Relativity in Star Wars

Warning, Science Content: Einstein's laws of relativity state that the passage of time is relative. There are two ways to slow down time from your own perspective (speeding up everything else from your view). One method is speed, the faster you travel in space, the slower you travel in time (equivalent exchange, for the FMA-savvy). If you travel at the speed of light, time becomes frozen, but you also desintegrate or explode or something. Light is timeless. The second method is gravity: the closer you are to a center of gravity and the stronger the gravity is, the slower time flows for you. Black holes are the pinnacle of gravitational objects. Time freezes on a black hole's "surface" (that's why it's called an "event horizon"). Both of these things have been proven to be true.

Alright, I thought of something I suppose you could call "Daala's Paradox" or something such.

Daala seems, well... stupid... for waiting as long as she did. But if time was moving differently from her point of view because of relativity and the gravity of those black holes, then that would make her story plausible.

Such turns out to be quite the opposite, though. The dunce cap simply passes from Daala to Palpatine and Tarkin (although it essentially belongs to Kevin J. Anderson). If the big-wigs wanted their superweapons ASAP, why would they have their precious think-tank located in a region of space where time flows slower? Are they willing to sacrifice time for secrecy? I wouldn't think so.

Of course you could say that relativity is *sigh* yet another physical law that doesn't apply to Star Wars. But wait! There's more! What about that one short story with that Jedi spirit Aryzah-whatshername? Her black-hole-related origin story involved a black hole AND relativity.

Does relativity exist in some places but not others? How the hell does that makes sense?

Damn you, Kevin J. Anderson.

 

Maybe they were far enough from the black holes that it didnt effect them that much.

Or they used gravity well projectors or whatever creates artificial gravity on a spaceship or spacestation to negate the effects of the black holes.

 

The only reason the Maw was able to sit there is that the station was in a position where the various influences of the black holes cancelled each other out.

 

If humans can evolve on Coruscant and be identical to Earth humans, then why should the effects of relativity be felt? It's fantasi, sci3nz3 d0s n0t appLY!!!!!111

 

Not that it really matters in fantasy, but what's so strange about creatures evolving along similar paths in similar environments? Also Human origins are not definitively stated.

 

There is time dilation in Star Wars.

 

For time dilation to be affecting the Maw Installation, wouldn't the facility have to be close enough to a blakc hole to be circling it at a high percentage of lightspeed? And wouldn't that be close enough for tides to rip something as big as the DS apart?

 

If anyone noticed, the HoloNet link said "relativistic shielding", obviously referring to something that protects a vessel or space-whatever from inadvertantly falling prey to the effects of relativistic time-dilation.

 

Well the slowing down of time in the Maw would certainly help explain why it took 20 years to build the Death Star

 

Maybe DS II got built so fast because Daala suddenly realized their relativistic shielding needed fixing.

 

Did the DSII even rely on the Maw? If it did dhe probably would have known that Tarkin was dead. If a lot of the work on the DSI was done in the Maw, and most if not all of the work on the DSII was done far away in normal time, that would explain the vast difference in time, along with of course, having already done it once before.

 

True, that. Otherwise, the installation would've gotten ripped to pieces.

On top of that: repulsors = antigrav.

 

Is there any source that lists how many black holes were in the Maw, or how large it was? Because it seems to me the holes must've been pretty far apart from each other, or at least rotating around each other in some type of Kemplerer rosette, to prevent them from falling into each other and forming just a single supermassive black hole. And if they were that far apart form each other, the efefcts on the Installation would, I assume, be pretty much nil.

 

We've never really gotten a good picture of the Maw either. There was one in the Jedi Academy Sourcebook, but it doesn't show much other than swirlyness and splotches of white. There's the mission in Rogue Leader, but that's really more of the astroid field near Kessel, and less Maw. One of the better ones is in X-wing Alliance, but even that only shows a few black holes in a nebula in the distance.

 

Not sure if the original chronology had a couple of pics too.

 

Galaxies has several black holes fairly close to one another near the Kessel System

 

There are two ways to slow down time from your own perspective (speeding up everything else from your view). One method is speed, the faster you travel in space, the slower you travel in time (equivalent exchange, for the FMA-savvy).

Actually you travel faster through time at a higher velocity which is why you might only be a few years older while anyone else that did not travel with you could be decades older.

If you travel at the speed of light, time becomes frozen, but you also desintegrate or explode or something.

Well, to be more accurate, if there is an end to the Universe you'd see it the moment you hit 100% lightspeed.

If the big-wigs wanted their superweapons ASAP, why would they have their precious think-tank located in a region of space where time flows slower?

Your'e either too close to the black hole or not, there is not a bait and swich going on here. Gravity for black holes works the same as it does for everything else. Our Sun is not big enough to be a black hole. But let's pretend Q from Star Trek shows up and instantly replaces our Sun with a black hole that has the same mass as our Sun. The planets would continue in their orbits, it's the same mass. There would be no difference in time either. Obviously we would lose the heat of the Sun and die off but that's not the point.
You'd have to take a dive at the black hole and get quite close to see anyything different take place.

Looking at the posts it looks like everyone has the gist of it.

 

*EX-F's antimatter*

 

Well, as the thing going at a noticeable fraction of the speed of light, it is you who are slowing down, time-wise. From your own perspective, your speed through time does not change and everything else speeds up, assuming you can see anything of significance changing in such a manner.

The whole deal about "relativistic shielding" basically explains what I wanted to know. The gravitational details of the Maw Cluster are another story.

That said I am somewhat curious as to how much if any the Maw's concentrated graivty affects the integrity of the galaxy. Not much, apparently, from the pictures we have of the GFFA from the outside. Supermassive black holes exist in the centers of galaxies (the Milky Way has a central black hole weighing 3 million Suns). Since the GFFA's structure and shape are more or less an exact copy of the Milky Way's, I would guess that the combined mass of all the black holes in the Maw couldn't weigh more than, say, 500,000 Suns, although I don't have any stats to back me up on that one. So all of the Maw combined couldn't add up to more than an intermediate black hole.

Another thing, what are the cons to relativistic shielding? Why would people want to not use it and dilate themselves through the ages? Could a single Sith Lord have ruled for millennia by utilizing relativistic time dilation? Could Order 66 survivors have escaped the Purge by disengaging their relativistic shielding and dilated themselves to Luke's time?

Also, how the hell would relativistic shielding work? Would we just call it SW's "little anti-time machine"? The gravity part would require something akin to anti-gravity, but that train of thought brings up it's own troubles. And what the hell can you use to nullify the effect while speeding? "Anti-speed" is just slow or stop. In regards to hyperspace, I would think it operates outside of relativity's effects, as Einstein's calculations don't allow for superluminal travel.

 

But that's the problem of Daala's Paradox (before relativistic shielding came into play). The Emperor and Tarkin must certainly have known about relativity. In a setting like that, obscure knowledge to us is common knowledge to them and vice versa, and even if they didn't know, their scientists could have told them. They wouldn't have had their think tank in a place where time flowed more slowing because of the extreme gravity.

 

Bear in mind that Relativity IS a theory, not a law. If the Star Wars universe is advanced enough to have hyperdrives and things like that we must assume that they discovered the Grand Unification Theory, which probably lead to more questions, which lead to more answers. Relativity need not hold true in the Star Wars Galaxy or even in OUR galaxy. There is A LOT of evidence suggesting it does but untill we can make a connection with general and special relativity amongst a few other theories, we know nothing of the limits of what can be done.

As far as Humans evolving on Naboo, Coruscant, Alderran Et Al, It could be an example of divergent evolution. If this planets have similar atmosphere content, similar temperature, similar elements, and similar gravity to our own Earth there is no reason to believe that beings that are much like humans on Earth would not have evolved there.

Carnage

 

Perhaps, but like the Big Bang Theory, it's mostly true, and the inconsistancies arise from conflicts with Quantum Mechanics (Unified Theory, like you said). We know that the effects relativity causes are true, because we've proven them with experiments on or near Earth and observations in space (atomic clock tests, accelerating muons, gravitational lensing and the like).

Fact, not theory: time for you slows in relation to your surroundings if you are faster.

Fact, not theory: time for you slows in relation to your surroundings if you are closer to a body of gravity or stronger body of gravity.

 

For something to be officially declared a theory, it had to be demonstrably at least mostly true. It's not just a sort of guess or idea. It has to be substantially backed up. Electrons? Theoretical. No one's ever seen one.

 

What was Daala going to do? Make a Death Star as she fell into a black hole? The only thing those black holes were going to do is provide a place to hide which was actually not needed since with a hundred billion stars or so you can pretty much hide anywhere.

You guys are confusing me by mixing up terms. Time Dilation is a fact, we know it happens, it is not just a math concept. The Theory of Relativity is a theory of gravity and an explanation as to why things like time dilation happen.

I was thinking the other day that yes, any Jedi that could have survived, or anyone in the galaxy who owns a ship with the technology we see in SW, could simply not use hyperdrive and just speed very close to lightspeed to time travel forward if they don't like the current happenings in the galaxy.

 

Well humans in SW are supposed to have one homeworld, which I would guess is an inner planet in the Coruscant system. If humans evolved separately on many different worlds in the GFFA (never mind the problem with human in the GFFA at all), would we be just as likely to see different sets of Nikto, Rakata, Yuuzhan Vong, Rodians, and Hutts independently evolving on several worlds.