Physics. (Very LAST thread). I promise

[Maximum7]

I’m trying to end my obsession with a future science idea. I’ve posted similar questions that I’ve asked you all over the internet and I’ve had no luck in finding anything.

What I’m really looking for is what a physicist can be studying in Star Wars. Star Wars has already moved FTL, Legends had teleportation, they probably know why how the universe formed (the Force), when it will end and why their is more matter than antimatter. They also know everything about dark matter and dark energy since Starkiller Base is powered by it

What do you think is left for a physicist to study for.

Also this is the very last time I will ask you for ideas. I’m trying to quit this crazy obsession.

[Phantasm]

Nowadays, science is about studying the processes, not necessarily invention. The invention part is left to the engineers.

That said, there's a lot of processes in Star Wars that to date should not be able to be explained properly without Alien Space Bats. Case in point: the Maw, a black hole cluster in the Outer Rim of the Galaxy, consisting of close to a dozen black holes which has not collapsed in on itself to form a supermassive black hole. Its placement is also a mystery.

Yes, the later EU books (Fate of the Jedi nine-parter) put Sinkhole Station, built by the Killiks at the request of the Ancient Space Bats, in the center of the Maw keeping it stable... but that's not public knowledge!



There's also the possibility that they're still trying to figure out dark matter, dark energy, and what came before the Big Bang.


Senator Grebleips of the Green Planet delegation sent a survey ship to a nearby galaxy three million lightyears away (a straggler had to phone home to get picked up). Has it been heard from since it left the galaxy? Is it being tracked? CAN it be tracked through intergalactic hyperspace?



And of course, a scientific study of just what the Force is so that it can be harnessed by non-Sensitives .. . or destroyed, either of which would (theoretically) shift the balance of power away from Force-using religious orders and into [the rest of this deleted because it was sociopolitical propaganda the writer doesn't actually believe anyway].

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Maximum7

What I’m really looking for is what a physicist can be studying in Star Wars.

The short answer is 'whatever the GM thinks is interesting'. Star Wars doesn't use physics as we know it.

[ak_aramis]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

That said, there's a lot of processes in Star Wars that to date should not be able to be explained properly without Alien Space Bats.

Star Wars has space bats... which eat power cabling.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Maximum7

I’m trying to end my obsession with a future science idea. I’ve posted similar questions that I’ve asked you all over the internet and I’ve had no luck in finding anything.

Yes … I noticed you on Stack Exchange.

Also this is the very last time I will ask you for ideas. I’m trying to quit this crazy obsession.

Good.

Let's try and explain why your quest is intrinsically, automatically, doomed. The various writers of Star Wars have never had any significant knowledge of real physics, nor have they ever had any clear or consistent fictional physics that has guided their worldbuilding. They have just made up some phrases that contained scientific-sounding words whenever their plots needed someone to explain something. I doubt they have ever claimed that anything was scientifically meaningful; if they did, they were ignorant or lying.

Everything you have learned from Hollywood is wrong. Anything involving any kind of technical material in films or TV that are presented as fiction can be reliably assumed to be incorrect. This is not because of a conspiracy to miss-inform the public. If such a conspiracy existed, it would be less effective in its purpose than the current style of scriptwriting, because some people would rebel against it as a matter of artistic freedom.

Scriptwriters care about their plots being dramatically and commercially successful, not about scientific plausibility. Real science does not produce neat and rapid plot resolutions, with pretty little moral and dramatic lessons emerging naturally from them.

Fans of film and TV series have put vast amounts of work into attempting to rationalise the events of those stories. This has all been wasted effort, and goes a long way towards justifying the lack of care for plausibility used by the producers of these stories: it is strong evidence that their dedicated fans will swallow anything, so why handicap yourself by trying make it plausible?

[Phantasm]

One fallacy: they have tech that utilizes certain physics, therefore they know everything there is to know about X. In the real world, we were using electricity believing the charges flowed from positive to negative before we realized we got it backwards. Starkiller base and dark matter/dark energy may be the same way. (Even the Prequel-era Jedi, with their belief that midichlorians are responsible for the Force, could be wrong, as injecting the parasites into someone has never resulted in inducing Sensitivity.)

Also, SW has a definite miniaturization problem; the problem is they don't have it! The First Order needed a planet to capture enough dark matter/energy to use; there's nothing indicating the New Republic/Resistance had that tech or even fully understood the science behind it. Granted, though, miniaturization is an engineering issue, not a physicist's thing.


Scientists studying the Force by observing and quantifying its effects are probably fed up with Jedi mysticism. The scientists are looking for a scientific explanation and all they get from Jedi are "will of the Force". Hardly a scientific viewpoint which can be studied and replicated under laboratory conditions. Looking for those theoretical particles - let's call them "psions" for now - mentally controlled by the Jedi and Sith but which elude detection by scientific sensors could be a lifelong obsession.

And as johndallman says, take a lot of the technical stuff in companion volumes with a grain of salt. SW is less consistent with tech and science than Trek. Run with it!



TL;DR: Basically, don't assume "They have tech which uses X, so all factions know everything there is to know about X."

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

The scientists are looking for a scientific explanation and all they get from Jedi are "will of the Force".

In the Star Wars setting (which isn't ours, "long long ago" notwithstanding!), the Jedi might be the ones that are actually right. Teleological and non-reductionist explanations might be the more correct ones when it comes to the Force. An atomist scientist who insists that it must be mentally controlled "psion particles" could be quite wrong, if not as crazy as someone in the real world insisting that planets are propelled around their suns because they're pushed along their tracks by angels. You could, of course, still have such a character, even if everyone in the group agreed with the Jedi philosophy, and it might even be fun to play. But that character's viewpoint doesn't have to be _right_.

About the least useful place to start with the Star Wars setting is assuming that "modern-day real world understanding of physics is true and nearly complete", and then asking what a real-world physicist would be studying if only they happened to be in the SW galaxy.

Do what the SW authors do. Make up something that sounds cool, but in fact is designed to propel the stories you want to tell.

[David Johnston2]

Predicting solar instabilities
Studying extragalactic radiation sources
Figuring out how to change course in hyperspace
Discovering a "subspace" counterpart to "hyperspace"
Studying wormholes
Improving the precision of hyperspace jumps
Speeding up or slowing down the flow of time.
Creating a more compact power source.

[whswhs]

If you want to think in terms of actual physics—not a requirement, as others here have said—it isn't necessary to look either for new fundamental forces, or for yet more elementary particles. A different direction has been emerging over the past half century or so: the physics of nonequilibrium situations such as systems with a steady influx of free energy (for example, planets illuminated by a sun), of systems with sensitive dependence on initial conditions such as weather, and of emergent self-organized complexity from flows of energy. This last might even provide a way of tying the Force into conventional physics, with a bit of handwaving; the life that "creates it; makes it grow" is one of the quintessential examples of emergent complexity, or so it appears. The traditional mathematics either of small numbers of particles (the three-body problem is already challenging!) or of random collections of particles (Asimov's model for the Foundation stories) can't cope with this; you need different sorts of math.

[Maximum7]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Predicting solar instabilities
Studying extragalactic radiation sources
Figuring out how to change course in hyperspace
Discovering a "subspace" counterpart to "hyperspace"
Studying wormholes
Improving the precision of hyperspace jumps
Speeding up or slowing down the flow of time.
Creating a more compact power source.

What do you mean by “sub space” counterpart to hyperspace

And what would you call changing course in hyperspace?