Speed of Light in Star Wars

[kaikatsu]

While this idea was inspired by the good old versus arguments -- I'm not coming at this from a versus perspective and don't care who wins. So into this board it goes.

This is my first post, so hi everyone. I am a computer science student with a strong hardware and engineering background, at York University, Toronto. (This puts me in Mike Wong's own place of birth, for anyone that cares. Hey Mike!)

Here's the premise of my argument. A lot of the issues can be resolved if we assume the speed of light is faster in the Star Wars universe. In fact, I would not be surprised if a NUMBER of cosmological constants were different in the Star Wars universe. But for now, let's just focus on the speed of light. To wit, we have...

1.) The Falcon manages to cross between star systems without a hyperdrive.

2.) Han refers to going .5 past light speed, as if this was some big deal.

3.) The death star is able to fire a beam with a greater energy limit than the annihilation mass of the death star itself. The mass/energy conversion ratio is dependant upon c^2.

4.) The Vong ships, in the New Jedi Order, are able to "lock onto a star" with gravity wells and travel at quick speeds to get there. The problem is, according to general relativity and standard the propagation of gravity IS the speed of light. (Disclaimer: these fields are not my primary area of knowledge, so if someone can correct me on them, I’m listening.)

I can think of a few other ideas (solar sails as a means to get around remotely quickly?!) that might support a faster speed of light, but they're not as important.

I can also think of at least ONE contradiction -- in the novel "Showdown at Centre Point" Radio is used and it demonstrates the kind of propagation delays one would expect at normal "c". I realized this after I had postulated the theory -- however I am tempted to disregard this one discrepancy as "a bad plot device".

I am looking for other contradictions besides the one I already listed. The more contradictions I can find (my knowledge of the Star Wars universe is far from complete) the more I can either address them, or scrap this theory.

I am also looking for other areas that would be AFFECTED by a faster speed of light, besides mass/energy exchange ratios. What about black body radiation, or the binding energy between atoms?

I have some other ideas, but we'll deal with them once I see how well this one is received. Looking forward to seeing what everyone has to say.

[Darth Wong]

The most obvious problem with this idea is that the probability of humans evolving in a universe with such grossly different laws of physics is insignificant.

The mere presence of humans indicates that Star Wars must take place in our universe, and any apparent deviations from our universe's rules must be due to phenomena we've not discovered yet, rather than changes to phenomena we already know.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Star Wars is merely in a different galaxy, not another universe.

[Ghost Rider]

A few problems...other then the fact that humans exist in SW, thus saying another universe would require immense proof that somehow probablity had arranged this, yet differ in so many other aspects?

1. We do not know the length between said systems. For all we know the Anoat system could be concievably in the backdoor of the Hoth system.

2. .5 past lightspeed makes honestly no sense as a statement of any sort of proof. .5 what?

3. Hypermatter. An energy source which we are given little ideas about but from observations immensely useful.

I've read too little of NJO to comment on number 4.

[Old Plympto]

2.) Han refers to going .5 past light speed, as if this was some big deal.

Timothy Zahn's novels have referred to going "Point Four" and "Point Five" beyond lightspeed as unknown units for speed.

[Darth Wong]

BTW, gravity would also be different if the speed of light was different.

[kaikatsu]

The notion that humans could not evolve in a universe with "grossly different laws of physics" is a fair one, but the notion that humans could evolve IDENTICALLY to our own self in another universe is equally unlikely, I would think. I would be willing to say we can't be one hundred percent sure their biology is identical to ours.

But that aside, you've made a pretty sweeping statement. What I was hoping to get a response to is the concept of -HOW- does a faster speed of light affect the other laws of physics? Let's be honest, the speed of light is SO fast from our point of view, that it might as well be instant. It affects us indirectly -- such as regulating how much energy we get from the sun -- but I am thinking that could be more or less compensated for by assuming that the planets are typically further out from the sun than Earth would be.

Are there concepts essential for life that CANNOT be compensated in such a way?

In regards to Star Wars being a different galaxy, not a different universe, the only real indication we have of that (as far as I know) is "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..."

How long ago? A few big bang contraction/expansion cycles? (Ok, in all fairness the oscilating universe concept isn't currently supported by the majority of astronomers.) How far away? And along how many arbitrarily defined dimensions?

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Humans were imported from Earth about two millions years BBY.

You won't find that cited anywhere, but it can be deducted.

And don't play smartass.

[Stark]

All 'fields' propagate their effects at lightspeed. Changing that speed would change everything from gravity to EM to chemical reactions. You can't change fundamentals without bringing the whole house of cards down.

[Darth Wong]

The notion that humans could not evolve in a universe with "grossly different laws of physics" is a fair one, but the notion that humans could evolve IDENTICALLY to our own self in another universe is equally unlikely, I would think. I would be willing to say we can't be one hundred percent sure their biology is identical to ours.

We don't have to be in order to make the point sound. The idea of a non-human organism which happens to look, act, and sound precisely human is just as absurd.

But that aside, you've made a pretty sweeping statement. What I was hoping to get a response to is the concept of -HOW- does a faster speed of light affect the other laws of physics? Let's be honest, the speed of light is SO fast from our point of view, that it might as well be instant. It affects us indirectly -- such as regulating how much energy we get from the sun -- but I am thinking that could be more or less compensated for by assuming that the planets are typically further out from the sun than Earth would be.

Do you not understand that even the slightest change in physical laws would make human life unworkable? Not to mention the fact that pretty much all of relativity (including gravity) is predicated upon the speed of light. Gravity is something that affects us daily, do you not agree?

Are there concepts essential for life that CANNOT be compensated in such a way?

See above.

In regards to Star Wars being a different galaxy, not a different universe, the only real indication we have of that (as far as I know) is "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..."

How long ago? A few big bang contraction/expansion cycles? (Ok, in all fairness the oscilating universe concept isn't currently supported by the majority of astronomers.) How far away? And along how many arbitrarily defined dimensions?

Your questions are completely irrelevant to the points already raised.

[kaikatsu]

Responses are coming faster than I can type it up. So I'll tackle these in reverse order...

The notion that humans were... imported from the earth... is an interesting statement. I'm not sure how to get this by induction or deduction. Maybe that's a topic for a different thread. I'd like to see evidence for this if you have it though.

As far as "not playing smartass" -- I would think illustrative questions would qualify as a valid method of discussions. Understand, I'm not trying to proove anyone wrong -- but a statement without any qualifications is cause for me to ask questions.

Regarding to the notion that "Gravity would be different" -- see -- THIS is the kind of thing I am trying to address. HOW would the magnitude of gravity be be different? I can't find a formula that links these two. If you can find one, point me in the general direction, would you?

Regarding Plympto and Ghost's posts.

1.) http://www.supershadow.com/starwars/map.html was the first map I could pull up. It's the same as the maps published in the back of most of the New Jedi Order books. Anyway, I can clearly see Hoth, Anoat, and Bespin along the Correlian trade spine. They seem to be more than one star system apart. That would make it a "considerable distance."

2.) Alright, I'll agree that point five past light speed COULD be seen as an unknown unit. Generally if someone were to say something like "point five past sound" I would assume mach one point five, and so on -- but it's not a proof. I've read Zahn's novels and I didn't catch that -- maybe I need to look over them again -- but it sounds reasonable. Point conceeded.

3.) Hypermatter has bothered me because it is poorly defined. It seems to me to be a copout in the sense that "no one named it, therefore it can produce an unlimited volume of energy." I'm not saying that's a bad explanation, but I'd like to toy with this idea and see where it takes me.

4.) Was the one that made me finally say "The speed of gravity must be infinite in the Star Wars universe. But I still don't see how that can get the ships past c". Then again, the NJO has demonstrated a more appalling lack of basic scientific principles than most Star Wars to date -- I suppose that comes with the territory of writing new technologies (and therefore having to explain them) as opposed to relying on visuals, and letting the geeks come to their own conclusions.

Anyway, I freely admit it's possible to say "You don't need the speed of light to be faster if you accept X other reasons for all observed phenomena." The question is not does the speed of light HAVE to be faster, but COULD it be faster if we change some constants? What, exactly, fails and does anything fail that can't be worked around whatsoever?

[kaikatsu]

Again, I'm having a bit of a hard time keeping up with the rate of posting.

Effectively I've gotten a healthy dose of, "If you change one little thing life as we know it can't exist."

Ultimately that -was- why I came here. I was sort of hoping for things like "If you change the speed of light, the rate of carbon-14 decay rises so significantly carbon based life is impossible, and you CAN'T assume all the C-14 is already decayed becase...."

I don't know how to finish that statement, but I was wondering if one of you could.

[kaikatsu]

Hate to reply to my own post again, but I think I found an answer to my own question in the fine structure constant. I'm going to mull over this with a textbook in bed. (Unfortunately I don't understand this as well as I wish I did.) Anyway, any replies will have to be handled in the morning. G'nite all.

[Praxis]

While this idea was inspired by the good old versus arguments -- I'm not coming at this from a versus perspective and don't care who wins. So into this board it goes.

This is my first post, so hi everyone. I am a computer science student with a strong hardware and engineering background, at York University, Toronto. (This puts me in Mike Wong's own place of birth, for anyone that cares. Hey Mike!)

Here's the premise of my argument. A lot of the issues can be resolved if we assume the speed of light is faster in the Star Wars universe. In fact, I would not be surprised if a NUMBER of cosmological constants were different in the Star Wars universe. But for now, let's just focus on the speed of light. To wit, we have...

1.) The Falcon manages to cross between star systems without a hyperdrive.

2.) Han refers to going .5 past light speed, as if this was some big deal.

3.) The death star is able to fire a beam with a greater energy limit than the annihilation mass of the death star itself. The mass/energy conversion ratio is dependant upon c^2.

4.) The Vong ships, in the New Jedi Order, are able to "lock onto a star" with gravity wells and travel at quick speeds to get there. The problem is, according to general relativity and standard the propagation of gravity IS the speed of light. (Disclaimer: these fields are not my primary area of knowledge, so if someone can correct me on them, I’m listening.)

I can think of a few other ideas (solar sails as a means to get around remotely quickly?!) that might support a faster speed of light, but they're not as important.

I can also think of at least ONE contradiction -- in the novel "Showdown at Centre Point" Radio is used and it demonstrates the kind of propagation delays one would expect at normal "c". I realized this after I had postulated the theory -- however I am tempted to disregard this one discrepancy as "a bad plot device".

I am looking for other contradictions besides the one I already listed. The more contradictions I can find (my knowledge of the Star Wars universe is far from complete) the more I can either address them, or scrap this theory.

I am also looking for other areas that would be AFFECTED by a faster speed of light, besides mass/energy exchange ratios. What about black body radiation, or the binding energy between atoms?

I have some other ideas, but we'll deal with them once I see how well this one is received. Looking forward to seeing what everyone has to say.

1) Novels state it to have a backup hyperdrive that is much slower than the normal one. Just enough to limp to a nearby system.

2) This is explained by Lucas and the EU that it is a hyperdrive rating. Since they use similar ratings for sublight and hyperdrive, one has to specify sublight or past light. .5 past light means it has a .5 hyperdrive rating. The lower the number, the faster the hyperdrive. The fastest civilian hyperdrive is class 3, and military is class 1 and 2. Han is .5.

3) Hypermatter is the power source, not antimatter or anything lesser. By definition (look up Hyper) hypermatter could be matter that exists in multiple dimensions, which explains the high power outputs.

4) The Vong ships were supposed to modify both space AND time.

[Cykeisme]

It does make sense that Star Wars ships have a secondary hyperdrive system.. otherwise failure of the primary hyperdrive could potentially doom a crew to becoming stranded between stars.

Btw Kaikatsu, this is a message board, not a chat thingy... you can just Edit your previous post if you have something to add, as opposed to making multiple consecutive posts in the same thread.

[GeneralTacticus]

Question: If the Falcon had a backup hyperdrive, why were Han, Leia et al in such deep shit when the primary hyperdrive was broken? Even if the secondary was slower, is there any reason why they couldn't have just used it to hop away from the pursuing ISDs?

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Because then they would have been detected.

[GeneralTacticus]

The only reason they had to try and avoid detection was because they couldn't hyper away. Han didn't give a thought to hiding from Death Squadron until after he tried to engage the hyperdrive and found it wasn't working. If the Falcon had a backup, why wouldn't he have just used that?

[VT-16]

I´m guessing their backup system is warpdrive.

[NecronLord]

1.) The Falcon manages to cross between star systems without a hyperdrive.

In the time it takes to train a Jedi Knight.

Interesting fact for you. If the journey had been a four light year one, and the Falcon had constantly accellerated at 1000 gravities, four years would have passed for Luke, but only five point eight days for the occupants of the Falcon.

[kaikatsu]

Praxis -- I did not know about the backup Hyper Drive. That's an interesting notion but one that, if you don't mind me saying so, it feels like a copout. There's never a single mention of it. It DOES however provide a good retroactive explanation, and it's certantly one we can't rule out.

I didn't know about the hyperdrive rating either. Somehow point five PAST light speed -- where a LOWER number is better -- seems semantically wrong to me. But hey, it's Lucas's universe.

Hypermatter has still always bothered me on the basis of it being a buzzword. ANYTHING that violates conservation of mass/energy as I see it bothers me. If the energy conversion ratios were different, I'd -rather- assume that the superlaser creates spontanious mass/energy conversions within the planet itself, than overrides M/E conversion. Still, it's sci fi, and fantasy sci fi at that. Point conceeded.

Vong ships "modifying time" boarders on treknobabble without the long words. In what reference frame do they modify time? These ships were cappable of traveling fast enough to match hyperdrives in effectiveness. The whole idea of a gravity drive is very poorly thought out in how it's explained. It's the greatest support for the idea that gravity, and by induction light itself, travels faster in the SW universe. But it's the expanded universe -- they get enough wrong that I can easily see one more being wrong as well.

One interesting last tidbit -- while looking over showdown at centrepoint to find the mention of the radio, I realized that the hyperdrive interdiction field -- which is based on gravity -- can cover a star system INSTANTLY (or at least at speeds fast enough to seem so.) Now I know that there's a lot of debate within the scientific community as to how fast gravity moves -- but this might be good evidence for Star Wars that it's moving faster than light.

Cykeisme -- thanks for the notes. I don't use message boards much.

Necron Lord, that's a beautiful observation in general -- that the time for Luke would have been much longer than for the Falcon. I don't know if that's supported by the Star Wars timeline, but if it's not, it SHOULD be.

Anyway, I took a look at the "fine structure constant" and while I don't understand all of the underlying mathematics, what I did gather was enough to tell me "If you change the speed of light your face will implode." Or something akin to that -- which I suppose renders the concepts moot. Subatomic physics isn't my area of knowledge so I have no idea if the effects can be canceled by arbitrarily adjusting other constants, but at this point I think Occam's razor has selected this idea for pruning.

Thanks to everyone who replied.

[NecronLord]

Necron Lord, that's a beautiful observation in general -- that the time for Luke would have been much longer than for the Falcon. I don't know if that's supported by the Star Wars timeline, but if it's not, it SHOULD be.

It makes a lot more sense for him to be living on Dagobah for about five years than for him to train to the point of being the equal of at least a padawan who'se been training since he was four in a few months, even if he's an exceptional student, years should be required.

[Praxis]

Praxis -- I did not know about the backup Hyper Drive. That's an interesting notion but one that, if you don't mind me saying so, it feels like a copout. There's never a single mention of it. It DOES however provide a good retroactive explanation, and it's certantly one we can't rule out.

I didn't know about the hyperdrive rating either. Somehow point five PAST light speed -- where a LOWER number is better -- seems semantically wrong to me. But hey, it's Lucas's universe.

Hypermatter has still always bothered me on the basis of it being a buzzword. ANYTHING that violates conservation of mass/energy as I see it bothers me. If the energy conversion ratios were different, I'd -rather- assume that the superlaser creates spontanious mass/energy conversions within the planet itself, than overrides M/E conversion. Still, it's sci fi, and fantasy sci fi at that. Point conceeded.

So you know, MW does a lot of work on this subject on the main site.

Practically EVERYTHING in SW violates conservation of mass/energy, which can ONLY be explained by Hypermatter (which explains it quite well).

Hey, after 25,000 years of galactic civilization we can't be surprised that they have multidimensional matter and are capable of these things.

Heck, Star Trek violates it plenty of times, and THEY only have Antimatter. Look at the Self-replicating mines. They carry antimatter to power them, but yet are able to turn energy into matter and create hundreds of copies of themselves. They should have run out of antimatter after the first copy!

[qupte]
Vong ships "modifying time" boarders on treknobabble without the long words. In what reference frame do they modify time? These ships were cappable of traveling fast enough to match hyperdrives in effectiveness. The whole idea of a gravity drive is very poorly thought out in how it's explained. It's the greatest support for the idea that gravity, and by induction light itself, travels faster in the SW universe. But it's the expanded universe -- they get enough wrong that I can easily see one more being wrong as well.[/quote]

The Vong tech does have a considerable amount of technobabble to it. Quantum Black Holes and creatures that modify space/time...

[Meest]

Praxis -- I did not know about the backup Hyper Drive. That's an interesting notion but one that, if you don't mind me saying so, it feels like a copout. There's never a single mention of it. It DOES however provide a good retroactive explanation, and it's certantly one we can't rule out.

The whole point was to escape, and to do that you need to go faster than the enemy.

[Batman]

Praxis -- I did not know about the backup Hyper Drive. That's an interesting notion but one that, if you don't mind me saying so, it feels like a copout. There's never a single mention of it.

In the movies. The EU mentions them repeatedly, one example being 'Dark Force Rising'.

I didn't know about the hyperdrive rating either. Somehow point five PAST light speed -- where a LOWER number is better -- seems semantically wrong to me. But hey, it's Lucas's universe.

So? It's a completely arbitrary way of rating speed, as is Warp factors or Mach numbers (as the speed of sound isn't exactly a constant). Hell, for all we know in universe the lower=faster ratio makes damn good sense on account of hyperdrive physics.
Valen as as tachyons supposedly have less energy the faster they travel that may even make sense WRT real world physics. Mind you, I may be talking gibberish here.

Hypermatter has still always bothered me on the basis of it being a buzzword. ANYTHING that violates conservation of mass/energy as I see it bothers me.

How does hypermatter violate conservation of mass/energy? It IS absurdly dense, it's just that Wars found a way to either negate that mass or store it in a place where said mass doesn't affect 4-dimensional space. E=mc^2 still applies.

Necron Lord, that's a beautiful observation in general -- that the time for Luke would have been much longer than for the Falcon. I don't know if that's supported by the Star Wars timeline, but if it's not, it SHOULD be.

It is most certainly not supported by the official timeline, at least not to the extent of the trip taking years. It may however easily have taken weeks to months.
Not that Luke actually displayed Padawan-level Force control in TESB or ROTJ. Compare him to Obi-Wan in TPM and he definitely comes off worse.