Star Wars by The Science of Star Wars

Author:The Science of Star Wars [Wars:, The Science of Star]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-03-10T13:37:03+00:00

SEPARATED AT BIRTH

Queen Amidala gives birth to bouncing baby twins, Luke and Leia. Obi-Wan makes arrangements for the twins to be separated. Leia must be hidden on Alderaan, while Luke will live on Tatooine under Obi-Wan’s protection .

Obi-Wan decides he will first take Leia to Alderaan, then return and pick up Luke for the trip to Tatooine. Amidala holds the one-year-old twins together for one last time, bids a sad farewell to Leia, and Obi-Wan leaves with the infant. The trip to Alderaan is not for, Obi-Wan decides he can make it without jumping to hyperspace. He travels at a constant speed of .9999 the speed of light. The journey takes one month, during which Obi-Wan wonders why he ever volunteered to change diapers. He entertains himself by braiding Leia’s hair into bizarre designs. When he arrives at Alderaan, he discovers the planet is crawling with Imperial forces.

He’s unable to land safely, and has to turn around and head back to Amidala, spending another month at .9999 the speed of light changing diapers. He brings Leia from the ship to see her mother. But Amidala appears changed, much older. Obi-Wan decides the separation must have pained her horribly. Then a boy runs into the room and asks to see his sister. Obi-Wan is shocked when Amidala tells him this is Luke. He is now thirteen years old, though his twin Leia is only one year and two months old. This is the famous “twin paradox” of relativity, and it accurately reflects what would happen in such a situation.

Relativity reveals that time is not some absolute cosmic clock ticking the same for everyone. The time that passes for each person is different, depending on where he goes and how he moves. That is because time and space are not two separate qualities, but a single interconnected spacetime continuum. While such effects are minimal in our everyday lives, they become dramatic at speeds close to the speed of light. The good news is that a space traveler can get from one place to another with only a short time passing for him. In our example, Obi-Wan travels to Alderaan in a month.

Let’s consider how for he traveled. Before he leaves, Obi-Wan charts his course with Amidala. She notes that Alderaan is 34 trillion miles away, almost six light-years.

If he travels very close to the speed of light, it should take him twelve years to make the round trip. But Obi-Won knows that once he reaches his cruising speed of .9999 c, he will measure the distance between himself and Alderaan as only 482 billion miles, or one-twelfth of a light-year. The distance will have contracted, just like the length of the Falcon in our earlier example. Thus Obi-Wan can make the trip in only two months.

According to the time and distance measured by Obi-Wan, he will be traveling at .9999 c. And according to the time and distance measured by Amidala, he effect would constantly arise.

For example, in The Empire Strikes Back, Luke promises Yoda he will return to Dagobah to complete his training.

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