THE SCI-FI PODCAST EP 14: The Science of Star Wars

TSFP Science of Star Wars Hologram

Welcome to The SciFi Podcasta wretched hive of scum and villainy a bi-weekly podcast focused on in-depth discussion of all things Science Fiction. The SciFi Podcast features three hosts—Mattroid, Solo, and Station!—and frequent guests. Each episode we look at a science fiction theme or franchise and take the discussion where no show has gone before.

This episode we bring back our real life friend and a real life physicist, Brian “The Brain” Patchett, to get his insights on the use of science (and pseudo-science) in the Star Wars saga. Brian teases lightsabers and gives us a full rundown on speeders, blasters, warp drives, deflector shields, The Death Star and more.

We also officially welcome Brain into the fold, updating his status from “special guest” to “contributor” … but contributing what, exactly? Well, besides guesting on great podcasts like this that will melt YOUR brain, OUR Brain writes incredibly-interesting essays for the site about the real science behind filmic fiction. If you haven’t read his “Brain Blogs” you are truly doing yourself a disservice. The most applicable to this week’s episode is his most recent essay, “Laser vs. Plasma, Sword Battle of Doom!,” or as Matt says “All About Lightsabers,” but they are all great.

Theme music courtesy of I Hear Sirens, featuring Matt on bass and Liz on keyboard. Hear more of I Hear Sirens ethereal, instrumental, post-rock at BandCamp. Podcast production and artwork SpaceWolf.
TSFP Science of Star Wars Falcon

94 thoughts on “THE SCI-FI PODCAST EP 14: The Science of Star Wars

    • That’s pretty great! If you follow Adam Savage’s podcasts or the Tested videos on youtube you can see a bunch of cool replica processes including the DL-44 and another one of Harrison’s weapons from Blade Runner.

  1. I hope Brain continues to slowly receive promotions over time including really absurd titles like ‘Elite contributor (class III)’ or ‘Junior junior host’.

    • Hahaha! So good.

      It does come off that way, but definitely not the intent.

      If I had to guess what Matt’s thinking, I think he just wanted to find a way to make Brain an official member of the team, even though he’ll continue doing thecexsct same thing–mostly writing science essays for the blog and saving his immense talents for those audio recordings where it really counts.

      I also just keep thinking of Matt as Michael from The Office with all of the “assistant to the regional manager” discussion, but he’d have to be giving “Junior, junior host” to someone more deserving of that title, like Andy.

    • It’s partially an inside joke and partially me wanting to make him an official member of the team in some fashion. Given his outstanding contributions yet lack of official hosting duties, “contributor” seems like the most applicable title.

      Don’t worry. Several more episodes and he’ll be bumped up to “special consultant in charge of powerful science thoughts”.

  2. A couple of questions I have from listening to the podcast:

    – Okay, the Death Star. It’s not possible for it to blow up a planet the size of Alderaan. Okay, cool. What would be more realistic if you did have a Death Star firing at a planet of that size? Would it destroy half of the planet? Maybe create a giant crater? Maybe only cause a single person to receive a tiny burn? I realize you can’t give me a definitive answer, but even just a general gauge of the sort of damage would be fine.

    – Something I’ve always wondered about warp drive and warp speed (Presuming they’re actually the same thing). What happens with the obstacles that’s in the way? If the warp drive only basically capable of being used if there isn’t anything in the way or is the crinkling of space means you don’t technically cover all of that space, thus you don’t need to worry about any objects in the way?

    • Awesome questions!

      Let’s say the Death Star has only the power of one Sun, roughly 2,250,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Joules, that is still a LOT of power. In order to say what I’m going to say next I also need to assign a cross section to the plasma beam from the Death Star, let’s say the final beam is 10 meters (30-ish feet) across and fires for exactly one second. That means that the beam is roughly 2,000,000,000,000 degrees Kelvin. You’re going to have a huge portion of the atmosphere and the rocky surface at ground zero that vaporizes instantly leaving a crater about one tenth the size of the planet. The material beneath is superheated magma that causes the tectonic plates to shift causing planet wide Alderaanquakes and magma eruptions that would most likely destroy any major structure on the surface. So basically everyone dies anyway, without the destruction of the entire planet.

      The key element in the Star Wars universe involving warp drive is the navicomputer. Warp drive means that the device is capable of warping space such that the distances change from point to point. You’re still flying through space where “things” are, it’s just warped in a way to help you get to your destination faster. And a warped asteroid will destroy your ship just as easily as a regular one. One of the key features to the Millennium Falcon that Lucas has talked about in interviews from the early 80’s, is it’s ability to calculate navigational pathways through space that are more effective than other ships can do. So it must have some sort of space scanner as well as detailed galactic maps that allow it to plot the shortest and safest route through the warp to the destination.

      • Knowing the Death Star would have still utterly destroyed all of mankind on Alderaan does make me feel better about the inability of destroying the planet. Would it be any more possible to destroy the planet if they fired once a day (Or however long it takes to re-energize after previously creating 2,500… Joules of power) for as many days as needed? Or would the ability to destroy the planet wouldn’t increase by firing multiple times, instead only further messing up the lands and further destroying any trace of buildings and the like?

        So when you use the warp drive, you’re not actually going in one straight line, but instead making a lot of tiny adjustments so you can weave past objects? What about other objects that you can’t account for? Whenever I think about warp drive, I picture an airplane hitting a bird because the damn bird got in the way when the pilots hadn’t expected to deal with such an obstacle. Granted, you can’t have the Millennium Falcon collide with another ship in the middle of using the warp drive as that would prematurely end the movie due to the lack of heroes, but that would be a concern of using a warp drive, correct?

        • 1) Yeah, multiple shots would keep vaporizing chunks away until no planet was left. I’m not sure how long the DS takes to recharge, there’s never any indication that it does…so if the bolt lasted about 10 seconds continuously it might be enough to vaporize everything to the molecular level. Make sure you check out the link I posted a little further up about the Ewok genocide, you might like to see what happened when the DSII exploded in Jedi…

          2) My assumption is that you are basically going in a straight line in warp, but the ship would have to have some form of forward scanner so that it could avoid the seagulls that might pop up here and there. One unpredictable asteroid could end it all! BUT, one thing we haven’t really talked about is that when the Falcon (or any of the SW ships with a hyperdrive) makes the jump to light speed it uses the warp drive to shorten space as well as opening a hyper-dimensional pathway through that space. In science the use of the term “hyper-” just means “extra”. So a hyper-dimensional path is a pathway through four dimensional space, instead of three. In four dimensional space it is possible to go around something while still going in a straight line, (algebraic topology if you’re interested in the topic), so by combining the two it should be possible for the navicomputer to plot a straight-line path that avoids all known objects, to account for the unknown we can only assume that there is some form of forward scanner that helps it avoid the objects not on the holocron star charts on board. This is likely why they drop out of hyperspace into an asteroid field that used to be Alderaan. The navicomputer would have the ability to avoid all of the rocky pieces while in hyperspace, but as soon as you drop out there’s nothing but deadly asteroids all around you.

  3. I broke the podcast down into a few parts due to everything going on with Thanksgiving, but I finished it today. Hats off to the episode. It’s a Star Wars themed episode without having to just review the previous movies like I imagine so many other podcasts are already doing including Weekly Movie Podcast. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that unless you tell people to buy Episodes 1 & 2)

    The end of the show also reminded me of how much I loathe the Sci-Fi Channel changing it’s name to Syfy. If Mattroid ever changes the name of this podcast to The Syfy Podcast, I will personally light a flaming bag of Wookie poop on his doorstep.

  4. Pingback: Happy Thanksgiving! - Movie Stream CastMovie Stream Cast

    • This episode was pretty good (even though I had to skip over large chunks of potentially spoilery stuff). If nothing else, it made me glad for not being a scientist because, as cool as the science behind Star Wars is, I think it would make me enjoy the movies less knowing how completely unrealistic it all is. I’m much happier thinking lightsabers could be a real thing.

      • You just have to be able to turn off your brain! that’s what I do, I actively don’t think about science when I’m watching the movie. Unless it’s The Martian, then it ruins it.

        • I will say this: whenever I start from a standing stop or get a little spirited with my driving, I think of Brain, TSFP, inertial dampening, and the Millennium Falcon.

        • THE FORCE AWAKENS. Again, I don’t know if there were any spoilers in there because I immediately skipped ahead once my jedi sense told me some bit of news or info on the new movie could potentially pop out, like during the lightsaber discussion.

          I’m not upset or blaming you guys for anything. I don’t expect anyone else to abide by my crazy strict unsullied policy.

  5. Mattroid – I feel partially responsible for the dejection in your voice whenever you refer to Star Wars as fantasy. Sorry, bro.

    Kudos for getting quadrilogy right, though.

      • NdGT is right in so far as the Enterprise is a more tangible and “real” starship with great staff and weaponry, but he’s wrong in that you always pick the Millenium Falcon when you’re asked that question, always.

        • To me it’s like asking which vehicle is better: a Porsche 911 or a Lexus suv.

          Very different, with different intentions, capabilities and pluses/minuses.

          In a way, a more accurate comparison would be Enterprise vs Star Destroyer.

        • I thought NdGT explained it in a very pseudo-science kind of way. Instead of going through the steps of why one ship is better than the other, he went the common sense route. Even I could’ve done that. Perhaps because it was such a short video, he had to create a very short answer and that’s what he came up with?

          Mattroid, you’re such a nerd haha. I love how you defended your beloved ships. But come on, you can’t be on both sides. Either you’re a Trekkie or you’re with The Force.

    • I’m surprised that neither NdGT or BC mentioned plasma, an Astrophysicist and a Particle Physicist would both have ample dealings with plasma interactions. And by Cox saying it’s ultrahigh energy photons he’s basically saying “well if you had a battery that could power the sun in your lightsaber, it would work” I would expect more from men of their learning.

      • Static warp shell!
        Tachyon pulse array!
        Inverted dialysis conundrum!

        If I use TNG problem solving speak or style of speak in my everyday life, I get more done. People ask my opinion. I get free meals. I become the captain of the commuter train. I call everyone number one and I can almost always fee myself becoming one with the Borg.

        I’m not going to lie…it’s an adventure.

        • I also get pissy and storm off to my ready room when I realize how difficult it is for me to spell things accurately or completely with my iPhone.

          Until people like Brain can my my thumbs less fat or keyboards infinitely more intuitive and accurate, I officially declare war on smartphone keyboards. They’re like Skynet, but really they are more like Skype, because that’s what autocorrected “Skynet” eight times.

          • Is this why you cry while rollerblading? You’re trying to forget about that mean iPhone making your thumbs feel fat by rollerblading, but the tears just won’t stop coming.

  6. It’s ok. I actually have no respect for canon vs non-canon. I accept everything I knew before. They can’t just come along and wipe out history, I don’t accept it.

  7. Can we all agree to stop talking about JarJar Binks being a Sith lord? He was a mistake, plain and simple. George Lucas should’ve been wearing a brain condom when he thought that one up.

    • The only downside is that it’s a bit of an old list, being posted back in May 2013. So there’s several omissions.

      Speaking of Marvel, I saw the trailer for Deadpool before Krampus today and it actually made me really want to see it. A bit of a big deal since I’ve seen a grand total of uh…zero MCU movies.

      The nice thing about Deadpool is that it looks like it’ll be different from other superhero movies.

  8. Thought I’d let Matt and the rest of the TSFP crew know that I received my prize of the Alien “Quadrology” Blu-Ray today. Looking forward to especially checking out Aliens again for the first time in HD quality.

    Thanks a lot for the great gift and the nifty envelope artwork.

    http://i.imgur.com/QKUtbIL.jpg
    (The aforementioned envelope artwork)

    The little alien dude in the center concerns me with how indifferent he looks while watching the Death Star blow something up. That’s some straight up sociopathic behavior!

  9. HEY! So on this episode I mentioned that there was a sci-fi book where two astronauts turn off their mics and touch helmets to talk. That book is The Mote in God’s Eye. It’s great! Everyone should check it out, I’m re-reading it now.

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