Kris Burns

Signature Assignment Option #2

Star Wars is one of the most iconic films and series ever made, but

could a galaxy such as that exist on the basis of what we know about physics

today? In this paper I will show how different aspects of the movie are

inconsistent with modern physics, specifically dealing with outer space and

astronomy, but also one plausibly accurate circumstance. Star Wars:

Episode IV A New Hope is not accurate with modern physics in these three

aspects: sound in space, gravity in space, and hyperspeed travel.

Many scenes in Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope take place in

space, in fact the opening scene is an example of this. Besides the movie

score, which is expected in a film and is not intended to contribute to

accurate science, the movie shows many sounds happening in space. Some

examples would be the sound of rockets, ships, weapons, collisions,

explosions, and even the sounds of a giant asteroid worm that tries to eat

the space ship of our heroes, along with many more instances. This is a

problem because sound, unlike light, cannot travel through a vacuum and

requires substantial matter, in the form of air, earth, water, organic or

mineral materials to embody and give it presence. (Revill, 2016) Sound can

only travel to our ears through vibrating matter, most commonly air

molecules, until it vibrates our ear drums and gets transmitted and

understood in our brains. Given that most of the occurrences of these

examples in the movie happen in deep space, there should be no sound

because of the lack of molecules for the sound to travel through. Therefore,
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we should not hear, as an audience, things like rockets, weapons, explosions,

collisions, explosions, monsters, etc. in the deep space locations in the

movie. Without enough matter and molecules for the sound to vibrate

through and travel to our ears, this becomes an inconsistency with sci-fi

fantasy and physics.

The second example I will use is gravity in space. Gravity is something

that we havent completely unlocked in respect to explaining and

understanding what it is and how it works. Isaac Newton provides us with

accurate equations that are relative to mass, but Albert Einstein gave us a

more correct theoretical perspective to explain gravity with the relationship

of mass and its effect on space fabric (Siegfried 2015). Even though there

are some accuracies in the Star Wars film, some of the things that are not

aligned with physics are the gravity within the space ships, the way that a

crashing fighter ship falls into and towards a bigger ship as if there is some

attraction there, etc. Unless the space ships in Star Wars are more advanced

than our modern physics and have sources of anti-gravity, the people inside

the massive ships, such as the opening scenes Empire cruiser, should be

floating around like our astronauts at the space station. However, in the

movie, the Empire officials and soldiers are walking through these ships,

which are flying in deep space, as if they are walking on earth with the same

gravitational effects. The only way that is possible is for the development of

anti-gravity, because they dont even try to use artificial gravity such as

rotational momentum to simulate gravity. I also mentioned how some of the

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smaller fighter ships would crash after being hit. In the movie, the smaller

ships fall along a curved path, seemingly always towards the larger battle

cruisers. This is false because in space, where gravities effects are lessened

because of distance from planets, the effects of inertia should not result in a

curved path of the falling object. However, if the ships did contain some

sort of anti-gravity device, it would make sense for the ships to fall towards

these larger ships. Once again, the gravity in outer space as shown in Star

Wars is inconsistent with modern physics.

The last inconsistency I will discuss is what the people in the movie

called hyperspeed or hyperspace. In the movie, there are all of these

ships that have the ability to flip a switch and travel so fast, that they travel

across their galaxy in a matter of seconds. They merely need to check that

their path is void of anything they would run into and obliterate themselves.

In regards to this concept and in order to travel that fast, their galaxy must

be very small, their bodies must be immune to super massive G-forces, or

they must be able to travel faster than the speed of light. According to

Francis Diep, our galaxy, the Milky Way, is 100,000 lightyears in diameter. Or

in other words, by traveling at the speed of light, which is about 300 million

meters per second. Albert Einstein stated that the maximum speed capable

of anything is the speed of light (Siegfried 2015). If the galaxy in Star Wars

is anything similar to the Milky Way, even at the maximum speed of light, it

should take many years to travel from place to place, rather than less than a

minute. Even if the Star Wars technology were super advanced, physics
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itself says that traveling that fast is impossible. From another perspective,

our heroes Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Chewbacca, and others must have

nearly indestructible bodies. The astronauts that ride in rockets off of earth

need to undergo intense training to withstand G-forces. They will experience

about 3 times the force of gravity with a change from standing still to

gradually reaching 8,000 meters per second in order to escape earths

gravity. If they are experiencing 3 Gs, imagine what Chewy and company

are experiencing if they jump from their average flight speed to more than 3

million meters per second! As cool as the concept of hyperspace travel is,

again, it is completely a sci-fi fantasy.

Although we all love Star Wars and its entertaining fictional universe,

the science regarding outer space lacks the scientific validity of what modern

physics tells us what and should happen out in space. These examples I

have shared, sound in space, gravity in space, and hyperspeed travel, show

how unaligned with the laws of nature this movie series is. Despite these

facts, we all love Star Wars and it should stay that way, but merely as an epic

sci-fi obsession rather than a credible source to learn about our universe.
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References

Diep, Francis (2013). The Size of the Milky Way Galaxy Shown to Scale.

Popular Science http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-04/cool-

galaxy-size-comparison-chart

Revill, George (2016). How is space made in sound? Spatial mediation,

critical phenomenology and the political agency of sound. Progress in

Human Geography, Vol. 40 Issue 2

Siegfried, Tom (2015). Getting a Grip on Gravity. Science News, Vol. 188

Issue 8