TechStuff Leaps Into Hyperspace

looking for passage to the Alboron system. Yes, indeed, if it's a fast ship fast ship, You've never heard of the Millennium Falcon, should I have? It's the ship that made the Kessel run in less than twelve parsecs. I've outrun Imperial starships, not the local bulk cruisers mind you. I'm talking about the big Karelian ships. Now, she's fast enough for you, old man? What's the cargo? Usually I am 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. 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, all 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 um. 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 and 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 parts x, 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, 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. It 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. 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 measurements. Why would think 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 parsecs 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 par sex 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 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 maw in aw would destroy a ship if you got too close to it. It's you know, it's a black hole. There bad times for ships, right, you know, you know you do? You have you heard what the term is for something that gets pulled through a black hole, the term of what is happening to

it spaganification. It's 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 parsex 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. He kind of scarred around it, and you know, Han Solo, being the guy that he is, he's he says, you know, time is money or distance his 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 parsex for this eighteen parsic 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 articles. Yeah, it's entertaining and uh and also and 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 a fast ship because it has to be able to escape that pull of the black hole.

So Therefore, that's what tells you that it's fast. It's not only that heat and only is the pilot capable of making a more efficient route to go through the Kessel run, but there's also in a ship fast enough to a state black roles, right right? Yeah, Well, according to a Wikipedia, 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, that's yeah. So essentially then you just make Han Solo

a Guo flips switches a really good flip switcher. There's also a great thing that was at the Smithsonian for the Star Wars exhibit where uh, Harrison Ford 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 switch is that they didn't. There was no rhyme or reason to it. And Chus was like,

I don't know. So there was buttons pull that lever pushed the button Frank. So anyway you might wonder, well, why what's the big deal of the Kestle 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 not film expanded universe, so not Cannon Kessel was a planet that had these minds 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 anyway or else it would 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 that you Rman's 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 leagues. Yeah sure, and this failed completely. But but the word kessel means that like pocket in German cat or cattle. Yeah,

dossi rishtish uh So the glistone 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 Han Solo 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 drug 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 PARSEC thing is really

an apologist. It's a red coon 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, by the way, in no way 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 hundred million, seven four hundred fifty eight meters per second or around one six thousand, two d 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 tough speed at somewhere around four hundred forty nine million million Si eight thousand, six eighty seven per second or two 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. It'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 you go, if you nudge right up to the speed of light, they would take about thirty

nine years travel twelve 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 the universal constant of time amongst the Empire, which is really convenient because otherwise Han Solo would be older than Yoda after he had taken what I don't know, like like two or three trips yet four or five 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 right. So So here's here's the thing the stasis is supposed

to keep everything constant. Uh. Time is a tricky thing because it doesn't matter that 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. 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 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 this idea of hyperspace and hyper drive, 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 lads just floating free in space, like well, that was a bad idea. Um that kind of this kind of happens in far Escape. But 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, all 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 chips 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 test react something like. Yeah. 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 star 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 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 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 Berman did about 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 Ricotta, and they create ricotta like the cheese. No, it's our A K A T A Okay, just checking. You gotta 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 create force powered drives, so they were tapping into the power of the force to travel through space at incredible speeds. And then 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 is 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 something that's force space, then that's 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 uh what 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 now, 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 be. And this was important because, as Han Solo explains to Luke, who is an impatient little brat in a New Hope, he explains like, he 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 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 sun gets in the way, so you're about like the auto bawn of space. Yeah, and and that's another thing that

I was reading on Wikipedia. I was was saying, I was saying that there maybe about eight of these, according to the Star Wars universe, kicking around and that 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 jump to this end point 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, how the hyperdrive 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, totally, yeah, well, let mean, come on, he was kind of dreamy, you know, we 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 at incredible speeds. And uh and so that's kind of the breakdown of how it worked within the lore of Star Wars. But we should really kind of talk about again. We'll we'll get into special relativity in general relativity and also some other discussions about

the whole hyperspace idea and just a little bit. But first before we do that, let's take a quick moment to thank our sponsored 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 correct, 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? Yes, sure, why not? I'll give it to you at this time, all right, And Lauren, you are in a 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 pertick 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 now we're according 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 come back to see me, and uh, and we're gonna say that you're going at a speed so that we won't make it ridiculous. Well, you're going at a speed where a year of time has gone by for me. I'm going to Chris speed. So so an hour of times gone by for Lauren, a year has gone by

for me. Um And 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. And and that's because that's because speed and mass both have speed and gravity both have an effect on time, as though time is a substance itself. So now the 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 an atomic clock, uh and have it synchronized with another atomic clock. So to 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 line is not not even a space elver. 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 sink. 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 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, right, 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 asn't it in satellites that we've launched into orbit. They have to they have to mathematically correct. 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 to 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 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 microseconds 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 micro seconds per day because of general relativity. So if you take those two numbers the the lag of second seven microsecon 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 act level. 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 mass.

So so that would be bad your mass. Your mass increases as you get closer to the speed of light. But if we say at infinitum, yeah, so it's going a ballast pass. As as as that was close to his speed of light as you possibly can imagine, this is probably not ever it's probably not ever going to be possible physically, but if you can imagine it um that, then the castle run would take about half a day, about so sixteen hours on the on the Millennium Falcon.

But then galactic time, assuming the galactic time is passing at a standstone, 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 in the galaxy since Han Solo made his Kessel run, And then he started saying, well, yeahs probably made a castle run more than once, so if you start adding up the number of Kessel runs, how much time has passed. And that's when he said, like,

you know, you do two castle runs. And then he had to have been born before characters who like you know, 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. Not granted, nothing can go faster than the speed of light. But you know, assuming they have they have those those drives, those the hyper drives, ret red con drives, the red con drives. Yes, those work really well. Um where you just say, hey, look impossible,

let's change it. Let's look at the Wookie. Yeah, 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 sons 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 Fridays, 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 hyper space, which I thought was so yeah, yeah, there there was a study that was done by we did that study, I don't have it in front of some students that Riley Connor's, Katy Dexter, Joshua Argyle and Cameron's school are, and they said that if you were to travel at the speed of light, and not only would you not see those stars become streets,

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 near the speed of light or at the speed of light towards something, Um,

everything is going to shift towards the blue. Yeah. The waves compressed because you're you're traveling toward the emanation of those waves, so they are being compressed further and further. In fact, they 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. U. 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, uh to 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 well, it gives a lot more. A lot more, that's the that's the astronomical term,

and there's a plenty in a chemical rocket. 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, yeah, they puto um no they that was that was a little bit of a mismisquote in the press. Oh nice. Yeah, Well I'm glad you. I'm glad you caught up on that, because obviously I did not. I 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 gives 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 atom that's either either has an excess of electrons or a deficit in electrons. So either way to got 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 plasma, 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, and so they can last ages. And they use that they have 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 spacecraft. We've already launched some spacecraft using ion engines. The Dawn spacecraft, which launched on September twenty seven, two thousand seven, has ion engines and uses the solar panels to get the electricity UM it's destination 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 it will have flown for seven years, five months, and two days to go those six point three billion kilometers. So I did some 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 three 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 five nine seven meters per second. Based on the information that I was able to find, so uhby I mean not shabby, but still nowhere near the schools 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. An astronomical unit, by the way, is one million, seven thousand

and seventy one KOs. 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. Yeah, 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 parsex 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 produces 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 is plenty enough. And uh so it says that the thrust changes the space crest 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 thousand 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, uh, 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 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 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 again. Yeah, yeah, that's why I never go outside. I don't like getting pushed around by the sun or by nobody. And so, uh, then I wanted to mention there's a theoretical engine. There's

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 solve

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 electro magnet, 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 then 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 and 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 and 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, electromagnetic and gravity that we are familiar with, there be two more and uh. And it's possible that these things exist, but it's so far exists as far as math goes, and not observation right right, even even lower down or even though it drowning down on the scale. There's a few other things that people

have kind of theorized about. One one is called um this is probably not how you say it. Qber's 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 you can just pick up right if you were able to fold the edge of the map so that it's right next to you, and you roll a 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. That's the magic of warp drive. People. We're talking about folding all of the galaxy around us to accommodate our travel needs. And people say, I'm a demanding traveler, but so so that's that's one.

You know, it sounds super easy on paper. Um, 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 its 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

hopped through the holes. So there's still some travel time, but it's much more reduced. It's this is where we get wibbly wobbly timmy whimy right right. But but hypothetically, all we would have to do is build two super dense rings 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 fabric 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 and not changing You're not going at this incredible speed. So time is still gonna 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 differences. You wouldn't need an infinite amount of energy to move yourself, and you wouldn't have an infinite amount of masks. 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, you know, so small as to not as 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. It may turn out that the theories are just they're they're not truly like theories in the sense of this is really established stuff. We're just working more hYP 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 to get Yeah, you you would have to build spacecraft capable of supporting multiple generations 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 it yourself up. So anyway, that that kind of wraps up this discussion about uh, Star Wars and hyperspace, 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. So yeah, if you guys want to send in any emails, I'm sure lots of you are thinking that you want to right now, I recommend you, uh you use our mudd ass that's tech stuff at Discovery dot com. Or let us know on Facebook or Twitter that I was making a Babylon five reference. Just now are handled there and say that I think pretty

sure it was the master. Um. Just drop me a little note my handle at both Twitter and Facebook text stuff hs W Lauren and I will talk to you again really soon for more on this and bouthands of other topics. Does it has to works dot com? This is Tis