Kepler’s third law relates the length of a planet’s year (its period of revolution, that is) to how far it is from the Sun. The Earth revolves around the Sun in one year (of course), and its distance from the Sun can be expressed as 1 astronomical unit (AU). Provided we express things in Earth years and AU, we can write Kepler’s third law as
(1) T2 = r3
where T and r are the planet’s period of revolution and distance from the Sun, respectively. So, for example, Jupiter has a period of just about 12 years. If we square 12, we get 144. What number, when cubed, yields 144? About 5.2, and the average distance of Jupiter from the Sun is indeed 5.2 AU.
Kepler published his third law near the end of his life. The rest of his time was mostly spent in non-scientific affairs, such as defending his mother against a charge of witchcraft. He never looked any deeper into planetary motions. He did publish a set of tables of planetary positions based on Tycho’s observations, called the Rudolphine Tables, but in comparison with his three laws, the Tables are simple bookkeeping.
Kepler didn’t give a causative force that drove the planets in ellipses; he only described their motions. However, that was more than enough for Isaac Newton (1642-1727) to derive his inverse square law of universal gravitation. Newton once wrote, “If I have seen further than others, it is only because I have stood on the shoulders of giants,” and I think, above all, he was thinking of Kepler when he wrote those words. Copernicus may have published the heliocentric model, but it was Kepler who compelled the scientific world to accept it as fact.
And the scientific world has tried to pass that fact down to the rest of us, in abridged form, with such indifferent success that a quarter of American adults seem to have made it up till now without apprehending it.
Adapted from Astronomical Games, June 2001.
*
Brian Tung is a computer scientist by day and avid amateur astronomer by night. He is an active member of the Los Angeles Astronomical Society and runs his own astronomy Web site. His previous publications in Strange Horizons can be found in our Archive.
Fan Force: The Universe of Star Wars Fan Films
By Cristopher Hennessey-DeRose
11/19/01
The universe continues to expand whether we want it to or not, going off in every direction, solely at the whim of those who follow its light. I’m talking about George Lucas’s Star Wars universe, in case you were wondering.
Fan fiction is nothing new. It seems that whenever a new speculative fiction TV show or movie rears its head, and usually an ugly one at that, a hundred and one websites spring up overnight faster than crop circles, detailing the adventures fans have created for their beloved characters.
Star Wars fans are no strangers to this phenomenon. While there are many fan sites that feature fan fiction based in the Star Wars universe, one site in particular, theforce.net, has done them one better: Fan FILMS.
These aren’t your backyard-on-the-weekend superhero serials your little brother made all those summers ago with mom and dad’s Super-8. No, these productions are polished comic or dramatic efforts: some offer cockeyed views of Star Wars that use humor to make their charm effective, while others take dramatic turns, featuring complex lightsaber battles and costumes. Some even go so far as to include blooper reels.
The Star Wars fan film phenomenon seems to have started about five years ago, with Kevin Rubio’s “Troops,” a series of satires on the Cops TV series. These films told the story of what really happened to Owen and Beru Lars, and also documented a few other incidents in the history of Star Wars that we thought we knew. “Troops,” with its high production values, attention to detail, and smart humor, served as a starting point for other filmmakers. It offered a glimpse of what could be done with one of the most beloved sets of characters ever to hit the silver screen, if the filmmaker was armed with something other than mediocre sets and sophomoric attempts at humor.
Fan Films and Lucasfilm
While George Lucas’s production company, Lucasfilm Ltd., has been known to turn the Death Star’s destructive powers upon several Internet fan sites, theforce.net has so far avoided this fate. There is no official word from Lucasfilm regarding theforce.net, but the fact that this substantial site has not been axed suggests that even the Empire has a soft spot in its heart. In addition, the films on theforce.net are made for the sheer fun of it, not for any kind of profit. (Bootleggers are identified and ratted out whenever possible.)
Lucasfilm teamed up with AtomFilms in 2000 in an attempt to give fan films their own official site, with the caveat that only parodies and documentaries were to be allowed on the site. This leaves theforce.net as the primary outlet for films that feature stories of previously unknown Jedi and villains, or, in the case of Peter Mether’s serialized story “The Dark Redemption,” which casts a live action actress in the role of Mara Jade, a character we’ve met only in comics and novels. While AtomFilms contains some decent enough work, the site has less than a third as many films as theforce.net, and the lack of original dramatic material on AtomFilms means fans won’t find the dramatic plot twists and individuality they can find at theforce.net.
There are over forty films on theforce.net. Many of the films are made during filmmakers’ spare time, usually on their own equipment and using friends to flesh out the cast and production crew. Budget and experience in filmmaking have little to do with being able to produce quality work. In their place is a passion for the original films that inspired these works, and for the genre itself. Theforce.net contains tutorials to assist aspiring filmmakers on how to shoot opening crawls, bluescreen technique, rotoscoping lightsabers, and much more.
The films’ running times can be as short as three minutes for a simple film about a lightsaber duel, entitled, fittingly enough, “Duel,” to well over ten minutes for films like “A Question of Faith” or “Brains and Steel,” which is a clever nod to both Star Wars and The Princess Bride.
There is a potential technical downside to take into consideration; older computer hardware can mean extended download times as well as unsatisfactory playback performance. This may seem a minor problem on the face of it, but in truth a few of these films aren’t very good, and you can’t evaluate the quality of a film from the synopsis on the website.
Fan Films and the Star Wars Canon
Fan films don’t necessarily alter Lucas’s considerable and growing universe. Instead, they tilt the viewer’s perspective just enough to accommodate the story the filmmakers wish to relate. Just the same, there have been postings on the message board of theforce.net regarding the continuity of certain stories, and where they fit into this admittedly borrowed universe. These finer points are oftentimes fun little hairs to split amongst friends, but they all too often ignite into flame wars that start with the inflammatory words, “a real fan would know….”
These films are not considered to be canonical, since they’re not a product of the creative fires of Lucasfilm. While they may be the source of much discussion and entertainment for a small core audience, they are unauthorized and therefore cannot be considered equivalent to Star Wars novels, which are considered canonical. The novels are usually written by an individual writer, then passed on to a Lucasfilm consultant, who decides whether the subject is suitable for their target audience, while also noting finer points such as which class a starship would be and whether Boba Fett is talking too much. The books have a larger audience than fan films, due to their wider circulation, as films are distributed primarily through underground channels.
Ironically, the films often have more meat to them than many of the novels. One reason for this may be because the films generally avoid bringing back familiar characters such as Luke and Princess Leia for more and more and more (at least in the live-action medium). Fan filmmakers don’t fall into this trap because look-alike actors are hard to find, and because the filmmakers would come under heavy criticism from other fans for pulling such a stunt. As a result, many Star Wars fans who have come away from a Star Wars comic or novel scratching their heads, thinking, “Luke would never have done that,” don’t have that same problem with these films. Slipshod writing is, unfortunately, a consistent phenomenon in the authorized universe, particularly in the comics. While many fan films are also uninspired, there are nonetheless many films that satisfy the viewer.
Truth be told (from a great distance and from deep within a secret bunker, just in case I raise a few of the wrong eyebrows at Lucas Prime), the overall legend and backstories in the Star Wars universe have undergone official revision over time, while all the while Lucas can be seen leaning against a handy X-Wing fighter, claiming that he knew all along where the story was going. Because of the wide variety of games, guides (both authorized and unauthorized), Internet sites, toys, and simple human error, it has become difficult to prove the veracity of a given statement about what a character has said, unless one has a reference point at the ready and is fully prepared to deal with the charges that one’s source was discredited years ago.