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Android: float GRAVITY_DEATH_STAR_I

code.google.com

50 pointsfrisco24 comments

Fourth entry from the top: const float GRAVITY_DEATH_STAR_I = 3.5303614E-7.

Also SENSOR_TRICORDER: "When this sensor is available and enabled, the device can be used as a fully functional Tricorder."

A friend worked out the math and it assumes a mass of 1e14 kg for the death star.

also, i just noticed a GRAVITY_THE_ISLAND a couple more lines down. what?

The Island on Lost, perhaps?

I always thought that was electromagnetic. Does The Island have impressive mass as well?

Yes, it's 4.815162, Lost numbers are 4 8 15 16 2[3 42].

Ahhh, right, that explains it.

However, while I haven't watched every episode of Lost I think it'd be a lot more noticeable if gravity there was 4.815162 times regular Earth gravity. Everybody would be crawling around, for starters.

yeah, though the numbers don't seem to be multiples or constants (except for the death star one), they seem to be metric accelerations

Oops, you're right, I hadn't checked.

That'd make island gravity roughly half of regular Earth gravity.

1.354e14 kg assuming the Death Star has a radius of 160 km. However there's conflicting information about the diameter of the Death Star (some say 120 km, others 160 km) and that's the diameter and not the radius.

So the Death Star would be considerably lighter than your friend's calculation.

My calculations give 3.385e13 kg assuming a radius of 80 km which yields a density of 1.578e-2 kg/m3 or 15.78 g/m3 which is way, way low. In fact it's much lower than the density of air.

Three possibilities: I made a mistake in my calculation, Google's gravity value for the Death Star is incorrect, we shouldn't expect consistency from a story George Lucas made up almost 40 years ago.

I think it's that you made a mistake. How could the other possibilities be true!?

;)

Wouldn't you assume the Death Star has artificial earth-normal gravity, just like all the spaceships? (Not to crash the geeky fun with geeky observations.)

Plus the Death Star was full of really dense stuff that was fuel or some ship

How exactly did they compute that constant? I suspect the figure they give is the result of many heated debates and much flaming on mailing lists and whiteboards.

Well theres so much material in the Expanded Universe including a book called "Death Star" that tells the story of the Rebel Alliance victory from the perspective of people who worked there. So, I would just have to assume that they went over the specs/dimensions/weight of the Death Star at some point.

http://www.starwars.com/databank/location/deathstar/?id=eu

the story of the Rebel Alliance victory from the perspective of people who worked [in the Death Star]

I hope that Randal from Clerks is credited in the author's acknowledgements.

That page itself has conflicting reports of the size. At the top it says "Size: 160 kilometers in diameter," but lower on down the page, it says "The Death Star was 120 kilometers in diameter."

My 'A Guide to the Star Wars Universe' is telling me the first one was 120 km, and the second one was 160 km.

GRAVITY_DEATH_STAR_I clearly tells us they are only concerned with the first death star...not the second.

Future versions of Android may feature GRAVITY_DEATH_STAR_II

It's also only valid at a certain radius (probably the surface). So the sensor wouldn't be calibrated correctly after you went inside (it would be off by differing amounts depending how far from the center you were).

The same is true of the constants for the planets, but at least they are (mostly) solid and not designed to be lived inside of.

I bet they called George Lucas and asked him...

or referenced the essential guide to vehicles and vessels

http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Guide-Vehicles-Vessels-Star/...

Gotta love googles sense of humor!

The real mystery is - why did they drop the e from neptune?

What, no fine structure constant? Not even h-bar?

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