67
votes
Accepted
How was Jim able to space walk when the ship was traveling at .5 c?
The very short answer is that the acceleration from the ship's engines is likely to be quite small. Note that this is an ionic drive that accelerates continually rather than a rocket that expends all ...
- 676k
59
votes
Accepted
The Expanse: Sustained Gs during space travel
The Expanse uses torch ships on Brachistochrone trajectories
Due to the Epstein Drive, fuel is not a (major) consideration so they don't need to worry about it. That means they can use the fastest/...
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51
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How was Jim able to space walk when the ship was traveling at .5 c?
We are hurtling through space at an insane speed at this moment (30 kilometers per second riding on the back of the earth); did you notice it?
No, because you can't feel speed, you can only feel ...
- 1,358
38
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From the bridge why can you see another ship in space, shouldn't there be no light?
Nearby stars are shining on the ships from off screen in addition to the ship's built-in lighting.
From the Star Trek: Voyager episode The Void:
USS Voyager is sucked into an area of space that is ...
- 35.5k
32
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From the bridge why can you see another ship in space, shouldn't there be no light?
Starships have plenty of lights on them.
Your question ignores the fact that starships have their own lights on the exteriors of their hulls. In the images above and below (from The Motion Picture) ...
- 111k
26
votes
Why and how can you hear explosions in space in Star Wars?
The canon novel Lords of the Sith makes explicit the fact that characters in-universe cannot hear explosions in the vacuum of space. For example, on page 16:
[Vader's] interceptor streaked toward ...
Null♦
- 69.5k
24
votes
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What happens to lasers in space battles?
I will confine my answer to Star Wars, as you are using that tag, and the question would be too broad if applied to Science Fiction at large.
Ships in Star Wars are not firing actual lasers, they are ...
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22
votes
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Looking for a book with a spacecraft with odd rules of physics
The only story I've ever read that matches this description is Redshift Rendezvous by John E. Stith. The ship achieves 'faster than light' travel in our universe by shifting into a 'hyperspace' where ...
- 7,765
18
votes
From the bridge why can you see another ship in space, shouldn't there be no light?
An out-of-universe answer would be that the people watching the show need to be able to see the ship that the Enterprise has encountered.
As for in-universe: the view screen could probably create a ...
- 217
17
votes
Do spacecraft in Star Wars produce jet blasts when taking off?
Mostly not
We know that many ships in the Star Wars universe use repulsors for vertical flight.
Ordinary ships use them to hover:
A low, throbbing whine from above directed our eyes to the sky, where
...
- 115k
16
votes
"The Martian" and weight units
Mass is universal; it's weight that differs according to planet.
The kilogram is a unit of mass, which is a physical property of objects. Something of mass 10 kg will have mass 10 kg anywhere: on ...
- 134k
16
votes
Accepted
How does Spider-Man manage to hold on to his webs?
Assuming we're happy to look at the films as evidence, it would appear that a combination of practice, supernatural spider-reflexes and a delayed cut-off of the spinneret are what allow Spider-Man to ...
- 676k
16
votes
Accepted
Sci-fi story with the premise that spacetime geometry is Riemannian
Sounds like Greg Egan’s Orthogonal trilogy. There is considerable technical detail (more than 80,000 words, so enough for another novel) on Egan’s website.
Orthogonal is a science fiction trilogy ...
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15
votes
The Expanse: Sustained Gs during space travel
I understood "gravity holding him gently to the floor" to imply 'slow burn' steady acceleration, whereas "the crush of high acceleration" to me implies 'high acceleration' like ...
- 20.2k
14
votes
Accepted
Was lightsaber physics planned from the start, or was it retconned later, possibly due to a "Discovery" episode?
The scripts for both the original trilogy and the prequels refer to lightsabers as "laser swords". The Episode IV script uses the phrase "laser sword" three times, so Lucas evidently thought of ...
Null♦
- 69.5k
14
votes
In the novel The Three-Body Problem, does the Sun's amplification of radio transmissions have a scientific basis?
As far as can be told, the 'solar mirror' phenomenon is a) normal within stars in this fictional universe and b) a purely fictional construct of the author.
There are literally pages of borderline ...
- 676k
14
votes
Accepted
How does Miller survive the acceleration in The Expanse?
Both the novels and the TV show mention that the protomolecule system on Eros is able to eliminate inertia. When the still under-construction enormous LDS Church-commissioned generation ship Nauvoo is ...
- 20.2k
13
votes
Accepted
Spells such as Wingardium Leviosa - where does the force come from?
No, there is not any such explanation.
In fantasy fiction, there are basically two techniques for introducing magic into your story, which I will refer to as the "Tolkien method" and the "Sanderson ...
- 103k
13
votes
The Expanse: Sustained Gs during space travel
Yes, they're constantly accelerating (sometimes more, sometimes less).
Safe or not, the only way to get across the solar system in days or weeks rather than months or years is to get up to very high ...
- 1,819
12
votes
How do they get to Andromeda so fast?
In the trilogy it's said that man kind can travel 50 times the speed of light.
Well... no. I'm not sure where you got that number from, but it disagrees with my sources.
The ME3 Codex gives top ...
- 9,423
12
votes
How did the Avalon (seemingly) get to Arcturus so quickly if they're only traveling at .5 of lightspeed?
In the 'Passengers' universe Arcturus is only (approximately) 20 light years from Earth.
We can be certain of the ship's flight time because the map room tells us
Jim: Wait. How long ago did we leave ...
- 676k
12
votes
Accepted
In The Expanse, how does rotating Eros create gravity?
From the source novel, Leviathan Wakes, we learn that people live inside Eros. The spin does indeed threaten to spin them off into space, but the floor (really the exterior walls) prevent this from ...
- 676k
12
votes
Is the audience laughing at Dr Alexander Murry's presentation?
Dr. Murry is being laughed at because, by any reckoning, he is talking nonsense
Dr. Murry is presenting to a group of scientists, many of whom are likely physicists, and he is essentially claiming ...
- 539
11
votes
Are the laws of classical physics different in Star Wars?
At 9:26 in the "Mythology of Star Wars" interview below, Lucas talks about his attempts to create consistency in the Star Wars universe even if it's different from our own world, and he says ...
- 56.2k
11
votes
What was the first story where a universal constant had a different value?
Perhaps George Gamow's Mr. Tompkins books:
Mr Tompkins is the titular character in a series of four non-fiction books by the physicist George Gamow. The books are structured as a series of dreams ...
- 21.7k
11
votes
Accepted
Cosmic topology in Greg Egan's Orthogonal Universe
However ...
So ...
You ask:
This universe ...
More details at http://www.gregegan.net/ORTHOGONAL/06/GRExtra.html
- 341
11
votes
Accepted
What happens to leaked energy in Sympathy?
This is actually explained in-universe in The Wise Man's Fear, where Denna is speaking with Kvothe and a few other arcanists at the Eolian. Denna asks where the energy goes, and the answer is that ...
- 5,583
10
votes
Accepted
How closely did When Worlds Collide authors pursue the physics of the catastrophic damage and planet trajectories?
Sam Moskowitz, prominent old-time fan and historian of science fiction, wrote an essay on Philip Wylie in his Studies in Science Fiction series. Titled "Philip Wylie: The Saccharine Cynic", ...
- 159k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible