Sith happens! [Caution: Thread contains movie spoilers]

[Skoons]

General Grevious was half droid/half some alien race.

I remember that and even try to explainit to my friend but when he saw Grevious hoping to open space and then to rescue ship, I have no chanses to argue him. He tells that if this droid breathing it cant be in the space, or if not it cant cough. Maybe they should make Grevious not the droid luke like.
Another funny moment in SW. All droids (except R2D2 ofcource) talking with each others on English, but if they are droids why they not comunicating with machine code or smth like that

[NatThoelecke]

I remember that and even try to explainit to my friend but when he saw Grevious hoping to open space and then to rescue ship, I have no chanses to argue him. He tells that if this droid breathing it cant be in the space, or if not it cant cough. Maybe they should make Grevious not the droid luke like.
Another funny moment in SW. All droids (except R2D2 ofcource) talking with each others on English, but if they are droids why they not comunicating with machine code or smth like that

I suspect they only speak when it is critical to the plot, otherwise they are communicating silently via some sort of wireless or something. You notice in Episode 1, when the droids are battling the Gungans, they formed ranks and attacked but never spoke. The only speaking (or emoting in R2's case) seems to be so that the audience will know what's going on.

[Latem]

Just with regards to travelling at the speed of light thing, I wanna clear this up. It is for a fact not possible to travel at, or faster than the speed of light, according to our understanding of physics today.

The gorssly oversimplified explanation is that basically the theory of relativity states that:

1. If an event happens, all observers must agree that it happened.

2. The rules of physics are the same in all frames of reference.

Rule #1 can be shown to get broken easily. Really rule # 1 means that if something happens, them we all must agree that it happened. We may not agree on how it happened and the exact details of it, but we must agree that it happened. If something traveled at or faster than the speed of light, then the info from that event will not get to some of us and we will not agree that the event happened.

The speed of light is more like an asimptode, you can never hope to reach it, just get closer and closer to it. matter can never have enough energy to get there though.

If matter could travel at or faster than the speed of light, it would break a lot of very important laws we have today, and which have been proven.

There is also a mathematical proof of this using Lorentz and Galileian transformations, which are known to be correct. You can do some math, and if you allow travel at or greater than the speed of light the transformations break down, and do not hold anymore.

The speed of light may have been variable though, earlier in the universe it could have been faster. there have also been experiments where they got light to travel faster than speed of light (c), but light is not exactly matter. and this doesnt break any laws.

There are theoretical particles techions (or something, not sure about the name) in string theories that could exist, and they travel faster than light but can never travel slower. But string theories are VERY shifty, and not very reliable at all. It's basically, we have all these equations, and if we look at it at this way, and if some stuff we assume is corect, then this theory would explain our universe today.

I am sure this is a gross oversimplification of matter, and I prolly got some wording/details wrong, but it should be in any relatively recent academic level book on modern physics.

Latem

[RoboTact]

Theory only explains what we observe. If we haven't observed certain things, we have no theory for it, and there are many facts which weren't predicted by theory. There may be, theoretically, conditions, when physics behave different, and we haven't observed and haven't predicted such conditions yet. Look at it from the Matrix point of view...

[cilu]

OH, I was waiting for such a long time for a physics debate...

Latem, you spoke about tachions. That is indeed the correct term. In old Greek it means "fast". These are imaginary particles that travel at speeds much greater than the speed of light and cease to exist if decelerated to the speed of light. The only problem is that they only exists mathematically, and they require imaginary mass, which I'm not sure how can be achieved. Anyway I recommend you to read Gregory Benford's Timescape. Fascinating book. (Benford is a physicist)

I adhere to Stephen Hawking's view on theories: a theory must satisfy 2 requirements: it must accurately describe a large class of observations, and it must make clear predictions about the results of future observations and experiments.

Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis; you can never prove it. No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory. On the other hand, you can disprove a theory by finding even a single observation that disagrees with the predictions of the theory.

The theories we have are the best model of the world, but doesn't mean they are complete. New observations, new experiments can prove them wrong and create new theories.

The speed of light may have been variable though, earlier in the universe it could have been faster. there have also been experiments where they got light to travel faster than speed of light (c), but light is not exactly matter. and this doesnt break any laws.

Hawking have proved that black holes are not actually black, that matter can escape them, and after a long long time they loose all the mass and cease to exists. How is that possible? For that to happen matter must travel to a speed greater than the speed of light (c). And here the virtual particles come into the picture. Pair of virtual particle-antiparticle can appear at any time any place in the universe. When they appear on the events horizon of a black hole one of them falls in the black hole, the other remains outside the horizon escaping the black hole, and it appears just like a particle has escape the black hole by traveling at a speed greater than c.

[Latem]

Theories, observations, conditions, etc... that we don't know about are irrelevant, because nothing says that they must exist. As I said with our current understanding of physics, matter cannot travel at or greater than the speed of light. If we allow this, lots of basic principles about relativetiy and others (such as E=mc^2, and F=ma) which are known to be correct, break down, and become wrong.

With the regards to black holes, you have within there explained why particles are emitted from black holes. Its exactly because of the virtual particle-antiparticle creation event thing. It hapens at event horizon, and one of them goes back into the black hole, the other escapes, because it is outside of the event horizon. That is what event horizon is basically, everything outside it doesnt get sucked into the black hole. therefore, it doesn't need to travel at or faster than c to escape.

Also, using Stephen Hawking's A Brief History Of Time or Universe in a Nutshell (I dont know if u are, but looks like it) as a reference is pretty much inappropriate in any meaningful physics discussion. The intended audience of these books are average people, with no physics knowledge. Their indended purpoce is to be insightful, enlightening, and most of all interesting and entertaining; not to teach. They have practically no math in them, and instead rely on pretty pictures. Pretty pictures do not demonstrate physics principles, calculus does. Don't get me wrong they are great books, but are in no way complete or thorough. Most of the time he focuses on the unknowns, and what ifs because that's the interesting stuff that's gonna sell. I'd suggest a book that a university uses to teach a 3rd or 4th (maybe even 2nd) year physics course specifically on modern physics topics. I dont know if I still have it, I may have sold it, but I'll check at home, and maybe post the name of the book we used in school.

I ddid not really wish to start discussion or debate about this, because I am definitly not qualified to participate in it. I don't know about the rest of you, but I do not have a PhD in physics. I only know what i've learned in school, read, and what my brother who is a physicist tells me (and he talks about this stuff all the time). I do not have necessary knowledge, understanding, or calculus skills to do it all justice, and I am sure I would get lots of things wrong.
Also it's off topic.

Anyway, I've written more than i intended about this.

Cheers,

Latem

[cilu]

Also, using Stephen Hawking's A Brief History Of Time or Universe in a Nutshell (I dont know if u are, but looks like it) as a reference is pretty much inappropriate in any meaningful physics discussion.

I must disagree. Einstein developed most of the relativity theory by imagining experiments. Math equations are important to give them a formal expression, but we can talk about a theory without diving into the headaching equations.

I did not really wish to start discussion or debate about this, because I am definitly not qualified to participate in it. I don't know about the rest of you, but I do not have a PhD in physics. I only know what i've learned in school, read, and what my brother who is a physicist tells me (and he talks about this stuff all the time). I do not have necessary knowledge, understanding, or calculus skills to do it all justice, and I am sure I would get lots of things wrong.

Make that two. But that also doesn't mean we cannot talk about physics. If you apply this logic, it means that since I'm not a chef, I should not be allowed to cook, or since I'm not a master of chess, I should never play it.

Also it's off topic.

I don't consider it out of topic, because we were talking about the science of star wars and the traveling at speeds greater than the speed of light. However, if you want, we can move this discusion to another thread. Doctor Luz is a physicist, we may have him join us...

[Skoons]

OH, I was waiting for such a long time for a physics debate...

That`s why I have ask those questions
Any way SW are greate epic film. But special effects in old episodes were greater I think, they are truly mastership

[cilu]

For those that like Origami, here are instructions to build a paper Master Yoda: http://www.pajarita.org/aep/internac.../intern2-1.pdf .

[Skoons]

Nice orighami, I have made one Yoda but , I have no green paper so it is yellow one

[cilu]

Well, you can take a green pen and make it greed. Or you can call FillRect() passing a green brush...

[RoboTact]

Well, you can take a green pen and make it greed. Or you can call FillRect() passing a green brush...

On your avatar Yoda is more yellow then green.

[Skoons]

Interesting what color suit to Yoda the most

[Doctor Luz]

I did not really wish to start discussion or debate about this, because I am definitly not qualified to participate in it. I don't know about the rest of you, but I do not have a PhD in physics. I only know what i've learned in school, read, and what my brother who is a physicist tells me (and he talks about this stuff all the time). I do not have necessary knowledge, understanding, or calculus skills to do it all justice, and I am sure I would get lots of things wrong.

Make that two. But that also doesn't mean we cannot talk about physics. If you apply this logic, it means that since I'm not a chef, I should not be allowed to cook, or since I'm not a master of chess, I should never play it.

Also it's off topic.
I don't consider it out of topic, because we were talking about the science of star wars and the traveling at speeds greater than the speed of light

Belive me, It is much more funny and interesting to see you talking about physics than seeing any physicist.

Yes, the speed of light seems to be a barrier. Acordingly with the theory of relativity this is an upper limit to the speed of any particle with rest mass not null. Rest mass is the mass that would measure an observer seeing the particle at rest. If you can't see the particle at rest its rest mass=0 and the particle is sentenced to travel with this upper limit of speed.
If this is true the starships of star wars can not travel faster than light. But we can create a theory to allow the starships to travel faster than light.

Suppose that the speed of light is only an upper limit to speed in our standard 3-D universe. Now suppose that there are additional dimensions and our 3-D universe, for example, folds on sheets over these new dimensions we can't notice. If the starship has a device able to create a tunnel between sheets you might make the starship to travel from one sheet to another in a femtosecond, however the light might take many years to travel until destination.

There are some theories like this, of course don't talk about starships and are much more elaborated. This is only a simple view.

But I think the worst thing in the science of star wars is not the hyperspace travel, they are the laser devices, specially the laser sabres. Their bright colours, their definite size, their power... nop nop nop, they are not realistic at all .

[Norfy]

specially the laser sabres. Their bright colours, their definite size, their power... nop nop nop, they are not realistic at all

If they used laser technology maybe not, but who said they were lasers? Light Sabre