TechStuff Classic: TechStuff Leaps Into Hyperspace

This episode originally aired on April two, thousand thirteen. It is called tex Stuff Leaps into hyper Space. Let's listen. Red leather, yellow leather, red, yellow leather. All right, here we go, Han Solo, I'm captain of the Millennium Falcon. Chewy here tells me you're looking for passage to the Alton System. Yes, indeed, if it's a fast ship fast ship, you've never heard of the Millennium Falcon ship I have. It's the ship that made the Kessel run in less

than twelve par secs. I've outrun Imperial starships. Not the local bulk cruisers, mind you. I'm talking about the big Correlian ships. Now she's fast enough for you, old man? What's the cargo? Usually I'm the one calling you old man. Yeah, that's true. I just wanted to turn that around a little bit. I also didn't go full Christopher walk In, despite the fact that I love that Saturday Night Live skit.

So we are talking about the Kessel Run and hyper drives in the Star Wars universe and uh, and then kind of comparing it to what we would like to call real life. Right. And we're doing this, by the way, because this is our five first episode and we are we we are big fans of the five of first legion. That's right, That's right, that's the Uh. This is props going out to our Star Wars buddies. So you five hundred and first members out there, this one's for you.

So now, in the original context, we need to talk about what the Kessel Run is within the mythology of Star Wars, right, and it's not really mentioned in um in any of the three original films, right, or even the fictional prequels that supposedly exist. No, we should also point out, according to everything I've ever read, Lucas considered anything that was in the movies cannon correct. Anything outside the movies was just extra stuff that may or may

not line up with what is canon. So there's no you know, the stuff that we'll be talking about, a lot of this is things that other writers have kind of expounded upon in in the novels. Are the comics, some of the video games, yeah, some of the cartoons, etcetera.

And so the stuff that we're talking about this is this is mostly people trying to explain away what Lucas created in a in a manner that makes kind of sense, because a lot of the stuff that you watch in Star Wars, if you really think about, you're like, wait a minute, it's not science. So the Kessel Run in particular is a route in Star Wars, at least this is the way it's explained in the Expanded Universe. It's it's a smuggling run, right, which is exactly what you know.

Han Solo is a smuggler, and so this is a particular route through space that smugglers would take. And uh. And one of the big complaints or criticisms of this particular section of dialogue is that Han Solo talks about doing a Kessel Run in less than twelve par sex, which seems to suggest that he thinks par sex is a measure of time, right, and it's not, and it's it's certainly not. You know, you know, I think that my my strongest um explanation of this is just that

Han Solo was just saying words. He was just talking and trying to sound impressive. My my explanation is Lucas thought that parsex sounded futuristic and that it sounds like a measurement of time. That was mine, which puts the onus on the writer and not the character. But hey, you know, I'm a writer. That's kind of how I think. Like sometimes I make mistakes too. I'm just saying that if you're going to excuse the character saying and I think that that is not a poor right if you

want to be an apologist. Sure, so, So what a what a par sec actually is? It is a unit of distance and technically based upon UH the uh the sun and earth and and and a second of arc. Uh. It involves some pretty complex UH concepts that are not that complex, but they're difficult to explain an audio format.

But ultimately it translates to about three point to six light years, right, and and it's specifically, by the way, tied to to the distance of the Sun from the Earth and another object and another object that makes up one sec. Yeah, and so you know, forgiving the fact that we're talking about a galaxy far far away, and that perhaps, as a phil plate of that astronomer pointed out,

that might not be the most valid measurement. Why would another why would people in another galaxy use a unit of measurement that's dependent upon the Earth's position relative to another object and the Sun. That makes no sense at all. But anyway, so it's it's equivalent to about three point to six light years, And of course that just makes things even more confusing for people who don't know what a light year is, and they think light year is

also a measurement of time. It's not. But at any rate, the description Han Solo makes is very confusing if you think about parsex being a distance, like, how can you take a route and say that your ship made it in less than twelve units of distance for that route and make that the a measurement of its speed. So here's how we're gonna try and explain this well. And also I should mention uh in the novelization of a new hope. Han Solo does not say Parsex recond that

real quick. He said standard time units twelve less than twelve standard time units. I have no idea how long the standard time unit is, but that doesn't really matter, I guess. But anyway, so Kessel run, you've got this route. It's usually if you are taking the quote unquote safe approach, eighteen par sex long, which is about fifty nine light years. Yeah. So the reason why it's that long is because the route takes you through an area of space that has

black holes in it. It's called the mall. And the mall in a w would destroy a ship if you got too close to it. It's you know, it's a black holes. There are bad times for ships, right you know? You know you do? Have you heard what the term is for something that gets pulled through a black hole? The term of what is happening to it? Spaganifications my

favorite thing in the world. Yes, because it gets pulled into these long, thin strands as it's being uh infinitely thin strands hypothetically being pulled towards this center of intense density or intensity as I like to call it. Anyway, So usually this route would be eighteen par sex long. But if one were to be a little daring or perhaps insane, completely crazy, one might be able to plot a route that goes closer to the black holes, you

kind of skirt around it. And you know, Han Solo, being the guy that he is, he's he says, you know, time is money, or distance is money, or money is money or something I don't know. Anyway, he wanted to be able to take a more direct route, which would shave off about six or so parsecs from this eighteen parsec long route, and that means that you know, he's he's essentially instead of going like a curved line, he's making a straight line. Not quite like that dramatic, but

close to it. So in other words, he's taking a route and making it more efficient, but it is much more dangerous. There's no direct relationship between the Millennium Falcon's speed and this route immediately, but one could argue, and one has. In fact, Kyle Hill of Wired wrote a great article how the Star Wars Kessel Run turns Hans Solo into a time traveler. Fantastic article. It's really well

link it. It's great. Yeah, it's entertaining and uh and also it starts to build in some chronological problems in the Star Wars universe, but we'll get into those. But anyway, he points out that that you could end up thinking, oh, well, the Millennium Falcon has to be the fast ship because it has to be able to escape that pull of the black holes. So therefore that's what tells you that

it's fast. Is not only that heating only is the pilot capable of making a more efficient route to go through the Kessel Run, but it's also in the ship fast enough to a black roles, right right? Yeah, Well, according to a Wikipedia um, which is one of the best wikis ever, I just said that on the air

it was wonderful. Um. In the commentary for Star Wars episode for a New Hope DVD, George Lucas said that the Millennium Falcons navigational computers were highly advanced and that that was why the parsic thing works out the way that it does. Yeah. Yeah, so essentially then you just make Han Solo a guyo flips switches, a really good

flip switcher. There's also a great thing that was at the Smithsonian, one of the Star Wars exhibit where uh, Harrison's It was actually talking about the first time they shot uh seen in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon and George Lucas gave him the direction of your flying the ship and he says, Okay, how do I do that?

Because there are just all these dials and switches and they didn't There was no rhyme or reason to its was like, I don't know the buttons pull that lever pushed the button frank, So anyway you might wonder, well, why what's the big deal of the Kessel run? Anyway was what was the significance? Like it's a smuggling route, but it's a smuggling route for what? And within the lore again this again nothing films expanded universe, so not Cannon.

Kessel was a planet that had these mines on it for something called glitter stem spice, which was a substance created by spice spiders, and it's a photoactive substance, so it activates when light hits it, So it had to be mined in complete darkness. It could not be exposed to light in anywhere or else it lose its potency. And the spice was essentially a drug. Uh As Cheery as that is, I do want to point out that I'm pretty sure the word castle comes from during World

War Two. You know, the Germans got themselves really good and surrounded by a group of Russians and uh and some of their compatriots were trying to get supplies and aid to uh their their surrounding colleagues colleagues. Yeah sure, and this failed completely. But but the word kessel means that like pocket in Germany, thint cattle, yeah, dosson thrish

dish uh So the Gli stump spice stuff. What it was supposed to do within the realm of Star Wars is boost your mental capacity and even give you perhaps telepathic powers for a short amount of time. It was also incredibly addictive. This is this makes Hanselo an even darker character in a way because he's smuggling. Yeah, he runs drugs. Um so, yeah, that's kind of grim. But in the during the Galactic Republic, which is the period that proceeds a New Hope, that's back when there was

a the Old Republic was around. It was being used medically. But then the republic fails and then the black market takes over. Smugglers start selling this. I guess more like recreational drugs as opposed to medical things, and the Empire outlaws it. And so that's why it's important to be able to avoid imperial entanglements, as Obi Wan says in

a New Hope. So that's why it's important that there's the explanation of shaving off some of the distance that it would normally take you to to travel in order to get there, and also the fact that the Falcon would have to be a little faster than most ships. Now, all of that is kind of cool. I can. I can kind of handle most of that, even though I

think that the parseec thing is really an apologist. It's a redcon or retroactive continuity where you after you've made a mistake, you go back and try to justify the fact that a mistake is there. Uh, this is the way in no way unlimited to Star Wars. It's extraordinarily common. Um, yes, everywhere, Yeah, it's yeah. So the other thing that Hans Solo says is that can go at point five beyond light speed. So I interpret that to mean half again faster than

the speed of light. I I interpreted it as as a as point five percent of light speed. Above light speed. But but but your sounds much more impressive. But that would be much mind would be much more impressive. Either way, you're violating the laws of physics as we understand them. Because as we as we understand the speed of light through a vacuum is the universal speed limit. Nothing can

go faster than light through a vacuum physically impossible. Now we should also mention light itself does not necessarily travel at the same speed through all media. You know, through a vacuum, it travels at an incredible clip. It's about two d million, seven fifty eight meters per second, or around one six thousand, two eighty two miles per second.

That's through the vacuum of space and solos ship. If you assume it could go half again faster than the speed of light would have its top speed, it's somewhere around four hundred forty nine million, million, six eight thousand six or eighty seven per second, or two thousand, four hundred twenty four miles per second. That's really fast, And of course it is faster than anything we can we we know of, besides some theoretical particles that we'll talk

about in a little bit. That's faster than anything we know of can go. That makes it really problematic because if we just talk about parsecs and shaving off distance, you know, Okay, I can see that we still have the problem of a parsec is a really long distance, right, Yeah, So how you know, if Han Solo made the kessel run, how long would it take him to do it? Assuming

that he's traveling at around the speed of light? And yeah, yeah, I mean if if you're if you nudge right up to the speed of light, they would take about thirty nine years travel twelve par sex that that would be. That would be due to an independent observer though correct because special relativity. But we'll talk about that. Yeah, I don't want to get into that right now, but special relativity will play a part in our second part of our conversation because also we should go ahead and say it.

According to Star Wars, and again this is a retcon type thing, all ships have a stasis field stabilizer thing that keeps time. It's a universal constant of time amongst the Empire, which is really convenient because otherwise Han Solo would be older than Yoda right after he had taken what I don't know, like like two or three trips yea four or five three trips on the Kestle run.

But it does sound like he's done it multiple times, which means that if he's done the Kestle run multiple times, that special relativity problem, which again we'll talk about in a minute just to Paine. Right. So, so here's here's the thing. The stasis is supposed to keep everything constant. Uh. Time is a tricky thing, but it doesn't matter. It's not just if you're traveling nearer or at or above the speed of light where you have to take it

into account. Every single planet that's in the entire galaxy of Star Wars has time pass at a different rate according to any according to physics. Yeah, and again it's relative. So if Lauren's on one planet and I'm on another planet, each of us are going to feel as if time is passing at the same speed individually, like a second will feel like a second to me, a second will

feel like a second to Lauren. However, depending upon the planet's mass and the speed at which it travels through space, the actual passage of time is going to be different relative to each other. So if we match our watches up, we'll see that they're not keeping exact synchronized time. And again more on that and just a bit. I have to I have to preface it because it's it makes my head swim, all right. So the other element in this Star Wars universe is the idea of hyper space

and hyperdrive. And so this is when, and if you've watched the Star Wars movies, you know, they engage the hyperdrive and then suddenly all the stars start streaking towards them in this beautiful display. And from from the outside it looks like the ship just suddenly gets an enormous speed boost, and yet no one is is slammed back against the back of the the Millennium falcon like and ejected into space because of the massive acceleration. That would

be a pretty pretty lame trip. It would be really would be funny to see, like the the activation of the first hyper drive and then you just see a bunch of a leads just floating free in space like well, that was a bad idea, um because that kind of this kind of happens in Fire Escape. That's for for

you kids out there. We need to make Jonathan watch that. Anyway, I've never watched it, so so it's it's not very well defined hyperspace, and in the Star Wars universe, even in the expanded universe a right, right, it's hyperspace is kind of placed in contrast to real space. Yeah, you know, real space being of course what we're kind of moving around and the under under normal speed constraints are moving around it. And then and then yeah, apparently these these

hypermatter reactor drives with hypermatter implosion cores. I mean, it sounds a little bit like a like a wormhole or a tests or act something like that. Like, again, it's

not very well explained. So some of there's like it could be a parallel universe where you open up a gate and you travel into a new universe, and then you open up a second gate and you re emerge into quote unquote our universe the start, or at least the Star Wars universe real space, but you are you know, in a different point of real space than you were when you started. Um Or it could be an extra dimension in space, which is kind of like warp drive

where you're warping space around you. It could be an alternate mode of physical existence, which I said is kind of like an astral plane for those of you who play fantasy games where you can travel to that um or it could just be traveling faster than the speed of light, and all of that is difficult to to get your head around. Again, none of that was definitively set down in the movies as this is how hyper

drive works or hyperspace. So we have a lot of different things to choose from and uh, and it seems to me that a lot of the people who write in the Star Wars universe or who have tried to explain the Star Wars universe have kind of fudged around with this a lot. No one has really come out

with what is the definitive answer as to what this is? Right? Sure, and and this I used this example about about once a week with Jonathan, but it always reminds me of this one terrific interview that Rick Burman did about a Star Trek, specifically the UH Eisenberg uncertainty compensators and the transporters, and someone was like, well, how did those work? And he was like, very well, thank you, next question. Yeah, whereas you know, the holidack works very poorly, or at

least it breaks down once a year. But again within the lore of Star Wars. Hyperspace itself is first discovered by a race called the Raccotta, and they create ricata like the cheese. No, it's our a k A t A. Okay, just checking. You're gonna remember that Star Wars often the pronunciations are exactly the same as very silly stuff here

on Earth. Funny about that, um. But anyway, they they created force powered drives, so they were tapping into the power of the Force to travel through space at incredible speeds. And there there, I have no problem because the force is magic, and and magic means you do not have to explain how something works technologically, physics, it's right out the windows, right, Yeah, you know it's a fairy tale. You don't question the physics of a fairy tale, you know.

I mean if you sit there and say, well, wouldn't prints climbing Rapunzel's hair, scalp her and leave her screaming in pain, that doesn't make the fairy tale very much fun. Uh would have been a very short movie. Tangled would have been very grim and not in a fairy tale kind of Okay, anyway, I'm getting off track. But they used the force, and I thought, oh, well, if it's thing that's force space then except that then within again

the expanded lore. The Karelians Karelias, one of the planets in the Star Wars universe, and the Euros both found these starship drives and using reverse engineering, determined how they worked and created technological versions of these force driven drives. So they use technology to replicate what the force did. And now now we have a technological explanation for how hyperspace works. Except there's no actual explanation there. It's just

that it is technological. Now this is what drives me crazy because then I'm like, okay, wait no, So if there is a technical way to make it happen, how does it work? Um? And and really we have more

about the process than anything else. So uh. In the movies, when they were going to make a jump to hyperspace, they would activate the ship's navigational computer, which would calculate whatever the route needed to And this was important because, as Han Solo explains to Luke, who is an impatient little brat in a New Hope, he explains, like, you can't hurry this stuff because if you do, you pass too close to a star or a planet, it pulls

you out of hyperspace and you could die. Yeah. Yeah. Now, now this to me creates another problem because if hyperspace is in fact a parallel universe, why do things that exist in our meat space affect you when you're in the parallel universe, unless, of course they also have a presence in that parallel universe. I I do, I don't know.

And it sounds much more like a like a like a wormhole, like like you're somehow jumping from from point to point along kind of a like like an conveyor belt sort of thing, which is another concept that we can talk about in a minute. So you're you're thinking more along the lines of this parallel universe has has certain anchor points to real space that it does pass through,

even if it's not a one to one ratio. Is that kind of what you're talking about or yeah, or kind of like I don't know, like like there's just certain sections of space that you can go much faster through and and unfortunately, you know sometimes as some gets in the way. So you're talking about like the auto

bawn of space. Yeah, and that's another thing that I was reading on Wikipedia, was was saying, was saying that there maybe about eight of these, according to the Star Wars universe kicking around and that are super safe roots, and then there's some that are pretty shady and wind

up getting me stuck in an asteroid. Wow. Okay, well, at any rate, it does make me sit there and think this parallel universe explanation is is harder to get my mind wrapped around if things in real space can affect you're traveling through the parallel universe, unless, of course, uh, it's just talking about how where your output is going to be, like where your stopping point is going to be, then obviously would be important if if it um maybe

it has to calculate all right, well, during the process, like right now, if we were to leave, if we were to instantaneously jumped to this endpoint right now, we'd be fine. But by the time we actually get there, there's gonna be a planet in the way because of the rotation of the planets. Then I'm like, okay, all right, I got it. Now that makes sense. It was to me. It was the stuff that was on the pathway that

made no sense. But anyway, the hyper drive would create ripples in the time space matrix using a fusion reaction and gamma radiation and then the ripples would propel the ship into hyperspace. And none of that makes any sense, but then again, it sounds really impressive if you're just not thinking at all. If if you're just if Han Solo were reading that, I would be like, yeah, total, yeah, well let me come on. He was kind of dreamy,

just we just bought anything, he said, uh yeah. And and this also reminds me of warp drive as well, where you're you're warping the time space. In this case it's the time space matrix and in star check could be the space time continuum. But either way, it's the idea of warping the dimensions themselves in order to propel you across vast distances that incredible speeds. And uh and so that's kind of the breakdown of how it worked

within the lore of Star Wars. All Right, guys, I'm gonna interrupt this classic episode for just a moment so that we can take a quick break to thank our sponsors. Alright, so let's get back to hyperspace. So we mentioned in the first half nothing can go faster than the speed of light, this universal speed. Look, yeah, it's it's smart people such as Einstein have talked a lot about that, right, and that that speed and time themselves actually have a relationship.

And so this gets us into special relativity. There are a lot of different aspects of special relativity, but the one that interests me the most in this discussion is the fact that as objects move faster, time dilates on that object relative to a stationary observer. So again, in other words, like if I if I'm standing perfectly still in space, so I'm not, I'm not on a planet, I'm not moving at all, hopefully in space suit Yes, sure,

why not? I'll give it to you at this time, all right, And Lauren, you are in a zippy little ship that's going at near the speed of light. Again, to you, time seems to be passing at the normal rate. Like if you were to have a watch watch, it would be taking along at one second partick according to my eyeballs, right, and it would feel exactly like it was as long as a second should be. My watch would also to me be it would appear to be

moving at exactly the correct speed. Now, if I were to to be able to see what's happening in your little world, it would look to me like a time had slowed way down for you, and that more time was passing for me than it was for you, so you could do like a quick joy ride around the

solar system. And let's say we're just going to make an argument that that you take an hour long trip around the solar system and to me, to to your to your watch, so your watch, you start the timer as soon as you engage the drive, and an hour has gone by, and you you come back and pick you up, you come back to see me, and uh, and we're gonna say that you're going on a speed so that we won't make it ridiculous. So were you're going at a speed where a year of time has

gone by for me? I'm going to Chris speed. Sorry, So, so an hour of time has gone by for Lauren, a year has gone by for me. Um, And that's the special relativity. It's that idea that again relative to me, less time has passed for Lauren. Relative to Lauren, more time has passed for me. Right, And then that's because that's because speed and mass both have speed and gravity both have an effect on time, as time is a substance itself. So now the gravity mass thing that's really

more general relativity. But that's that's also playing a part in all of our calculations when it comes to space faring. By the way, if you were to do something like Carrie and a my clock, uh, and have it synchronized within another atomic clock. So two atomic clocks are side by side on a table here on Earth, and you take one of those and you get on an air elevator. Is not even a space all there. You just get

an airplane. And as an airplane is going at top speed and it's flying as far as it possibly can and then it lands. By the time it lands, those two clocks that were in perfect sink before will no longer be in perfect sinc And the reason is is

that you were traveling a little faster. There's also some uh, the element of general relativity, which means that when you're further away from the center of the Earth and and therefore the closer you are to a large mass object, the slower time passes for you relative to something that's

further out from that massive object. Again, it's all relative because from your individual experience, it seems like time is passing at the same rate unless you're you know, waiting on an important phone call, in which case, yeah, like you know that that dreamy, that dreamy person you met at that party is supposed to call and you're just staring at the phone. Tie. Every second is an eternity, no matter whether you're traveling at the speed of light

or not. But anyway, yeah, we can observe this in it in satellites that we've launched into orbit, they have to they have to mathematically correct for that sort of Yeah. So, in fact, both special and general relativity play a part

in this. So the Global Positioning System GPS, the GPS device you have picks up signals that are beamed down from satellites, and the satellites part of the signal is a time stamp, and the way your GPS figures out where you are is by saying, all right, well, it took X amount of time for for this one signal to come from this satellite to hit me, It took x amount why amount of time from the signal from this other satellite hit me, and took the amount of

time for the signal from this third satellite to hit me. Based upon all of that and the position of those satellites, I know that I must be on this point on the Earth. Well, obviously the time stamp is really important for the information to work. It needs to be pretty precise, yeah, otherwise it's going to give you the wrong location on

the Earth. The thing about the satellites is that they are traveling faster than a point relative on the surface of the Earth, so that means that time is passing again at a different rate relative to us here on Earth on the on the surface. But they are also further out from the mass of the Earth, which means they're going faster, So that means times passing more slowly relative to us. But they are further out, so time

is passing faster than relative to us. This gets really complicated, but if you were talking about just special relativity, because the satellites are moving so fast, they have about a lag of about seven micro seconds per day on the satellites clock. So remember they're they're traveling faster than the relative point on the surface of the Earth, so that means that less time is passing on the satellite seven

micro seconds per day as a as a result. But because they're further out from the mass of the Earth, then a clock would be here, you know, close to the surface. Their clocks are actually running faster by about

forty five microseconds per day because of general relativity. So if you take those two numbers, the the lag of second seven microseconds and the surplus of forty five microseconds, and then you know, combine the two to cancel them out, you are still left with a thirty eight microseconds surplus per day on the satellites clock compared to one on Earth. So that means that you actually have to correct for that.

All right, that's one satellite that's orbiting Earth. Now imagine that on all the spaceships traveling everywhere all the time. And that's why you get to the point where keeping track of time is an impossible actic level is Yeah, So in the case of Han Solo, again going back to that that Wired article that Kyle Hill wrote, he started pointing out that assuming that you're going at near the speed of light. He went ahead and said, okay, you can't go faster than speed of light. Yeah, let's

let's that's right out. And going at the speed of light is also impossible because you would at that point have infinite density, density, and and mass. So that would be bad mass. Your mass increases as you get closer to the speed of light. But if we say ad infinitum, yeah, so it's going about as fast as it as as as close to the speed of light as you possibly

can imagine. This is probably not it's probably not ever going to be possible physically, but if you can imagine it um that, then the Kessel run would take about half a day, about sixteen hours yea, so sixteen hours on the on the Millennium Falcon. But then galactic time, assuming the galactic time is passing at a stands to forty years, So forty years would pass in galactic time

while on board the Falcon, sixteen hours passes. So they started to figure out like how much time has passed in the gal and the galaxy since Han Solo made his Kessel run, And then he started saying, well, yeahs probably made the Kessel run more than once, so if you start adding up to of Kessel runs, how much time has passed. And that's when he said, like, you know, you do two Kestle runs. And then he had to

have been born before characters who like cook. Yeah, so then you've got Han Solo predating all the characters who were in the prequels. Uh, and it's because of this special relativity problem. So, by the way, if he were in fact able to travel faster than the speed of light, it would mean that he would arrive at his destination before he left math is fun. Yeah, so so he would actually he would be on Kessel before he had decided to make the Kessel run due to the way

this works. Now, granted, nothing can go faster than the speed of light. But you know, assuming they have they have those those drives, those that the hyper drives, ret red con drives, the red con drives. Yes, those work really well. Um where you just say, hey, it's impossible,

let's change it. Let's look at the wookie. Uh. And and so the stasis field was sort of the answer to that, saying that the time does not pass differently aboard the ship as it does in the outside galaxy, which is fine except for the fact that again, remember, every single planet has its own passage of time. Like you know, a second feels like a second no matter where you are, but it lasts shorter or longer depending upon the planet's mass and its speed that it moves

through space. And also technically, I think that it would be a little bit confusing to try to, you know, call days out on a whole system of planets that have different suns and different orbits, and yeah, and and tattooing. You've got two sons, one of them might always be up.

You never know, I mean, it's it gets complex and uh yeah, And then you have all these other people who are traveling around at nearer or faster than the speed of lights, so time gets messed up for them too, So time would be meaningless in this universe, which you know, one could argue it's kind of meaningless now, but I don't get that cynical except on Friday's and it's a Thursday, so I'm all right. Then again, there are also some criticisms to things like the visual representation of what it

looks like to go into hyperspace, which I thought was awesome. Yeah, yeah, there there was a study that was done by did that study I don't have it in front of some students Riley Connor's, Katie Dexter, Joshua Argyle and Cameron's school are and they said that if you were to travel at the speed of light, not only would you not see those stars become streaks, they would become a cone of light, so the center would be the brightest and the further out from the cone, the darker it would get.

And uh, and part of that is because of the Doppler effect essentially, right, right, that's that's that's blue shift and redshift. And yes, when you're when you're when you're moving and near the speed of light or at the speed of light towards something, um, everything is going to shift towards blue. Yeah. The waves compressed because you're you're traveling toward the the emanation of those waves, so they

are being compressed further and further. In fact, that would be compressed so much as to move outside the visible spectrum and then you would start getting hit by lots of X rays, which would tell you that your spaceship needs to have some real protection built into it or else people are not going to feel so great when they get to where they're going. Uh. And that's an interesting point too. Yeah, And I didn't even think about that until I read this little study, and I thought, well,

that's pretty clever. Yeah, I guess. So the Doubler effect would would be something you'd have to take into account, so it wouldn't look like those stars flying by the way they do in the movies. UM, So we wanted to talk a little bit conclude with a discussion about some actual real propulsion systems besides chemical rockets. Now we don't have a hyperdrive, which is unfortunate. We would love to have one, obviously, would be really handy, you guys,

get on that. Yeah, but right now we don't have one. So some of the propulsion systems have been proposed for for for space travel beyond. We're getting outside the whole thing about launching off the Earth. I mean that that part. You still pretty much need chemical rockets, solid fuel rockets to provide the propulsion you need to get off the planet, right because the amount of power involved what we can do with chemical right now is a lot more. Um it gives a lot more, a lot more. That's this

astronomical term, and there's a plenty in a chemical rocket. Guys. We just popped out of hyperspace for just a moment, so we can take another quick break, but we'll be right back. These other drives would be very useful once you do get up into space where you don't have to have the considerations of escaping a planet's gravity or battling its atmosphere in order to maneuver, right, because the thing about about these chemical drives is that they are

extremely wasteful in a grand universal kind of scheme. You have to carry a lot of fuel. They pack a lot of power, but you have to carry an awful lot of it's not terribly efficient. Uh So they wouldn't

last very long in the grand scheme of things. If you're talking about trying to travel vast different distances, not differences, but distances, then the chemical uh rockets end up being really heavy and that limits how much you can carry, which in turn limits how far you can go so without just coasting like for example, the voice your satellites right right, which, hey, just left the Solar system. Actually they didn't. They come back. Yeah, you have left something

on Pluto. Um no, they that was that was a little bit of a miss misquote in the press. Oh nice. Yeah, Well I'm glad you. I'm glad you caught up on that, because obviously I did not failed to tweet about it, so well, I'm that's bad. Hey, No, it's okay, you caught it on the podcast. So now our listeners can say that vogo bomb she keeps Strickland on task. So one of the ones we want to talk about where ion engines. Now ion engines, they're using ions, and so

that's charged particles. Um. You know, think of an them that's either either has an excess of electrons or a deficit in electrons, so either way to either a negative or positive charge. Plasma is an ionic gas, So it's a gas that has these free ions moving through. It means that you can actually pass electric current through the gas itself. That's what a plasma is. A positible, of course, is the most plentiful of the states of matter in the universe as far as we are aware. And um.

And so the ion engines use electric fields rather than chemical reactions to create propulsion, and they're not as powerful as chemical engines, so they don't give you that the chemical engines do, but they are way more efficient, so they can last ages, and they use the solar energy to provide that. Yeah, they get the solar energy to provide electricity to help create these reactions that will create

the ions that that propel it. So they have these big solar panels that will unfold from the space craft. We've already launched some spacecraft using ion engines. The Dawn spacecraft, which launched on September twenty seventh, two thousand seven, has ion engines and uses the solar panels to get the electricity. UM it's destination it had to actually, but the second destination, the ultimate destination, is a dwarf planet series, and it's

scheduled to arrive there in February. Uh So, visiting the NASA pages about this spacecraft, I saw some interesting figures. One was that it is a six point three billion kilometer journey, and just so that you get an idea of how far that is compared to a light year. A light year is nine point four trillion kilometers, so six point three billion kilometers still nowhere near a light year. So it assuming that it arrives on the first of February,

in which you know, that's I just took as an arbitrary. Yeah, it will have flown for seven years, five months, and two days to go those six point three billion kilometers, so I it's him. I did some silly little math which was that six million, six point three billion kilometers ends up being six point three trillion meters, and then you have to figure out how many seconds are in seven years five months and two days, So I did

two hundred six million, hundred seconds. So if you do the math, then that means that the average speed, and this is you know, just an average because it does change, is twenty six thousand, five nine seven per second based on the information that I was able to find. So uh, I mean, not shabby, but still nowhere near the streets of the falcon. Uh. But it also used about uses. The Dawn's engine used fos of xenon fuel being a neutral ly charged yeah, and it used that the solar

array to to ionize everything's uh. And the solar array at one astronomical unit provided about ten point three kilowatts of power. UH. Astronomical unit, by the way, is one million, seven thousand and seventy one kilometers. And you might say, well, what the heck kind of measurement is that, Well, that's the mean distance between the Earth and the Sun. Because the distance actually changes throughout the Earth's rotation around the Sun, it's not always exactly that far away. That's the mean.

So that's what we decided to define as an astronomical unit. And I'm sure any aliens will be happy to take us up on a discussion of why that's very human centric. Yes, an astronomical unit is exactly the distance between your star and your planet. Really enlightened, guys, I mean I think that they'll really take onto it, like parsex. Yeah, they'll

be right up there. They're like I was having this discussion with my buddy eight parsecs ago, like, oh, come on, Like, hey, I know how this goes because I watched your Star Wars documentary. So at the maximum thrust, Don's ion engine expands about point to five ms of xenon per day, and that produced is a thrust of ninety two million Newton's, which NASA explains is about the amount of force you feel when you put a piece of paper on your

open hand. That's the amount of force which sounds so incredibly unimpressive when you write, but in the in the in the environment of space, it is plenty enough. And uh so it says that the thrust changes the space cust velocity about oh ten to the negative five meters per second every second, and after about a thousand days it would achieve a velocity of a thousand meters per second.

So because there's no dragon space exactly. Yeah, So anyway, yeah, about a thousand meters a second after a thousand days. So that that that speed I gave you the twenty six seven per second. Obviously, again that's a that's just averaging it out over the full distance. In fact, it's just constantly accelerating, not always at that particular speed, but it will be or at that particular rate. I shouldn't say it's accelerating at that speed, that's totally it's not misleading,

but at that rate. So yeah, that's that's one of the ones that we're looking at. Now. There's also other forms of propulsion that have been proposed, like solar sales. Again, not something that's going to get you from Earth's solar system to a distant solar system anytime quickly. Um, it's more of a very efficient means of travel by harnessing photons. The photons hit the solar sale and that's what provides the propulsion to move the craft forward, which sounds kind

of incredible you think about that. You know, how much kinetic energy can a photon have? Uh, And and it may surprise some of you to know that photons have kinetic energy, but that's true. I mean the Earth actually when the sun is hitting you you weigh a little more because the light is actually hitting Yeah. Yeah, that's why I never go outside and only getting pushed around by the sun or by nobody. And so, uh, then I wanted to mention there's a theoretical engine. There's a

there's a few theoretical engines. Yeah. The one that I came across was an electromagnetic gravity drive by Yachoum Howser. That's just a guess because I don't know how to pronounce that name. I do not either. That sounds great to me. Well, he's a physicist and a professor of computer science at the University Applied Sciences in a soul

skitter and uh. And then he worked with Volter Drusher, who was an Austrian patent officer, and they came up with an idea that would use an electromagnet, essentially a rotating ring above a super conducting coil, and then they would pump a lot of electricity through the coil, which would then create a magnetic field. Because we know about the relationship between coils, electricity and the magnets. Magnets, you know you can you can either if you run electricity

through a coil, you'll create a magnetic field. If you run a coil through a magnetic field that's alternating or that's that's uh, that's changing over time. A dynamic magnetic field, you will induce current to flow through the coil. That's this relationship between electricity and magnets. Thus the electro magnetism that magnetic field will quote reduce the gravitational pull on the ring to the point where it floats free end

quote uh. And that theoretically you could go from Earth to Mars in about three hours using this in a way that makes no sense to me. I mean, it's it's talking about a The math requires that you actually have extra dimensions to make it all makes sense. And you know, in the in the standard model, we essentially think of four dimensions, three in space of one in time.

But this would require two more dimensions would also end up in requiring extra fundamental forces besides the strong and weak nuclear force slectro magnetic and gravity that we are familiar whe there be two more and uh. And it's possible that these things exist, but it's so far it exists as far as math goes, and not observation right right, even even lower down or even though down and down on the scale. There's a few other things that people have kind of theorized about when one is called, um,

this is probably not how you say it all. Qbres warp drive is the thing that NASA has talked about a little bit, which which kind of kind of is similar to the Doppler effect. It says that if you can get space time to expand behind you in contract in front of you, you can just kind of warp straight through it. So, in other words, think of it

this way. You've gotta like, imagine you have a map in front of you, all right, a paper map, and you have put a figuring on the leftmost edge of the paper map, and your job is to get the figuring to the right most edge and the least number of die rolls, and there their spaces there that that

represent how far you can go. So uh, normally there would be a hundred spaces between you and the and the right side, and you're only able to roll the die x number of times, right, But if you can just pick up the right if you were able to fold the edge of the map app so that it's right next to you, and you roll one and you move one space and then you unfold the map, you have just moved one space, but you've traveled all that distance. Right.

That's the magic of warp drive. People. We're talking about folding all of the galaxy around us to accommodate our travel needs. Right, And people say, I'm a demanding traveler. But so so that's that's one. You know, it sounds super easy on paper. I just explained that. Um, and the other being a being creating wormholes. Um, you know, you know, a wormhole being kind of a pokey thing through.

It's shortcut on a paper map. If you if you, if you took instead of a little figuring, you had a pointy figuring or a pencil or something, and you and you stuck that pencil straight through the two points in the map that you wanted to travel between, and then sort of hit hop kit holes. So there's still some travel time, but it's much more reduced. It's this is where we get wibbly wobbly timmy wimy right, right.

But but hypothetically, all we would have to do is build two super dense rings a giant super dense rings, charge them somehow, and spin them near the speed of light.

Oh that's easy. Yeah, no problem. So the interesting thing here, by the way, is that when we're talking about warping space, when we're talking about actually moving or manipulating the space time continuum or however you want to fab break of space itself, we actually get around the special relativity problem because your actual speed doesn't need to be light speed. You are just changing the distance. You're not changing you. You're not going at this incredible speed. So time is

still going to travel or stimes. Time is still going to pass differently relative to someone on a different ship or a different planet, but not at the amazing different You wouldn't need an infinite amount of energy to move yourself, and you wouldn't have an infinite amount of mass. And you also wouldn't find out when you call back home

that everyone you know is forty years older. Uh, they might be, you know, a few micro seconds older than you, but it would be so small as to not has to be negligible, except for things like communication and stuff where you have to have exact timing. Obviously you have to have computers to correct those calculations. But when it comes to, you know, missing someone's birthday, you don't have to worry so much daylight saving time would probably interesting.

So anyway, Yeah, I mean, there are people who are working on these theoretical drives, and it may turn out that the theories are just they're they're not truly like theories in the sense of h this is really established stuff just workingematical theories. More, they're more like hypotheses that we have yet to prove um. So it'll be interesting to see if we ever do develop anything beyond the

propulsion systems that we're currently looking into. Uh. I mean, it would obviously be very helpful for anything involving colonization or exploration, because otherwise it's going to take us a really long time. Generations. You you would have to build spacecraft capable of supporting multiple generation stions of people aboard that with a very limited number of supplies because you know, you pretty much you have what you take with you. You know, you know, most we don't know of any

shopping malls out there beyond Earth. You have to have to grow out yourself. Ye. So anyway, that that kind of wraps up this discussion about star Wars and hyper space. The Kessel run, what we're actually looking into as means of propulsion in space it's a really interesting topic. I'm glad that we we grabbed this one as our first episode. And hey, to all my Star Wars fans out there,

I just have to say, live long and prosper. I hope you guys enjoyed this classic episode tech Stuff about hyperspace. I think that's a pretty awesome science fiction topic that I find particularly fascinating. Don't know if we're ever going to see any meaningful manifestation of that idea, or maybe we just ultimately you find out that there's no real way to achieve that particular flight of fancy. I hope otherwise, but we'll see. If you guys have any suggestions for

future tech Stuff topics, let me know. Contact me on Facebook or Twitter. The handle for both is text stuff H s W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.