Cult work of popular culture, Star Wars is a saga that is almost taboo not to appreciate, even if we know that much of what we see there is purely science fiction. A team of scientists has nevertheless decided to focus on one element in particular which, in real life, would not look at all like what we see in the movies.
hyperspace in Star Wars : have we been lied to?
Small correction following this introduction: Star Wars is a cult saga. But even the franchise’s most beloved films, series and other productions matter their share of errors and approximations. This is particularly the case for hyperspace travel, those moments when, aboard a ship, characters exceed the speed of light in a fraction of a second. They then find themselves in a kind of alternate dimension. allowing them to travel in a flash from one end of the galaxy far, far away to the other.
Seen several times during the saga, hyperspace is especially associated with Han Solo’s Millennium Falcon. Through the windows of this one, we can then see luminous streaks in the form of a tunnel scroll very quickly. It is precisely this representation which would be erroneous according to a study conducted by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Indeed, according to them, we should rather see a kind of “quantum glow”, linked to a spatial phenomenon called the “Unruh effect”. Without going into details, let’s say that according to it, an observer in uniformly accelerated motion will find himself in a hot environment at a certain temperature, generating radiation which, if intense enough, would be visible as a glow.
So that’s what should happen with ships in hyperspeed of Star Wars, but we would have to wait billions of years to verify it. A little more rushed than that, the researchers are said to have devised a way to speed up the process.
From theory to practice, there is a world
To verify the theory of a “quantum glow” advanced by MIT researchers, we would probably have to wait tens of billions of years before a quantum fluctuation accidentally allows an atom to reach the speed of light. And still it would be necessary to succeed in observing the phenomenon. The other option considered is therefore to use photons (represented below), particles whose flow generates electromagnetic radiation. By creating a field of photons, it would greatly increase the frequency of the quantum fluctuations that cause the Unruh effect. An atom would then be placed and accelerated within this field of photons in a very specific trajectory, which would create the famous effect, discovered in 1976 but never observed before. It is in this way that the researchers could observe in detail the radiations, in order to confirm their theory.
If we use the conditional, it is because the MIT teams explain that they focused on the purely theoretical aspect of the experiment. In practice, in order to implement this experience, they will have to create an environment conducive to observations, namely a particle accelerator, an instrument using electric or magnetic fields to drive particles to extremely high speeds.
The LHC (Large Hadron Collider), the largest particle accelerator in the world
We will therefore have to wait for many more years, especially since the researchers insist that nothing guarantees the success of this experiment. On the other hand, they say they are proud to have already succeeded in overcoming its theoretical part and incidentally to have tackled a central element of Star Wars ?
