From: jswthomp@milton.u.washington.edu (James Thompson)
Newsgroups: misc.writing
Subject: Re: Reserach in Fiction (the Star Wars tangent)
Date: 21 Jul 92 18:27:08 GMT
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle

In article <1992Jul21.130125.1@eagle.wesleyan.edu> mschmitt@eagle.wesleyan.edu writes:
>In article <1992Jul21.141728.29806@bwdls61.bnr.ca>, pww@bnr.ca (Peter Whittaker) writes:
>> In article <1992Jul20.175859.571@HQ.Ileaf.COM> hal@HQ.Ileaf.COM (Hal Wadleigh) writes:
>>>One example of a "howler" is the use of parsecs as a unit of time in Star Wars.
>> 
>> That's fine:  all units of distance are acceptable as units of time as
>> well.  It is perfectly legitimate for me to say "See you in 90
>> gigametres"; you might have difficulty figuring out that I mean "See
>> you in 5 minutes", but that is something we'd have to work out.
>> 
>	Only if you have a commone reference frame of speed.  You have to know
>that the speaker is referring to the speed of light as the time basis.  If I
>assume you mean .5c, for example, the whole thing falls apart.
>	Also, relativity could reak havoc with your system.  :)
>
>> How do 90 Gm and 5 min equate?
>> 
>> speed of light (c) = 3x10e08 m/s
>> 
>> 5 min * 60s/min = 300 s
>> 
>> 300 s x c = 90 x 10e09 m = 90 Gm.
>> 
>> The real howler in Star Wars was that they probably used "parsec" to
>> mean a fairly short time;  a parsec is just over 3 years long.
>	
>	It's just over 3 years long _IF_ you're referring to the speed of
>light.  However, if you recall, the Millenium Falcon travels in hyperspace,
>i.e. _faster than light_ (FTL).  So, it could be much less.
>	BTW, the official explanation (from George Lucas, if memory serves) was
>that this was an _intentional_ goof.  In other words, it was meant to
>demonstrate that Han really didn't know what the heck he was talking about.  If
>I recall, Obi-Wan had kind of an exasperated expression at the time, backing up
>this theory.

Sorry, George, but that doesn't wash.  If a pilot is bragging about how fast
his ship can go, he may exaggerate the QUANTITY beyond theoretical limits, but
it doesn't make sense that he wouldn't know what UNITS that speed was measured
in!  Only a non-pilot would make that bad a blunder.

I always thought that since the 'Falcon is a hypership, that making a
particular run in a given number of parsecs would indicate the limits to which
the ship can reduce the length of the trip.  I took this line to be an
implication that the hyperdrives used in the Star Wars universe operate by
finding or generating paths to a destination that are shorter than the linear
distance.  I.e, if the "Castle run" (I think it was) is actually 200 parsecs
in linear space, then "Making the Castle run in five (??) parsecs" would mean
that the route that the M. Falcon's hyperdrive generated made was much shorter
than the linear distance.  I had thought that Obi-Wan's exasperated look was a
response to a ridiculous exaggeration.

I hadn't stopped to estimate the time that that this reputed trip must have
taken though, and I agree that THAT is where the real howler was!

Please note, though:  Although I am of the school that believes it IS worth
the effort to research a subject well enough not to sound like an idiot to
anyone who really does know the subject, I must admit that this blunder doesn't
bother me.  Here's one that did, though:

In "Communion", Whitley Streiber is describing a supposedly true account of
a UFO encounter.  He uses as proof that this encounter wasn't a dream, that
the clock on his VCR was five minutes behind when he looked at it the next
morning.  This corresponded to the five minutes that the power was off due
to the activity of the UFO.

The error:  In my many years as a technician, I have not seen a VCR with
anything but a digital clock.  When digital clocks lose power, one of two
things will happen.  If the clock has built-in power backup, then when the
power comes back on, the clock will indicate the correct time.  Otherwise,
it will display 12:00 or 0:00 or something like that.  It will NOT be behind
by the amount of time that the power was off!  This small detail was
enough to put a serious dent in the book's credibility, which when combined
with many other inconsistencies made the book annoying to me, making me
uninterested in reading any more of Mr. Streiber's books.  (One of the
reactions described by Marcy Thompson in her post.)

Jim Thompson
jswthomp@u.washington.edu
Newsgroups: misc.writing