There is no doubt that the original three Star Wars films, episodes IV through VI, are three of the greatest space/sci-fi films of all time. Even with these accolades, they do not come without a few physics flaws. Filming a movie that takes place in outer space is an immense task that even movies of the twenty first century have not yet mastered. The original trilogy was filmed in the 1970’s and 1980’s making filming techniques nearly entirely mechanical rather than digital. I chose three of the blunders that are some of the biggest parts of the movies.
- In Episode IV: A New Hope, the Death Star is seen blowing up Leia’s home planet of Alderaan. Making the assumption that this planet is near earth-like in its size, the amount of energy needed from a laser to obliterate Alderaan would be 10^32 Joules. This amount of energy is more than one million times more than the amount of energy released by the entire sun for a whole week. If a laser was built like this on the Death Star, Luke Skywalker wouldn’t have had to shoot a proton torpedo down a thermal exhaust because the Death Star would explode from the immense amount of energy on board.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/_onwa25RuEo/hqdefault.jpg
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Another Physics misfire are the iconic laser blasters. The laser blasters have a couple problems. The first problem is that a laser is a beam of light. In the movies, you can see a section of light travel at a speed much much less than the speed of light. If you were in a battle with Stormtroopers 100 feet away, it would take light 100 nanoseconds which in the movies is drawn out to roughly 1/2 a second. The laser blasters also make a cool noise when fired. It is made to look as though the laser makes this noise when in reality, lasers are as silent as the light bulb someone turns on in his or her house.
http://giphy.com/gifs/commercial-stormtrooper-armor-10meUuSGXSgUF
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Along the lines of lasers making noise, all of the dog fights that happen out in space should be on mute. Because space is a vacuum, there are no particles for sound waves to bounce off of making it silent. Although Star Wars engineers have claimed the sound is a three dimensional creation placed inside the cockpit, the audience is not inside the cockpit, and should hear silence.
http://25.media.tumblr.com/03570d21177ca501330b11a5bbf0c60e/tumblr_mg0g2s0TVr1r93xiko1_500.gif
Even with this physics flaws, Star Wars films are still classics. Without the bending of the rules in these ways, who knows how the films would have turned out.
Sources:
http://www.thecollapsedwavefunction.com/2012/10/bad-science-in-movies-star-wars.html
Destination: Alpha Centauri 
