The construction of an analogue of the "Death Star" from "Star Wars" will be hampered not only by its astronomical cost and vulnerability to a targeted attack of the enemy, but also by the laws of physics, say scientists interviewed by the online edition Space.com.
“The most powerful laser on Earth today produces a 2 petawatt beam. A Death Star capable of destroying planets would require a million billion times more powerful emitter. If such a space station can generate such amounts of energy, then the heat generated by “heating up” such a mega-laser would simply melt the entire death star,”explains Raychelle Burks, a chemist at the University of Texas at Austin, USA.
In George Lucas's film epic, the main threat to the rebel forces and the lives of almost all the inhabitants of the Galactic Empire was the so-called "death star" - a battle platform the size of a small moon, which was inhabited by a crew of more than a million clone stormtroopers, soldiers of the Imperial army and navy, and several hundred thousands of fighting robots.
Economist Zachary Feinstein last year calculated, based on the cost of the Manhattan Project, that the first Death Star, along with development costs, cost Emperor Palpatine an astronomical $ 193 quintillion. This is, based on data from Internet sources in the Star Wars universe, about 4.3% of the GDP of the entire Galaxy as a whole.
According to scientists, there are physical problems that are likely to make it impossible to build a "death star", which netizens have repeatedly asked the US President, sending petitions to the White House. For example, in addition to problems with the laser "death star", its construction in the orbit of the Earth or any other planet will be virtually impossible.
"The diameter of the" death star "exceeds 160 kilometers, which is why it simply cannot rotate in its orbit around the Earth for a long time without collapsing. Objects of this mass and size will have to be kept in orbit constantly, which is virtually impossible with any conceivable or unthinkable fuel reserves, "adds Rod Pyle, historian and popularizer of science.
In addition, the very principle of operation of the "death star" - the combination of several laser beams into a single whole - violates the laws of physics, since the intersecting rays of light, according to Burks, pass through each other without hindrance, and do not merge and reinforce each other, as it happens in Star Wars.
On the other hand, the original analogs of the "death star", although more modest in scale, actually exist, at least in the form of plans. For example, in 2013, the famous American scientist Philip Lubin from the California Polytechnic University (USA) presented a project for the DE-STAR orbital platform, designed to destroy or knock asteroids off course.
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Lubin and his colleagues have developed an optical analogue of a phased array that can operate as a super-powerful laser. The DE-STAR orbital platform consists of hundreds or thousands of microlasers combined into a phased array. These emitters are powered by solar panels attached to the platform.
According to astrophysicists' calculations, a small platform 100 meters in size will be able to "shoot down" asteroids and comets from dangerous orbits, and a large DE-STAR 10 kilometers in size will be able to vaporize asteroids the size of 2012 DA14 or Apophis (2004 MN4).
In addition, according to Lubin, such a system can be used to "accelerate" spacecraft to near-light speeds, which will make it possible to travel to the distant approaches to the Solar System and beyond. Participants of the Breakthrough Starshot project, sponsored by Yuri Milner, plan to use this principle to launch a microprobe to Alpha Centauri in the middle of 2030.
