It’s the opening week of Star Wars: The Force Awakens (in case you were living under a rock and didn’t know), and in the spirit of all things Star Wars, we take a look at the gadgets and fun stuff behind the franchise.
Lightsabers
There’s no denying it: lightsabers are cool. They are a high-tech throwback to the days of sword fights, and who doesn’t enjoy a great action-packed duel?
The only problem is, it’s not possible. If the lightsabers were actually made out of light, they would just pass right through one another. When was the last time you took someone’s arm off with a flashlight?
Two world-renowned astrophysicists — Neil deGrasse Tyson and Brian Cox — actually had their own lightsaber duel on Twitter a couple of years ago.
They concluded that a weapon could be made of of high-energy gamma rays, another form of matter. But “high-energy gamma ray sabre” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Death Star
The Death Star, the fearsome planet-killer, is a pretty neat idea (if you’re on the Dark Side, that is). The problem with it is that the energy needed to blow up a planet is enormous. Not to mention the resources needed to even construct one.
WATCH: Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about how you can blow up a planet. You know, just in case you were looking to do that.
The U.S. Navy has developed the first laser weapon. But it can only destroy boats or aircraft. If we wanted to blow up an entire planet, it would take energy that is a billion trillion times more powerful than that.
The idea of a Death Star has been carefully considered by the White House, however.
In response to an online petition for the construction of a Death Star, the White House responded with “This Isn’t the Petition Response You’re Looking For,” explaining that it would “cost more than $850,000,000,000,000,000. We’re working hard to reduce the deficit, not expand it.”
Droids
It might be fun (or not so fun) to have a robot following you around, waiting on you hand and foot. While we’re not quite there yet, there has been a lot of development in creating artificial intelligence.
Take Jules, for example. This robot — called a “conversational character robot” — was built by Hanson Robotics. (Watch the video: it’s kind of creepy.)
READ MORE: Why human-like robots make us feel uncomfortable
Giants such as Google, which recently bought Boston Dynamics — a company at the forefront of robotics development — are trying to bring us intelligent robots that we may one day use.
Bionic body parts
(If you’ve never watched the Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, be warned: there’s a spoiler ahead.)
We found out in in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith that Darth Vader is mostly mechanical, with very little human parts left (though we were given a hint in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi when Obi-Wan says, “He’s more machine now than man”).
WATCH: Bionic technological advances
Science has advanced far enough that people are being fitted with bionic parts, such as arms, legs and even bionic lenses for your eyes. Could someone be “more machine now than man”? It might be a little early, but there’s always the future.
Faster-than-light travel
It doesn’t matter what science fiction movie or show you watch: if it takes place in space, you’re going to come across faster-than-light travel, be it light speed or warp speed. And that’s because if we were to follow Einstein’s theory on special relativity, movies would be pretty boring: at current technology, it would take tens of thousands of years to reach the nearest star to Earth.
In the Star Wars universe, the Millennium Falcon is equipped with hyperdrive which allows it to get into hyperspace, a dimension of space-time. This hyperspace doesn’t exist — at least to our knowledge. So far we know of four dimensions in our universe: gravity, electromagnetism, and two nuclear forces, the weak and strong.
The problem is, Einstein concluded that nothing can travel at the speed of light. And so far nothing has proven him wrong.
But one of the most exciting theories on how we might be able to explore our galaxy is the Alcubierre Warp Drive. You’re probably already familiar with it: it’s the way the starship Enterprise whips around the galaxy in Star Trek.
The warp drive was proposed by Mexican theoretical physicist, Miguel Alcubierre in 1994. Basically, instead of trying to travel at light speed, you warp the space around your ship — contracting space in front of your ship and expanding the space behind it. It essentially makes quick travel possible because your ship is no longer travelling within normal space-time. You’re standing still.
When world famous theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking toured the set of Star Trek: The Next Generation, he looked at the warp drive engines and said, “I’m working on that.”
We’re still waiting, Mr. Hawking.
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