"A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..."
Star Wars is back!
Disney is taking over LUCASFILM and
they are planning to make some more Star Wars films.
To celebrate this exciting news we
are taking a look at the science behind the movies.
This week we will take a look at
Han Solo's beloved spaceship, the Millennium Falcon.
The Millennium Falcon (c)
Lucasfilm Ltd
What is the Millennium
Falcon?
The Millennium Falcon is a starship
used by Han Solo when he was a smuggler with his friend and partner
Chewbacca the wookie.
Although the ship ends up being an
important part of the rebellion against the Galactic Empire in the
Star Wars films, the thing it is most famous for in the movies is
being fast - really fast!
Han Solo once boasted that the Millennium
Falcon was the fastest ship in the rebel fleet. The
question is, will a spacecraft ever really travel faster
than light?
Just how fast is
light?
Light travels at - wait for it -
299,792,458 metres per second! That's over 670
million miles per hour...
In other words, in the time it
takes you to read the words "that's really fast", light could
travel all the way round the world more than nine
times!
How is the Millennium
Falcon supposed to work?
There aren't many details in the
Star Wars movies about exactly how starships
travel through hyperspace, but we do know a couple of things:
- It is a really fast way to travel
- Starship captains have to use an extremely good computer (or
droid like R2-D2) to navigate between stars, planets, black holes
and asteroid belts
You see, one of the problems of
travelling at light speed is that if you bump into anythingm you're
in BIG trouble. Even a speck of dust would punch a hole
straight through your spaceship.
No wonder Han Solo needed a good
sat-nav!
So, could faster-than-light
travel ever happen?
Not very long ago, scientists
working in Switzerland thought they might have measured tiny
particles called neutrinos travelling faster than
light.
Everyone got very excited, but
unfortunately it looks like there was a fault with one of the
instruments. That means that, at least for now, the
Millennium Falcon will have to stay in fiction.
But let's have a quick look at a
couple of the ways people think we might have a tiny, miniscule
chance of one day travelling faster than light.
1. Warp
bubbles...
More Star Trek than Star Wars, this
one, but it does have a tiny bit of real science behind it... The
idea is that when the universe began, back at the big
bang, space expanded outwards faster than light
did...
If there was some way in which we
could create enough energy to bend and stretch the universe to
create a bubble of time and space, we could make it travel faster
than light.
Have a look at this video to
find out more about this idea:
The trouble with warp bubbles is
that not only would you need the energy of a whole sun to create
one, it would have to be "negative energy", and scientists don't
even know if that exists.
2.
Wormholes...
You may have heard of black holes -
tiny spots in space where gravity is so strong
that not even light can escape the pull.
Well what if one black hole
connected up with another - would it create a tube that you could
travel through?
Imagine for a moment that you
wanted to visit your cousin in Australia. You could fly round the
world. Or you could just dig a hole right through the middle of the
Earth and fly through that. Much quicker!
Well, some scientists think these
tunnels in space might be real. They even have a fancy name
for them: Einstein-Rosen bridges.
It's based on the idea that space
and time curve round like the surface of the Earth. This means -
like in our imaginary journey to Australia - you could have two
black holes on either side which link up to create a tunnel or
wormhole which we could use as a shortcut.
One of the big problems with this
idea is that, like the video above says, black holes are violent
and destructive places. Going into one wouldn't be very
sensible, even if you thought you might get safely out the other
side!
So, what do you
think?
Could we ever travel faster than
light and visit other stars and planets in our galaxy? Could we
beat the Millennium Falcon in a race one day?
Let us know what you think - if you
come up with a good idea we might add it to this page.
In the meantime - may the force be
with you!