Warp Speed Mr Sulu
by Jon Burch Photography
Title
Warp Speed Mr Sulu
Artist
Jon Burch Photography
Medium
Photograph - Digital Capture
Description
For those of us science fiction fans who grew up in the 1960's, Star Trek was the premier TV show. If you wanted to go somewhere fast, warp speed was about the fastest way anyone knew how to travel. This was at least augmented, but certainly not replaced, in the 1970's in the movie "Star Wars" by going to hyperspace in the Millennium Falcon.
The problem with the 1970's Star Wars movie and the Millennium Falcon is that there is a line in the movie that is just wrong! If you will recall, Hans Solo described his ship, the Millennium Falcon, as the "ship that made the Kessel run in less than three parsecs!" So what's wrong with that?
As I have explained to my astronomy classes on many occasions, a 'parsec' is a unit of distance*, not time. Within this context, Solo didn't have a clue, nor did his script writers. Oh well...
While certainly not quite yet at full 'warp', the ancient instrument panel on this defunct tractor does indeed seem frozen in time. According to Einstein, as you approach the speed of light, time slows down. Maybe we're on to something here?
*One parsec (parallax second) is how far you have to be from two objects one astronomical unit apart (like the Earth and the Sun) to measure an angle of one arc second between them. One arc second is 1/3600 of one degree, so that's a far piece (3.26 light years)!
Image copyright 2013 Jon Burch Photography
Uploaded
March 24th, 2013
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