Prepare to be owned by a PHD in physics. (Not me!)
BTW, the comments are the Author's. For such plagarism, I insist you visit the guy's site occasionally. If you want to argue, take it with him. You'll lose.
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Yes, that cargo capacity is a canonical figure, (
http://www.theforce.net/swtc/rpg/executor.html) after correction for misprinted data that made the cargo capacity ten times less (and would have subsequently required Coruscant to use ten times as many ships to deliver food).
Do not think about what they do with all the sewage.
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Yes, well. So many people wrote to me after #386 (
http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/cgi-bin/comic.pl?comic=386) to tell me that disposing of sewage and providing food for all the people of Coruscant could be achieved without arable land by judicious use of underground recycling facilities, that I thought it was my duty to point out the other problem that raises...
I fully expect another round of arguments in support of the concept of a planet-wide city, so fire away. George, I'm doing this for your sake - I hope you appreciate it.
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Wow. 386 (
http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/cgi-bin/comic.pl?comic=386) and #393 (
http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/cgi-bin/comic.pl?comic=393) have generated more emails than anything else I've done so far in this comic. It seems there are some people out there still clinging desperately to the shreds of anything in Star Wars being even vaguely plausible.
Well, go take it up with Messrs Kelvin and Boltzmann. You can make your social dynamics, city planning, and biology arguments all you like, this is thermodynamics baby. Don't mess with a cartoonist with a Ph.D. in physics. ;-)
(And thank you for everyone who actually did write to me. You gave me beautiful inspiration for this strip.)
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The saga continues: #386, (
http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/cgi-bin/comic.pl?comic=386)#393), [url=
http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/cgi-bin/comic.pl?comic=396]#396), (
http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/cgi-bin/comic.pl?comic=393)#399)... (
http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/cgi-bin/comic.pl?comic=399)
Admittedly if you haven't studied thermodynamics it's not obvious that Coruscant can't use the waste heat its civilisation generates to run cooling systems. So if you were wondering why I didn't mention this as a possibility, it's because it's not. (Wow, how many negatives can I squeeze into two sentences?)
Basically, yes, you can use heat energy to do work. The trouble is the efficiency is always less than 100%, because of Carnot's theorem of thermodynamics. What this means is you can't use heat energy to pump the heat around without also adding some external energy to the system. And this extra energy shows up eventually as waste heat. So not only do you fail to cool things down, you actually make it hotter.
Think about your fridge. It cools down the inside. But to do it, it pumps that heat out through the coils on the back. And to move that amount of heat, it consumes electricity, which also comes off the coils as heat.
So a civilisation the size of Coruscant generates so much heat simply from all the energy they're using that the planet will reach a temperature of about 500 K (227°C or 440°F) before it reaches equilibrium by radiating a black body spectrum to space (that's another physics lesson for another comic strip) and, because of the laws of thermodynamics, can't do anything to cool itself down*. And no, that doesn't count incoming heat from its sun - which will only make the situation worse. Even if it was in interstellar space with negligible sunlight, they'd still have this problem.
So now you know.
For those who wish to learn more, try reading about the Carnot heat engine. (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot_heat_engine)
For those who wish to come up with new excuses for how Coruscant could possibly be realistic, try reading about the Time Cube. (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Cube)
;-)
*: Okay, smartypants, yes, it could fire high thermal energy particles into space. Eroding the planet fast enough to need those 80,000 Super Star Destroyers bringing in shipments of dirt and rock every day. Not to mention creating a radiation hazard to any shipping in the system that would make ion cannons look like popguns.
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I'm sorry. I know this joke has worn so thin it needs to run around in the shower to get wet. I've finished now.
Unless I get another funny idea based on this. ;-)
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Yet another problem with Coruscant. (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatulence)
Star Wars Trivia Fact: Did you know the name of the guy who attempts to sell Obi-Wan the death sticks in Episode II - Attack of the Clones (
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0121765/) is Elan Sleazebaggano? I kid you not. Who said George Lucas was uncreative?
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The saga continues: #386, (
http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/cgi-bin/comic.pl?comic=386) #393, (
http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/cgi-bin/comic.pl?comic=393)#396), (
http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/cgi-bin/comic.pl?comic=396) #399, (
http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/cgi-bin/comic.pl?comic=399)#417), (
http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/cgi-bin/comic.pl?comic=417) #420... (
http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/cgi-bin/comic.pl?comic=420)
Yeah yeah, I said in #420 that I was finished with this topic. But the emails keep rolling in, and the possibilities just keep getting bigger! I only have so much self-control...
I do want to make one thing absolutely clear though. I am intensely amused by the ongoing discussion over this particular topic, and not at all angry. It's just an act for the sake of the comic. ;-)
On the Laws of Thermodynamics:
These are physical laws that govern the transfer of energy. They can be explained in simple terms thus:
1. The First Law of Thermodynamics states that energy is conserved. You can't create energy from nothing, nor can you destroy it. Since heat is a form of energy, you're stuck with it, unless you convert it into some other form of energy or move it away. Since you can't get something for nothing: You can't win.
2. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that heat will only flow from a region of higher temperature to one of lower temperature. To move it the other way, you need to supply some extra external energy to do the work. So moving energy in any useful direction that doesn't happen naturally requires you to put in additional energy. You can't even use the First Law and say "the total heat content is equal, so just move the heat from the cold place to the hot place" - it won't happen: You can't break even. However, the efficiency with which you move energy around is related to the temperature. The colder the better. If you could get to absolute zero, you could break even, just. But:
3. The Third Law of Thermodynamics states that it's impossible to reach absolute zero. As you make a system approach absolute zero, the process that you are using to cool it down slows down. It sucks smaller and smaller amounts of heat away (and you're using tons of energy to power this ьber-refrigerator), and you can never suck away that last bit of heat to get it to absolute zero. Since you can't even get to the place where the Second Law lets you do things with 100% efficiency: You can't get out of the game.
Physics is a bastard sometimes.
Anyone who has studied physics at university, by the way, might recognise an early edition of the venerable Resnick and Halliday (or Halliday and Resnick as I believe they are these days) textbook. Yep, I studied this stuff that long ago.
And if you keep reading this comic long enough, you won't need to study physics. You'll learn it all right here. And have a heck of a lot more fun than I did studying thermodynamics, let me tell you.
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The saga continues: #386, #393, #396, #399, #417, #420, #431...
Before he was so rudely interrupted, Anakin started explaining to Jar Jar why huge heat-radiating fins sticking out into the cold depths of space will not help Coruscant to cool down.
Those who remember the material on the Laws of Thermodynamics from #431 might be thinking:
But hang on. Space is cold. Pretty darn cold, if I remember rightly. Near absolute zero, in fact. (Though not at absolute zero because I understand the Third Law of Thermodynamics now; clever dick, aren't I?) And from the Second Law of Thermodynamics I know that heat will naturally flow from a hot place to a colder place. So if we build great big towers full of some heat-conducting material, from the surface of Coruscant so tall that they stick out into space, the heat will naturally flow up the towers away from the planet and into the cold of space! Brilliant!
Congratulations. You've just come up with an idea that Jar Jar came up with. ;-)
So what's wrong with it?
Yes, space is cold. But it's also empty. Heat mostly moves by conduction through matter. And there's bugger all matter in space to conduct that heat away. It will leak away, but very, very slowly. Not fast enough to cool Coruscant appreciably.
Energy can also be radiated away, as electromagnetic radiation. At the high temperature Coruscant will be, it will mostly be infra-red radiation. Now, I've already taken how much heat radiates from the planet itself into account in working out how hot the planet will be. That's the standard way to calculate the temperature of something in physics: Work out how much energy is being produced, and set it equal to the amount of energy radiated away (they must be equal because of the First Law of Thermodynamics). Solve the equation for the temperature, and there you go.
Now, the formula for working out how much energy is radiated from something depends on the temperature and the surface area of the object. So, to radiate an amount of heat sufficient to cool Coruscant appreciably, you need to have those towers have a surface area similar to the size of the planet itself. Which is a lot. And the other problem is all that area will start intercepting the radiation from the planet, making the cooling less and less efficient the more cooling radiators you build.
This material is examinable and will be on the test at the end of the semester.
Oh, and if you thought you'd never see a Star Wars/Pirates crossover strip, think again!
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