It seems like outer space is always a topic of interest. I assume this is because it is less familiar and so different than the world around us. No matter how much time and effort we put into discovering things about space, there will always be new things that we find that will surprise us. I think that because so much is unknown to the general public, people like you and me who don’t study space for a living, about space, this is why space movies, TV shows and books are so popular. I know in the 70’s when the Star Wars movies first came out it was something everybody had to see. Even now, 40 years down the road, the younger generations are still caught up with these movies. Personally, I have never seen a space movie, but I know for a fact they are still popular today. I have a nephew who is 10 years old and he watches the new episode of Star Wars the Clone Wars, a cartoon every Friday night. When I ask him what he wants for Christmas, he replies with star wars figurines. And they are not hard to find, if you walk into your local Wal-Mart or K-mart they have a whole isle dedicated to Star Wars stuff. Since the movie and TV industries are so caught up in keeping this theme popular they may portray the space wars to be more what we think or want to happen rather than what really would happen to keep the audience interested. I hate to burst your bubble, but the space wars that you are so in tuned to on Friday night are not realistic and if you were to see a real space war it would not be what you expected.
The best parts of the movie is when all of the fighting starts and ships are shooting at other ships and eventually one ship will blow up and the other will claim victory. You are drawn to the scene because of the loud noise and all of the lights and fast moving action. As you may know, there is no air in space. No wind or even a slight breeze, and no oxygen that we human need so we can breathe. It is also very very cold in space and you would end up freezing to death if you didn’t have any protection. An astronaut would not be able to survive out of his ship without his space suit. Because there is no air, there is no sound in space. The sound waves would have nothing to travel across and you would hear nothing when all of this action is going on. Now, how exciting would a space war be if it had no sound? You could be gazing at a star in the distance and right behind you and intergalactic space war could be happening right behind you and you have no idea because all you would hear is complete silence.
Would you agree that the coolest part is watching the other ship explode into a million little pieces? Well once again I hate to burst your bubble but this is very unlikely to happen. Here on earth, making another object explode is devastating, but to have the same effect in space you would need a lot of energy. Energy is not something you can go out and buy and keep it in a huge warehouse and use it when you need it. Energy is all around us. You know that bowl of Wheeties that you ate this morning for breakfast? Wel,l eating gives you energy so you are able to run around at recess. While you are running you are losing the energy that you had got earlier in the day from your Wheeties. You get energy from the environment around you and once you use all of that energy, it is returned to the environment around. Now back to our explosion in space. Remember earlier how we talked about there being no air in space? Well the air is what makes an explosion so destructive on earth. Let’s say that you like collecting fireflies. You spend all night outside with a jar and you are able to collect 50 fireflies in your jar. You set the jar on the table so you can run and find your mom and dad to show them all of the fireflies that you caught. As you and your parents are walking towards the table you see your older sister who is singing and dancing around the kitchen and she accidently knock over your jar and it hits the floor. As it hits the floor it shatters into a million different pieces and your fireflies that you have worked so hard to collect, are now flying everywhere around your house. This is what the explosion would be like here on earth. But in space the explosion would be more like this. Do you know the story of the three little pigs and the big bad wolf, who huffed and puffed and blew their houses down? Well when the big bad wolf got to the little pig who built his house out of brick, he huffed and puffed but he could not blow the house down no matter how hard he tried. Mr. Wolf is not going to be able to damage a brick house just by blowing on it. He would have to find something bigger like a hammer or a big rock to throw at the house in order to cause damage to it. In space, the explosion just creates expanding gas. You will not be able to destroy your enemies’ ship with gas just like the wolf could not blow down the little pig’s house no matter how hard he huffed and puffed.
This is the neat thing about space, we are able to find new and exciting thing every day. Maybe when the fist Star Wars movie came out this is how people would expect battles to happen, since that is what happens here on earth. Now, with all of the new technology, we are able to see things for how they really are. Above the clouds there is a whole different place out there and we as humans need to accept that not everything happens like it does on earth.
