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Physics and Star Wars


evan

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We all love the classic movies of Star Wars, if you don't love these movies than your probably too cool to be reading this blog, but if your like us in physics c you can see the glaring flaw that represent themselves throughout the movies. Star Wars is in a different galaxy but the same laws of physics should be universal so while watching the movies you can pick up on certain aspects that are in fact impossible.

1.) One of the most basic flaws we can see in the movies is that during the epic space battles we can hear not only blaster fire, but the explosions and droid sounds such as in the end of the 4th movie and the beginning of the 3rd. Space is a vacuum and sound cannot travel through a vacuum because it needs matter to propagate, so because of this basic fact we can see that in all of the Star Wars movies we should not be able to hear anything while they are in space. Whether it be the sound of a blaster, explosion, droid, or the whoosh as a ship flies by, in space there should be no sound.

2.) Another flaw concerning the space battles of Star Wars comes from the explosions that occur. Not only should there be no sound, but an explosion in space would produce a flaming blast because of oxygen within the ship, but that blast would last for less than a second, and would only be interpreted from the human eye as a flash of light before the vacuum of space would extinguish it. As a vacuum has no oxygen it is impossible to have a fire in space, so the explosion caused from the ships would last less than a second before they disappeared, and as we can see in movies such as Star Wars 3 or Star Wars 1 where a fire catches on the ship and lasts for multiple seconds, those instances are impossible.

3.) Lightsabers and blasters cannot actually be made of light and they cannot shot lasers. If a blaster shot a laser it would than be impossible for anyone to see or dodge the beam as it would travel so fast that it would be impossible for anyone to the the light move. Also in the space battles, in a vacuum the laser is invisible because there are no particles to scatter the beam making it visible. So these storm troopers can't actually be shooting lasers, and the light sabers cannot be made of light because light cannot deflect the blasts from these guns. Lightsabers if made of lasers would require an object as dense as a black hole to stop the laser and make it turn back in on itself forming the shape of a lightsaber and we can safely say that is impossible to carry around. We can see that if lightsabers were lasers such as what the guns claim to shoot, they then would not be able to deflect opposite laser beams shot at them. Also if lightsabers were indeed just projections of light shot out, than it is impossible that they would go and than stop after about 3 or 4 feet unless there was some object there to block or reflact the light. If they were just beams of light shot out than they would shot out far far far far far far longer distances than just 3 or 4 feet. Lightsabers were also said to possibly be made of a plasma substance. While it seems possible to control this plasma substance the heat from the condensed material would cook the hands of the user.

4.)In the Space battles we all admire how the ships go around flying, shooting at each other, turning, spinning, but in reality we can see that the turns and spins shown in Star Wars are in accurate if there were actually space ships flying around. We see throughout the movies how the space ships make banked turns, such as the Millennium Falcon. A banked turn is a turn or change in direction where the aircraft inclines towards the inside of the turn. We can see on earth how banked turns are needed because the fixed winged aircraft need the air pressure in order to operate but in the vacuum of space there would be no need to use banked turns. With this idea there is in no fact need for wings in space. Ships such as the Falcon would be in fact the design of space ships, not like that of the rebel fighters in the 4th, because as you are in space and there is no atmosphere there is no need for wings to help you turn or control the ship.

5.) Another issue we see in these movies are the asteroids. As shown in the 5th movie as they escape Hoth the crew, Chewie Han Lea and the droids, fly into a asteroid field in order to escape their pursuers. We can see that due to physics these large asteroids should not be able to float together without crashing into each other. The field cannot contain such huge asteroids that just fly around because in reality they would fall into each other continuously ramming each other till they break down and the field is made up of smaller pieces of rock floating around large boulders. Also Han and Lea exit the ship within an asteroid, within a creature, not only is there no way a worm of some sort could exist in space living in an asteroid, there is also no way Han, Lea, and Chewie could exit the Falcon without putting on full space suits and expect not to explode in space's vacuum.

Along with these five flaws we can see many more in the Star Wars franchise but the list can go on and on. There are certain concepts in the movies such as light speed and hyper drive which are impossible, but the movies play off the fact that we just don't have the technology now that can produce them thus they cannot be totally dis proven. The ideas and concepts above though are known facts about physics, space, and how the universe works and thus glaring errors in the Star Wars movie franchise.

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