Recursive self replication..
Sounds awfully like biology to me..
But as it's making a weapon maybe it's called Terror-Forming
Coat Please
Death Stars are a waste of time – here's the best way to take over the galaxy
Mild spoiler alert: This article includes minor details of the plot of Star Wars: The Force Awakens The Star Wars films raise lots of pressing questions. “Why is there sound in space?” “How did George Lucas lose his way?” And, of course, “Did Han shoot first?” (that’s an easy one). There are innumerable variants on the “How …
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Wednesday 23rd December 2015 22:49 GMT Captain DaFt
Re: All that...
Or "The Brick Moon", an early Victorian "death star"?
(Really, you could fill an encyclopedia with prior references.)
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Wednesday 23rd December 2015 23:40 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: All that...
Nor the xenocidical machines from Forge of God, whatever they are (and we never see them either).
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Wednesday 23rd December 2015 10:37 GMT sandman
Ships building ships
Pretty much the way that the large Culture ships produce other ships/drones/knife missiles for all occasions. ((Ian M Banks books for those who're thinking "What the hell is he talking about). I've never understood why you would want to destroy perfectly inhabitable planets though. If I was Emperor I would want to add them to my ever-expanding domains, BWAHAHAHA!
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Wednesday 23rd December 2015 10:47 GMT Dave 126
Re: Ships building ships
And Banks alludes to what can happen if those self-repair mechanisms go wrong (like cancer) - resulting in pesky swarms of tiny machines that would if left unchecked turn all available matter into replicas of themselves. The culture assign some ships to 'pest control' duties.
As others have noted, he didn't originate the concept.
In Star Wars, people live on planets. In the Culture books, the matter of a planet would support far more life if it were re-arranged into a ring-shaped Orbital habitat.
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Wednesday 23rd December 2015 11:01 GMT Peter Gathercole
Re: Ships building ships
"ring-shaped Orbital habitat", aka a Ringworld.
Not completely sure whether Larry Niven originated it, but it was derived from the idea of a Dyson Sphere. There's a write-up of the idea in the back of the original book, and some clarifications of the maths in the later books. Read them.
Niven and Jerry Pournelle between them wrote innovative fiction about so many interesting ideas, like archologies, mono-molecular filaments, system-wide civilisations without effective intersteller travel, planetary occupation etc. I did not get the idea of integral trees, though.
Forward the Hindmost!
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Wednesday 23rd December 2015 11:20 GMT frank ly
@Peter Gathercole Re: Ships building ships - re. Ringworld
The Culture orbital habitats didn't encircle their star, as Larry Niven's Ringworld did. They were 'small' bands that orbited a star and were slightly tilted out of the plane of orbit and themselves rotated with a one 'day' period so that the part of the band nearest the star didn't shade the other side of the band, thus simulating a day/night cycle.
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Wednesday 23rd December 2015 11:25 GMT Dave 126
Re: Ships building ships
I've read 'em. I still choose the 'Orbital' variant of the concept because the topic was a reason to rearrange the mass of a planet.
A Ringworld is roughly described by the orbit of the Earth, and provides about 300 million times the habitable surface area.
An Orbital doesn't encircle a sun, and provides around a 100 times the habitable surface of the planet whilst using less matter.
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Wednesday 23rd December 2015 10:38 GMT Dave 126
Are we talking about...
...Self Hemogenizing Swarms, as Iain M. Banks dubbed them? He also used the word 'Smatter' (Smart Matter, IIRC). Other people have used the terms 'Grey Goo', or 'Von Neumann Machines'.
I confess, I didn't read the article - I haven't seen the Force Awakens movie yet, and was scared off by the spoiler warning.
To others who haven't seen the movie, you should avoid Wired.com, since they have spoilers in their headlines.
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Wednesday 23rd December 2015 10:45 GMT Robert Helpmann??
Art Imitating Parody
With all of the bits that Abrams threw in as nods to past Star Wars movies, did anyone else catch that Starkiller Base was just a bigger, better Mega Maid?
IT connection? Examples of single point of failure being a Bad Thing in Death Star and Starkiller Base. Mission critical services should have redundancy designed in.
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Wednesday 23rd December 2015 12:36 GMT Robert Helpmann??
Re: Art Imitating Parody
I hate to explain the joke as it typically ruins it, but in Space Balls MegaMaid used a giant vacuum cleaner to suck up all the atmosphere from Druidia which is pretty much how in SW-TFA Starkiller Base charged up from the nearest star. Pretty sly and perhaps not intentional, but I thought it was funny just the same.
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Wednesday 23rd December 2015 15:19 GMT BenR
Re: Art Imitating Parody
Ah right. I kinda get it. I suspect not intentional at all, given how tenuous it is tbh.
I love SpaceBalls (the film, the colouring book, the lunchbox, the flamethower and - my personal favourite - the doll. Isn't he adorable?) but I hadn't thought of that possible back-link in any way.
--++ SPOILERS ++--
Personally, I think that JJ was trying to avoid as much nerd-rage as possible by showing a potential power source of being able to generate the energy required to overcome the binding energy of not just 1 but 5No. Earth-a-like planets in one go. I was sat with the kind of squirming in my seat usually reserved for when i see IP addresses with values in the 7 and 8 hundred ranges when the first shots were fired, thinking "How on earth is that laser beam travelling interstellar distances to destroy planets in remote star systems? Surely the people looking at the sky would just see practically static beams?" when the explanation tipped up that The First Order had managed to construct a hyper-lightspeed weapon system. At that point, the nerd rage subsided. They haven't explained how it worked, but they'd clearly given it sufficient thought to realise the problems and handwaviumed it away.
Good enough for me, given we're talking about a universe with hyperspeed, all-powerful space wizards, laser-plasma swords, moon-sized artificial space stations and technological ability to hollow out a planet at turn it into a star-slurping supergun.
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Friday 25th December 2015 14:27 GMT Wzrd1
"Personally I subscribe to the Jar Jar is a sith lord theory: https://youtu.be/8yy3q9f84EA"
Uh, huh. And Blackadder is actually the king.
The story style mirrors where good and evil character come from the same village, where the evil character thanks the good character for helping him acquire power.
Meanwhile, the good character was only bringing all of the bad guys who support evil character out into the open, so that all of the evil gets stamped out at once.
I'm guessing you've never studied the legends referenced in the series.
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Wednesday 23rd December 2015 11:29 GMT Peter Clarke 1
Suggested Viewing
Probably not the first version but check out the Replicators in Stargate SG1. Small building blocks that can join together to form more complex structures, stripping planets of resources as they go. Probably at their most scary as swarms of insectoids/arachnids. Thank heaven for primitive projectile waepons
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Wednesday 23rd December 2015 11:31 GMT Anonymous Coward
I never understood this crazy about breaking planet apart...
... habitable planets may be a scarce resource, better to clean it up, and then give it to your supporters, if you're the evil kind. Moreover destroying a planet may destabilze a whole planetary system - debris could heavily impact other planets (maybe some where your supporters live...), and their orbits could also be impacted, depending on the system configuration. Any moon will also go loose...
As usual, there is a lot of fiction and just a little science in Star Wars - and nobody will ever talk about small spaceships that looks to be able to have no inertia in space despite their speed, and are able to change direction suddendly, without killing their pilot or breaking apart? And if they have any system to counter those forces, why they still banks like planes when turning - who banks exactly because of those forces (but in an atmosphere)?
SW is just like King Arthur, Lancelot and Excalibur - turn off your brain and enjoy the magic - as long as the plot is decent (and the director is not Jar Jar Adams).
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Wednesday 23rd December 2015 11:49 GMT Naselus
Re: I never understood this crazy about breaking planet apart...
The more destruction the better. It's about a vulgar display of power to terrify everyone into submission. If the resource is scarce, so much the better, it shows that you don't care how valuable the target is because you're so badass you don't need it.
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Wednesday 23rd December 2015 18:01 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: I never understood this crazy about breaking planet apart...
You need it, and that's why most badass in those movies look childish. One of the best way to acquire and ensure loyalty from supporters is to give 'em your enemies resources. Most people are moved by greed, not some sort of idealism.
Romans got better armies giving away conquered lands to their soldiers, than pouring salt over Carthage ruins.
Firing at any planet you like may also make your supporters unsure if they're next in the list for any reason, and they will end to overthrow you just in case...
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Wednesday 23rd December 2015 23:08 GMT Captain DaFt
Re: I never understood this crazy about breaking planet apart...
"The more destruction the better. It's about a vulgar display of power to terrify everyone into submission."
Have your cake and eat it too; The Genesis Bomb from Star Trek's "The Wrath Of Kahn". Obliterate an entire planet's population in seconds, leaving a lush, inhabitable world behind ready for settlers.
It had the Klingons totally freaking out at that possibility.
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Wednesday 23rd December 2015 23:42 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: I never understood this crazy about breaking planet apart...
Have your cake and eat it too; The Genesis Bomb from Star Trek's "The Wrath Of Kahn". Obliterate an entire planet's population in seconds, leaving a lush, inhabitable world behind ready for settlers.
"Greenpeace through superior firepower"
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Wednesday 23rd December 2015 11:55 GMT Anonymous Coward
My concern is
if you wanted to build such a massive base/ringworld etc the scale of the resources neded would require the mining, processing and refining of multiple planets/asteroid belt to achieve the necessary number of cubic kilometers of material, even if the local system was made 80% usable material and 20% waste (enough to build a new planet I would suggest)
I sould imagine the self replicating robot army would simply be mining refining and transporting never mind building the new base/habitat assuming unlimited solar/nuclear type energy availability.
This new structure would presumably also generate its own gravity and magnetic field so surely the eary/innermost section would have to be either nearly hollow or would pull in and collapse with the mass of the outer layers. A ringworld would probably swivel and sway like a suspension bridge in the wind too based on the heating/cooling of day/night and routine collision avoidance/orbital adjustment.
Nice easy questions for the enthusiastic scientists out there...!
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Wednesday 23rd December 2015 11:55 GMT &rew
Ascribing motives to people
I am wondering if perhaps we are ascribing motives to people that do not match their (still fictional) aims? What if the Sith just want to speed up the process of getting to the heat death of the Universe, in a similar way that some religious sects are eagerly awaiting the end of life on Earth?
If the End Goal is indeed to rule over everybody, perhaps the easiest way to get there is for there to be fewer bodies, too.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
