Star Wars Science
Tying in with the revelations about “midichlorians” (however you spell that) it could be suggested that the reason for the Jedi’s powers is that they (and the midichlorians) are (both) telepathic. This idea, plus a liberal interpretation of quantum theory, feeds into the reasoning behind Sidious’ quest for immortality, and why, apparently, Qui-Gon, Padme and Obi-Wan achieved it.
This deviates slightly from Lucas’ “explanation” in Revenge of the Sith, but if we assume telepathy is explained by particles in people’s bodies being “quantum entangled” with particles in other people’s bodies (or the fabled “midichlorians”) we can see how (potential) Jedi can commune with the dead and have all sorts of other fantastic abilities. Padme, for example, had a connection with Leia because Leia was the nearest when she died, being born after Luke, which is how she was apparently able to appear to Leia during her childhood. Presumably, there was some connection between Leia’s midichlorians and Padme’s and that Leia received the telepathic gene from Anakin. This also means that it was Padme’s midichlorian count, coupled with Anakin carrying the telepathic gene, which made Luke and Leia (potential) Jedi.
What is the Force? The problem with Lucas’ introduction of midichlorians is that it cheapens somehow the mystical idea of an all-pervasive Force. This makes it difficult to describe what exactly the Force is and how to explain the Jedi’s abilities on its terms, but maybe by making it more indefinable the sense of mystery returns.
I would assume that all objects in the Star Wars galaxy, at least, contain midichlorians. This is why Jedi can interact with inanimate objects, but not, initially, the alien Yuuzhan Vong in the novels. It may also be possible that one’s midichloriate count itself would not always make one a potential Jedi.
Telepathy is often mentioned, directly or indirectly, in the novels and the beings concerned seem otherwise incapable of performing the same abilities that Jedi do, so I would suggest a relatively high midichloriate count and, at least a low level of, telepathy are required. Another reason for the separation of telepathy and midichlorians count is that it is possible that Padme had a higher than average midichlorian count, and that this, combined with the 20,000(TPM?) count in Anakin’s sperm made it almost certain that their offspring would be Jedi, especially if Anakin carried the right “telepathic genes”. It also goes towards explaining how Luke could successfully (especially as Obi-Wan, for example, took around twenty years) train to be a Jedi within a short space of time and how powerful he becomes when he heads the New Jedi Order.
How can Jedi and Sith move objects around, in other words, how and why are they telekinetic? Whether all objects contain midichloriates or not, it seems likely that they can communicate with each other in order to change an object’s quantum state. To levitate, all the molecules in an object have to orient upwards simultaneously during thermal vibrations. For objects to fly around the place, their molecules would have to be constantly re-oriented in order both to continue moving and to change direction.
For Jedi to heal, they (or their midichlorians) would communicate with the midichlorians in the parts of the injured person’s body that are affected. They would then re-orient and regenerate on a cellular level the person affected. By an extension of this method, presumably, D.Sidious hoped that he and Anakin/ Vader could extend each other’s lives indefinitely.
This plan failed when Anakin lost all of his limbs and Palpatine was left disfigured after his battle with Mace Windu (Sith). This would have decreased both their midichlorian counts and limited their powers, leading Palpatine to rely more on military strength to keep power, with the construction of the Imperial Fleet and the Death Star and other projects, instead of relying on Senate support through the promise of virtual immortality. Vader’s loss of his original arms would, in a similar fashion, would be the reason why he never learned to use Force lightning. Of course, for a Sith to rely completely on Force lightning as a weapon would most likely result in a chronic salt deficiency over a period of time (a reduction of chlorine ions).
What was successful was the original creation of Anakin. It is very likely that Darth Plagueis is his “father”: he created Anakin to avenge his future murder and betrayal by Sidious. Sidious’ powers were also apparent with the survival of Shmi, Anakin’s mother. No-one could survive a month without food and water, so it was very likely that Sidious was able to keep Shmi alive long enough for Anakin to watch her die, thus seeing the extent and limit of his powers from his perspective and being susceptible to Palpatine’s temptations of power.
Any advanced society would eventually discover quantum mechanics and would be able to explain these phenomena. However, there seems to be some circumstantial evidence to support the idea that the inhabitants of the Galaxy do not have any explanation of Jedi abilities, outside of referring to the “Force”. Quantum entanglement also explains, as stated, (apparent) telepathic phenomena such as the “villip” communicators used by the Yuuzhan Vong so it is difficult to understand why the inhabitants of the Galaxy are so perplexed by them.
There are three, somewhat interconnecting, explanations for these: George Lucas doesn’t know or care, AS ITS FANTASY, about quantum physics; only the Jedi know of quantum theory, but is part of Jedi training and so is effectively a state secret of the Old Republic; similarly, in a civilisation that has had the capability for faster than light travel for ten times longer than the Christian civilisation has existed on Earth, it is possible that the workings of many technologies are poorly understood, only that they work.
In an interstellar economy with a common rule of law, something only has to be invented once for everyone else in the common civilisation to have access to it. So, quantum theory may explain or underlie many technologies, but as long as the same technologies can be duplicated, there is no pressing need for sentients to know this. It also has to be stated that with such a high population of sentients (including trillions of humans) it could be argued that there is a statistical chance of several individuals having apparent precognitive and telepathic powers and that “The Force” is an explanation for these abilities. The midichlorians are the most likely explanation both of the Jedi’s other abilities (like TK) and why children (especially of female Jedi) inherit the same or similar abilities, which would not be explained by random chance or “the Will of the Force”.
Many of the beings in the Star Wars Galaxy may not be as alien as one would think. A being such as Yoda could be a descendant of humans who settled a high gravity planet or at least a 1G planet with a dense atmosphere. With both these conditions successive generations would become smaller in stature so that they basically resemble dwarfs. Other features could follow through successive chance mutations over thousands of years along with separation from the rest of the human gene pool.
The purpose of the Twi’lek’s head tails could be an oversized erogenous zone (using the ear as a base?) for certain (human) members of Zyloth society, for whatever conceivable reason. The head tails would maybe also have provided the unforeseen purpose of being an extra-directional aid in the planet-sized maze that is Ryloth, so those born with the head tails may simply have had a better chance of obtaining food or escaping danger (or the Ryll Dens) and then reproducing.
The Death Star (both of them, but this explanation refers mainly to the original Death Star) has the firepower to destroy a rocky planet, but not a gas giant or a star. This is very important, as it shows the weapon has a realistically limited capacity. We know the Death Star has a giant turbolaser and is apparently powered by a “hypermatter” core. From “A New Hope”, we would assume that the turbolaser itself has the capacity to destroy a planet, but what if the heavy metals in a planet’s core provided most of the destructive energy through fission?
Conceivably, the “hypermatter” is a core of densely packed neutrons, kept in place by a high artificial gravity field. The turbolaser simply drills a hole almost right to the planet’s core and then the neutrons are emitted. These cause the heavy metals in the core to undergo fission thus exploding the planet like a giant atomic bomb. If the Death Star was as powerful as we would otherwise be lead to believe, then, instead of orbiting the planet Yavin, the Empire could simply destroy Yavin or Yavin’s sun from a safe distance instead of waiting for Yavin 4 to complete its orbit.
It has been stated in the novels that the Old Republic contained around a million planets and that the galaxy as a whole has over 20 million sentient species/ races. Coruscant itself (the capital planet of the Old and New Republics and the Empire before Coruscant was retaken by the Rebel Alliance) is supposed to have a population of one trillion (1,000,000,000,000) humans and aliens. As suggested before, some of these “races” could be multiple offshoots of humanity, and other species. It is difficult to tell whether most of these races are significant in terms of population and/ or technology and whether or not the “indigenous” human population on any particular planet counts as a separate race so this won’t be dealt with. Sentients are sentient beings; they are people, but not necessarily human.
The Old Republic has an elected Senate, which works as a kind of elected civil service. From the way the Old Republic is run, there are many more planets covered by the Senate than there are Senators. Even if there were six thousand in the Senate at any one time, if every member planet is to be represented at a regular rate (eight to twelve years), a single Senator could only have a day’s term in office at the most! From the prequels, it is apparent that this is not so and Senators can maybe expect to represent their world for life.
It is more likely, and apparent, that there are a variety of planets with differing populations in the Old Republic, and later Galactic Empire. From “Attack of the Clones” and the run up to the events in the Clone Wars, individual planets are often in complicated series of alliances, both economic and military, and that only a minority of these planets actually send representatives to the Senate. However, if a planet leaves the Old Republic (or Empire as during the Rebellion) dozens of planets may be forced to follow, making Dooku’s promise of the support of “ten thousand star systems” a genuine threat to the stability of the Republic by cutting off funds and supply routes considerably.
After twenty years, the New Republic was re-constituted into the Galactic Alliance of Free Federations, with each Galactic Civilisation, as they are often referred to, sending a Senator each. If we apply this situation to the Old Republic/ Empire as a whole, we can have a better idea of the Galactic population and how it is distributed. If we assume that each Empire/ Federation has a total population of around 30-50 billion, mostly living on 20-30 highly populated worlds (like the Bothans or the Hapans) each supported by 10-100 colonies that supply important resources, then the population of the Old Republic comes to (a conservative estimate of) between 1200 and 2400 trillion (around 2 quadrillion) living on a million planets.
Returning to the political situation, planets such as Naboo, Kashyyyk and Alderaan seem to be relatively self-sufficient. This self-sufficiency would explain why all three worlds have a representative each in the Galactic Senate as they wouldn’t be part of a regional federation and also why Palpatine/ the Galactic Empire was so keen to control or destroy them. Similarly, the Galactic Empire need only have direct control over 10,000 or so planets in order to have bases across the Galaxy. If any of these planets is part of a regional federation, then most of the planets in that particular federation would have to actively defy the Empire for the key world to be forced to leave. Alternately, if a key world wanted to leave the Empire, they would be unable to do so if the majority of its allies were pro-Empire.
How is Coruscant fed? From the sheer size of the city-planet, we would be lead to believe that its population is entirely dependent on imported food or, for those citizens too poor to afford it, synthetic “grayweave”. There is a lot of traffic going too and from Coruscant and plenty of room for food going to the surface and waste products (to be) recycled into fertiliser going off-planet, but it is difficult to imagine that enough food products could be imported to feed much more than 1% of the population (10 billion sentients). Similarly, it is doubtful that more than 5% live entirely off grayweave.
It is probable that many of Coruscant’s upper-middle class (8-10%?) grow most of their own food themselves-they can afford the space, unlike most of the population, and fertiliser is likely to be so cheap it is practically given away. More importantly, inside many of the towers on Coruscant there would be enough space to hydroponically grow vegetables and carbohydrate staples such as wheat and potatoes (or equivalent). Rice etc could be as easily grown on-planet as imported. This could add up to, say, 50-70% of food production, with imported staples maybe making up 25%. Humans, and probably aliens as well, waste a lot of food. A good deal of food waste could be automatically sorted into edible and inedible and the edible portion redistributed to the poor, giving a lower limit of 17%?
More controversially, remains of corpses could be fed to algae a la “Soylent Green”. This algae could be exported off-planet for animal feed, meaning that Coruscant could export more foodstuffs than it imports, or sold directly to (poor?) aliens. Non-humans make up probably more than 10% of the population and, conceivably, most could live entirely off algae. Algae could also feed farmed fish. There are artificial seas and lakes on Coruscant, likely to be full of fish.
Windu and Streen. During the establishment of the New Order, as we all know, the Jedi were mostly exterminated. In the novels, a few (maybe a dozen) survive at least long enough to have children or to teach Force-sensitive youths some of the basics. Another character, Streen, is at least in his sixties when Luke meets him on Bespin.
This makes Streen, who is untrained but noticeably telepathic from the start, old enough to have been a Jedi in the last years of the Old Republic. In fact, someone with his abilities must have been spotted at an early age and been brought to Coruscant as a child to be trained as a Jedi. I would suggest that “Streen” is a surviving Old Republic Jedi who somehow forgot his training and even the knowledge that there were others like him in the Galaxy. It is then possible that Streen is in fact Wace Windu! Despite losing his lightsaber and apparently falling to his death at the hands of the Sith Lords, he could have (just about) survived, but have lost all his memories in the process.
Windu could then have survived in the lower levels of Coruscant for years before escaping on several ships before reaching a place where he could make a quiet living without being bothered by “the voices”. By keeping a low profile and unwittingly creating a new identity, Windu/ Streen would have avoided the Emperors’ purges.
