Some ‘Star Wars' stories have already become reality
By Daniel B Oerther and William Schonberg
Just 48 short years ago, movie director George Lucas used the phrase 'A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away' as the opening to the first 'Star Wars' movie, later labeled 'Episode IV: A New Hope.' But at least four important aspects of the 'Star Wars' saga are much closer – both in time and space – than Lucas was letting on.
One, the ability to add blue food coloring to milk, was possible even at the time the first film came out. But in 2024, 'Star Wars'-themed blue milk became periodically available in grocery stores.
And we, an environmental health engineer and a civil engineer, know there are at least three more elements of these ancient, distant Lucas stories that might seem like science fiction but are, in fact, science reality.
Moisture farming
In that first movie, 'Episode IV,' Luke Skywalker's Uncle Owen was a farmer on the planet of Tatooine. He farmed water from air in the middle of a desert.
It might sound impossible, but it's exactly what experts discussed at the second International Atmospheric Water Harvesting Summit hosted by Arizona State University in March 2025.
Each day, a human needs to consume about the equivalent of 0.8 gallons of water (3 liters). With more than 8 billion people living on the planet, that means engineers need to produce nearly 2.6 trillion gallons (10 trillion liters) of clean drinking water every year. Taken globally, rainfall would be enough, but it's distributed very unevenly – including landing in the oceans, where it immediately becomes too salty to drink safely.
Deserts, which cover about one-fifth of the Earth's land area, are home to about 1 billion people.
Researchers at places such as Berkeley have developed solar-powered systems that can produce clean drinking water from thin air. In general, they use a material that traps water molecules from the air within its structure and then use sunlight to condense that water out of the material and into drinkable liquid. But there is still a ways to go before they are ready for commercial distribution and available to help large numbers of people.
Space debris
When the second Death Star was destroyed in 'Return of the Jedi,' it made a huge mess, as you would expect when blowing to smithereens an object at least 87 miles across (140 kilometers). But the movie's mythology helpfully explains a hyperspace wormhole briefly opened, scattering much of the falling debris across the galaxy.
As best as anyone can tell, a hyperspace wormhole has never appeared near Earth. And even if such a thing existed or happened, humans might not have the technology to chuck all our trash in there anyway. So we're left with a whole lot of stuff all around us, including in space.
According to the website Orbiting Now, in late April 2025 there were just over 12,000 active satellites orbiting the planet. All in all, the United States and other space-faring nations are trying to keep track of nearly 50,000 objects orbiting Earth. And there are millions of fragments of space debris too small to be observed or tracked.
Just as on Earth's roads, space vehicles crash into each other if traffic gets too congested. But unlike the debris that falls to the road after an Earth crash, all the bits and pieces that break off in a space crash fly away at speeds of several thousand miles per hour (10,000 to 30,000 kph) and can then hit other satellites or spacecraft that cross their paths.
This accumulation of space debris is creating an increasing problem. With more satellites and spacecraft heading to orbit, and more stuff up there moving around that might hit them, space travel is becoming more like flying the Millennium Falcon through an asteroid field every day.
Engineers at NASA, the European Space Agency and other space programs are exploring a variety of technologies – including a net, a harpoon and a laser – to remove the more dangerous pieces of space junk and clean up the space environment.
The Force itself
To most Earth audiences, the Force was a mysterious energy field created by life that binds the galaxy together. That is until 1999, when 'Episode I: The Phantom Menace' revealed that the Force came from midi-chlorians, a microscopic, sentient life form that lives within every living cell.
To biologists, midi-chlorians sound suspiciously similar to mitochondria, the powerhouse of our cells. The current working hypothesis is that mitochondria emerged from bacteria that lived within cells of other living things. And mitochondria can communicate with other life forms, including bacteria.
There are many different kinds of mitochondria, and medical professionals are learning how to transplant mitochondria from one cell to another just like they transplant organs from one person's body to another. Maybe one day a transplant procedure could help people find the light side of the Force and turn away from the dark side.
May the Fourth – and the Force – be with you.
Daniel B Oerther is Professor of Environmental Health Engineering, Missouri University of Science and Technology. William Schonberg is Professor of Civil Engineering, Missouri University of Science and Technology.
The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.
External Link
https://theconversation.com/some-star-wars-stories-have-already-become-reality-255563
© The Conversation
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Japan Times
24-05-2025
- Japan Times
Doubt cast on claim of 'hints' of life on faraway planet
When astronomers announced last month they might have discovered the most promising hints of alien life yet on a distant planet, the rare good news raised hopes humanity could soon learn we are not alone in the universe. But several recent studies looking into the same data have found that there is not enough evidence to support such lofty claims, with one scientist accusing the astronomers of "jumping the gun." The debate revolves around the planet K2-18b, which is 124 light years away in the Leo constellation. The planet is thought to be the right distance from its star to have liquid water, making it a prime suspect in the search for extraterrestrial life. Last month, astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope made headlines by announcing they had detected hints of the chemicals dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and dimethyl disulfide (DMDS) on the planet. These chemicals are only produced by life such as marine algae on Earth, meaning they are considered potential "biosignatures" indicating life. The astronomers, led by Cambridge University's Nikku Madhusudhan, expressed caution about the "hints" of a biosignature, emphasizing they were not claiming a definitive discovery. Their detection had reached a three-sigma level of statistical significance "which means there is still a three in 1,000 chance of this being a fluke," Madhusudhan said at the time. Two of Madhusudhan's former students, Luis Welbanks of Arizona State University and Matthew Nixon of Maryland University, were among the researchers who have since re-analyzed the data behind the announcement. When deploying other statistical models, "claims of a potential biosignature detection vanish," according to their preprint study published online late last month. Like the other papers since the April announcement, it has not been peer-reviewed. In one model, Welbanks and colleagues expanded the number of possible chemicals that could explain the signals detected by Webb to 90 from the original 20. More than 50 received a "hit," Welbanks said. "When you detect everything, did you really detect anything?" he asked. They are not saying the planet definitely does not have DMS — just that more observations are needed, Welbanks added. Madhusudhan welcomed the robust debate, saying that remaining open to all possibilities is an essential part of the scientific method. "These sort of arguments are healthy," he said. His team even went further, releasing their own preprint study last week that expanded the number of chemicals even further to 650. The three most "promising" chemicals they found included DMS but not DMDS — a major part of the team's announcement in April. The other two chemicals were diethyl sulfide and methyl acrylonitrile, the latter of which is toxic. Madhusudhan admitted that these little-known chemicals are likely not "realistic molecules" for a planet like K2-18b. Welbanks pointed out that "in the span of a month — with no new data, with no new models, with no new laboratory data — their entire analysis changed." Telescopes observe such far-off exoplanets when they cross in front of their star, allowing astronomers to analyze how molecules block different wavelengths of light streaming through their atmosphere. Earlier this week, a paper led by Rafael Luque at the University of Chicago combined Webb's observations of K2-18b in both the near-infrared and mid-infrared wavelengths of light. It also found "no statistical significance for DMS or DMDS," the paper said. An earlier paper by Oxford astrophysicist Jake Taylor using a basic statistical test also found no strong evidence for any biosignatures. Madhusudhan dismissed the latter paper, saying the simple exercise did not account for observing physical phenomena. He also stood by his research, saying he was "just as confident" in the work as he was a month ago. More data about K2-18b will come in over the next year which should offer a much clearer picture, Madhusudhan added. Even if the planet does have DMS, it is not a guarantee of life — the chemical has been detected on a lifeless asteroid. However, many researchers do believe that space telescopes could one day collect enough evidence to identify alien life from afar. "We are the closest we have ever been" to such a moment, Welbanks said. "But we have to use the frameworks that are in place and build up (evidence) in a reliable method, rather than using non-standard practices and jumping the gun — as has been done in this particular case," Nixon added.
Yomiuri Shimbun
16-05-2025
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Planet Found Following Odd Orbit around 2 Brown Dwarfs
ESO / L. Calcada / Handout via Reuters An artist's impression shows the exoplanet 2M1510 (AB) b's unusual orbit around a pair of brown dwarfs. WASHINGTON (Reuters) — In a memorable image from the 1977 film 'Star Wars,' the young hero Luke Skywalker gazes at two suns setting above the horizon on his desert planet Tatooine. Astronomers since then indeed have discovered worlds, called circumbinary planets, orbiting two stars. But for sheer exoticism, it would be hard to top a newly described circumbinary planet located relatively nearby in our Milky Way galaxy. It orbits not two stars but two brown dwarfs — celestial objects too small to be a star and too big to be a planet. And its orbit is unlike any other such planet on record. Brown dwarfs could be considered wannabe stars that during their formative stages did not reach the mass necessary to ignite nuclear fusion at their core like a star. But they are more massive than the biggest planets and are modestly luminous. Using the European Southern Observatory's Chile-based Very Large Telescope, researchers have found evidence of a planet roughly 120 light-years away — probably a gas planet at least four or five times the mass of Earth — orbiting two brown dwarfs, each about 35 times more massive than Jupiter. The two brown dwarfs are gravitationally bound and orbit near to each other — as close as just 4% of the distance between Earth and the sun. The planet, named 2M1510 (AB) b, orbits around this pair. Another brown dwarf is present in this system, but is too far away — about 250 times the distance between Earth and the sun — for its gravitational pull to measurably disturb the other two. Of the approximately 5,800 planets beyond our solar system — called exoplanets — confirmed to date, only 16 are circumbinary. And until now, none of those were found to be orbiting brown dwarfs, rather than regular stars. The nature of this planet's orbit also is unique. Rather than following the plane established for the orbit of the two brown dwarfs, the planet instead orbits almost nearly perpendicular from the plane — called a polar orbit — in a journey lasting at least 100 days. 'A satellite on a polar orbit around the Earth is one that would pass over the north and south pole. It would therefore be on an orbit that is inclined at 90 degrees to the rotation axis of the Earth,' said Thomas Baycroft, a doctoral student in astronomy at the University of Birmingham in England and lead author of the study published in the journal Science Advances. No planet in our solar system has a polar orbit. The several exoplanets known to follow such a path orbit only a single star. When two stars, or in this case two brown dwarfs, orbit each other, it is called a binary system, like the fictional one in 'Star Wars.' The view by an observer from this planet, however, would be unlike the one that Luke Skywalker saw. 'This would be different from the Tatooine image. Both brown dwarfs would be identical and red. Since they are brown dwarfs they are fainter than the sun in general, though how bright they would appear in the sky also depends on how close the planet is to them,' Baycroft said. These binary brown dwarfs each have a mass approximately 4% that of the sun and are only about 0.1% as luminous. 'This appears like an exotic configuration for a planetary system. Probably the most important discovery since the first exoplanet has been how diverse planetary systems are. They seem to defy our expectations, which is great — they present a fantastic opportunity to learn,' said University of Birmingham astrophysicist and study coauthor Amaury Triaud. While scientists previously had hypothesized the existence of exoplanets in a polar orbit around a binary system, this is the first good evidence of that, Triaud said.
Japan Today
09-05-2025
- Japan Today
Some ‘Star Wars' stories have already become reality
Tatooine's moisture farming equipment stands in the desert of Tunisia, where parts of the "Star Wars" movie series were filmed. By Daniel B Oerther and William Schonberg Just 48 short years ago, movie director George Lucas used the phrase 'A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away' as the opening to the first 'Star Wars' movie, later labeled 'Episode IV: A New Hope.' But at least four important aspects of the 'Star Wars' saga are much closer – both in time and space – than Lucas was letting on. One, the ability to add blue food coloring to milk, was possible even at the time the first film came out. But in 2024, 'Star Wars'-themed blue milk became periodically available in grocery stores. And we, an environmental health engineer and a civil engineer, know there are at least three more elements of these ancient, distant Lucas stories that might seem like science fiction but are, in fact, science reality. Moisture farming In that first movie, 'Episode IV,' Luke Skywalker's Uncle Owen was a farmer on the planet of Tatooine. He farmed water from air in the middle of a desert. It might sound impossible, but it's exactly what experts discussed at the second International Atmospheric Water Harvesting Summit hosted by Arizona State University in March 2025. Each day, a human needs to consume about the equivalent of 0.8 gallons of water (3 liters). With more than 8 billion people living on the planet, that means engineers need to produce nearly 2.6 trillion gallons (10 trillion liters) of clean drinking water every year. Taken globally, rainfall would be enough, but it's distributed very unevenly – including landing in the oceans, where it immediately becomes too salty to drink safely. Deserts, which cover about one-fifth of the Earth's land area, are home to about 1 billion people. Researchers at places such as Berkeley have developed solar-powered systems that can produce clean drinking water from thin air. In general, they use a material that traps water molecules from the air within its structure and then use sunlight to condense that water out of the material and into drinkable liquid. But there is still a ways to go before they are ready for commercial distribution and available to help large numbers of people. Space debris When the second Death Star was destroyed in 'Return of the Jedi,' it made a huge mess, as you would expect when blowing to smithereens an object at least 87 miles across (140 kilometers). But the movie's mythology helpfully explains a hyperspace wormhole briefly opened, scattering much of the falling debris across the galaxy. As best as anyone can tell, a hyperspace wormhole has never appeared near Earth. And even if such a thing existed or happened, humans might not have the technology to chuck all our trash in there anyway. So we're left with a whole lot of stuff all around us, including in space. According to the website Orbiting Now, in late April 2025 there were just over 12,000 active satellites orbiting the planet. All in all, the United States and other space-faring nations are trying to keep track of nearly 50,000 objects orbiting Earth. And there are millions of fragments of space debris too small to be observed or tracked. Just as on Earth's roads, space vehicles crash into each other if traffic gets too congested. But unlike the debris that falls to the road after an Earth crash, all the bits and pieces that break off in a space crash fly away at speeds of several thousand miles per hour (10,000 to 30,000 kph) and can then hit other satellites or spacecraft that cross their paths. This accumulation of space debris is creating an increasing problem. With more satellites and spacecraft heading to orbit, and more stuff up there moving around that might hit them, space travel is becoming more like flying the Millennium Falcon through an asteroid field every day. Engineers at NASA, the European Space Agency and other space programs are exploring a variety of technologies – including a net, a harpoon and a laser – to remove the more dangerous pieces of space junk and clean up the space environment. The Force itself To most Earth audiences, the Force was a mysterious energy field created by life that binds the galaxy together. That is until 1999, when 'Episode I: The Phantom Menace' revealed that the Force came from midi-chlorians, a microscopic, sentient life form that lives within every living cell. To biologists, midi-chlorians sound suspiciously similar to mitochondria, the powerhouse of our cells. The current working hypothesis is that mitochondria emerged from bacteria that lived within cells of other living things. And mitochondria can communicate with other life forms, including bacteria. There are many different kinds of mitochondria, and medical professionals are learning how to transplant mitochondria from one cell to another just like they transplant organs from one person's body to another. Maybe one day a transplant procedure could help people find the light side of the Force and turn away from the dark side. May the Fourth – and the Force – be with you. Daniel B Oerther is Professor of Environmental Health Engineering, Missouri University of Science and Technology. William Schonberg is Professor of Civil Engineering, Missouri University of Science and Technology. The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts. External Link © The Conversation
