Star Wars Science

stand, which you know, it would be good for everybody's bodies, I think, if you had to stand. Having standing meetings is great because meetings otherwise can just drag on and on and on. And if everybody has to stand, then you uh you have to you're stuck. Um people will want to get off their feet, they want to go back to work, whatever. And so, yeah, meetings don't go longer than they have to. I appreciate this idea. That is unfortunately not the version of the word I meant. Yep. — But I do think that is an excellent idea. Yeah, and so you make a standing meeting. Right. That you do that every week. So, our movie marathons continue. Um we watched Oblivion, which uh people had wanted to go on to my top 100 movies, and I had said that I didn't love it. And so, I rewatched it, and it was a little better than I remembered, but it still wasn't great. — Didn't make your list. Didn't make the list. Um — [clears throat] — uh we watched Dune '84. Did I mention I watched Dune 1984? That one, I think, is really good. It's uh it's parts of it are wonderful, and meh. Yeah. Um we watched the Evil Dead trilogy. So, Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2, and Army — as science fiction? — It Well, so it's I mean, so my list is like it really should just be my nerdy list. Okay. That's right. But it's like sci-fi, fantasy, space. So, like First Man is on the list. — Okay. Apollo 13 Um but also uh Lord of the Rings is on the list, right? Like that's not fantasy. But um and then last night we watched Kill Bill part one, which is so good. So, what I highly recommend is if they ever do the director's full release in a theater, Mhm. I got to see that at the Alamo Drafthouse, so it was all three movies shown at once — What's the third one? — Sorry, both movies. Both Okay, Kill Bill and Kill Bill 2, yeah. — Yeah, it was both movies shown with some additional features, um intermission in the middle, and it was the Alamo Drafthouse before they changed their stuff, so they brought us food that we didn't have to do anything other than put up a piece of paper. Yeah. — So, yeah. Yeah, that sounds very civilized. Yes. — Uh and then reading, I am read I finished Dune and Dune Messiah. Okay. — is just Children of Dune is the right place to end. Go one more book. No, I'm going to do them all. I'm going to go all the way. I know like I know God Emperor of Dune is but like this is I haven't read Dune in 30 years. — Yeah, that sounds about right. It is the perfect science fiction book. It is a masterpiece. Like it's just so good on every level on the and when you think about the world building and the uh you know, a lot of the concepts, even the stuff we're going to talk about today, — Yeah. was developed in Dune. Uh the so good. Oh, man. — there are so many influences from Dune on uh Star Wars. And in my head canon, uh the night sisters are Bene Gesserit. That's my head canon. — Yeah. Yeah, it is just it just totally holds up. So good. Um and so now I'm reading Parable of the Sower. Oh, that one's good. — Butler. Oh, it's so good. Oh my god, it's so good. Yeah. Yeah, I'm what, halfway through the book right now? So, don't spoil it. — hard. Yeah. Um what is in So, I mean, [snorts] the you know, without spoiling it too much, it is about, you know, it said in 2025 or 2026, which is really funny because that is um now-ish. Right. — and she is sort of anticipating the climate refugees from climate change and just like rising intra rising inflation and decreasing food productivity and just [snorts] this grind that is just happening to society. And and the main character is living in an enclave in just outside of Los Angeles, but it's not really an enclave. It's essentially it's a

cul-de-sac where they've walled it off, and they've built a gate across the front at the entrance to the cul-de-sac, and they've got 9-ft walls and razor wire on top and and then it's just this decline of society bit by bit. And it like it really dismantles the apocalypse fetish Yeah. that I think a lot of people have, you know? Like, "Oh, the apocalypse would be great. Like then we'd we'd be like living in a shopping mall, and there'd be nobody around, and we'd have all this stuff to ourselves, you know? And we could be a fresh restart. " But that's not how it will go. It'll be this just this like, "Oh, someone so's house burned down, and now someone so's child died, and now such-and-such, and then thieves came, and they stole our sewing machine, and now we can't Now we don't have a sewing machine. " And it's just brutal Yeah. — in a way that no other apoca you know, not even because it's not even post-apocalypse. It is just the decline. It is now. It is Yeah, but now but worse, right? — Yeah. And yeah, it's really good. When I was reading that, I was listening to the audiobook, I'll admit. I'm listening to the audiobook as well. — Yeah. And I was walking around Old Quebec, where I was for my sister in my sister-in-law's wedding. Mhm. And it was like a couple of days after the wedding. We were still there. Everyone else had left, and I was exploring the city, and my husband had food poisoning. Um so, I'm by myself, and like I hit a point where I was just like I literally just sat down on the lawn of a historic building looking at the water Yeah. — feeling devastated. Yeah. — Yeah. And that's the only thing I can do. There's There's very few books that do that. There's The Doomsday Book, which do not read during a pandemic. Luckily, I did not. And then [clears throat] Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow. Those three books have all devastated me. Mhm. Yeah, I Yeah, I haven't tried The Sparrow yet. I've heard it's sort of got a sort of terrifying thing in it. But um but yeah, I've I don't think I've felt this affected by a book in a long time. Just where you're having trouble distinguishing between reality and the book you're listening to. You know? Neal Stephenson's The Fall also does that. — Mhm. Yeah. Sandbar is asking, "What about The Chronicles of Riddick? " Yeah, we watched Pitch Black and Chronicles of Riddick about a week and a half ago. And um Pitch Black made my list in my top 100. Chronicles of Riddick does not, but it could have. It was there was this there's this incredible world building in The Chronicles of Riddick with these uh I'll figure out the Necromongers, who are these this empire of baddies, and they have this really great, weird um philosophy, semi you know, religious fervor to them. And then there's all this really interesting world building, and they just they ruin it. They just make a mess of it, and it's deeply un- unfortunate. Like I would love to spend more time in this universe. It feels very um uh Warhammer 40K. Like if they could they leaned on it in that direction, it would have gone more into the Warhammer 40K. And I don't I haven't seen anybody properly [snorts] do a gothic sci-fi universe in the way that Warhammer 40K does. Like they're wildly popular, and nobody is willing to tread in that area in the way that And Chronicles of Riddick sort of tiptoed around the edge of it, and then just vomited mistakes. Yeah. — so. And I haven't seen the I Apparently, there's a third Riddick movie. I haven't even seen it. And apparently, there's a fourth one coming out. I haven't even seen that one yet. So, yeah. There is one, and I'm trying to remember the name of it, that I mean, like it hits the definition of gothic, but doesn't hit the atmosphere of gothic, if that makes any sense to you. Yeah. — That was really good, where they're able to create optically powered robots. Uh What's the movie? Uh no, it was Sorry, it was books. Oh, no, yeah. I can't I'm not talking movies, yeah. — No, I can't think of any Plenty of books, yeah. Yeah, I can't think of anything that's been that I just can't think of any Like it's such a rich Have you So, there was a um on Prime Video, there's a Was it Second Level? Next Level? Um So, the the Did you lose your video again? Yeah. Oh. All right, the people who did So Sam Roberts saying

Equilibrium, we just rewatched Equilibrium. I was disappointed. I remember liking it, rewatching it, I liked it less. Okay, I'm going to One moment. Move, Sala. — [yawns and gasps] — Oops. Yeah. Yeah, so Equilibrium does not make the list. It was There was like a little bit of clever idea with the kind of gun-kata, the gun fu. The way they elevated that in the John Wick uh movies, but there was just a lot in that was had much to be desired. So yeah, I unfortunately Equilibrium took a step down in my rewatch. While say Elysium took a step up. Now I'd say Oblivion took a slight step up in my rewatching it. Rewatched Brazil. Uh Brazil's just a hunt It's totally holds up. Brazil absolutely uh is the greatest. Uh I love Brazil. And I picked up the at the thrift shop, I got a special edition of Brazil that has the director's cut, and it's like a deep cut. Like you had totally different ending on Brazil. So we have yet to watch it, but um uh yeah, so we've been uh What's the other random movie that we watched? Oh, we watched In Bruges, which is terrific. What a great movie. — haven't even heard of that one. — No? Um it's about two assassins holding up in Bruges waiting for instructions from the guy who has hired them. And it's the same director that did The Ghosts of uh In Bruges. It's this Irish island. Yeah. So good. Uh so he's a terrific director, really great. — [snorts] — I am currently reading An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green, and I haven't made it very far in yet. I just started it last night. But I have to admit, I completely missed the fact that he wrote science fiction. Like was oblivious to it. And it got recommended to me. And the title doesn't make it sound like it's science fiction. It could totally be a science book. Um and so far it's delightful. So yeah. I am I am pleased. It speaks to my uh inner massive objects love. Mhm. I'll check it out. All right, let's do your job. Okay. I uh I'm pressing record on the audio. I am video. I've also pressed record on the audio. recording. Astronomy Cast, episode 792, The Science of Star Wars. Welcome to Astronomy Cast, our weekly fact-based journey through the cosmos. We help you understand not only what we know, but how we know what we know. I'm Fraser Cain, I'm the publisher of Universe Today. With me as always is Dr. Pamela Gay, a senior scientist for the Planetary Science Institute and the director of CosmoQuest. Hey Pamela, how you doing? I am well, and my allegiance is to the Republic, to democracy. — Yeah, so uh hopefully if people are seeing the video of the episode that we are recording, you have uh Princess Leia hair. I do. I do, and the video is currently working. We did have a glitch, and I appreciate that Yeah. folks watching on YouTube got to see I I'm wearing my rainbow uh Rebel t-shirt, uh the Princess Leia braids crisscrossing, which is I think about the only hairstyle she has you can actually do with your hair. Um everything else requires more hair than human beings have. So So I didn't know we were doing this. — So I, you know, didn't have a costume, but uh and if I had, I would have pushed back and said, I will do this, but only if we will also do a Science of Star Trek and a Science of Stargate. — I'm good for that. You're All right. Okay, so we'll make this a trilogy. I will rewrite the season, and yes, we shall make it so. — Nice. Make it so, number one. Uh All right. May the force be with you. Isn't that what people say on the international holiday known as Star Wars Day? Today, we're going to talk about the science in everyone's favorite sci-fi fantasy stories. Which of it is real, and which is essentially magic? Let's find out. But first, it's time for a break. And we're back.

All right. So Pamela, when did you experience Star Wars first? I in theory saw it in the theater when it first came out. However, I was of so early an age that I have no memories of this. I am pretty sure that I got to watch Star Wars for the first time for realsies in a meaningful way at our local library during one of the summer library programs. Huh. Um and Empire Strikes Back, waiting in line to see Empire Strikes Back. I have distinct memories of sitting on the cement, leaning against the wall at the shopping mall, drawing and coloring books, and I had a massive bag filled with toys to keep me occupied the entire day. So you would have been like six? Something like that, yeah. — Yeah, I was seven. Six. I was six in 1977. I think I watched it in '78. But I actually think I read the comic book first. But it was weird, like back in the day, back in the olden times, in the before-40 times, movies would be playing for 6 months. Right, right. — And so you could just go and watch the movie, and then go back and watch it again. Like that does not happen anymore. Like it's it switched to video, switched to you know, the DVDs come out, and even that doesn't even happen anymore. They just go straight to streaming. So um But yeah, and it affected me. Like I'm sure it did you. Like I can hear you are wearing your Princess Leia hair, so must have affected you. It was It just blew my young mind. That you could have a movie that had spaceships and glowing swords and aliens and it was amazing. Uh-huh. Yeah. Uh haven't watched it since my kids were Really? — four? Yeah, like I tried to Well, they were like six, five, and I was like, "Okay, time to watch Star Wars. " And they're like, "Meh. " — Go let's watch Avatar: The Last Airbender again. Like, all right, yeah. I can't argue with that. So I have to admit that watching it as an adult, I do find Luke to be insufferably emo. Yeah, I've So I've got the Blu-rays. I found them at a thrift shop, and so I'm going to watch them, but I didn't watch it. But I, you know, I've gone on record saying that Andor is It's the best. — easily my favorite definitely my favorite Star Wars thing ever, probably in my top three favorite science fiction things ever. Yeah. So it And I'm like rewatching Stargate right now. But it's not comfort food, just to warn you. There's like Andor? Yeah, like I can rewatch Buffy a gazillion times as comfort food, even though it's not a happy bright show. But and I can watch Babylon 5, it's comfort food. Andor takes your heart. So it says, "See this? See this? Squish. " — Yeah, I love it. We need more of that. It's not comfort food. Yeah. Yeah, so I'm saying except say The Expanse, Yeah. Andor. Oh, man. — Babylon 5 and the new version of Battlestar Galactica. So the new Battlestar Galactica is dead to me. The last episode killed the entire series. — Dead to me, yeah. It is — It is It is utterly failed. So I did pick the first two seasons of it. The first season is probably the finest season of science fiction ever made. The rest are The rest I mean Once they had found the planet, they started colonizing, Yeah. it was over, yeah. No. Yeah. Anyway, but that's all we're talking about. We're talking about Star Wars. So uh but I hope everybody is sort of thinking about Everyone who loves Star Wars, anyway, is thinking about when they first uh encountered the medium, the juggernaut that is Star Wars. But I was listening to a Brandon Sanderson podcast recently. Okay. And he said, "Star Wars isn't science fiction. It's fantasy. " It is both, I would argue. Yeah, I I sort of buy it that it is fantasy. Um and weirdly that Lord of the Rings is science fiction. Um but let's talk about sort of the science that is in Star Wars. Where do you want to start? So I want to start with uh considering the question, is it a galaxy far, far away? Is it a dwarf galaxy far

far, far away? Is it a dwarf galaxy star-forming region far, far away? Because there is this — [snorts] — sense that you get across all the different episodes over the years that it is tightly compact, that this is some place where it's easy to get from point A to point B. And there is a scene after Luke has had his hand reattached, uh where they're all looking out the window at what looks like the Sombrero Galaxy as if though they're really darn close to it. Hm. And was it actually the Sombrero? It was not actually the Sombrero, but it was definitely artwork very close to the Sombrero Galaxy. So, they were outside of a galaxy. Yeah. That's weird. And — thinking So, you're thinking dwarf That's funny. That didn't That has never even occurred to me, but now that I'm thinking back. And so, you're thinking It's something like Large Magellanic Cloud. — Right. They're in a dwarf galaxy that is orbiting around some uh recent recently merged or impacted, maybe jellyfish galaxy like the Sombrero. That's interesting. Okay. And this opens up a lot — eye. of their stuff to make more sense because how do you get it so that it is so easy to get from one world to another? And I know about hyperspace lanes and all that sort of nonsense, — [snorts] — but the Kessler system is theoretically in the center of their galaxy. And you have to go through thick clouds uh to get to it. Um and if it is a massively star-forming forming dwarf galaxy, something like I guess more like the Small Magellanic Cloud, — Right. — you can imagine having that exist without having a supermassive black hole right there making it impossible to get to and ruining the possibility of life. Right. And I mean, the retcon about the whole Kessel Run and blah, blah, parsecs. But and later on, people have said, well, they've The way you explain it is that there's a black hole. Well, why not have there be an intermediate-mass black hole at the heart of this dwarf galaxy. And you can have your stars close together. You can have a lot of sort of big, obnoxious stars. A lot of kinds of places that will have been seeded with heavier elements. You could have more metals, more uh more interesting star-forming regions. Yeah. — there's other ways within the canon that make more sense to fix that. So, so one of the things that comes out in the uh High Republic era is that the standard uh hyperlanes that are used to get between different jump points. The reason that Tatooine has so much traffic is because it has a lot of jump lanes that go there. And and if you consider most ships fly along these jump lanes, but some have the capacity to generate their own jump points or I guess hyperlane paths is the better way to phrase it, then suddenly you have it where the Millennium Falcon, instead of following a standard hyperspace lane, is generating its own hyperspace lane, making its own calculations, and reducing the Kessel Run from 18 parsecs to 12. — No. No. No. I will not let you follow that retcon. Okay. No. It was George Lucas messing up an astronomical term. He thought parsec was a measure of time. It's a measure of distance. He screwed it up. And nope. Nope. But fine. You know, if you want to retcon Cuz the problem is you can't Like, how do you retcon the mistake to explain the s- the galaxy? No. Fine. Like, I'm just going to roll over. I don't care. Whatever. Um Okay. So, so that That's great. You know, it had never really occurred to me to try and place the galaxy. And I love the clues that you're working with. Cuz like, obviously, again, just some artist had said, oh, it'd be really cool to have a really cool galaxy kind of like how it'd be cool to have a really cool nebula. Let's put it outside the window. Have them looking at it. Well, to look at a galaxy that big with your eyeballs — has to put you in a certain position. I think that Yeah, I think that's interesting. So, I wasn't familiar with this idea of the transportation system that you had to follow these hyperlanes. — So, it's it's — ever explain this? — Yeah. So, apparently, uh various life forms, the space whales, I know they have a fancier name

um as well as some Jedi have the ability to fold space, essentially doing tesseracts. We're stealing ideas from other authors now. — Talk about stealing from Dune, yeah. — Yeah. And in the process, they create paths through space. Got it. Okay. — And then technology also enabled this to happen. So, there is an issue where a lot of force users are actually extremely uncomfortable in hyperspace because they are sensitive to what has happened in the past. You don't see this in the uh uh Star Wars trilogy as much uh because Jedi in the modern era are less capable of than ones in the past era. Um yeah, that gets into genetics issues that Right. But the Right. And so, they're sort of following this idea of there being highway space highways that you have. So, okay. So, let's talk about the science of that, then. Are there space highways? Um not so much. What there are is lower gravity pathways between uh or I guess gravitationally favorable pathways between points. So, you can imagine with each massive object curving space in certain ways, the shortest path between two points isn't going to be a straight line. It's going to be something that is this weird curved path that — Yeah. maximizes how you take advantage of these gravitational wells. Yeah. And this was called the interplanetary superhighway. This was something that came out like maybe learned about it like maybe 20 years ago. And people had done the math where you could essentially drift from a Lagrange point to Lagrange point. And this would explain some of the migration of various objects in the solar system that there are these propellant-free pathways that you can take. And they can take tens of thousands of years for you to get from, say, Earth vicinity and Mars vicinity or vice versa. But for, you know, long, long-term movement within the solar system, this can explain uh the some of the weird migrations that we see. It also starts to get you towards some of the semi-stable things that we have. But that's a different episode. Right. Yeah. Okay. So, so that is transportation. And then how that you've got the ion engines which carry you inside the, you know, at sublight speed. — Right. Which that feels, you know, that's very scientific. — It's both very now and very problematic simultaneously because you have to wonder um just what ions are they flinging that allow them to accelerate that fast? When one of the major problems with ion drives is you're flinging like literal atoms. And even if you upgrade to molecules, you can only fling them so fast. Um and they're called ion drives. So, the idea is they are either uh loading up with a whole lot of mass that they are flinging at rates no magnetic field we have is capable of. Like, not the rate of the particles, but the throughput of the particles is It has a higher flux density than our current ion drives. Um and then you're just like, wow, they're carrying a lot of really high-energy particles. Um yeah, so. That See, that does not bother me at all. Like, someone saying this propulsion system that we know works and has been used on spacecraft and is actually is very um very responsive, lasts for long periods of time, sips at fuel, highly efficient. — about the stability, not the lack of its existence. You can then just say s- future societies will scale this technology up so that you can actually have them be on TIE fighters and they can be flying around doing dogfights. Like, that That is the one of the least things for me. What When you then say, well, you know, could you fold space with these giant ships and wink in and out of existence and travel it at faster-than-light speeds, then we're shifting into Alcubierre drives and warp technology, which requires entirely new physics. Yeah, we don't have that physics. Ion drives like this could exist. I fear for the people using them. Sure. Yeah

but I mean like all of it. I mean Uh — It is not a safe universe. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, you got swords that people can walk around with that create that can melt metal. I mean, come on. Yeah. — Um all right. Uh we're going to travel a little bit more, but it's time for another break. And we're back. Okay, so we've talked about the spaceships. What do you want to What else talk about? Asteroids. Okay. So, so I have two rants. One, I'm sure you've all heard before, and this is the density of the asteroids in asteroid belts in the Star Wars universe is much greater. — No, they're all the same. Orville, Star Wars, Stargate, Battlestar Galactica, it's all the same. They all make the same mistake. They aren't that dense, folks. If they were, the objects would gravitationally pull themselves back together and form large objects. That's just what gravity does. Yeah. And like the asteroid belt, the objects are hundreds of thousands of kilometers apart from each other. Yeah. When you're in the Kuiper Belt, they are millions. Oort Cloud, they are tens of millions of kilometers apart from each other. Space is very empty. Where space is not very empty, things are attracted to each other and either orbiting each other or on collision courses with one another. Or both. Both is an option. And so there is no such thing as an asteroid field. Only right after something has been destroyed. So like right after Alderaan gets blasted apart um that would form a fairly dense field, but for hours. Yeah. — Yeah. Okay. So 100% agree with you. Um What else do you think is uh What else we do? Would you like to talk about the weapons? No, I have a second rant. — have a second You Okay. — Asteroids. So in I believe it is Empire Strikes Back, they are flying the Millennium Falcon through the asteroid belt. And they take damage. They go to land in a cave. I have no problems with the concept of a cave. It's what happens next. So they have landed on a fairly small object in the grand scheme of things. It's significantly smaller than our moon. Mhm. And they land. And I'm fine with the gravity after they land while they're on the Millennium Falcon cuz we've already come to understand it has artificial gravity of some sort. But they step outside. Right. And as they're walking around in what turns out to be the mouth of a big old scary object um they're not experiencing low gravity. Right. They're experiencing normal Earth gravity. — Yeah, they should be bouncing around way more than uh folks on the moon did back in the '60s. They should be like accidentally flinging themselves into the ceiling. And there is somehow a fairly thick atmosphere uh that is allowing flying things to fly. And and that amount of gravity would require that asteroid to be made of You mean a neutron star? Not quite, but definitely it starts to make you question why are they landing here rather than mining this cuz if it's made of that kind of material, clearly this is useful for other purposes. — Yeah. So to be fair — everyone also makes that mistake. You have either Earth gravity or weightlessness. That is all that is ever portrayed in science fiction. I have never ever once seen a lower gravity portrayed in any way. — Eureka. There was one episode of Eureka where hats off to Kevin Grazier cuz he was their science advisor. — Mhm. And they land on Titan and get out to walk around. And I'm like, Titan has low gravity. What's going on here, Kevin? This is my internal dialogue. And then the scientists on the TV show like, this can't be Titan. The gravity's wrong. And I'm like, YES, THEY GOT IT. They figured something out. Well, but they didn't display it. Yeah. One episode of Eureka acknowledging it. — Yes. But like when I think about uh For All Mankind, they're on the moon, they're on um they're on uh they're on Mars. They're pouring liquids. They're walking around. They're climbing ladders. Like it would all just be different. And someone is mentioning in the chat here about The Expanse. Nope, The Expanse doesn't do it either. They don't get it quite right. No, The Expanse when you're on the

Expanse The Expanse when you're on the asteroid station — Yeah, it's not right. — they show birds flying in a way that they would in low gravity. And I was like, oh my god, somebody actually did it. But the way they pour liquid, the way liquids would slosh, the way people would walk around, they would the way they would get out of their chairs. Just walking around — Not quite right. — on a station when you are 1/100 gravity would be totally different or even 1/10 gravity, 1/20 gravity. It just is a totally different experience than what it would be for you to be on Earth. And it's just obviously because it's too complicated. It's way too easy. Why bother? Cuz only nerds like me are going to notice, but still. I do appreciate that in The Expanse they tie up hair in a way that you don't notice. — Yeah, for the for the zero grav. Okay, let's move back to Star Wars. We're not Now I think we just added a fourth thing for the for The Expanse. Um but let's go into um some other aspects of the Star Wars universe. Where else do you want to go? So I think we have to address the elephant in the room. Is it the Death Star? That's bigger than an elephant. I was thinking more the lightsabers. Okay, sure. We'll talk about lightsabers. — [snorts] — So lightsabers uh originally called laser swords in the script uh are clearly plasma swords. Mhm. Um and people do confuse lasers and plasma. I don't fully understand. It is a thing. Um but what's really cool is if you do assume that they're plasma swords the colors that they're at are such that you can say that it's either contaminants or they're different temperatures such that uh Jedi with blue uh kyber crystals have much hotter um laser plasma swords uh than the red Sith. Um so I just appreciate that. Although I'm more on the it's probably contaminants side. — Right. Yeah. Um cuz that is more in keeping with the kyber crystals as a way of handling the plasma. Now what is really fun to think about is tokamaks use tokamak uh nuclear fusion. Um uses either fission. Yes, they're fission. — Tokamaks are fusion. They are fusion. Okay, I'm having a moment, clearly. — Yeah, yeah. So it's a magnetic helium. They're heavy elements. No, they're [snorts] hydrogen helium. Yeah, they're hydrogen. So tokamak is a type of fusion reaction. So you can either have the laser ignition, which is what was done finally. They reached energy parity in the US at the National Ignition Facility. The other option is your magnetic containment, which is a tokamak reactor. And that's what's being done for the ITER experiment, which is being built in Europe right now. And you essentially take fusion You take hydrogen, contain it, heat it up to ludicrous temperatures so that like because in the sun you get enormous pressure at reasonable temperatures. And by reasonable I say 4 million or whatever it is, 15 million degrees, right? And then you have the entire pressure of the sun, and that gets you fusion. But you can't produce the pressure in a hydrogen in a tokamak reactor. So instead you go for the temperature, and so they go to whatever 300 Celsius, something ludicrously hot or 100 Celsius, 100 million, sorry, 100 million Celsius. And that gets you the recipe again, but you have to use this magnetic containment that keeps the thing together. And so You have a donut-shaped magnetic Yes. — which is apparently where I stopped reading cuz I got so excited cuz it's a toroid. Yeah. And so this beautifully contained plasma doesn't have essentially stray filaments of plasma because it's confined in a shape that the magnetic fields cause things to just curve back around. Now in order to get a stable lightsaber it would have to actually be a hollow long, skinny toroid that allows this no hair magnetic field solution. And so you can imagine uh the best way to do this is to have a dipole that flies out as you turn on your lightsaber. What if you had a monopole? Would that

work? I don't know. — monopole? Yeah. — Magnetic monopoles are one of those theoretical things that doesn't seem to actually exist. So I haven't gone [clears throat] down that rabbit hole. — Right. Yeah. But I think again, it doesn't really bother me that much. — No, but it's fun to think that the same science that works in tokamak reactors also could explain lightsabers, which means we might be able to create these as a really good cutting tool and way to slaughter your neighbors. It would be Yeah, it would be really amazing that if like you saw the lightsaber — Yeah. and then in just the right orientation, you could see that the lightsaber was actually a was had a line in the middle. That it was following a kind of toroidal shape. Yeah. — That would be like a very long skinny toroidal shape. And so it would look like a sword. But if you And because even when you look at the lightsabers, the ends of them are rounded. Like the end of the very end of it is rounded. And if it's a So it'd be very interesting if they had a lightsaber and they were fighting with it and it actually turns out you looked at it just right, it's actually like a balloon animal turn, you know, like a long balloon animal pinched off at both ends with a sort of gap in between. That would be really That would be great. An electromagnetic field like this hum. And Yeah. you can imagine the magnetic field reconnections occurring when lightsabers collide with one another. And so the one place where it falls down is where you have two lightsabers getting held in contact with one another. Those magnetic fields would probably merge and just create some sort of really nasty moving plasma bluh. There's no word for what would occur. Yeah. Um so I was going fine until I started thinking about collisions and Yes. But — colliding with plasma isn't going to be a rigid — Well, and the magnetic field versus magnetic field magnetic fields are I mean they're fields, they flow like water. — But they can add, they can subtract from each other. Yeah, it would be a mess, wouldn't it? You'd be like pouring out contained magnetic plasma across you pouring out plasma on each other the second your swords hit. That would be a bad day. — fields. Yeah. So the sum of the two fields, you're now like that's math I don't want to do, but it could be fun. Yeah, but you could get the some of the fields you could also get the fields canceling each other out. You could get the right? You could get And so what you would end up with is a spray of plasma on each compo- on each fighter. That would be very bad. All right. We're We need to take another break. — And we're back. All right. We're running out of time. So we've got to speed run through the through some of the other aspects of Star Wars cuz there's way too much. Okay. Can we just say the force does nothing? So the force is interesting because the force is instantaneous. Uh so it clearly doesn't travel at the speed of light because Obi-Wan is able to sense the destruction of Alderaan at a distance while they're traveling at faster than the speed of light. So the force is somehow instantaneous. It has uh massive effects on gravity. So uh you can also realize that uh Amidala Queen Amidala uh she's a force user. If you look at where she frees herself in the second um where they're fighting at in the big gladiatorial battle and all the robots come in at the end. I guess that's Yeah, that's the second movie. I don't It's It has almost been washed from my mind. — It's okay. It's the one where Obi-Wan ends up riding a lizard because he's far better at riding animals than he is at flying spaceships. Um and if you look at the height that she's jumping from and the rate at which she falls in the movie, you can actually calculate that the rate that gravity is affecting her is not the same rate that it's affecting other things in the field. So she must be a force user, which had been predicted in other things. Um but the over and over across all the different series, uh there's a in the Clone Wars comic series, there's an episode where Obi-Wan theoretically dies so that they can have him go under go undercover in with some stuff.

And Ahsoka's like he should have been able to survive that fall because force users manipulate gravity left and right. It's just what they do. So gravity and the force are deeply tied together. Right. And so whatever it is, it's instantaneous. So it's kind of like an entanglement. Yes. And it has something to do with gravity. Yes. Right. But it also has something to do with minds, which again It's working at a quantum mechanics level for some things. Yeah. So And then it's capable of warping space and time if it was force users who created the hyperspace tunnels. Right. Okay. All right. What Was there Were there any other aspects that you wanted to talk about the science of Star Wars before we wrap up this episode? I mean I'm I'm willing to say that I will die on the hill that galaxy long ago and far away was not a massive galaxy and that all the maps we see across everything from their Goonies-like child series that came out recently to the maps in the third trilogy uh all seem to indicate we're looking at a dwarf galaxy. — Right. So the last thing that I think is kind of interesting, you know, I mean I brought this up earlier, which was the Death Star. And that is just that if you want to destroy a planet with a laser then you have to overcome the gravitational binding energy of the planet. That is the That's the math that you need to do. And so you So if you're looking to do a calculation of how much energy would be required, you just need to calculate the gravitational binding energy of Earth, for example. And then that you get that calculation, which is essentially how much energy would take to lift a chunk of Earth, like take a kilogram of Earth off the planet and out onto an escape trajectory. And then grab another kilogram. Of course, Earth has become less massive while you lift these kilograms off. Add up all that energy. Mhm. You know, it's a calculus thing. Once you're down to zero, that is the total amount of energy that must be delivered by some weapon. And if you can do that, then you can destroy a planet. Um and then in the sequels, they have the Starkiller base. — Yeah, where they're clearly Right. And they're firing a laser across light-years of distance and then destroying targets, which of course doesn't work because it's an energy weapon and needs to travel at the speed of light. You would need to wait uh years for the destruction of this weapon to come through. So that I have a problem with. Uh the rest of the things, the weapons is fine. Lasers, sounds good. Uh what was it? Proton torpedoes? Fine. That's Star Trek. No, that's photon torpedoes. — Oh, you're right. — Yeah. In Star Wars, they're proton torpedoes. — Okay. You're right. — And then they have which I think is great is they have um ion blasters. But they can disrupt the electronics of the spacecraft that they hit. Destroy drop the shields. So one of the things that remains deeply amusing to me that is sideways from the science we normally do, and that's the lack of passwords that R2-D2 has to know. Right. — Uh so clearly — Bad security. Yeah. — Yeah. Either R2-D2 is running that new uh mythos software uh that came out or is just hacker extraordinaire because there clearly are passwords in the Star Wars universe, just not that bother R2-D2. Yeah. I love the lack of computers in the Star Wars universe. I think that's terrific. It's totally unrealistic, but I love it. And uh yeah, I think that having it go it could because it's sort of like it's too easy. Like once the computers are super fancy and the you know, you think about the level of AI that we have today. Just imagine if you're on some spaceship and you you're needing questions to be answered. That's what's like in Star Trek, which we'll talk about in an upcoming episode. All right. One last thought. The Star Wars universe has the moral equivalent of switch for handheld devices while Star Trek has the moral equivalent of iPads. So, you can see where different places were inspired. — Right. Yeah, totally. All right, that was fun. Uh may the force be with you. And on to you. — All right, we would now like to thank a new round of humans because it is a new month.

month. Uh so, if you join in the month of April, this will be the first month you have a chance of hearing your name. There are a lot of you, so we're going to divide this up and do a different group each week. And as always, I'm really sorry for my lack of ability to pronounce things. That's part of the charm. Yeah, it is. It really is. All right, thanks everyone and we'll see you next week. Bye-bye. And you need to run. I I've got a couple of minutes. Yeah. — Okay. Um Let's see. So, I have 792. So, thank you everyone who's here watching us live. It's greatly appreciated. We had four tornadoes through my county on Monday. Four. — Yeah. Two alarms in one day before, but having the sirens go off four times and every mobile device in the house had to join in with the sirens and the dogs are now traumatized. Um yeah, Monday was a lot. So, I want to read something out to you and I want you to respond. — Okay. Uh I'm uploaded. Um where is it? Okay, I got to grab this. Hold on. Um Okay, this is a comment on one of my episodes. Uh it's Astronomy Cast. I don't know why Mr. Cain isn't promoting the podcast in every talking about Yeah, single episode here. Should happen in my opinion. Why not try to get more ears and eyeballs to something that you participate in every week. It's just surprising. Pam work should would benefit as well. Fraser has a huge astronomy channel while Pamela has been left with less visibility. And I'm surprised that you and Pamela don't do more video work together or that you didn't start this video empire together. I suppose everything has a reason. I'm guessing you started separately first because working alone could be sometimes faster, but then Fraser at least ended up having a big team once the Fraser Cain channel blew up. So, I responded, but I would be interested to hear how you would respond to that comment. It's a completely different history. Uh Universe Today has been doing videos and news articles. Uh your news articles go back to what '97? '98? '99? Okay. — I was being a space journalist and writing and reporting on with Universe Today for 10 years before we even met. — Right. And I was working on uh citizen science for the other side of my career up until 2017 where we started doing uh just a daily Twitch stream where we were either myself or Andreas Plaitis or Matthew Richardson uh who were other scientists that were working on CosmoQuest citizen science projects with me. Um we started doing a daily talking about the journal articles we were reading, which is a different audience than what Fraser does. Um and Fraser and I collaborated on uh the Weekly Space Hangout. We collaborated on the virtual star parties. Um and it was a random ass moment um during the pandemic when uh I was asked to convert both Astronomy Cast and Daily Space into stuff that could air on Now Media TV. — Mm. And that was when the Daily Space went from being uh entirely just like one of us talking straight to camera and taking questions on Twitch to being something we actually produced. Um and and then somewhere along the line during the pandemic um it just became one of the major things that we're doing and uh yeah, we are so much smaller. Like we are 1,500 downloads an episode, which is nothing, but Ally and I are super proud of what we create. It is a very different audience than what Fraser does and Fraser and I are always happy to collaborate with one another. Um and it was not my intention that CosmoQuest would become a major media star, but in these uh really bad funding days, it turns out that our media is how we pay our server bills. — Yeah. Um Yeah, and the thing that I mentioned in my response to that was Yeah, I mean, we have been doing separate jobs for 10 years before we met. And the and Astronomy Cast was just this collaboration that we were doing. Um and the other thing that I

mentioned is like I don't take a salary from Astronomy Cast. Like my contribution to the salaries of the people that work with you and it That's my the time that I do. You know, 792 times I've shown up and done my part to contribute to the project that you guys are working on and to pay the salaries of Richard and Ally and all the people who work with you. And that uh you are on a totally different track, right? You you're you are doing these citizen science projects. You were running CosmoQuest educationally. You're a 501c3. You are a researcher. You work for the Planetary Science Institute that we mention every every week. Like it's just you're just a totally different Yeah, bread. And then you you've brought on all this other stuff. Stuff that I had been doing for 12, you know, 12 years, 15, whatever. And I couldn't be happier and I promote it as much as I can. And whenever you do some kind of event like your hangout with phones or whatever, I again, I participate Yeah. in doing that. And I think I shout out Astronomy Cast. It's in every single newsletter that I do. And then I shout out Astronomy Cast. I remind people probably once a month, maybe a couple of times a month in the episodes that I do in my various stuff. So, yeah, it's just we are separate two separate businesses, two separate entities, run our own thing, And we collaborate on this. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's funny that people sort of imagine a closer um sort of working entity. You know, there's some kind of machine that we run as part of but it's totally like we literally we just show up. — three different Patreons. Yeah, totally. Yeah, yeah. One for Astronomy Cast, one for CosmoQuest, one for Universe Today just cuz they're separate creatures. Yeah. Yeah, so anyway, it's interesting that I that I got that comment. And so, just sort of shows like I'm so glad that people appreciate Astronomy Cast. And I'm so proud of what we built with this show. Um But it's a stepping stone. It is Yeah. foundational content. It is fun. I think that's part of why both of us do it is Yeah. It's good to get to share the camera and just laugh with somebody else periodically. — Yeah, totally. Yeah, yeah. And that's the part that people don't see is like when we share the camera and then we just, you know, support each other through all of the stuff that we're going through. Um okay, we've reached the end of the hour. I do have to run now. Uh but yeah, so we're going to do Star Trek next and then maybe some sort of eight. — I I'm going to go rewrite the schedule. Okay, awesome. I love it. Okay. Fantastic. Thanks everyone and uh we'll see you all next week. Bye-bye, everyone. And oh, shoot. Awkward ending. My mouth doesn't want to move. Do you want me to stop the stream? — Uh that won't help with Twitch. Okay, go.