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My "hard sf" Star Wars theory
#1
I love Star Wars, but I also love hard sci-fi, which seems to be lacking in Star Wars. Or is it?

For my theory, I'm ignoring a lot of Star Wars. No EU, no Disney films, just the two George Lucas trilogies, and a small passage from this book;

https://www.amazon.com/Star-Wars-Encyclo...j+sansweet

This is the old Star Wars Encyclopedia. I believe it's the one I was flicking through in a book store when I was younger. The hundred dollar plus price tag prevented me from taking it home. The first thing I looked up was "hyperspace". Now, contrary to what has been published later about a parallel universe (that is a possibility of m-theory, although quite a stretch to use it in the ways they do in Star Wars), this book stated that the Star Wars universe was connected via wormholes. This also fits with what we see on the Risk Star Wars board game. Some systems in clusters (more of that later) and others need to take a "hyperspace lane" to get to.

Now, this is similar to Orion's Arm, and the wormhole nexus.

One thing I will take from the EU is that hyperspace is not an invention of the current civilization, but a previous one. These wormholes were already there. They would have been observed in early stargazing, and possibly led to a space age much sooner than our own civilization. Hence why Star Wars people seem old fashioned, but also futuristic.

Now, in the film, they never mention travelling faster than light, they always say "lightspeed". The exception is Han Solo, boasting that his ship can do "point 5 past lightspeed", which is still only 1.5c, and not that great for crossing a galaxy. But, I also theorise that this, and the famed "12 parsecs" line was merely bs (remember we're ignoring the whole maw thing), and just Han trying to make a sale to what looked like a stupid farm boy and an old man. Spew jargon that makes no sense. Like a car salesman has never done that before.

The jump to lightspeed must be done with some form of inertia-less warp field, but not one that accelerates superluminally. This is the "hyperdrive". Possibly some conjunction of the existing engines and void bubbles curving the surrounding space, so a quick burst from the ion engine can accelerate the ship at much greater velocities than usual.

Now what got my attention about the similarities to the Wormhole Nexus of OA was this discussion that we were having the other day, particularly post#4; http://www.orionsarm.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=2858 , which states "This is why the Nexus grows outwards, wormholes travelling at relativistic speeds shift into the future from the perspective of the wormhole that stays at home. That doesn't violate causality because even if home (Hw) is in the global past relative to colony (Cw) it's outside of Cw's light cone. A krasnikov tube would have the same issue I'd think, though I don't know much about them."

Now, we know that the centre of politics and trade is the core worlds in Star Wars. This is one of the clusters I mentioned earlier. Just check out how close together the stars are in the core of our own galaxy; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_gggKHvfGw

It's easy to see how the core worlds can operate without FTL travel. But now, think about the Outer Rim. This is connected by wormhole links (or possibly Krasnikov tubes, if you like the whole "hyperspace lane" thing), that are displaced in time. So maybe trekking between the stars out there takes years and years, but when you get back to the core, it has been weeks, or months.

To support this, I note that recent events in Star Wars always seems like ancient history. I couple this with the fact that no one mentions a system of time keeping in Star Wars. We don't know how long their year is, what their lifespans are (being people with advanced medical practices), or the time between any two events. This is because time differs from different perspectives, due to temporally displaced wormhole links and relativistic travel through space.

So, there you have it. My hard sci-fi Star Wars theory. It's not enirely scientifically sound (it is Star Wars), but I'm happy with it and it's what I'm going to believe!
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#2
My first thought = Well, Ok, then.

My second thought = Why is it necessary to try to convert/justify/rationalize Star Wars as a hard science fiction setting just because you like hard science fiction? I really like OA and other hard SF stories and settings - but I also really like the Culture novels by Ian Banks, the Dresden Files storied by Jim Butcher, and the Nightside stories by Simon Green. Not to mention the Lord of the Rings books by Tolkien. None of these are hard science fiction, nor do they make any attempt or pretense to be. But I like them anyway because I like them.

As one of our members observed some years ago, there seems to be this reflex in many circles to interpret 'hard SF' to mean that those who like it are looking down on any other from of the SF genre. While there are no doubt some people who do take that approach or at least use that rhetoric (including some of the founding and early members of the OAUP), I would say that that isn't the case for most people (certainly not the current management of OA) and that it really isn't necessary or useful to take that approach or viewpoint (either that hard SF is 'superior' or that people who like hard SF think it/they are 'superior').

My third thought = Since there is no single objective standard for what constitutes 'hard' SF, (believe me, we've looked) to say that something is or isn't hard SF after the fact is tricky, at least if all you're basing it on is the tech that is seen there. Certainly it can be fun to 'reverse engineer' the tech seen in a given film/book/game to see if it can be made to work in the real world with real physics. OA does that a lot. But unless the story makes it clear that it actually is using the 'reverse engineered' method in question, I don't know that it works to definitively say that it is doing so and therefore label the story as 'hard SF' because of that. But as I said in my first thought regarding anyone who wants to do this - Well, Ok, then.

My final thought = I don't really agree with your reasoning on this re Star Wars, but also figure it's your business to decide whatever you want about this. Unless you wanted to debate the point for fun, and we could be confident that such a debate wouldn't descend into acrimony, then I again refer back to my first thoughtSmile

My 2c worth,

Todd
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#3
(05-29-2017, 08:18 PM)AmrlKJaneway Wrote: So, there you have it. My hard sci-fi Star Wars theory. It's not enirely scientifically sound (it is Star Wars), but I'm happy with it and it's what I'm going to believe!

Now all you have to explain are:

The Force

How lightsabers work

How synthetic gravity works

How force fields work

How tractor beams work

How antigravity works

How space fighters can bank around like atmospheric fighters, and have insane amounts of delta-v

How so many alien species have a humanoid form

Easy peasy.
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#4
(05-29-2017, 11:45 PM)Drashner1 Wrote: My first thought = Well, Ok, then.

My second thought = Why is it necessary to try to convert/justify/rationalize Star Wars as a hard science fiction setting just because you like hard science fiction? I really like OA and other hard SF stories and settings - but I also really like the Culture novels by Ian Banks, the Dresden Files storied by Jim Butcher, and the Nightside stories by Simon Green. Not to mention the Lord of the Rings books by Tolkien. None of these are hard science fiction, nor do they make any attempt or pretense to be. But I like them anyway because I like them.

As one of our members observed some years ago, there seems to be this reflex in many circles to interpret 'hard SF' to mean that those who like it are looking down on any other from of the SF genre. While there are no doubt some people who do take that approach or at least use that rhetoric (including some of the founding and early members of the OAUP), I would say that that isn't the case for most people (certainly not the current management of OA) and that it really isn't necessary or useful to take that approach or viewpoint (either that hard SF is 'superior' or that people who like hard SF think it/they are 'superior').

My third thought = Since there is no single objective standard for what constitutes 'hard' SF, (believe me, we've looked) to say that something is or isn't hard SF after the fact is tricky, at least if all you're basing it on is the tech that is seen there. Certainly it can be fun to 'reverse engineer' the tech seen in a given film/book/game to see if it can be made to work in the real world with real physics. OA does that a lot. But unless the story makes it clear that it actually is using the 'reverse engineered' method in question, I don't know that it works to definitively say that it is doing so and therefore label the story as 'hard SF' because of that. But as I said in my first thought regarding anyone who wants to do this - Well, Ok, then.

My final thought = I don't really agree with your reasoning on this re Star Wars, but also figure it's your business to decide whatever you want about this. Unless you wanted to debate the point for fun, and we could be confident that such a debate wouldn't descend into acrimony, then I again refer back to my first thoughtSmile

My 2c worth,

Todd

It was al just for fun. Just random stuff I'd thought about for years now, that I wanted to share. And the uncertain definition of hard sf is why I used quotation marks! Lol.
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#5
(05-30-2017, 04:08 AM)JohnnyYesterday Wrote:
(05-29-2017, 08:18 PM)AmrlKJaneway Wrote: So, there you have it. My hard sci-fi Star Wars theory. It's not enirely scientifically sound (it is Star Wars), but I'm happy with it and it's what I'm going to believe!

Now all you have to explain are:

The Force

How lightsabers work

How synthetic gravity works

How force fields work

How tractor beams work

How antigravity works

How space fighters can bank around like atmospheric fighters, and have insane amounts of delta-v

How so many alien species have a humanoid form

Easy peasy.

Lol. Nah. I'm done at hyperspace. You can feel free to explain those ones...

Wait! Synthetic gravity is nanobot swarms and magnetism. Someone on here explained that once.
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#6
Tractor beams

Radtech497
"I'd much rather see you on my side, than scattered into... atoms." Ming the Merciless, Ruler of the Universe
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#7
Also, explain why wormholes are blue on the inside and have no discernible mouths while you're at it Smile

My lifelong goal: To add "near" to my "baseline" classification.

Lucid dreaming: Because who says baseline computronium can't run virches?
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#8
(06-02-2017, 02:07 AM)Alphadon Wrote: Also, explain why wormholes are blue on the inside and have no discernible mouths while you're at it Smile

Sure, right after I explain why the stars stretch and fly at you when you jump to lightspeed.
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#9
Exactly. It cannot be a wormhole, because wormholes have literally nothing in common with it. You also can't fly "through" a supernova, as Han said in the first movie, in a wormhole. Wormholes don't have noticeable travel time. It might be Krasnikov tubes, since I'm not really sure how those work, but it seems unlikely. Why not just accept that SW clearly does not conform to real-life physics in any way?

My lifelong goal: To add "near" to my "baseline" classification.

Lucid dreaming: Because who says baseline computronium can't run virches?
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#10
(06-04-2017, 02:51 PM)Alphadon Wrote: Exactly. It cannot be a wormhole, because wormholes have literally nothing in common with it. You also can't fly "through" a supernova, as Han said in the first movie, in a wormhole. Wormholes don't have noticeable travel time. It might be Krasnikov tubes, since I'm not really sure how those work, but it seems unlikely. Why not just accept that SW clearly does not conform to real-life physics in any way?

I do accept it. Just having fun with a few little tidbits is all. Ignoring what I want, taking what does work, and making something else out of it. Also, I noted that a lot of Han's dialogue is bs to big note himself to these guys he's making a sale to.

Wait, I got an explanation for the force! Suppose there's these microscopic lifeforms... wait... that's lame, isn't it?
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