Scientific advancement in the Star Wars galaxy?

[Maximum7]

I legitimately wonder what science scientists are working on in Star Wars. Many many people have said that there is no scientific progression in Star Wars; but I don’t believe that. Scientist characters are featured in stories and surely they must be doing something! That something is never revealed but I can’t help but speculate. I think they probably know what dark matter and dark energy are since Starkiller Base is powered by it. They probably know what the full size of the universe is, how it started, how it will end and why their is more matter than anti-matter.

They obviously know the origin of consciousness and how to create it since they have “sentient” droids.

That being said, what is left to wonder about?

 

In these fields, what do you think Star Wars scientists are studying or trying to create? 

 

1. Medicine

 

2. Physics

 

3. Psychology

 

4. Math

 

5. Chemistry

 

6. Computers

 

7. Engineering

 

8. Philosophy

 

9. Biology

 

10. Economics

 

11. Drug creation

[Cancer]

Rubber.  As in, rubber science.  

 

There's so much wrong in terms of physics (and astrophysics) in SW canon that with the possible exception of xenobiology of new-discovered worlds I have a difficult time taking science in SW seriously at all.  It may exist, but it looks nothing like what we are used to, and Clarke's Law is quite applicable.

[Spence]

There is no science in SWs and they don't even try to pretend.  It operates on a kind of "My Dad can beat up your Dad" or "mine is bigger than yours" logic.  Look at the ships, they are huge and cavernous with interior spaces larger than cathedrals for absolutely no reason.  Doubly so for ships with all robotic crews. 

 

Mind you, it works for a 100% fantasy romp where all technology is relegated to the status of "plot device" or "McGuffin". 

 

I am not saying that this is bad, I really enjoy a lot of the SW shows and animated series.  But a "scientific basis" for SW?  That just makes me snort my drink

[IndianaJoe3]

I'll go along with the idea that there is no scientific progression in Star Wars. The MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic has all the technology that the films have (droids, hyperdrives, blasters, lightsabers, etc), even though it is set four thousand years before them. By way of comparison, 4000 years ago on Earth was the Trojan War.

[Starlord]

Umm, they used to be called lightbutterknives.

 

 

No scientific advancement, my a$$.

[L. Marcus]

Bah. That's just engineering.

[Duke Bushido]

4 hours ago, Maximum7 said:

They probably know what the full size of the universe is,

 

 

They certainly should, seeing as how it doesn't seem to take an entire day to get _anywhere_....

[Ninja-Bear]

Well somebody worked on making a planet into a giant weapon!

[Duke Bushido]

Here's a thought--

 

(Going to admit it up front:  _not_ a Star Wars fan.  Not even a little bit.  I love me some space opera, but I tend to point at Star Wars as the perfect example of "not this.")

 

Suppose they've hit the limit?

 

Suppose there is no more science left to science?  That they have taken observation and manipulation as far as it is possible to go with _science_, which is why this weird mysticism keeps cropping up?  Perhaps they've gone as far as it's possible to go without straight-up magic?

 

 

[Zeropoint]

When you run the numbers, that doesn't sound so far-fetched. We can calculate the minimum energy needed for the Death Star to blow up an Earth-sized planet, and when we do, we discover that:

1) That shot contained more energy than you'd get by converting the entire mass of the Death Star directly to energy, and

2) Even at 99.99% efficiency, firing that shot would have generated enough waste heat to melt the Death Star (I want to say "vaporize" but I don't remember exactly). No wonder the engineers couldn't eliminate the thermal exhaust ports!

 

Star Wars tech, at least in some areas, is PFM. We can't even start to describe how it might work in theory.

[wcw43921]

You could say that about a lot of science fiction movies and television--especially anything that has either faster-than-light (FTL) travel, or artificial gravity, or both.  Right now we only have the barest inkling of an inkling as to how FTL might work--and we don't even have that when it comes to artificial gravity, by which I mean a sort of energy field that allows people to walk around inside a spaceship as easily as they do in planetary gravity.  Yes, you can have centrifugal force stand in for gravity--but when did you ever see that in Star Wars?  Or Star Trek?  Or Battlestar Galactica?  Or any of the Stargate series?  No, they just flip a switch (assuming the system isn't automated) and carry on as usual.  

 

Neat trick, that--anyone in real-life who figures out how to generate and manipulate gravity the way we can now generate and manipulate light will be richer than Gates and Zuckerberg combined.

 

This is why I think Star Trek is most consistent with its technology--any society whose understanding of the laws of science and the universe is so thorough and profound that they can build FTL and artificial gravity systems, should also be able to build matter transmitters, replicators, disintegrator weapons, holodecks, universal translators, and all the other tech we've seen on the shows and movies.  That's why I raise an eyebrow to anyone who says they prefer "low-tech" science fiction, with gunpowder weapons and wheeled transport and other such items--anything with FTL and artificial gravity is definitely not "low-tech."

 

Just my thoughts on the subject--take them as you will.

[Pariah]

 One thing Star Wars appears to have in common with much ‘real’ science fiction is the idea that highly advanced civilizations tend to stagnate. It happened with Asimov, it happened in Dune, and it’s certainly evident in Star Wars.  

 

There is precedent for the idea in real history as well. The Roman Empire, for example, eventually collapsed under its own weight. At some point, having a single political entity that big almost necessarily precludes any kind of innovation. There are just too many mouths to feed, too many roads to build, and too many aqueducts to maintain. 

[Scott Ruggels]

There is no Scientific Advancement in the Star Wars universe, because Star Wars is a purely emotional story. There is no place for rational curiosity there. The main theme of the story is about controlling one’s emotions to accentuate the positive; to create a better life for you and those around you. Notice that any application nor mathematics to Star Wars causes the whole thing to collapse into implausibility. 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah Star Wars is fixed and inflexible.  From the oldest stories in the setting (the Old Republic, thousands of years before the movies) to the most recent film, they use exactly the same equipment and tech down to the same design of weapons.  Either we're supposed to believe there's literally nothing better that can be developed, that the presence of the Jedi retards scientific innovation, or that there have been a series of unrecorded catastrophes that keep wiping out civilization and they have to rebuild over and over reaching exactly the same point when each story is told.

[Ternaugh]

Star Wars is basically a 1930s science fiction serial, like Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers. Heck, they even took the crawl from the 1939 Flash Gordon serial for the opening of each episode. Any similarity to real science is purely coincidental.

 

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yep, both that and Indiana Jones were affectionate throwbacks, homages to the old action serials of past days.  They were both fun and clever but not terribly logical or consistent, which was fine for the genre.

 

Its when fans get hold of them that things start to be taken too seriously

[Doc Democracy]

9 hours ago, wcw43921 said:

Neat trick, that--anyone in real-life who figures out how to generate and manipulate gravity the way we can now generate and manipulate light will be richer than Gates and Zuckerberg combined.

 

Despite everything I tell her, my wife still believes that NASA have a room (in a building, on the ground) in which they can switch off gravity to train astronauts....

 

😭

[wcw43921]

I'm not sure who I should pity more--you or your wife.

 

(No offense meant, sir.)

[Doc Democracy]

No offence taken, I think! 🙂

 

Doc

[Clonus]

You know what?  I reject this consensus.  Ion cannon were introduced as new game changing technology in the Clone Wars cartoon.  Fighters with internal hyperdrives seem to be a new development as well.  And hyperspace tracking and navigation is apparently getting better and better.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Problem is, KOTR was set four thousand years before the films were set and they had... internal hyperdrives, hyperspace tracking and navigation well enough to get around the galaxy lightsabers, droids that were functionally identical to the film versions, etc.  Its stagnant.

[Duke Bushido]

1 hour ago, Clonus said:

 Fighters with internal hyperdrives seem to be a new development as well. 

 

Return of the Jedi:

Luke flew a fighter to a distant planet in a ship that doesn't have a stove, refrigerator, toilet or even a cup holder.  Bobba Fett traveled from system to system in his magic metal elephant head like it was nothing.  Granted, the size of that thing changes enough from "canon" to "canon" that I think perhaps its an inside-out TARDIS, but still: over-all, it ain't big.

 

Pretty sure that fighters with Your-technobable-here Drive's aren't remotely new.  New to the conversation, maybe?  Or new again because this one particular cartoon required we be especially aware of the fact that  they have FTL in tiny little ships?

 

I have absolutely no access to (or interest in) the new Star Wars cartoon that Disney is whoring around to attract subscribers right now, but if the seven-hundred, forty-eight-thousand, two hundred and sixty-eight new memes the past three weeks have made a point of teaching me, it features an infant Yoda.  That puts it at-- what?  800 years ago?  How old did he live to be, anyway?  If he hasn't done any system-hopping yet, I'd be curious to know if it's in incredibly large ships, or fighter-sized ones.

 

 

[dmjalund]

It isn't infant Yoda. It is an infant of the same species. Maybe even Yoda's clone

[Clonus]

5 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Problem is, KOTR was set four thousand years before the films were set and they had... internal hyperdrives, hyperspace tracking and navigation well enough to get around the galaxy lightsabers, droids that were functionally identical to the film versions, etc.  Its stagnant.

 

Not a problem for me.  I can cheerfully ignore KOTOR just as Disney does and just as Lucasfilm did before Disney.  It's a good game but not exactly consistent with either movies or even books.  And since the idea that tech stays stagnant  for thousands of years is absurd and directly contradicted by more authoritative sources I'm fine with KOTOR being it's own universe.  If however you insist on including it since KOTOR was actually more technologically advanced than the Star Wars Trilogy, you pretty much have to assume some kind of catastrophic long night before the refounding of the Republic that caused them to fall to a comparatively primitive level and crawl back up.  

[dmjalund]

Maybe technical knowledge gets lost as they might not have a copyright system so the only way someone can have exclusive rights to a technology is to keep how it works/how you make it a secret