What Hyperspace Travel Really Looks Like

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Dear science people, thanks for ruining this for the rest of us. The Millennium Falcon "jumping to lightspeed" looks way better than this.

But University of Leicester students have calculated that – in reality – Han, Luke and Leia would not see the light from stars stretching past the ship as we are shown in the movies. The group of fourth year MPhys students published the findings in this year’s University of Leicester’s Journal of Physics Special Topics.
 
I cant wait to hear some caveman tell me what flying in an airplane is like.
 
from article said:
Riley Connors, 21, from Milton Keynes, said: “If the Millennium Falcon existed and really could travel that fast, sunglasses would certainly be advisable. On top of this, the ship would need something to protect the crew from harmful X-ray radiation.”

Ugh, now Lucas is going to re-remake Star Wars to make all crews traveling in hyperspace wear sunglasses and have Han Solo make Ben and Luke sign a waiver disclaiming responsibility from any radiation poisoning that may occur while traveling in hyperspace.
 
Maybe they should make all their ships out of lead. It won't overcome the force against the ship that was described by the students, but it will protect the occupants.
 
I'm assuming "4th year MPhys students = Physics major who's senior in college? Or would that be graduate school Master's program? Because all of this is a big honking "duh" to anyone who's been a physics student, who knows maybe they're the first to actually publish a paper involving the Millenium Falcon

From the Millennium Falcon crew’s point of view, the wavelength of the light from stars will decrease and ‘shift’ out of the visible spectrum into the X-ray range.
Gamma rays actually, but sure Xrays are quite enough.

The group found after further investigation that the intense X-rays from stars would push the ship back, causing it to slow down. The pressure felt by the ship would be comparable to that felt at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
If they actually hit light speed, the pressure would infinite. In fact this is the single greatest argument as to why nothing can travel faster than light, the whole "infinite mass means infinite energy" argument is a bit silly, it's the pressure of the whole universe pushing back against you that increases to infinity which requires the infinite amount of energy.

Their calculations also show that Han would need to store extra amounts of energy on his ship to overcome this pressure in order to continue on his journeys.
Infinity + 1 energy it is!

But the reality is it's a science FICTION movie. I love how the comments from these students act like they're the first ones who ever thought of any of this. Psst. Gene Roddenberry got around that shit before any students were a twinkle in your dad's eye.
 
I'm no expert in physics but this is quite fascinating to me. But ya have to allow for Hollywood theatrics.

...now Lucas is going to re-remake Star Wars to make all crews traveling in hyperspace wear sunglasses...

Isn't this what "shields" are for (atleast in part)?

Infinity + 1 energy it is!

I guess Toy Story had it more accurate: "To infinity and beyond!"
 
Ugh, now Lucas is going to re-remake Star Wars to make all crews traveling in hyperspace wear sunglasses and have Han Solo make Ben and Luke sign a waiver disclaiming responsibility from any radiation poisoning that may occur while traveling in hyperspace.

Lucas sold all things Star Wars to Disney remember? He will not be changing anything about these movies ever again.:p
 
Hyperspace doesn't make the ship go faster than light. It puts the ship through an alternate dimension. Do these geniuses no realize that? They CONSTANTLY bring up the "can't go faster than light" and "X would kill you" stuff all of the time, even with warp drive, when that isn't how even warp drive works. So smart and yet, so dumb, also.
 
The group found after further investigation that the intense X-rays from stars would push the ship back, causing it to slow down. The pressure felt by the ship would be comparable to that felt at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

Their calculations also show that Han would need to store extra amounts of energy on his ship to overcome this pressure in order to continue on his journeys.


Uh, but they have deflector shields turned on, so this pressure is deflected... DUH

In all seriousness, Co-worker, who went to MIT and studied this material, and I were talking about this. He essentially said, they're wrong and in fact you would see a black center with the sides changing different color spectrum along the side, going from blue to red as you passed by it.
 
Students? ...so they are too young to know that we've actually seen what a hyperspace jump looks like thanks to Star Wars. Morons.

:)
 
LOL:

If the Millennium Falcon existed and really could travel that fast, sunglasses would certainly be advisable.
And so starts the spread of sunglass kiosks all over space... :eek:
 
Honestly , it still looks awesome. Plus being able to even directly view (with heavy shielding and probably through a Camera system) the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation without looking at a WMAP would also be amazing.

Shit even traveling at near light speed would be amazing (despite the serious issues with doing so like atomic hydrogen building up to the point that the radiation is so deadly outside on the craft that nothing could survive inside) all on its own.
 
Pffft....boring. I want my stars ala Windows Screen Saver circa 1992. Screw this...
 
why go hyperspace for all that money when you can just do the same in gimp
 
Uh, but they have deflector shields turned on, so this pressure is deflected... DUH

In all seriousness, Co-worker, who went to MIT and studied this material, and I were talking about this. He essentially said, they're wrong and in fact you would see a black center with the sides changing different color spectrum along the side, going from blue to red as you passed by it.

This is what I always figured. It would be rather dark and then a very fast flash of light as you slam into something that you literally couldn't see coming.
 
I don't think a vessel moving at "hyperspace" would see much of anything, with the pressures involved you wouldn't want windows or ANY design that isn't solid mass or copious quantities of water, and cameras as we know them right now would fail to function in such electromagnetic fields. Even if it were an un-manned probe, you also run into the problem of electroweak forces merging and becoming more of a problem as you move along the accumulate. Maybe John Titor can come back and tell us how this all works :p
 
Typical college idiots. HYPERSPACE is outside the Universe, between dimensions, it is NOT lightspeed or faster than lightspeed travel within the universe.

So there are NO PHOTONS to be "seeing" at all. The whole idea of hyperspace is to poke a hole.... artificial blackhole work-a-like to slip out at point A and back into the universe at point B nearly instantaneously, where lightspeed travel would have taken 10's or 100's of thousands of years.

There friggin nerds can't even get their fantasy bullshit straight. :eek::rolleyes::cool:
 
Huh. I've rarely ever thought about this, but I did imagine that traveling at light speed or FTL would look different than what we've been shown in movies. I never really tried to visualize it, though.

And Steve...Millennium Falcon version better?

They would simply see a central disc of bright light as Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation is shifted into the visible spectrum.

...I dunno about you, but to be able to see CMBR visibly with my own eyes would be awesome! Real life light speed FTW. Millennium Falcon light speed can smash into a random chunk of moon!!! :p
 
More importantly the inside of hyperspace in Star Wars is a rippling blue cloud-like tunnel, not a bunch of streaking stars.
 
Static Warp Shell>Hyperdirve

/nerd rant

That is like saying that an Apple is superior to a Nail.

They are two entirely different things that serve extremely different purposes and neither is superior to the other because they don't compete with each other in any appreciable way.

/nerd correction
 
IDIOTS!!!!

"The sight of the Millennium Falcon making the “jump to lightspeed” is one of the most iconic images from the Star Wars trilogy."

The Millennium Falcon does not jump to lightspeed, it jumps to hypersapce!!!!!

"Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy!"
 
The Millennium Falcon does not jump to lightspeed, it jumps to hypersapce!!!!!

"Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy!"


"How long before you can make the jump to light speed?"

"We're losing a deflector shield. Go strap yourselves in. I'm going to make the jump to light speed. "

My conclusion is that Star Wars was just not written very carefully, so it's very difficult to draw conclusions about what was "supposed" to be happening in the Star Wars universe let alone extrapolate that to what would "actually" happen in the real universe.
 
All these arguments are irrelevant... because we know these students would just be texting while going from point A to B and not pay attention to looking.
 
I don't understand why perfectly reasonable college students would even care about Star Wars. They really should just let those people alone to do Priceline commercials or lament about how TekWar could have been better if the networks hadn't pulled the plug. The horse is dead and all the money has been bled out of it. Stop flogging it already and go set your lightsaber to stun on something else. Why not pick apart those crappy Matrix movies where, after 30 minutes everyone was like, "ZOMG, just stop talking and die, Trinity!"
 
Well I hope they never try to realistically put this to film... I'd rather see fake star stretching than having my retinas seared for realism.
 
Umm they didn't disprove anything relating to Star Wars. Why? Because Han said that the Falcon can go "point five past lightspeed". Therefore they are not traveling at lightspeed and are infact using some other means like bent space.
 
^ yup about alternate dimension. and i think how it works in conjunction with that. The better the hyperspace engines are, the smaller that alternate universe is and thats what allows faster travel.
 
"How long before you can make the jump to light speed?"

"We're losing a deflector shield. Go strap yourselves in. I'm going to make the jump to light speed. "

My conclusion is that Star Wars was just not written very carefully, so it's very difficult to draw conclusions about what was "supposed" to be happening in the Star Wars universe let alone extrapolate that to what would "actually" happen in the real universe.

it was probably called lightspeed because of how it looks when traveling through hyperspace.
 
"How long before you can make the jump to light speed?"

"We're losing a deflector shield. Go strap yourselves in. I'm going to make the jump to light speed. "

My conclusion is that Star Wars was just not written very carefully, so it's very difficult to draw conclusions about what was "supposed" to be happening in the Star Wars universe let alone extrapolate that to what would "actually" happen in the real universe.

Nah, pretty simple, Han Solo would know how the space ship operates since he's the captain and had to start talking down to the techno-phobe Obiwan and the farm boy Luke, so he tried to dumb it down.
 
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