CREWE Cinema Science Star Wars

SCREEN EDUCATION

Cinema Science Using the Force of Star Wars

PERHAPS THE MOST UBIQUITOUS OF ALL BIGSCREEN FRANCHISES, THE STAR WARS SERIES HAS OFTEN PRIORITISED ENTERTAINMENT OVER SCIENTIFIC ACCURACY IN CONSTRUCTING ITS SINGULAR, ICONIC UNIVERSE. AS DAVE CREWE FINDS, HOWEVER, THERE IS A COMPLEX MIXTURE OF FACT, FICTION AND SPECULATION LYING UNDERNEATH THE FILMS’ FANCIFUL CONCEPTS – AND, AS SUCH, PLENTIFUL LEARNING OPPOR­ TUNITIES FOR CURIOUS SCIENCE STUDENTS.

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SCREEN EDUCATION

Cinema Science Using the Force of Star Wars

PERHAPS THE MOST UBIQUITOUS OF ALL BIGSCREEN FRANCHISES, THE STAR WARS SERIES HAS OFTEN PRIORITISED ENTERTAINMENT OVER SCIENTIFIC ACCURACY IN CONSTRUCTING ITS SINGULAR, ICONIC UNIVERSE. AS DAVE CREWE FINDS, HOWEVER, THERE IS A COMPLEX MIXTURE OF FACT, FICTION AND SPECULATION LYING UNDERNEATH THE FILMS’ FANCIFUL CONCEPTS – AND, AS SUCH, PLENTIFUL LEARNING OPPOR­ TUNITIES FOR CURIOUS SCIENCE STUDENTS.

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W

hen it comes to colossal cinematic franchises, nothing compares to Star Wars.

Across more than forty years, a dozen or so feature films,1 countless Expanded Universe TV shows and novels, and an unending stream of merchandise, George Lucas’ creation has become a cultural juggernaut, redefining the meaning of the word ‘blockbuster’. Whether you’ve seen a single film or not, Star Wars is, in the words of Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) in Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (Richard Marquand, 1983), ‘inescapable’.

The Star Wars franchise, while putatively science fiction, has never evinced much interest in the scientific mechanisms underpinning its saga of galactic good and evil, opting for more of a space-fantasy vibe than the intricate world-building of competitors like Star Trek. That hasn’t stopped a kind of cottage industry springing up around the science of Star Wars. There’s a book (The Science of Star Wars, by NASA astrophysicist Jeanne Cavelos, published in 1999), a Discovery Channel series of the same name produced in 2005 and countless internet articles examining just how the Star Wars universe fits together.

All of this positions Star Wars as the perfect stimulus material for secondary Science students. You can expect most students, fans or otherwise, to be familiar with the broad strokes of the franchise – lightsabers, spaceships, heavybreathing villains swathed in black – without needing to play a single minute from the film. The films’ incidental engagement with its science makes for a convenient platform for exploring how planetary motion, astrophysics and technology work in our galaxy, and how Lucas’ speculative visions from 1977 compare to the scientific advances of today.

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‘A galaxy far, far away’ Though introduced as part of our universe – ‘far, far away’ and ‘a long time ago’, of course – the rules of space in Star Wars seem distinct from our own. Whether it’s dogfights accompanied by the sound of ion engines and laser blasts despite taking place in a vacuum or spaceships travelling faster than the speed of light, Star Wars breaks – or, at the very least, bends – the rules defining our understanding of how physics operates outside the Earth’s atmosphere.

As genre-movie fans would know from Alien’s (Ridley Scott, 1979) famous tagline – ‘In space no one can hear you scream’ – sound doesn’t travel in space. That doesn’t seem to be the case in Star Wars, though. Spaceship battles are an integral part of pretty well every film in the franchise, and they’re inevitably accompanied by the roar of the Millennium Falcon, the whine of TIE fighters’ twin ion engines and the pew-pew of laser fire being exchanged. The explanation for this is quite simple: while filming Episode IV – A New Hope2 (1977), Lucas prioritised excitement over astrophysical accuracy.

While some Expanded Universe instalments have offered up half-baked explanations (sensor systems that assist their pilots by replicating the sounds), within a Science classroom this phenomenon serves as a jumping-off point for a conversation around why sound shouldn’t travel in the vacuum of space. An understanding of the propagation of soundwaves through a medium is an integral building block in the eventual understanding of the broader nature of waves in Physics, and thus worth exploring in the context of a sound or general waves unit.

Another example that’s attracted the attention of the many naysayers of Episode VIII – The Last Jedi (Rian Johnson, 2017) is Leia’s (Carrie Fisher) brief sojourn into the empty expanse of space early in that film. More than a few sci-fi films propose that exposure to the chilly, pressureless environment of space would lead to instantaneous freezing or even an explosion; as Cassidy Ward details at SyFy Wire, however, data from NASA experiments in a vacuum environment suggest that ‘it’s not impossible, nor even unlikely, that Leia could come out the other side of that ordeal at least mostly intact’.3 So there’s at least some science fact mixed up with the fiction.

Then there’s the ever-controversial sci-fi topic: fasterthan-light (FTL) travel. Way back in A New Hope, Han Solo (Harrison Ford) brags that the Millennium Falcon will ‘make it .5 past light speed’. It’s not entirely clear what ‘.5 past’ means here, but contemporary astrophysics tells us that’s impossible; special relativity suggests that you’d need zero mass to even approach light speed. In any case, it’s hard to put too much stock in Han’s bragging when he subsequently boasts about making ‘the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs’ – a questionable claim when parsecs are a unit of distance,4 not time.

Since Star Wars is serious business nowadays, we can’t resolve these apparent errors by proposing that Lucas or

Han were talking out of their sarlacc pits. Instead, the canon has proffered two resolutions. The first is a classification of engine speeds, found at the crowdsourced Star Wars reference site Wookieepedia,5 which clarifies that Han was referring to his engine speed (the details of which I’d avoid exploring unless you’re particularly interested in imaginary engine specifications).

More relevant is the wiki’s explanation of how ‘hyperdrives’ work in the Star Wars universe; rather than accelerating beyond the speed of light, ships enter hyperspace – a sort of parallel dimension of space-time – something that is within the bounds of our current conceptions of astrophysics, if very speculative. Nitpicking aside, Science classrooms could engage in a fruitful discussion of the challenges of FTL travel in the context of special relativity and Star Wars. You could even examine how the ‘Holdo manoeuvre’ – in which the eponymous character (Laura Dern) decimates an Imperial fleet through a kamikaze hyperspace launch in The Last Jedi – gels with the theoretical conception of hyperspace.

Oh, and that ‘parsecs’ mix-up? It’s been handwaved away in, at first, the Expanded Universe and, eventually, Solo (Ron Howard, 2018) as a dangerous shortcut. Curious, given the shooting script appends Han’s famous line with an observation that it is merely a ‘stupid attempt to impress’ and ‘obvious misinformation’.6

Though introduced as part of our universe – ‘far, far away’ and ‘a long time ago’, of course – the rules of space in Star Wars seem distinct from our own.

PREVIOUS SPREAD, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: C-3P0 AND R2-D2; LUKE SKYWALKER (MARK HAMILL) WITH R2-D2; DARTH VADER; LUKE WITH PRINCESS LEIA (CARRIE FISHER) AND HAN SOLO (HARRISON FORD) OPPOSITE, L–R: YODA; WICKET, AN EWOK ABOVE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: LUKE ON TATOOINE; A SALT PLAIN ON CRAIT; DARTH VADER ON HOTH; AN IMPERIAL STAR DESTROYER FIRES AT THE MILLENNIUM FALCON

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‘That’s no moon’ Star Wars is thick with different planetary ecosystems. From the verdant forest of the moon of Endor through the icy wilderness of Hoth to the salt plains of Crait, each planet is distinctive – though presumably not especially diverse in and of themselves. Our Earth’s surface has environments from desert to glacial with everything in between; in Star Wars, things seem entirely more homogenous.

How does the Star Wars galaxy, brimming with lifesupporting planets, compare to our own sliver of space?

Well, that’s what exoplanet hunters are trying to find out.

Exoplanets – meaning planets that orbit a distant star – are too small and far away to be directly observed by our current astronomic equipment, but a host of tricky techniques enable scientists to locate planets that might one day, or even already, support life themselves. These techniques include transit photometry – where a star’s dimming correlates with a planet briefly orbiting between the star and Earth – and measurements of a star’s radial velocity to determine the gravitational wobbles caused by orbiting bodies. We’re still a few giant leaps away from finding our galaxy’s Endor, though.

Then there’s the most famous Star Wars planet of all: Tatooine. The home of Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), ObiWan Kenobi (Alec Guinness7) and the ‘wretched hive of scum and villainy’ called Mos Eisley is perhaps best remembered for its iconic binary sunset. A New Hope famously portrayed Skywalker grappling with his emotions as he surveyed a pair of suns sinking toward the desert horizon.

The concept of a planet in a dual-star system8 might have just been a flight of fancy on Lucas’ part, but it’s not as far-fetched as you’d expect. These are known as ‘circumbinary planets’, and scientists – who, it’s fair to assume, count a few Star Wars fans in their number – have spent some energy searching for them from Earth. While a mischievously named project titled ‘The Attempt to Observe Outerplanets in Non-single-stellar Environments’ (‘TATOOINE’ for short) failed to find any circumbinary planets, subsequent searches have proven the existence of such bodies.9 Tatooine might be the most famous planet in Star Wars, but, if we extend the criteria to include any astronomical bodies, it has some tough competition from the various iterations of the Death Star. Introduced in A New Hope,

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the planet-killing space station – an undeniably resonant concept – appears in some version or other in every second Star Wars film, give or take.10 For students interested in engineering, the Death Star opens up a plethora of questions. While it’s unlikely we’d be able to build such a large space station anytime soon, one would hope we’d avoid the design flaws that seem to plague its various manifestations at every turn – or, at least, identify them. A 2016 engineering study used the Death Star to compare engineers’ error-identification techniques by seeing which methods most efficiently identified the space station’s fatal failing.11 Then there’s the analysis of the aftermath of the Rebellion’s increasingly frequent take-downs of these apocalyptic juggernauts. A 1997 fan theory suggests that those fluffy Ewoks of Endor’s Forest Moon would’ve been eradicated in the wake of the second Death Star’s obliteration in Return of the Jedi. And, unlike most fan theories, this one is supported by scientific analyses; as detailed

by Dave Mosher in Business Insider, most experts agree that things wouldn’t have ended well for Wicket (Warwick Davis) and friends.12

‘A more civilised age’ Not all Star Wars tech is as gigantic – and fragile – as its series of Death Stars. Like any self-respecting sci-fi universe, Star Wars is thick with unique creations and contraptions, running the gamut from laser pistols to landspeeders.

Landspeeders have always piqued my interest. They’re the vehicles you see zooming about the place throughout the franchise, typically a metre or so above the air (as distinct from more manoeuvrable aircraft like X-wings). The basic concept of a hovering car would be a breakthrough for modern transport, avoiding all the problems of friction, wear and tear, and lubrication that plague wheeled vehicles. It might be an interesting exercise for a science class to explore just how much energy you could save without requiring wheels – thereby giving some idea about how much energy you’d want to spend resisting gravity – and research current inno­vations (and challenges) in the field.

As recently as 2017, for instance, Renault was exploring a hover-car concept called ‘The Float’,13 though it’s a long way from completion.

Droids – the Star Wars term for robots – are also not as far removed from reality as they might have seemed back in 1977. Granted, modern robots might not be able to translate 7 million languages while offering passiveaggressive commentary on your attempts to navigate an asteroid cluster, but robotics is an incredibly fast-growing industry with applications across a dizzying number of fields. Exploring just how close modern technology is to approximating Star Wars droids is a great way to engage students, and perhaps even plant a few seeds for budding robotics engineers.

Finally, the most iconic piece of Star Wars technology is undoubtedly the lightsaber. These laser swords are, sadly, the most far-fetched; while we might soon approximate the capabilities of Star Wars’ droids, it’s unlikely we’ll see space wizards wielding fluorescent magic swords anytime soon – and more’s the pity! Nonetheless, lightsabers open up numerous avenues for interested young scientists. They might wish to understand how real lasers work, and why it’s not so easy to turn Earth lasers into lightsabers. Or young padawans might instead investigate how lightsaber lore – the need for Force users to find rare kyber gems to build their own weapon – aligns with the importance of mined materials like copper and gold in modern technology.

Odds and ends Given the sheer size of the Star Wars universe, there really is no end to the scientific explorations one can bring to bear. But, just briefly, here are some more topics that might excite interest in science students.

• The Force: how does it work? Is the prospect of tele­ kinesis entirely fictional, or could we harness such a phenomenon one day? And what about that ‘midi-chlorians’ nonsense? Maybe you could examine the genetic component of Force sensitivity – keeping in mind that the series is notoriously inconsistent on the subject.

• The psychology of Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd / Hayden Christensen / David Prowse): the most fascinating character in the Star Wars universe, Anakin goes from a hero to a villain and back again, thanks to a challenging childhood and teenage years torn between a couple of cults. What does modern psychological theory tell us about a man like Darth Vader?

• The language of Star Wars: forget C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) for a second. Just how is it that Han – and, indeed, pretty much everyone by the time we hit Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker (JJ Abrams, 2019) – can perfectly understand Chewbacca’s (Peter Mayhew / Joonas Suotamo) whines and roars?

Dave Crewe is a Brisbane-based secondary teacher and critic.

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Endnotes 1 A rough count that varies depending on whether you count animated features like 2008’s The Clone Wars (Dave Filoni) or made-for-television films like The Ewok Adventure (John Korty, 1984) or the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special (Steve Binder, 1978).

Though the film was originally released as Star Wars and later retitled to Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, I’m sticking to the films’ subtitles in this piece for brevity and clarity.

3 Cassidy Ward, ‘Could Leia Really Survive the Vacuum of Space?’, SyFy Wire, 9 January 2018, <https://www.syfy. com/syfywire/could-leia-really-survive-the-vacuum-of -space>, accessed 16 February 2020.

4 And a unit of distance that seems oddly out of place in a galaxy far, far away! One parsec is the distance at which the mean radius of the Earth’s orbit subtends an angle of one second of arc. Given that the Earth isn’t part of the Star Wars universe – one assumes, anyway – it doesn’t make much sense that they’d be using a unit of measurement defined in terms of an unknown (or, at best, insignificant) planet!

5 As detailed in ‘Hyperdrive’, Wookieepedia, the Star Wars Wiki, <https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Hyperdrive/ Legends>, accessed 16 February 2020.

6 Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope shooting script, revised fourth draft, 15 January 1976.

7 Also, of course, played by Ewan McGregor in the prequels and the recently announced Disney+ television series; see Will Thorne, ‘Ewan McGregor Confirms Obi-Wan Kenobi Disney Plus Series to Shoot Next Year’, Variety, 23 August 2019, <https://variety.com/2019/tv/news/ ewan-mcgregor-obi-wan-kenobi-disney-plus-series -1203311196/>, accessed 25 February 2020.

8 When considering circumbinary systems, you might also want to springboard from the ‘two-body problem’ to the ‘three-body problem’, a famously complicated scenario in classical mechanics. Both of these are discussed in more detail in Rhett Allain, ‘This Is the Only Way to Solve the Three-Body Problem’, WIRED, 16 June 2016, <https:// www.wired.com/2016/06/way-solve-three-body -problem/>, accessed 25 February 2020.

9 As discussed in more detail in Michael Greshko, ‘The Real Science Inspired by Star Wars’, National Geographic, updated 1 December 2019, <https://www. nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/12/151209-star -wars-science-movie-film/>, accessed 16 February 2020.

10 It’s debatable whether you can include the planet-killing Star Destroyers in The Rise of Skywalker – though, given the film spends a not-insignificant amount of time in the ruins of the second Death Star, I’m happy to count it.

11 Guy Walker et al., ‘What the Death Star Can Tell Us About Ergonomics Methods’, Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science, vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 402–22, 16 March 2016, abstract available at <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10 .1080/1463922X.2015.1130879?journalCode=ttie20>, accessed 16 February 2020.

12 Dave Mosher, ‘Scientists Are Backing Up the Most Terrifying Fan Theory in the Star Wars Universe’, Business Insider Australia, 21 December 2015, <https:// www.businessinsider.com.au/endor-holocaust-star -wars-science-physics-2015-12?r=US&IR=T#the -endor-holocaust-fan-theory-dates-back-to-1997 -when-it-first-appeared-on-a-website-called -theforcenet-1>, accessed 16 February 2020.

13 Kate Streit, ‘Hover Cars Could Be a Reality Sooner than We Think’, Simplemost, 11 October 2017, <https://www. simplemost.com/renault-hover-car-name-the-float/>, accessed 16 February 2020.

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