Spoiler Dicussion of The Last Jedi

Quote: ams288

JJ Abrams is writing and directing 9, so we should expect it to mimic Return of the Jedi.

It's going to take a lot of handwavium to get to the Sarlac or even the Rancor :)

First, though, they have to figure out what to do about Leia. I offer no guesses here.

Mimicking Return of the Jedi, though, would involve killing Kylo Ren and overthrowing the First order. So that in 20 year Abrams can do his prequels and disappoint all his fans, then ten years later someone can do another new trilogy, beginning with "The Force Really Wakes Up for Real this Time, Really." All so Paco can talk about 10-billion dollar movies then :)

Quote: Nareed

That's not a good thing.

What do you mean? The selfless sacrifice of the hero is the best part of every movie.

Quote: FrGamble

What do you mean? The selfless sacrifice of the hero is the best part of every movie.

Didn't your own church warn about embracing death for dramatic purposes?

Not that it matters, but if we take "jump to light speed" literally, and assume a mass for Holdo's ship of 10,000 tons, then:

10,000 * 1000 *1000 to get the mass in grams = 10 trillion grams.

So 10^9 grams times (300,000 kms/s)^2 = 900,000,000,000,000,000,000 gr km^2/s^2

Which Google tells me it's: 9.0 × 10^23 joules.

According to an online converter, this exceeds 215,000 megatons.

The bomb dropped on Hiroshima was 15 kilotons. you'd need about 67 of them to make one megaton. So 215,000 times 67 = 14.4 million Hiroshima bombs.

And that's what stroke Snoke's ship, if Holdo's ship was only 10,000 tons. If it was heavier, well...


I think the result should have been subatomic dust, not a massively damaged ship. But then Darth Emo, Rey, Finn, BB8 and Rose wouldn't have been around for the next movie.

Quote: Nareed

Didn't your own church warn about embracing death for dramatic purposes?

Yes, death should only be embraced out of love for God and our neighbor.

Quote: FrGamble

Yes, death should only be embraced out of love for God and our neighbor.

I know my neighbors enough to say "hi" and hold open the foyer door. I can't imagine dying for them.

Quote: Nareed

Not that it matters, but if we take "jump to light speed" literally, and assume a mass for Holdo's ship of 10,000 tons, then:

Ok, maybe going to lightspeed doesn't annihilate the mass and produce energy <blush>

But the formula for kinetic energy is 1/2mv^2. So we just need to divide my example in half and we get an impact on Snoke's ship with an energy equal to only 7.2 million Hiroshima bombs, or 107,500 megatons.

My conclusion still stands. The damage to the ship, while massive, was far less than ought to be expected from an impact that energetic.

Well, it still depends.

Since the cruiser was "moving" at light speed (but really in "hyperspace" whatever that is to them) it could very well have left a distinctly cruiser-shaped hole in the target, forcing all of the mass at the point of impact (and in the cruiser-shaped hole) beyond the bulk of the target before it completely annihilated, and then again because of the momentum of everything involved, explode away from the back of the target ship.

Quote: Dalex64

Well, it still depends.

Since the cruiser was "moving" at light speed (but really in "hyperspace" whatever that is to them) it could very well have left a distinctly cruiser-shaped hole in the target, forcing all of the mass at the point of impact (and in the cruiser-shaped hole) beyond the bulk of the target before it completely annihilated, and then again because of the momentum of everything involved, explode away from the back of the target ship.

You are missing the physics of the collision as Nareed calculated. The release of energy when they hit would vaporize everything, likely even damage the base as it seemed relatively close. Of course they could have different laws of physics in Star Wars world.

Quote: Dalex64

Since the cruiser was "moving" at light speed (but really in "hyperspace" whatever that is to them) it could very well have left a distinctly cruiser-shaped hole in the target, forcing all of the mass at the point of impact (and in the cruiser-shaped hole) beyond the bulk of the target before it completely annihilated, and then again because of the momentum of everything involved, explode away from the back of the target ship.

Trek scripts famously feature the term [TECH] when the writer needs handwavium to explain away how something happens. I wonder if Star Wars scripts are moving in that direction.

In TFA, Finn or Han laid on some to explain how they'd penetrate the shields of the Not-a-Death-Star. In TLJ, Finn and Rose engage in [TECH] dialogue about how they're being tracked.

Now, I don't know how to determine kinetic energy at FTL speeds. Common sense is that the same formula applies. But c is a defining line, and maybe on the other side of it, if there is one, things work differently.

FTL travel requires a lot of trickery and technobabble, because the energies involved ought to be huge. For instance, there isn't enough energy in the whole universe to accelerate a mass particle, like an electron, all the way to the speed of light. to 0.99999999999999 ad-infinitum 9s,c yes. But to 1.0 c, no. Now imagine the energy required to move something far more massive than en electron faster than c, even 1.000000...00001 c.

Of course you come up with wormholes, warp drive, hyperspace, etc.

in one novel, Nemesis, Asimov nearly struck a compromise with a drive that could go FTL for short periods, provided the average speed of travel was exactly 1.0 c. I thought that was phenomenally clever. Then he has "true FTL" thrown in for dramatic reasons.