Clocks in Star Wars

Do clocks in Star Wars have a Parsec hand? If so is it the big hand or the little hand?

 

space time is probally set up very different than anything we have used here on Earth. As for "Local Planet time" I would guess they would have almost the same types of clock. Maybe with more or less hours depending on the planet its self.

 

I would imagine that there would be a "Coruscant Time" and a "local time". The local time being what time it is wherever you are, and CT being a galactic standard, like GMT is on Earth.

You would have to have a common time to associate with or no one would ever get coordinated.

 

A fine question! One tends to wonder as well whether time even exists as we know it in a universe where pan galactic travel is possible... One calls temporal relationships into question and even asks if clocks in Star Wars have hands at all...

However, I did read a graphic novel once where Han Solo checked his wristwatch and the digital dispay had some extra numbers on it that may have been there to indicate parsecs...

 

um...

"parsec" is a unit of distance...

 

The only time I ever heard mentioned was when Han told Luke and Obi-wan that they would be arriving at Alderaan about 02:00 or 03:00 hours. Maybe they ran on a 24:00 hour system?

 

Um. Earth parsecs are units of distance.

But as FirstStarWars has posited, Space Time is likely set up differently in the dogless Star Wars Galaxy.

A character in A New Hope called Han Solo, boasting about the speed of his ship, the Millenium Falcon, says "you never heard of the millenium Falcon? It's the ship that did the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs."

If a Star Wars parsec, like an earth parsec, is a measure of distance, then the millenium falcon's speed would in that bit of dialog be measured in terms of distance. so The Kessel Run would then be a timed event? as in, "we shall measure your speed by asking you to fly fast in a single direction for a predetermined lenght of time. you shall then stop and we shall measure how many parsecs you are from the starting line."

I don't know about other star wars fans, but that's not how i picture the kessel run. since such method of measuring performance could be done anywhere, i don't see how you'd need a "run" which implies a specific location, set of obstacles.

 

Star Wars parsecs are also a unit of distance.

"Geonosis is less than a parsec away." - Padmé in AOTC

The Kessel run is explained in the EU.

 

I'm not convinced by the Padme dialog.

I live in L.A. where the only answer you ever hear to the question, "how far away is [x location]?" is "twenty minutes."

measuring physical distance with a unit of time is a pretty intuitive leap, especially when you're in a hurry and the travel time is what you really need to know anyway.

conversely, measuring time with a unit of distance is a little more difficult to conceptualize, as in the following example...

"honey, I really have to use the toilet. When will you be out of the bathroom."

"hold your horses, i'll be out in three and half feet."

 

I would just like to point out that no one.. NO ONE has answered LBV Matt's initial question of "Do clocks in Star Wars have a parsec hand and would it be a big or little hand."

Distance or time measurements... they matter very little. We are trying to get to the guts of the clocks question here. I will reiterate the question once again:

Do clocks in Star Wars have a parsec hand or not?

 

the parsec hand hand is a dot that moves around the outer ring of the clock's fast. It moves faster or slower depending on what part of the Galaxy you are in.

 

In the ANH commentary Lucas explains how Han making the kessel run in 12 parsecs makes sense. He said that when you make the jump to light speed you need the navi-computer to plot a course around all the objects, otherwise you would fly into a star (which would make the trip real short). He said that since the Millenium Falcon has a powerful navi-computer, it was able to do the kessel run in less distance than others because it was able to plot a safe course though areas that lesser navi-computers would plot a course around and go the long way.

 

Interesting.

So if you're doing the Kessel Run, warp speed is assumed? so whoever does it in the shortest distance is the winner?

The only way that that doesn't make sense is if there different levels of warp speed. Are there? if a ships performance is measured on the distance traveled instead of the time it took to make the journey, that assumes warp speed is a constant.

further, if warp speed is a constant, it would stand to reason that ships would stop being referred to as fast, if it's their nav-systems that make them win. if warp speed is so commonplace as to be assumed, then the effective ships would be the accurate ones. It's a pretty radical paradigm shift. I'm uncomfortable with it's cursory treatment in the films.

 

Warp speed is star trek.
Star Wars uses hyperspace, and yes, there is more than one speed.

Basicaly you calculate the distance, and a "hyperdrive multiplyer" is added. The Falcon has a .5 multiplyer.

So if a trip from Endor to Tatoone takes 1 hour with a x1 hyperdrive, it takes 30 minutes for the falcon, and six hours for a ship with a x6 hyperdrive.

 

hyperspace, thanks. my bad.

but um... so now there are variables. doing the kessel run in 12 parsecs makes no definitive statement about how long it took you to do it. (since luke and obi-wan would have no way of knowing what kind of hyperdrive multiplyer the falcon had)

So it's not a very good answer to the question, "Is the ship fast?"
It's a great answer to "is the ship capable of efficient navigation?"

 

The EU answer is that the Kessel Run takes you past the "Maw", a black hole.

The faster your ship is, the closer to the black hole you can skirt. Apparently Han's ship is fast enough that it can make the run is 12 parsecs. Other ships are slower, so they need to go out and around.

 

I think the key to success in the Kessel run is contingent upon both the speed and the navi computer of your vessel. A ship with the falcon's navi computer would need the falcon's speed in order to complete the intricate route that the computer has set for it. In the dogless universe of Star Wars, this makes much more sense to me now.

And to whoever wrote that thing about the parsec hand being a dot that rotates around the edge of the clock: I think you made that up.

 

What I find funny about time in space is when In like Star Trek they say its 'the late shift'.

Like in Star Trek Voyager, Harry Kim was asked "Have you ever taken control of Voyager"

and he's like "yeah, but only during the night shift" and he was sad, cuz he thought that the night shift didn't mean much.

Which doesn't make sense because there would be just as much danger during the 'night shift' as there is when the normal captain takes command. Its not like he's doing a easy job because its during the 'night'.

Your not on a planet. Your in space. Just because your captain is sleeping doesn't mean your enemies wont attack you during the 'night shift'.

 

Basicaly you calculate the distance, and a "hyperdrive multiplyer" is added. The Falcon has a .5 multiplyer.

Is this the "official EU" answer?

I think the whole "lightspeed" concept is wrong.
At lightspeed it would take a whole year to travel 1 lightyear. Clearly when Han say "she'll make .5 PAST lightspeed" he doesn't know what he's talking about. Even if the .5 represented an ability to travel 50% faster than the speed of light, it would still take 6 months to travel 1 lightyear. The GFFA is 100 million lightyears across, yet we see ships zip from one side to the other with ease. The rendezvous point for the rebel fleet in ESB is outside of the GFFA by, in my estimation, more than the diameter of the GFFA. The highest class hyperdrive I know of is .4, meaning that if all the ships in the fleet had .4 class hyperdrives than it would take at least 4.8 months for them to make the trip without stopping to refuel. The movies definitely imply that it doesn't take that long to travel throughout the galaxy.

The quantum definition of hyperspace eliminates all the problems though by allowing space time to be folded like tin foil. This allows for nearly instant travel throughout the galaxy. I don't know how the hyperdrive class designations would fit into this, however. I just wish GL would choose between "lightspeed" and "hyperspace" because they are two different concepts.

 

Yes it's official. And you seemed to have missed the example I gave.

The .5 has nothing to do with lightspeed, it's his multiplyer. It takes the falcon 1/2 the time (or .5) to travel anywhere that a regular x1 hyperdrive can go.

And the rebels didn't leave the galaxy anymore. That's the Rishi Maze you se in ESB. You also see it in the map Obi uses in AotC.

 

I did not miss your point, and was not really responding to it, except for the "multiplyer" theory.

They use two terms in SW for FTL travel: Hyperspace and Lightspeed. They are mutually exclusive modes of travel for me. I was just saying that GL should pick one and that "lightspeed" does not fit with what goes on in the movies. I said that the "hyperspace" model does not accomidate the hyperdrive class designators (if they are, indeed, multiplyers) well. In the DK companion books, the class designator seems to refer to the range it can propel the ship through hyperspace before having to stop and refuel.

If, at the end of ESB, the Falcon is flying toward the Rishi Maze, then tell me why? Tatooine is not in the Rishi Maze. I think it was GL's intention to illustrate that the Rebellion had to vacate the whole galaxy for a time to avoid battle with the Empire.

 

If, at the end of ESB, the Falcon is flying toward the Rishi Maze, then tell me why? Tatooine is not in the Rishi Maze. I think it was GL's intention to illustrate that the Rebellion had to vacate the whole galaxy for a time to avoid battle with the Empire.


I agree that was the intention.
There were problems with that, mainly that the galaxy was visibly rotating. For us to be so far out and be able to see the rotation means it was rotating at an absurd rate.
It's now "canon" that it's the Rishi Maze. I'm not a fan of it either, but that's what it is.

Maybe Tatooine is between the rebels and the maze. Maybe they aren't going to Tatooine. It's a year between the movies, I imagine they were going somewhere else first. I don't know. Ask George.

 

Am I missing something or does the theory of general relativity make all of this speculation about time and space in Star Wars nonsense? I mean Lucas doesn't bother with the problems of space travel effecting people's ages, right?

To answer the question, if a Parsec is a measurement of time, then it is the hand on the clock with the big middle finger extended.

 

Allow me to address lbvmatt's original and thought provoking question - "Do clocks in Star Wars have a Parsec hand?"

The answer is no - clocks in Star Wars COULD NOT have had a parsec hand. The problem with clocks and space travel is just as FirstStarWars suggested - spacetime is a different model than the one we use in our every day lives. The translation of terms between models that can be confusing - is a parsec a measure of time or a measure of distance? Assuming a parsec is used as a constant unit of measure used throughout a galaxy, it's both. Just as a light year is a measure of time AND space, so must be a parsec. And just as we don't have hands on our clocks for lightyears, nor would Star Wars clocks have parsec hands.

With clocks, it's all relative. The closer you come to traveling at lightspeed, the slower your clock moves relative to the people you leave behind. Even the atomic clock and it's steady measure of atomic decay and oscillation frequencies suffer this strange problem when on board a speeding vessel. While spanning any dogless galaxy the last thing you want cluttering your instrument panel is a clock - would be like bringing an occilating fan on a scuba dive.

The solution could be a microwave. Cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation is the radiation "echo" of the young exploding universe and is everywhere. It's frequency can be measured and used to mark time that everyone "hears" at the same time because the universe IS the clock. The CMB frequency is a more likely unit to measure travel through spacetime and is probably what a parsec based on. i.e the distance light travels in X number of CMB oscillations.

 

Am I missing something or does the theory of general relativity make all of this speculation about time and space in Star Wars nonsense?

How is time in the Star Wars universe nonsense? Regardless of whether time spent traveling in space ages you differently than nonmoving observers, people who are living on any given planet would still experience time the same way we do, and I would imagine the great majority of people in the GFFA are living on planets, not hopping from system to system in ships. The only question is the length of their planet's day.