaker 1: up a pathway through extra dimensions that we normally don't

720
00:43:54,120 --> 00:43:59,120
Speaker 1: have any contact with, and using that extra dimension, creating

721
00:43:59,320 --> 00:44:02,640
Speaker 1: a short between points A and B, and it relies

722
00:44:02,760 --> 00:44:07,040
Speaker 1: very heavily on computers to make the calculations necessary to

723
00:44:07,120 --> 00:44:11,000
Speaker 1: go into and come out of hyperdrive in a safe way,

724
00:44:11,080 --> 00:44:14,799
Speaker 1: so that you arrive at your destination at a reasonable

725
00:44:14,800 --> 00:44:17,480
Speaker 1: distance and you don't appear, say in the middle of

726
00:44:17,480 --> 00:44:21,560
Speaker 1: a star or a supernova, as Hans Solo would say.

727
00:44:22,200 --> 00:44:26,879
Speaker 1: So it's not like dustin crops back home. You have

728
00:44:26,960 --> 00:44:30,200
Speaker 1: to have that calculation, You have to have this way

729
00:44:30,200 --> 00:44:32,600
Speaker 1: of entering into these extra dimensions, and we don't have

730
00:44:32,640 --> 00:44:35,680
Speaker 1: anything remotely capable of doing that. We have lots of

731
00:44:35,760 --> 00:44:41,360
Speaker 1: theories that require extra dimensions that we cannot ourselves observe.

732
00:44:42,120 --> 00:44:45,360
Speaker 1: You may have heard of string theory. String theory essentially

733
00:44:45,400 --> 00:44:50,560
Speaker 1: says that everything in our universe, at a level even

734
00:44:50,680 --> 00:44:55,560
Speaker 1: smaller than sub atomic is made up of strings, and

735
00:44:55,600 --> 00:44:59,520
Speaker 1: those strings are either links of string or loops, kind

736
00:44:59,520 --> 00:45:01,719
Speaker 1: of like a rub band and they're all vibrating at

737
00:45:01,760 --> 00:45:06,440
Speaker 1: different frequencies, and the way they vibrate determines what they are,

738
00:45:06,440 --> 00:45:09,160
Speaker 1: like is an electron or a proton or whatever it

739
00:45:09,239 --> 00:45:13,480
Speaker 1: may be. String theory. Some of them suggest that we

740
00:45:13,480 --> 00:45:17,120
Speaker 1: would need as many as twenty six dimensions in order

741
00:45:17,160 --> 00:45:21,040
Speaker 1: for the theory to work, and there's nothing that we

742
00:45:21,120 --> 00:45:25,239
Speaker 1: can do experimentally that can tell us whether or not

743
00:45:25,320 --> 00:45:28,280
Speaker 1: we're on track. They're not falsifiable. In other words, and science,

744
00:45:28,560 --> 00:45:32,520
Speaker 1: there's an important concept called falsifiability. So for something to

745
00:45:32,600 --> 00:45:36,080
Speaker 1: really be considered scientifically valid, it has to be falsifiable,

746
00:45:36,080 --> 00:45:38,799
Speaker 1: meaning there has to be a way where if you

747
00:45:38,840 --> 00:45:44,080
Speaker 1: were to test it, the outcome could be otherwise, and

748
00:45:44,160 --> 00:45:47,560
Speaker 1: that would tell you, all, right, well, now we know

749
00:45:47,640 --> 00:45:50,000
Speaker 1: that this is that way because every time we experiment

750
00:45:50,040 --> 00:45:52,080
Speaker 1: it turns out this way. But if it didn't turn

751
00:45:52,120 --> 00:45:55,560
Speaker 1: out that way, it would be false. String theory is

752
00:45:55,560 --> 00:45:58,759
Speaker 1: not falsifiable because it's not testable. We cannot test it

753
00:45:58,840 --> 00:46:01,520
Speaker 1: in any way. That doesn't mean wrong, it just means

754
00:46:01,600 --> 00:46:05,640
Speaker 1: we can't know that it's right because it's beyond our

755
00:46:05,680 --> 00:46:09,120
Speaker 1: capability of even exploring. W It's kind of cool in

756
00:46:09,120 --> 00:46:11,759
Speaker 1: a way, also frustrating, because you might argue that's more

757
00:46:11,760 --> 00:46:15,040
Speaker 1: of a philosophy than a science. However, the math is

758
00:46:15,080 --> 00:46:19,160
Speaker 1: pretty awesome. It also is well beyond my ability to

759
00:46:19,280 --> 00:46:24,280
Speaker 1: understand some of those mathematical models require these extra dimensions.

760
00:46:24,320 --> 00:46:27,359
Speaker 1: So hyperdrive would in some way be able to tap

761
00:46:27,440 --> 00:46:30,959
Speaker 1: into that that is so far beyond our capabilities that

762
00:46:31,120 --> 00:46:34,240
Speaker 1: it really is the same as saying you could summon

763
00:46:34,280 --> 00:46:36,600
Speaker 1: a magic dragon and it will teleport you to where

764
00:46:36,640 --> 00:46:40,080
Speaker 1: you need to go. It's about the same thing because

765
00:46:40,120 --> 00:46:44,920
Speaker 1: there's not really any way that we can physically uh

766
00:46:44,960 --> 00:46:48,160
Speaker 1: accomplish what we see in Star Wars in the real world.

767
00:46:48,320 --> 00:46:52,279
Speaker 1: But at least they were trying. They weren't trying to

768
00:46:52,440 --> 00:46:56,080
Speaker 1: go faster than light as as such, as they were

769
00:46:56,120 --> 00:47:01,120
Speaker 1: trying to create shortcuts in space time, at least according

770
00:47:01,120 --> 00:47:04,080
Speaker 1: to most descriptions of hyperdrive. Again, in the movies, it

771
00:47:04,120 --> 00:47:07,520
Speaker 1: doesn't really go into that detail. It just you know

772
00:47:07,560 --> 00:47:10,640
Speaker 1: that hyperdrive is very fast, and you know it's very

773
00:47:10,719 --> 00:47:15,799
Speaker 1: dangerous based upon the limited amount of information spoken in

774
00:47:16,280 --> 00:47:18,239
Speaker 1: the Star Wars films. And the last thing I want

775
00:47:18,239 --> 00:47:19,920
Speaker 1: to talk about in this section is the concept of

776
00:47:19,960 --> 00:47:24,160
Speaker 1: super maneuverability, and Dr Johnson actually brought this up in

777
00:47:24,239 --> 00:47:26,560
Speaker 1: his book and I thought was pretty fascinating this idea

778
00:47:26,680 --> 00:47:30,439
Speaker 1: that there are times where you see vehicles in Star

779
00:47:30,520 --> 00:47:34,160
Speaker 1: Wars behave in ways that are beyond the capabilities of

780
00:47:34,200 --> 00:47:37,000
Speaker 1: what the craft normally would be able to do based

781
00:47:37,040 --> 00:47:40,880
Speaker 1: upon its design. So, in other words, if you build

782
00:47:40,880 --> 00:47:44,920
Speaker 1: a plane and you've got a certain wing design, certain

783
00:47:45,040 --> 00:47:48,920
Speaker 1: chassis design, certain engine in that plane, they're gonna be

784
00:47:49,040 --> 00:47:51,400
Speaker 1: some things that plane can do, and then there'll be

785
00:47:51,440 --> 00:47:54,759
Speaker 1: things outside of that that the plane cannot do. But

786
00:47:55,000 --> 00:47:58,000
Speaker 1: in the Star Wars universe, there's occasionally moments where vehicles

787
00:47:58,000 --> 00:48:00,600
Speaker 1: are able to do something that is outside of what

788
00:48:00,680 --> 00:48:04,520
Speaker 1: they typically should be able to do. Dr Johnson actually

789
00:48:04,520 --> 00:48:08,239
Speaker 1: talks about the possibility of creating systems that would allow

790
00:48:08,320 --> 00:48:09,839
Speaker 1: us to do this, and in fact, we have done

791
00:48:09,840 --> 00:48:14,080
Speaker 1: this with military vehicles, where by adding in extra technological

792
00:48:14,120 --> 00:48:20,440
Speaker 1: elements you can create a extra maneuverability capability of your vehicle.

793
00:48:20,920 --> 00:48:25,480
Speaker 1: So an example he gives us adding paddles two thrusters

794
00:48:25,520 --> 00:48:28,080
Speaker 1: for jet engines, So in other words, you can use

795
00:48:28,120 --> 00:48:31,400
Speaker 1: paddles to help redirect the thrust that's coming out of

796
00:48:31,440 --> 00:48:35,880
Speaker 1: a jet engine because the direction of the thrust determines

797
00:48:35,960 --> 00:48:39,520
Speaker 1: what direction the vehicle goes. In if you're throwing thrust

798
00:48:39,680 --> 00:48:42,720
Speaker 1: immediately behind you, you're going forward. If you start throwing

799
00:48:42,719 --> 00:48:44,919
Speaker 1: thrust to the left, you'll start moving to the right.

800
00:48:45,280 --> 00:48:49,480
Speaker 1: By using paddles to redirect thrust, you can add to

801
00:48:49,520 --> 00:48:53,600
Speaker 1: the maneuverability of a vehicle within a certain range of parameters. Obviously,

802
00:48:53,640 --> 00:48:56,040
Speaker 1: if you go beyond that, you can start to cause

803
00:48:56,160 --> 00:48:59,840
Speaker 1: structural damage to your vehicle, and that's not good. So

804
00:49:00,560 --> 00:49:02,960
Speaker 1: one of the examples Dr Johnson gives us of a

805
00:49:03,040 --> 00:49:07,080
Speaker 1: vehicle a plane, a jet that has the capability of

806
00:49:07,160 --> 00:49:12,000
Speaker 1: hovering with its nose pointed nearly straight up because of

807
00:49:12,000 --> 00:49:16,440
Speaker 1: this ability to direct the thruster, which doesn't sound terribly comfortable,

808
00:49:16,440 --> 00:49:19,839
Speaker 1: but he points out that the capability was designed so

809
00:49:19,880 --> 00:49:23,400
Speaker 1: that if you're in this type of aircraft and you

810
00:49:23,440 --> 00:49:25,719
Speaker 1: have an enemy aircraft behind you and it's trying to

811
00:49:25,800 --> 00:49:28,839
Speaker 1: chase you down and shoot you, you can use this

812
00:49:28,920 --> 00:49:34,040
Speaker 1: maneuver too, come to what is essentially a complete stop

813
00:49:34,080 --> 00:49:38,279
Speaker 1: in the air, have your enemy aircraft fly past you,

814
00:49:38,640 --> 00:49:41,880
Speaker 1: and then now you're behind it and the tables have turned.

815
00:49:42,719 --> 00:49:46,879
Speaker 1: So there are some elements of the technologies in Star

816
00:49:46,880 --> 00:49:49,880
Speaker 1: Wars that we do have in our real world, and

817
00:49:49,880 --> 00:49:52,319
Speaker 1: in fact there's some that work much better in the

818
00:49:52,320 --> 00:49:55,640
Speaker 1: real world than in star Wars because they rely upon

819
00:49:55,680 --> 00:49:59,719
Speaker 1: planetary physics, not interstellar physics. So you might see things

820
00:49:59,760 --> 00:50:02,880
Speaker 1: like planes banking in star Wars, or not planes, but

821
00:50:03,120 --> 00:50:06,279
Speaker 1: StarCraft banking in star Wars, like X wing fighters and

822
00:50:06,360 --> 00:50:12,160
Speaker 1: tie fighters. Uh. Obviously that's not really possible in space,

823
00:50:12,239 --> 00:50:14,719
Speaker 1: where you don't have an atmosphere to bank off of,

824
00:50:15,400 --> 00:50:19,239
Speaker 1: but it does essentially, it does work here on the

825
00:50:19,239 --> 00:50:22,440
Speaker 1: the planet Earth. Also, tie fighters want a weird design.

826
00:50:22,560 --> 00:50:25,239
Speaker 1: Their wings are vertical, not horizontal, so that means they

827
00:50:25,239 --> 00:50:28,040
Speaker 1: wouldn't actually generate lift as they move through the air.

828
00:50:28,719 --> 00:50:32,200
Speaker 1: They'd work fine in space, I guess, but once you

829
00:50:32,280 --> 00:50:35,440
Speaker 1: got them down to an atmosphere, I'm not sure how

830
00:50:35,480 --> 00:50:38,040
Speaker 1: well they would perform unless you were to fly it sideways,

831
00:50:38,040 --> 00:50:40,600
Speaker 1: and even then that'd be a little weird. I've got

832
00:50:40,600 --> 00:50:43,399
Speaker 1: a lot more to say about a few more technologies

833
00:50:43,440 --> 00:50:45,239
Speaker 1: that are in the Star Wars universe, but before I

834
00:50:45,320 --> 00:50:47,880
Speaker 1: jump into that section, let's take another quick break to

835
00:50:48,000 --> 00:50:58,200
Speaker 1: thank our sponsor. Okay, so I talked about how vehicles

836
00:50:58,280 --> 00:51:01,000
Speaker 1: attempt to get around in space and star Wars. There's

837
00:51:01,040 --> 00:51:07,080
Speaker 1: also terrestrial vehicles stuff what not. Meant to go into space.

838
00:51:07,480 --> 00:51:10,720
Speaker 1: In other words, I think I was channeling Chris Pallette

839
00:51:10,760 --> 00:51:14,280
Speaker 1: there for a second. So you've got things like Luke's

840
00:51:14,400 --> 00:51:20,520
Speaker 1: land Speeder in a New Hope. It travels by levitating

841
00:51:20,640 --> 00:51:26,160
Speaker 1: above the ground, and obviously that has some really cool benefits, right.

842
00:51:26,200 --> 00:51:30,280
Speaker 1: You don't have to worry about a rocky, traveling, rocky

843
00:51:30,280 --> 00:51:32,799
Speaker 1: path that you're traveling down. You're you're actually floating above it,

844
00:51:33,000 --> 00:51:35,840
Speaker 1: so it's a nice smooth ride. You don't have the

845
00:51:35,920 --> 00:51:39,480
Speaker 1: friction of the ground to fight against, so you can

846
00:51:39,520 --> 00:51:42,560
Speaker 1: accelerate very smoothly get up to a nice top speed.

847
00:51:44,040 --> 00:51:47,520
Speaker 1: The question remains how you do that, because gravity is

848
00:51:47,560 --> 00:51:52,080
Speaker 1: a harsh mistress, as the tick once observed, and boy

849
00:51:52,200 --> 00:51:55,680
Speaker 1: was he right. So how would anti gravity work? How

850
00:51:55,719 --> 00:52:00,840
Speaker 1: do the repulsor lifts in Star Wars work. That's a

851
00:52:00,840 --> 00:52:04,520
Speaker 1: good question because there's not really ever addressed, and obviously

852
00:52:04,640 --> 00:52:07,120
Speaker 1: other vehicles are able to do this too. When the

853
00:52:07,200 --> 00:52:10,359
Speaker 1: Millennium Falcon takes off, you know it's thrusters are all

854
00:52:10,440 --> 00:52:14,279
Speaker 1: located in the back of the spacecraft, but it must

855
00:52:14,280 --> 00:52:16,759
Speaker 1: have some form of repulsors in order to actually lift

856
00:52:16,800 --> 00:52:21,480
Speaker 1: off the ground before its ion thrusters kick in. And

857
00:52:22,320 --> 00:52:24,680
Speaker 1: there are a lot of interesting questions about this. I mean,

858
00:52:24,719 --> 00:52:28,080
Speaker 1: gravity is one of the fundamental forces of the universe,

859
00:52:28,200 --> 00:52:32,520
Speaker 1: is one that we understand the least about. We can

860
00:52:33,480 --> 00:52:39,280
Speaker 1: incorporate the other three fundamental forces into a unified theory,

861
00:52:39,360 --> 00:52:42,480
Speaker 1: but gravity eludes us. We have not yet figured out

862
00:52:42,520 --> 00:52:46,799
Speaker 1: how to incorporate that in a unified theory. And while

863
00:52:46,800 --> 00:52:48,799
Speaker 1: we use a lot of language to talk about what

864
00:52:48,840 --> 00:52:54,080
Speaker 1: gravity does, it's mostly placeholders. Like we talked about gravitons,

865
00:52:54,080 --> 00:52:57,080
Speaker 1: that again is more or less a placeholder for the

866
00:52:57,120 --> 00:53:01,520
Speaker 1: thing that is able to actually in act gravitational pull

867
00:53:01,719 --> 00:53:04,640
Speaker 1: upon things. We know that we know what gravity does, right.

868
00:53:04,800 --> 00:53:08,799
Speaker 1: We know that it's a force that attracts all objects

869
00:53:09,200 --> 00:53:13,719
Speaker 1: toward one another, and that that forces dependent upon the

870
00:53:13,760 --> 00:53:17,719
Speaker 1: mass of the objects in question and their relative distance

871
00:53:17,800 --> 00:53:22,360
Speaker 1: to each other. So the further away you are from something,

872
00:53:22,600 --> 00:53:27,080
Speaker 1: the less of a gravitational pull you will experience from

873
00:53:27,160 --> 00:53:31,200
Speaker 1: that thing. But technically speaking, every single object in the

874
00:53:31,280 --> 00:53:36,200
Speaker 1: universe is pulling gravitationally upon every single other object in

875
00:53:36,239 --> 00:53:39,440
Speaker 1: the universe. It's just that, and in most cases that

876
00:53:39,480 --> 00:53:43,799
Speaker 1: pull is so faint as to be completely undetectable. But

877
00:53:44,040 --> 00:53:49,160
Speaker 1: when you get into distances and masses that are substantial enough,

878
00:53:49,360 --> 00:53:52,160
Speaker 1: you can get this actual gravitational pull. So, for example,

879
00:53:52,239 --> 00:53:57,160
Speaker 1: a planet and you Earth is massive enough and you're

880
00:53:57,200 --> 00:54:00,400
Speaker 1: close enough to it where you are going to be

881
00:54:00,480 --> 00:54:02,680
Speaker 1: affected by its gravitational pull, and that's why you're not

882
00:54:02,719 --> 00:54:05,879
Speaker 1: flying off into space. I presume you're not flying off

883
00:54:05,880 --> 00:54:09,480
Speaker 1: into space. If you're an astronaut strapped into a rocket

884
00:54:09,640 --> 00:54:11,759
Speaker 1: and you're about to go to the space station, you

885
00:54:11,800 --> 00:54:14,040
Speaker 1: are about to fly into space, and I salute you.

886
00:54:14,800 --> 00:54:17,680
Speaker 1: But for the vast majority of my listeners, I suspect

887
00:54:17,719 --> 00:54:21,800
Speaker 1: that they are not about to fly off into space. Well.

888
00:54:21,920 --> 00:54:25,680
Speaker 1: Dr Johnson actually has a suggestion for how our repulsor

889
00:54:25,800 --> 00:54:29,239
Speaker 1: left could work, assuming that you're not using some sort

890
00:54:29,239 --> 00:54:32,200
Speaker 1: of mag lev approach, which I'll talk about in just

891
00:54:32,320 --> 00:54:36,800
Speaker 1: a second, and that is again bending spacetime, which seems

892
00:54:36,840 --> 00:54:40,040
Speaker 1: to be a bit of overkill to me, but let's

893
00:54:40,160 --> 00:54:42,399
Speaker 1: run with it. He says that if you were able

894
00:54:42,440 --> 00:54:46,600
Speaker 1: to remove the bending of space time around an object,

895
00:54:46,640 --> 00:54:50,040
Speaker 1: you could levitate it. Uh. And like I said before,

896
00:54:50,080 --> 00:54:52,759
Speaker 1: spacetime bends around everything, So if you could remove that

897
00:54:52,800 --> 00:54:54,600
Speaker 1: around an object, you could have it where it just

898
00:54:54,680 --> 00:54:59,640
Speaker 1: floats in a very specific way above whatever surface you

899
00:54:59,680 --> 00:55:04,360
Speaker 1: were concerned with, but you would have to make constant

900
00:55:04,440 --> 00:55:11,680
Speaker 1: adjustments for this, Every little tiny change would possibly result

901
00:55:11,719 --> 00:55:16,399
Speaker 1: in capsizing your vehicle. You would have to have an

902
00:55:16,440 --> 00:55:21,319
Speaker 1: incredible system that is able to sense these changes dynamically

903
00:55:21,560 --> 00:55:25,680
Speaker 1: and respond instantly so that you would have the proper

904
00:55:25,719 --> 00:55:28,560
Speaker 1: balance the entire time. Otherwise you would just end up

905
00:55:28,600 --> 00:55:31,720
Speaker 1: having a object that would flip around and then crash.

906
00:55:31,800 --> 00:55:36,360
Speaker 1: And that's not great. Now I did mention maglev vehicles.

907
00:55:36,640 --> 00:55:39,319
Speaker 1: They work on a principle that is similar to what

908
00:55:39,360 --> 00:55:42,520
Speaker 1: we see with the repuls or left vehicles in Star Wars,

909
00:55:42,560 --> 00:55:46,560
Speaker 1: but they require very specific parameters. You can't just run

910
00:55:46,560 --> 00:55:49,920
Speaker 1: a maglev vehicle over any surface. It has to be

911
00:55:50,000 --> 00:55:53,600
Speaker 1: over something that's generating a magnetic field. So this is

912
00:55:53,719 --> 00:55:56,319
Speaker 1: how a lot of maglev trains work. Typically, you will

913
00:55:56,360 --> 00:55:59,960
Speaker 1: have a collection of magnets. Some of them might be

914
00:56:00,000 --> 00:56:02,840
Speaker 1: permanent magnets, some of them might be electro magnets. So

915
00:56:02,920 --> 00:56:06,080
Speaker 1: let's say in the train you have some permanent magnets

916
00:56:06,080 --> 00:56:09,200
Speaker 1: set up on the base of your train, and then

917
00:56:09,200 --> 00:56:13,840
Speaker 1: in the tracks you have electro magnets, and the electro

918
00:56:13,920 --> 00:56:19,520
Speaker 1: magnets are generating a magnetic field that's in the same

919
00:56:19,560 --> 00:56:24,520
Speaker 1: polar alignment as the magnets that you have permanently affixed

920
00:56:24,560 --> 00:56:28,120
Speaker 1: to your train. So you've got the similar poles facing

921
00:56:28,120 --> 00:56:31,960
Speaker 1: one another, north pole to north pole or south pole

922
00:56:32,040 --> 00:56:34,680
Speaker 1: to south pole. Now, if you've played with magnets, you

923
00:56:34,760 --> 00:56:40,840
Speaker 1: know that those same poles will repel one another. North

924
00:56:40,880 --> 00:56:45,680
Speaker 1: repels north, South repels south. Opposites attract one another. So

925
00:56:45,880 --> 00:56:48,879
Speaker 1: if you have the magnets repelling one another, you can

926
00:56:48,920 --> 00:56:52,520
Speaker 1: actually create a four strong enough to push the train

927
00:56:52,960 --> 00:56:57,120
Speaker 1: up to levitate the train above the tracks. And there

928
00:56:57,120 --> 00:57:01,320
Speaker 1: are magnev trains that do this that use electromagnetic force

929
00:57:02,040 --> 00:57:06,080
Speaker 1: and magnetic fields to create this form of levitation. They

930
00:57:06,080 --> 00:57:10,320
Speaker 1: will also use electromagnetic force to propel the train. Typically

931
00:57:10,560 --> 00:57:15,440
Speaker 1: you'll use a system that is switching poles rapidly, and

932
00:57:15,480 --> 00:57:18,960
Speaker 1: you really can do this just by using alternating current

933
00:57:19,000 --> 00:57:22,120
Speaker 1: through an electro magnet. You reverse the flow of electricity

934
00:57:22,200 --> 00:57:27,040
Speaker 1: that flips the magnetic field. So if you do, it's

935
00:57:27,040 --> 00:57:30,720
Speaker 1: so that the opposite charge is just in front of

936
00:57:30,720 --> 00:57:34,479
Speaker 1: the train, it pulls the train forward, and the the

937
00:57:34,560 --> 00:57:37,240
Speaker 1: same charge is just behind the train that pushes the

938
00:57:37,280 --> 00:57:41,440
Speaker 1: train forward, and this push poll if you keep flipping

939
00:57:41,480 --> 00:57:44,760
Speaker 1: those poles over and over and over again. You can

940
00:57:44,840 --> 00:57:48,600
Speaker 1: make the train accelerate pretty darn quickly. This is, of

941
00:57:48,600 --> 00:57:55,000
Speaker 1: course the basis for the the the transportation systems that

942
00:57:55,080 --> 00:57:59,600
Speaker 1: have been proposed for hyperloop, using electro magnets to create

943
00:57:59,680 --> 00:58:04,280
Speaker 1: that motive force. Although the hyper loop doesn't necessarily use

944
00:58:04,400 --> 00:58:08,720
Speaker 1: mag lev as the way of getting above the ground,

945
00:58:09,120 --> 00:58:14,000
Speaker 1: the initial hyper loop presentation that Elon must talked about

946
00:58:14,480 --> 00:58:18,800
Speaker 1: was one that would use air skis, so the actual

947
00:58:19,040 --> 00:58:24,240
Speaker 1: vehicles would use pressurized air pumped downward to create lift

948
00:58:24,600 --> 00:58:27,360
Speaker 1: and then use electro magnets to create the motive force

949
00:58:27,440 --> 00:58:32,760
Speaker 1: to move down the track. Other hyper loop designs actually

950
00:58:32,760 --> 00:58:36,520
Speaker 1: do use mag lev technology, they avoid the air skis

951
00:58:37,280 --> 00:58:41,640
Speaker 1: approach that Elon Musk had suggested. So mag lev does exist,

952
00:58:41,720 --> 00:58:44,200
Speaker 1: but again you can't just use it anywhere. This has

953
00:58:44,240 --> 00:58:46,640
Speaker 1: to be first of all, the tracks are set up

954
00:58:46,640 --> 00:58:48,160
Speaker 1: in such a way where the train is not going

955
00:58:48,200 --> 00:58:51,600
Speaker 1: to get unbalanced and fly off. You know, you have

956
00:58:51,680 --> 00:58:54,040
Speaker 1: to have that that barrier system there to hold the

957
00:58:54,040 --> 00:58:56,640
Speaker 1: train in place where it's gonna levitate up, but it's

958
00:58:56,640 --> 00:58:59,080
Speaker 1: not gonna fly off the track one way or the other.

959
00:58:59,400 --> 00:59:02,640
Speaker 1: It does, how a remove that that amount of friction

960
00:59:02,680 --> 00:59:06,040
Speaker 1: that you would get with wheels making contact with a rail,

961
00:59:06,400 --> 00:59:09,920
Speaker 1: so you do reduce the friction that you would encounter otherwise.

962
00:59:11,000 --> 00:59:12,960
Speaker 1: So there are systems out there that are like that.

963
00:59:13,600 --> 00:59:15,320
Speaker 1: But again, you can't just drive it over anywhere. You

964
00:59:15,320 --> 00:59:18,480
Speaker 1: can't drive it over the desert like the land speeder

965
00:59:18,520 --> 00:59:21,800
Speaker 1: does because you don't have that magnetic field to push

966
00:59:21,880 --> 00:59:25,480
Speaker 1: off against, so that wouldn't really work. One other thing

967
00:59:25,520 --> 00:59:28,080
Speaker 1: you could do, and again this requires a magnetic field,

968
00:59:28,480 --> 00:59:30,800
Speaker 1: but would be super awesome if you could do it,

969
00:59:30,840 --> 00:59:35,280
Speaker 1: is you could use superconductors and use superconductor levitation. You

970
00:59:35,320 --> 00:59:37,200
Speaker 1: may have seen videos of this. It's one of the

971
00:59:37,240 --> 00:59:40,800
Speaker 1: most counterintuitive things to see. Like the first time I

972
00:59:40,840 --> 00:59:44,560
Speaker 1: saw it, I thought, what sorcery is this? It must

973
00:59:44,600 --> 00:59:47,440
Speaker 1: be trickery. Someone must have gone in and done some

974
00:59:47,480 --> 00:59:51,800
Speaker 1: sort of digital video shenanigans. But no, it's actually a

975
00:59:51,840 --> 00:59:57,840
Speaker 1: relatively well understood phenomena. Superconductors can levitate uh in the

976
00:59:57,880 --> 01:00:00,320
Speaker 1: presence of a magnetic field. They could actually main tain

977
01:00:00,360 --> 01:00:03,800
Speaker 1: an orientation relative to that magnetic field, and they won't

978
01:00:03,880 --> 01:00:07,400
Speaker 1: change it unless you change unless you actually change their orientation.

979
01:00:08,160 --> 01:00:11,200
Speaker 1: So the way this typically works is that you get

980
01:00:11,320 --> 01:00:16,000
Speaker 1: a superconductor, you have to chill it. Superconductors typically are

981
01:00:16,040 --> 01:00:19,400
Speaker 1: only super conductive when they are very very cold. Superconductive

982
01:00:19,480 --> 01:00:25,000
Speaker 1: means there's no electrical resistance of the materials. Thus you

983
01:00:25,040 --> 01:00:29,240
Speaker 1: have super conductor. A conductor allows electricity to move through it,

984
01:00:29,880 --> 01:00:32,640
Speaker 1: but typically you have resistance, and that means you lose

985
01:00:32,720 --> 01:00:35,400
Speaker 1: some energy in the form of heat you get. The

986
01:00:35,480 --> 01:00:38,760
Speaker 1: material will heat up as this resistance is there, and

987
01:00:38,800 --> 01:00:42,400
Speaker 1: you can reduce resistance in various ways. But superconductors, once

988
01:00:42,400 --> 01:00:44,360
Speaker 1: you chill them to a certain amount, and we're talking

989
01:00:44,440 --> 01:00:47,920
Speaker 1: super cold, you're usually using liquid helium to get them

990
01:00:47,920 --> 01:00:51,480
Speaker 1: cold enough, they will conduct electricity with no resistance, and

991
01:00:51,600 --> 01:00:57,080
Speaker 1: they have this, uh, this other facetness flux pinning levitation.

992
01:00:57,520 --> 01:01:01,200
Speaker 1: So you get a superconductive duct that's cooled down to

993
01:01:01,240 --> 01:01:05,200
Speaker 1: this level you got over a magnetic field. It'll just

994
01:01:05,280 --> 01:01:08,800
Speaker 1: hold its position there over that magnetic field, and you

995
01:01:08,840 --> 01:01:11,280
Speaker 1: can even tilt it in different ways and it looks

996
01:01:11,280 --> 01:01:14,720
Speaker 1: like it's just stuck in mid air. It's fascinating. If

997
01:01:14,720 --> 01:01:19,040
Speaker 1: you have a round magnet, so you've got a magnetic

998
01:01:19,040 --> 01:01:22,160
Speaker 1: field that's in around like a track, you can even

999
01:01:22,200 --> 01:01:24,760
Speaker 1: give it a little push and it'll just spin around

1000
01:01:24,800 --> 01:01:28,600
Speaker 1: and around that track and and and again what seems

1001
01:01:28,640 --> 01:01:31,920
Speaker 1: like magic. It's fascinating to watch, and there are tons

1002
01:01:31,960 --> 01:01:35,040
Speaker 1: of videos about this phenomena on YouTube, so if you've

1003
01:01:35,080 --> 01:01:37,640
Speaker 1: never watched one, I recommend you do it. What's going

1004
01:01:37,680 --> 01:01:40,840
Speaker 1: on here is that when you super cool a superconductor,

1005
01:01:42,040 --> 01:01:45,920
Speaker 1: once it reaches a certain temperature, I think minus two

1006
01:01:46,360 --> 01:01:50,360
Speaker 1: eleven degrees fahrenheit is the warmest we can get right now,

1007
01:01:50,440 --> 01:01:52,720
Speaker 1: but that's actually much warmer than what it used to be.

1008
01:01:54,000 --> 01:01:57,840
Speaker 1: You can, uh, you actually see it reject all magnetic fields,

1009
01:01:58,680 --> 01:02:04,080
Speaker 1: so it's like it's expelling magnetic fields and that allows

1010
01:02:04,080 --> 01:02:06,960
Speaker 1: you to put it into whatever orientation you want within

1011
01:02:07,080 --> 01:02:09,640
Speaker 1: another magnetic field and it will just hold it there

1012
01:02:09,680 --> 01:02:13,000
Speaker 1: because it's not allowing anything inside. It's just kind of

1013
01:02:13,520 --> 01:02:18,080
Speaker 1: just kind of stuck. Um. Obviously, you can't really do

1014
01:02:18,160 --> 01:02:21,400
Speaker 1: that with a vehicle. You would have to have the

1015
01:02:21,520 --> 01:02:26,680
Speaker 1: vehicle components chilled to a an incredible amount. That means

1016
01:02:26,720 --> 01:02:28,800
Speaker 1: you have to haul around a huge amount of liquid

1017
01:02:29,000 --> 01:02:32,880
Speaker 1: helium or liquid nitrogen, probably liquid nitrogen first to cool

1018
01:02:32,880 --> 01:02:35,840
Speaker 1: it down enough to then switch to liquid helium. To

1019
01:02:36,000 --> 01:02:38,600
Speaker 1: use liquid helium right away, you're just gonna shatter whatever

1020
01:02:38,640 --> 01:02:41,280
Speaker 1: your technology you're using, and you would still need a

1021
01:02:41,320 --> 01:02:44,200
Speaker 1: magnetic field to float above, so you couldn't just do

1022
01:02:44,280 --> 01:02:49,400
Speaker 1: it anywhere. But still pretty interesting. Uh So again, propulsors

1023
01:02:49,440 --> 01:02:55,360
Speaker 1: probably not terribly practical in the real world. Dr Johnson

1024
01:02:55,400 --> 01:02:59,120
Speaker 1: also addresses another thing that I wish never existed in

1025
01:02:59,200 --> 01:03:04,840
Speaker 1: the Star Wars equals. I'm talking about pod racing pod racers.

1026
01:03:05,040 --> 01:03:07,760
Speaker 1: Uh First of all, I really showed that George Lucas

1027
01:03:08,000 --> 01:03:11,320
Speaker 1: loves car racing a lot, which we all knew. If

1028
01:03:11,320 --> 01:03:15,600
Speaker 1: you know anything about lucas is past and his childhood experiences,

1029
01:03:15,640 --> 01:03:17,800
Speaker 1: you know that he was really big into hot rods.

1030
01:03:17,840 --> 01:03:21,280
Speaker 1: He was he loved fast cars, and pod racing is

1031
01:03:21,320 --> 01:03:26,640
Speaker 1: nothing but a real long car racing sequence in The

1032
01:03:26,680 --> 01:03:30,720
Speaker 1: Phantom Menace. But how would that work? I mean, the

1033
01:03:31,040 --> 01:03:34,400
Speaker 1: way the pod racers are set up. They look like

1034
01:03:34,480 --> 01:03:41,680
Speaker 1: they are cockpits that are tethered to free floating engines,

1035
01:03:42,440 --> 01:03:47,560
Speaker 1: apparently jet engines, that then pull the cockpit along, and

1036
01:03:47,640 --> 01:03:49,840
Speaker 1: most of them have two, some of them have four.

1037
01:03:49,960 --> 01:03:53,240
Speaker 1: One of them is more like a jet engine rocket

1038
01:03:53,400 --> 01:03:55,680
Speaker 1: that one of the characters is writing on top of,

1039
01:03:55,760 --> 01:03:58,960
Speaker 1: but the rest are being pulled either two or four.

1040
01:03:59,120 --> 01:04:03,160
Speaker 1: Jet engine. Jet engine is not the safest things to

1041
01:04:03,200 --> 01:04:06,400
Speaker 1: be around. In fact, if you ever worked around jet engines,

1042
01:04:06,440 --> 01:04:09,479
Speaker 1: you know there are two danger zones, and I don't

1043
01:04:09,480 --> 01:04:11,840
Speaker 1: mean like the song. One of them is directly in

1044
01:04:11,920 --> 01:04:14,480
Speaker 1: front of the jet engine the intake, because you could

1045
01:04:14,480 --> 01:04:17,600
Speaker 1: get sucked into it and that would be bad. And

1046
01:04:17,640 --> 01:04:20,320
Speaker 1: the other is directly behind the jet engine, where you

1047
01:04:20,320 --> 01:04:24,840
Speaker 1: could get hit by hurricane force winds when a jet engine.

1048
01:04:24,920 --> 01:04:27,960
Speaker 1: When a Boeing jet engine is idling, it's idling at

1049
01:04:27,960 --> 01:04:31,160
Speaker 1: a speed that is equivalent to a category three hurricane

1050
01:04:31,560 --> 01:04:34,720
Speaker 1: when it's actually thrusting, when it's putting forth thrust. That's

1051
01:04:34,760 --> 01:04:38,040
Speaker 1: talking about a category five hurricane that's strong enough to

1052
01:04:38,120 --> 01:04:41,040
Speaker 1: knock over a house. We're talking about more than a

1053
01:04:41,120 --> 01:04:44,400
Speaker 1: hundred fifty five miles per hour winds at a hundred

1054
01:04:44,400 --> 01:04:49,200
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit. So it's a hot hurricane blast hitting you

1055
01:04:49,320 --> 01:04:51,800
Speaker 1: right in the face, and you've got two of those

1056
01:04:52,120 --> 01:04:55,360
Speaker 1: strapped fifty feet in front of you pulling you along.

1057
01:04:55,840 --> 01:04:58,520
Speaker 1: Not the best way to get around. What I did

1058
01:04:58,560 --> 01:05:02,480
Speaker 1: love about Dr Johnson's approach in tackling this was he said, well,

1059
01:05:02,520 --> 01:05:05,760
Speaker 1: would it be possible to build something like this that

1060
01:05:05,800 --> 01:05:07,400
Speaker 1: would kind of work that way? Says, well, if you

1061
01:05:07,520 --> 01:05:09,680
Speaker 1: if you can elevate it off the ground so that

1062
01:05:09,800 --> 01:05:12,920
Speaker 1: you could get it up to speed to generate thrust

1063
01:05:13,600 --> 01:05:15,520
Speaker 1: so it could take off. And if you added wings

1064
01:05:15,560 --> 01:05:18,920
Speaker 1: to it so that it would have left so I

1065
01:05:19,000 --> 01:05:22,840
Speaker 1: could counteract the effect of gravity pulling it down, then yes,

1066
01:05:22,920 --> 01:05:25,200
Speaker 1: but then you've just built a jet, because that's what

1067
01:05:25,240 --> 01:05:27,919
Speaker 1: a jet is, and you no longer have a pod

1068
01:05:28,000 --> 01:05:34,120
Speaker 1: raiser um not not practical. Also, he talks about the

1069
01:05:34,160 --> 01:05:38,360
Speaker 1: electrical arc that is visible that exists between the engines.

1070
01:05:38,640 --> 01:05:40,520
Speaker 1: For that to happen, it has to be in a

1071
01:05:40,560 --> 01:05:43,760
Speaker 1: massive amount, like the voltage has to be so high

1072
01:05:43,880 --> 01:05:46,120
Speaker 1: that when jar Jar comes into contact with it, he

1073
01:05:46,160 --> 01:05:50,800
Speaker 1: would have been essentially um executed by electricity, and we

1074
01:05:50,880 --> 01:05:53,720
Speaker 1: all would have been spared the rise of the Empire,

1075
01:05:53,760 --> 01:05:55,720
Speaker 1: because as we all know, jar Jar is the one

1076
01:05:55,720 --> 01:05:59,480
Speaker 1: who voted to give the Emperor the control over the

1077
01:05:59,480 --> 01:06:03,840
Speaker 1: Senate and the executive power that he needed in order

1078
01:06:03,880 --> 01:06:07,320
Speaker 1: to really bring his plan to completion. So the universe

1079
01:06:07,360 --> 01:06:12,160
Speaker 1: would have been spared, but somehow Jars are survived. It's

1080
01:06:12,200 --> 01:06:14,640
Speaker 1: really the tragedy of the Phantom Menace when you think

1081
01:06:14,640 --> 01:06:17,439
Speaker 1: about it. So one other thing I wanted to touch

1082
01:06:17,480 --> 01:06:22,680
Speaker 1: on before I conclude is the concept of holograms. In

1083
01:06:22,760 --> 01:06:27,760
Speaker 1: Star Wars they factor in pretty heavily. A character communication

1084
01:06:27,840 --> 01:06:31,200
Speaker 1: is often represented by holograms. Princess Leiah has a hologram

1085
01:06:31,240 --> 01:06:34,080
Speaker 1: stored in R two D two. There's a hologram chess

1086
01:06:34,160 --> 01:06:38,400
Speaker 1: game that's aboard the Millennium Falcon. Holograms are interesting in

1087
01:06:38,440 --> 01:06:40,760
Speaker 1: the Star Wars universe. They appear to be fully three

1088
01:06:40,800 --> 01:06:46,440
Speaker 1: dimensional creations of light. They can be created by a

1089
01:06:46,440 --> 01:06:49,520
Speaker 1: single projector because R two is able to project out

1090
01:06:50,000 --> 01:06:54,680
Speaker 1: this image of Princess Leiah fully formed and then her

1091
01:06:54,680 --> 01:07:00,360
Speaker 1: brother starts creeping on her, which is you. But anyway,

1092
01:07:01,600 --> 01:07:03,880
Speaker 1: we can't really do that because again we can't really

1093
01:07:03,920 --> 01:07:07,320
Speaker 1: tell light where to go and make it stop. Typically,

1094
01:07:07,320 --> 01:07:10,280
Speaker 1: if we want to create a hologram like effect, you

1095
01:07:10,320 --> 01:07:13,160
Speaker 1: need to have something that you're projecting the light against,

1096
01:07:13,280 --> 01:07:18,080
Speaker 1: particles like a dust cloud or smoke or something else

1097
01:07:18,120 --> 01:07:21,400
Speaker 1: along those lines. Now, you could use different wavelengths of

1098
01:07:21,480 --> 01:07:26,880
Speaker 1: light and different sizes of particles too, kind of get

1099
01:07:26,920 --> 01:07:29,440
Speaker 1: an effect similar to what you see in Star Wars,

1100
01:07:29,440 --> 01:07:32,200
Speaker 1: but you wouldn't have very good resolution, nor would you

1101
01:07:32,240 --> 01:07:36,680
Speaker 1: have very good color representation, so it would look more

1102
01:07:36,720 --> 01:07:41,880
Speaker 1: like a morphous light blobs as opposed to three dimensional

1103
01:07:41,960 --> 01:07:46,200
Speaker 1: figures that seem to have some sort of of of

1104
01:07:46,680 --> 01:07:51,680
Speaker 1: presence in your area. So holograms as they are depicted

1105
01:07:51,720 --> 01:07:54,200
Speaker 1: in Star Wars are not possible. Now, there are a

1106
01:07:54,240 --> 01:07:56,960
Speaker 1: lot of ways of cheating around that, Like I've talked

1107
01:07:57,000 --> 01:08:00,320
Speaker 1: to in the past about the Peppers Ghost, a usion

1108
01:08:00,720 --> 01:08:04,360
Speaker 1: which gives the effect of a hologram, but is not,

1109
01:08:05,240 --> 01:08:06,920
Speaker 1: at least in the sense of what we see in

1110
01:08:06,960 --> 01:08:09,600
Speaker 1: Star Wars the same thing. Pepper's Ghost, by the way,

1111
01:08:10,000 --> 01:08:14,680
Speaker 1: uses a reflective surface like a pane of glass, and

1112
01:08:15,280 --> 01:08:18,479
Speaker 1: you typically have the viewer the person who you want

1113
01:08:18,520 --> 01:08:23,080
Speaker 1: to do the effect on, in darkness, and you have

1114
01:08:23,400 --> 01:08:26,920
Speaker 1: out of the viewers line of sight an area that

1115
01:08:26,960 --> 01:08:30,840
Speaker 1: can be brightly lit. And so then the viewers looking

1116
01:08:30,840 --> 01:08:33,320
Speaker 1: at a pane of glass, they see a reflection in

1117
01:08:33,400 --> 01:08:35,559
Speaker 1: that pane of glass, but to them it looks like

1118
01:08:35,680 --> 01:08:39,759
Speaker 1: a translucent figure. A lot of Haunted mansions uses, including

1119
01:08:40,160 --> 01:08:44,360
Speaker 1: the Haunted Mansion ride at Disney. In Disneyland Disney World,

1120
01:08:45,000 --> 01:08:47,840
Speaker 1: whenever you go through the ballroom sequences and you see

1121
01:08:47,880 --> 01:08:50,280
Speaker 1: all the ghosts that are dancing around or at the

1122
01:08:50,280 --> 01:08:54,320
Speaker 1: birthday party, or they're shooting weapons at one another, those

1123
01:08:54,360 --> 01:08:59,920
Speaker 1: ghosts are actually animatronic figures that are either below or

1124
01:09:00,200 --> 01:09:03,320
Speaker 1: above the track, which you can't see because you're in

1125
01:09:03,360 --> 01:09:07,200
Speaker 1: a enclosed track that's in darkness, and you're seeing their

1126
01:09:07,240 --> 01:09:09,920
Speaker 1: reflections on a pane of glass. So to you it

1127
01:09:09,960 --> 01:09:12,920
Speaker 1: looks like these translucent ghost figures, but in fact they

1128
01:09:12,920 --> 01:09:16,960
Speaker 1: are solid, three dimensional figures that are just out of

1129
01:09:17,000 --> 01:09:19,840
Speaker 1: sight and you're just looking at their reflections. So there

1130
01:09:19,840 --> 01:09:22,439
Speaker 1: are ways we can cheat to make it look like

1131
01:09:22,600 --> 01:09:25,559
Speaker 1: we have a three dimensional hologram, and there are some

1132
01:09:25,600 --> 01:09:31,200
Speaker 1: ways that we can make very believable simulations of that,

1133
01:09:32,080 --> 01:09:35,280
Speaker 1: but we cannot. We don't have the technology to make

1134
01:09:35,360 --> 01:09:37,519
Speaker 1: one the way that we see them in Star Wars,

1135
01:09:38,640 --> 01:09:41,240
Speaker 1: not to that level. Not to say that we won't

1136
01:09:41,280 --> 01:09:43,559
Speaker 1: ever do that. We may find a way of being

1137
01:09:43,600 --> 01:09:45,639
Speaker 1: able to do it in the future, and we can't.

1138
01:09:45,680 --> 01:09:48,400
Speaker 1: Like I said, if you use smoke or mist or

1139
01:09:48,479 --> 01:09:53,480
Speaker 1: water and you use multiple projectors, you can get pretty

1140
01:09:53,520 --> 01:09:57,559
Speaker 1: interesting simulations, but it's not quite the same thing. Still,

1141
01:09:57,640 --> 01:10:00,200
Speaker 1: it was fun to go into the world of Star

1142
01:10:00,240 --> 01:10:02,960
Speaker 1: Wars and look at some of the technology there. There's

1143
01:10:02,960 --> 01:10:04,719
Speaker 1: clearly a lot more that we could have talked about.

1144
01:10:04,720 --> 01:10:07,840
Speaker 1: I didn't touch droids at all. We didn't talk about walkers.

1145
01:10:08,680 --> 01:10:10,639
Speaker 1: There are a lot of other things are like electro

1146
01:10:10,760 --> 01:10:13,320
Speaker 1: staffs and things of that nature that I didn't even

1147
01:10:13,640 --> 01:10:16,400
Speaker 1: really mention in this episode. A lot of that is

1148
01:10:16,479 --> 01:10:18,760
Speaker 1: covered in the book that I was using as my

1149
01:10:18,800 --> 01:10:21,680
Speaker 1: prime resource, The Physics of Star Wars. Again, that's by

1150
01:10:21,920 --> 01:10:26,120
Speaker 1: Dr Patrick Johnson, and I do recommend checking that book out.

1151
01:10:26,160 --> 01:10:28,639
Speaker 1: If you're interested in science and you like the Star

1152
01:10:28,640 --> 01:10:34,200
Speaker 1: Wars films. It's very easy to understand. It's entertaining, so

1153
01:10:34,600 --> 01:10:36,680
Speaker 1: I recommend that if you want to give this a

1154
01:10:36,800 --> 01:10:40,280
Speaker 1: longer look and explore other elements of science, not just

1155
01:10:40,320 --> 01:10:44,599
Speaker 1: the technology aspects. As for the tech of series, I

1156
01:10:44,680 --> 01:10:48,599
Speaker 1: love doing these. If there is a world of fantasy

1157
01:10:48,640 --> 01:10:51,720
Speaker 1: world out there, science fiction world out there that has

1158
01:10:51,840 --> 01:10:54,200
Speaker 1: interesting technology, and you would like me to cover it

1159
01:10:54,280 --> 01:10:56,280
Speaker 1: both in the way it's supposed to work within that

1160
01:10:56,360 --> 01:10:59,280
Speaker 1: mythology and the way it would work in our real world,

1161
01:11:00,040 --> 01:11:02,880
Speaker 1: let me know, or any other topic for that matter,

1162
01:11:02,920 --> 01:11:04,920
Speaker 1: if there's something in tech that you want to know

1163
01:11:05,000 --> 01:11:07,840
Speaker 1: more about, send me a message. Maybe there's someone you

1164
01:11:07,840 --> 01:11:10,680
Speaker 1: want me to interview on the show or have on

1165
01:11:10,720 --> 01:11:13,040
Speaker 1: as a guest host, let me know that as well.

1166
01:11:13,320 --> 01:11:15,759
Speaker 1: You can reach out to me on email. The address

1167
01:11:15,800 --> 01:11:18,920
Speaker 1: for the show is tech Stuff at how stuff works

1168
01:11:18,960 --> 01:11:21,360
Speaker 1: dot com, or you can drop me a line on

1169
01:11:21,360 --> 01:11:23,920
Speaker 1: Facebook or Twitter. The handle of both of those is

1170
01:11:23,960 --> 01:11:27,200
Speaker 1: tech Stuff hs W. We also have an Instagram account

1171
01:11:27,280 --> 01:11:30,240
Speaker 1: at tech Stuff hs W. Check that out. We've got

1172
01:11:30,280 --> 01:11:33,280
Speaker 1: a lot more stuff coming up on that so including

1173
01:11:33,360 --> 01:11:35,400
Speaker 1: I think we're gonna end up having some interesting little

1174
01:11:35,960 --> 01:11:39,400
Speaker 1: video snippets and stuff, things that you don't get anywhere else.

1175
01:11:39,520 --> 01:11:42,800
Speaker 1: So check out the Instagram account, and as always, you

1176
01:11:42,800 --> 01:11:46,519
Speaker 1: can join me live when I record these things on

1177
01:11:46,600 --> 01:11:51,200
Speaker 1: Wednesdays and Friday's over at twitch dot tv slash tech Stuff.

1178
01:11:51,439 --> 01:11:53,439
Speaker 1: Just go over that site. You'll see where the schedule

1179
01:11:53,560 --> 01:11:56,000
Speaker 1: is and you'll see when I record, and you can

1180
01:11:56,040 --> 01:12:00,720
Speaker 1: watch live as I have brain meltdowns and become incapable

1181
01:12:00,840 --> 01:12:04,400
Speaker 1: of saying even the simplest words like my viewers did

1182
01:12:04,479 --> 01:12:07,240
Speaker 1: just moments ago that you didn't get to hear because

1183
01:12:07,320 --> 01:12:11,439
Speaker 1: Ramsey the Wonder producer cut it out. Thanks Ramsey, and

1184
01:12:11,520 --> 01:12:15,360
Speaker 1: thank you guys. I'll talk to you again really soon.

1185
01:12:15,680 --> 01:12:24,280
Speaker 1: May the Force be with you for more on this

1186
01:12:24,439 --> 01:12:27,120
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Because it staff works dot

1187
01:12:27,200 --> 01:12:37,160
Speaker 1: com