The Feasibility of Hyperspace

Since I had recently watched Star Wars, I have been put in a new phase which wants me to talk more about Star Wars stuff.  So we will!  This time we are going to discuss the feasibility of hyperspace:  the theoretical ability to go at or faster than the speed of light.  


The computer role-playing game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic gives one of the more substantial explanations of how hyperspace travel works in the Star Wars universe. There are established safe hyperspace routes that were scouted out by an unknown species 25,000 years prior to the events in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977). These routes made interstellar trade and eventually the establishment of the Republic possible. New routes are almost never scouted out, mostly because the end coordinates might place the traveling shipinside some star or planet. For example, the Deep Core Systems are especially hard to navigate because of the high density of stars. A pilot's skill in hyperspace has a lot to do with how he or she navigates the tangled web of hyperspace routes that criss-cross the galaxy. According to George Lucas, that is why Han Solo brags about the Millennium Falcon making the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs when a parsec is a measure of distance rather than time: apparently, his real gift is as a navigator (although in the Star Wars IV: A New Hope novel by Lucas, published in 1975, Solo says "she made the Kessel run in less than twelve Standard Time measures"). This appears to make no sense within the context of the original dialogue, however, as Solo's statement about the Falcon making the Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs was in response to Obi-Wan Kenobi saying, "If it's a fast ship." However, to get to Kessel, a ship must pass near The Maw, an incredibly dense cluster of black holes. To achieve a shorter distance, the ship must be moving faster, to skirt the edge of a black hole without being sucked in. Traveling through hyperspace requires the aid of either an astromech droid (such as R2-D2 or R4-P9) or a navicomputer (navigational computer), althoughJedi are sometimes reputed to be able to travel through hyperspace without reference to navicomputers, astromech droids, or existing known routes. Traveling through hyperspace is also apparently quite complex as Han Solo tells Luke that "It ain't like dustin' crops, boy."


Now, this system clearly break's relativity because a crew going faster than the speed of light would in fact be going backwards in time.  That is, unless, the ships had some sort of protective shield around it to prevent this time travel, because who wants to travel through time any way?  Putting all that mumbo jumbo aside, it would take an enormous amount of energy to jump into hyperspace and an equal amount of energy to get out of it.  Possibly it is some sort of high end ionic thruster on both sides of the ship to blast the plethora of energy needed to initiate and terminate hyperspace.  


Symmetry of the universe requires that there exist one velocity which does not vary according to the observer's point of view. The nature of electromagnetism is such that light in vacuum only travels at this special speed, which therefore is called lightspeed. The numerical value of lightspeed is commonly denoted by the symbol c. (Its approximate value is 2.98 x 10^8 m/s.) No matter how fast a person is moving relative to any other observer, a beam of light is always seen to move at lightspeed by both observers. This basic fact gives rise to all of the time dilation and other effects associated with Special Relativity.  


Particles which bear mass can be either below or above lightspeed. The former are called bradyons and the latter are tachyons. (In the real world, detection of tachyons is practically difficult and has not yet been accomplished. It seems as if most of the matter in the universe is subluminal relative to Earth.) The fundamental particles of the tachyonic realm are the same as those of the bradyonic world, because the only difference is the velocity of an observer's point of view. From the vantage of a tachyon it is the rest of the universe which is moving at superluminal speed in a certain direction. However the interaction of tachyons with bradyons is in many ways unlike the familiar interactions of bradyons with other bradyons. 


For the purpose of superluminal travel in STAR WARS it is sufficient to choose the viewpoint of the galaxy at rest as realspace, and anything which is tachyonic relative to the collective of star systems is considered to be in a realm called hyperspace.

At rest the energy is at the mass-energy minimum. At lightspeed the energy becomes infinite. In the superluminal realm the energy becomes ever smaller for increasing velocity.[Tachyons, Monopoles and Related Topics]

At rest the momentum is zero. At lightspeed the momentum becomes infinite. For high hyperspatial velocities the momentum descends to a limiting value which depends on the object's rest-mass. [Tachyons, Monopoles and Related Topics]

The technologies used in the Star Wars series currently are impossible to yield for our own uses today and in the near future, but it is not entirely improbable thousands of years from now it may even be the norm by then!  I guess we will have to just sit and wait for this technology to come.  


Next week stay tuned for IG Droid's special on lightsabers!