Category Archives: Star Wars Just For Fun

THE ODD PHYSICS OF REY’S BACKFLIP IN STAR WARS: EPISODE IX

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Via Wired.com:

What the heck does “The Rise of Skywalker” even mean? Some people hate trailers because they spoil the plot. For me, it’s more like an appetizer to get me ready for the show. Of course, in this case I’m talking about Star Wars IX: The Rise of Skywalker.

Since you know I’m a huge geek for both Star Wars and physics, I have to do some type of analysis on this trailer. That’s just what I do. How about a look at Rey’s backflip over a low-flying TIE fighter?

My weapon of choice in this post will be video analysis (using Tracker Video Analysis). The idea is to look at the x- and y-position (in units of pixels) of an object in each frame of the video. With this, I can get position and time data to do whatever analysis I want.

For Rey jumping over (I assume she makes it) a TIE fighter, I’m just going to look at her vertical motion. Once she leaves the ground, it would just be normal physics projectile motion with a vertical acceleration equal to the local gravitational field for that planet. These kinds of analysis come up quite often—and there are three things you could consider.

The vertical acceleration. On Earth, this is -9.8 m/s2.
The distance scale. How many pixels of video in one meter of distance?
The time scale. What is the length of time for each frame?

If you know two of these three things, you can find the third. Here you can see there is a problem. I’m pretty sure I can get a distance scale by using the height of Rey (or the size of the TIE fighter). But what about the other two? It seems I should stay away from the time scale. The trailer shows her acrobatic leap in slow motion (apparently for effect). But since it’s in slow motion, the viewed frame rate (what the user sees) is different than the “real” rate. Yes, I know Star Wars is not real.

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Fans Claim to See Darth Vader in Snoke Image

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Via Comicbook.com:

Star Wars: Episode IX is finally being released this year, so it’s no surprise the Internet is currently full of theories and ideas about the beloved franchise. According to one theorist, that includes a hidden reference to Darth Vader in Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

Recently, Reddit user thecircularblue shared an interesting idea to r/starwarsspeculation, a subreddit “for those who want to speculate on any Star Wars news, theories, or new and old leaks” and “a place for you to post your wildest of theories.” According to them, there’s a hidden/subliminal image of Darth Vader in Star Wars: The Last Jedi during a scene with Snoke.

“There’s an image of Darth Vader mixed with Snoke during his interaction with General Hux on the Star Destroyer bridge,” they explained. “Vader’s mask even sits correctly the way it would fit on Snoke’s face. The glint in Snoke’s eye show’s where his eye would be behind the mask’s lens. Not only that, but said glint, in addition to the rectangular ceiling light, shows where light would be reflecting off of the lens. It’s akin to when Vader is fed up with Admiral Ozzel in The Empire Strikes Back, being that a leading dark side Force-user is castigating a subordinate officer. The images show how to see it (or the easy way by using the curve of your hand to cover Snoke’s face, from the left, up to his nose). It’s either a cool coincidence or intentional.”

While this doesn’t necessarily mean anything, we like to think it was a purposeful aesthetic choice made by director Rian Johnson. Someone suggested the user tweet their discovery to the director to get confirmation, but they don’t have a Twitter account.

“I don’t have twitter, but that’d be way cool if he became aware of it. I was idly looking at Star Wars stuff, and it just came to me. I was blown away. I think of the impact this must of had on the viewer’s subconscious seeing it on the big screen – especially since Snoke’s projection was gigantic. Rian Johnson, his team, Lucasfilm, and Disney are illin’,” they replied.

While some people thought this was a bit of a stretch, many other Star Wars fans embraced the page’s acceptance of wild theories and were quick to praise the discovery.

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