The Science of Star Wars

Droids, lightsabers and the Force return to theaters August 15th in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Get the lowdown on the science behind it all.

 
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Features
The Science of Star Wars
Excerpts from the book by Jeanne Cavelos

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Top 10 Exoplanets: Weird Worlds in a Galaxy Not So Far Away [Slide Show]
A look at some of our extreme planetary neighbors right here in the Milky Way Galaxy

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How realistic are images of planets around other stars—and should they be?

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I, Clone
The Three Laws of Cloning will protect clones and advance science

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Is It Time to Give Up on Therapeutic Cloning? A Q&A with Ian Wilmut
The creator of Dolly the sheep has ended his focus on somatic cell nuclear transfer, or cloning, in favor of another approach to create stem cells

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Space Wars--Coming to the Sky Near You?
A recent shift in U.S. military strategy and provocative actions by china threaten to ignite a new arms race in space. But would placing weapons in space be in anyone's national interest?

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Monkey Think, Robot Do
A rhesus monkey uses thought to make a robot walk, paving the way for paralysis victims to move using brain-powered prosthetic limbs

Scientific American Magazine
A Bus Between the Planets
Gravity-assist trajectories between Earth and Mars would reduce the cost of shuttling human crews and their equipment

Extreme Tech
The World's First Flying Saucer: Made Right Here on Earth
A University of Florida researcher has plans on the drawing board for a saucer-shaped aircraft that turns the surrounding air into fuel

Extreme Tech
Voyaging to the Stars on a Solar Breeze: Space Sail to Take Flight
New approaches to space sail technology could give a much-needed push to interplanetary, and even interstellar, travel

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Power for a Space Plane
Creating a revolutionary jet engine that could propel a space plane to orbit affordably and routinely is a tough but seemingly achievable task

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Robotics Prof Sees Threat in Military Robots
But are the dangers as overplayed as the Pentagon's dreams of robot battalions?

Scientific American Magazine
Android Science
Hiroshi Ishiguro makes perhaps the most humanlike robots around--not particularly to serve as societal helpers but to tell us something about ourselves

Mind Matters
Can a Robot, an Insect or God Be Aware?
Our intuitions about consciousness in other beings and objects reveal a lot about how we think.

Scientific American Magazine
The Elusive Goal of Machine Translation
Statistical methods hold the promise of moving computerized translation out of the doldrums

Scientific American Magazine
The Truth and the Hype of Hypnosis
Though often denigrated as fakery or wishful thinking, hypnosis has been shown to be a real phenomenon with a variety of therapeutic uses -- especially in controlling pain

Scientific American Magazine
The Color of Plants on Other Worlds
On other worlds, plants could be red, blue, even black

Scientific American Magazine
Are Aliens Among Us?
In pursuit of evidence that life arose on Earth more than once, scientists are searching for microbes that are radically different from all known organisms

Scientific American Mind
The Will to Win
More and more athletes are engaging in mental workouts to give themselves that extra edge

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News Bytes of the Week—Lightsaber to fly on shuttle
Stem cells mend broken rat hearts, stone cold sober astronauts and more...

 

 

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