Hyperspeed travel looks wrong: Leicester students
Sorry, special effects people, you got it wrong: if the Millennium Falcon can actually do the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs*, Han Solo and his passengers won’t see the stars stretching by. In fact, they won’t see the stars at all. In addition to slaughtering the inhabitants of the solar system at their destination, the …
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Re: Lasers in space
Yes, indeed, once you see the light of a weapon-class laser, you can't any more (ever again!)
Re: Lasers in space
But those phsszzew noises are all real!
Windows Warp screen saver
No you don't understand, they were just running the Windows Warp screen saver on their main screen.
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/31941/Multi-monitor-Warp-Speed-Screen-Saver
Re: Windows Warp screen saver
So that's why the dang thing always needed a reboot.
The point
Is to find a problem that students will have to find a solution to without any easy cheats.
Nice one.
Maybe...
...the 'Kessel Run' is not a measured distance, it's a set of tasks that could be carried out in any set order. This would make the parsec measurement correct... Feasible?
Cone of light, brighter at the centre
What I'm getting from this is that the Elite hyperspace graphic was in fact not too bad.
Physics
Who assumes you can have see-through windows in a spaceship that can travel that fast? Do people not know about atoms "rubbing off" en-route (causing disintegration)?
P.S.
time is a measurement of change; not an actual event. Time is a single eternity (not a clock).
Re: Physics
Time is the fourth dimension. It was explained to me this way:
Take a line — that is the first dimension. Take another line at right angles to the first — that's the second dimension. Take a third line at right angles to both the first two — that's the third dimension. Now take a line at right angles to those three...
"won’t see the stars stretching by"
That effect was only used for acceleration/deceleration to and from Hyper Space, whilst in Hyper Space George went for a sort of bluey-white cloudy effect that rotated slightly, possibly similar to that described by the students. It didn't get much screen time, as it's not as pretty as the star-stretch effect.
Well if you're going to be picky
Why do the X wing fighters change there wing configuration when attacking the death star? The was no atmosphere so there is no aerodynamic effect. Possibly to give a wider firing patten? Or just possibly just a visual cue of the ships preparing for battle in what is just an entertaining scifi story.
Re: Well if you're going to be picky
Because they were poorly designed, this allowed them to separate their wing-tip cannons; presumably so they didn't cause the ship to explode.
Re: Well if you're going to be picky
According to the old Star Wars RPG (West End Games) you are absolutely correct, it's to give a wider firing area, concentrated at the corners of your ship in order that you can hit the enemy without being completely head on (obviously nobody told Wedge Antilles).
Re: Well if you're going to be picky
And why were'nt the engines of an X-wing out on the wingtips too, would make it so much easier to rotate the ships when you've got a TIE fighter on your tail.
But then thats because Lucas watched 'The battle of Britain' and "The dambusters" while he was coming up with the final scenes
Re: Well if you're going to be picky
633 Squadron was the direct inspiration for the final attack on The Death Star.
From the Wonkypedia synopsis of 633 Squadron:
"The plant is in a seemingly impregnable location beneath an overhanging cliff at the end of a long, narrow fjord lined with anti-aircraft guns. The only way to destroy the plant is by collapsing the cliff on top of it"
Sounds about right to me.
Re: Well if you're going to be picky
It's so the streams don't cross. That would be bad...
Re: Well if you're going to be picky
Wings probably aren't strong enough to support the shear from the engine thrust if placed on the wings. The idea makes me think of the Starfury from the Babylon 5 universe. It was specifically designed for what you mentioned. Four thruster clusters, one on each corner, each with a forward, backward, lateral, and vertical thruster so it can turn like few other ships could: even in place.
Re: Well if you're going to be picky
You sir, are an awesome nerd.
Seriously, the millennium Falcon is inside a deflector bubble when it travels the stars appear the way they do because of the relative conditions inside the bubble vs those outside the bubble. They have to go and do their homework on how stars would appear travelling at light speed through a deflector field that keeps the object inside the bubble at relative normal.
/sarc off
lol
Death by X-Ray?
But what if the Falcon was constructed from negative-index metamaterials?
Re: Death by X-Ray?
That, or you just reverse the polarity of the neutron flow (seems to work for Scotty and Geordi La Forge, and Dr. Who (or was that the flux))
They just don't think about it enough
It bugs me when they show the view of stars rushing by, in just about any Sci-Fi production, and the stars stay the same size as the whoosh by.
Think about it.
In reality the view would be a fairly static backdrop of distant stars much like we see when we look up on a cloudless night, with the occasional star growing hugely in size, then becoming a blinding light as the craft passes by without somehow burning up.
So, effects like the PC 'starfield' screensaver are so totally wrong I can only laugh.
Kessel
As a kid I also knew Parsec was distance, and so assumed that it must be a measure of acceleration rather than speed. In the same way that high performance car has a great "quarter mile". So if you assume that the Kessel run means a "jack-rabbit" standing start acceleration to light speed (or to light speed and back to sub-light speed again) then the Kessel run would be measured in Parsecs. There are reasons why a "run" might not be a simple distance covered.
Re: Kessel
You would get really old though doing 12 parsecs waiting for hyperspace.
no artist's rendition
help me el reg, you're my only hope
First they* tell us, that to reach the speed of light, the ship will need infinite energy.
Now they* tell us, that when you get near the speed of light, your ship will be irradiated by... infinite energy of universe's background radiation, Doppler-shifted to visible, then x-ray, and then some.
So, you'll just need an effective solar panel to provide that infinite energy? Will the infinities conveniently cancel out at light-speed?
___________
* boffins
But
If the students are right, how did the Roswell Greys get here?
Bah!
Niven discussed this in the very early 70s. Not new. Not groundbreaking. Make these uninformed nitwits give back any grant monies and tell them to read around more.
ER...Rubbish!
They travel through Hyperspace.
No-one can possibly say what it looks like.
Perhaps it really does look like the opening titles of Doctor Who circa 1975.
The 'Jump to lightspeed' is therefore a metaphor for 'Do the necessary calculations in order to create and enter a hyperspace field'.
I would be more concerned about the apparent motion of the X-Wings as they appear to move through an atmosphere rather than a vacuum.
They don't travel at near light speed. It's faster.
Yes, at realativistic speeds (the students use 0.9999995c as their benchmark), light from stars is no longer visible at all. At superluminal speed, physics get really predictable again, and things'll seem to go back in time. The real problem is that the stars pass the ship by. At superluminal speed (>1.0*c, which is entirely possible, as long as you can somehow bypass hitting "c" itself. Which is not possible in classical physics) the stars should look like the ship's reversing =)
Re: They don't travel at near light speed. It's faster.
> which is entirely possible
Urban legend.
Re: What the hell...
It's the same as a standard bronze falcon, only made in China.
Re: What the hell...
I thought it was the Maltese Falcon.
Cone of light
So, the cone of light people claim to see who have had near death experiences might correspond to travelling somewhere at (close to) light speed. Interesting
Re: Cone of light
More likely their visual cortex going a bit crazy due to lack of oxygen. Tunnel vision of death.
Re. FTL
I was under the impression that FTL meant using a doughnut shaped field to warp the fabric of space/time and thus the space moves "faster". The conventional engines would only be needed to keep the crew area of the FTL shp in the "eye of the storm" so to speak.
>1000T fields would do horrible things to living tissue, such as inducing hallucinations and stopping hearts if the electric field gradients (google MRI) got too intense.
I am writing a paper on this as we speak..
AC/DC 6EQUJ5
Would you believe it
PRL won't accept it, grr. Maybe I can get it published in some obscure journal, got any suggestions?
May Contain Star Wars Nuts
Alluvial dampers. Nuff said. / coat.
I've travelled at hyperspeed
On my way home the other night in the snow. The effect is pretty cool at 60mph on a dark country road.
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