Comment

Comment on How did gravity worked on the Death Star?

Yeah the fact it’s called a small moon is slightly deceptive to us because our moon is absolutely huge as far as moons go. The natives of the SW universe would be used to much much smaller moons.

For reference, our moon is 3475km across and the death star is 150km across, so it’s diameter is 23 smaller. It’s also weighed at about 900million tonnes or 9*10^14kg.

If I’m right (which I’m likely not). g=(GM)/r² or g=(6.66710^-119*10^13)/75².

That’s a gravity of 1.086x10^-5m/s² or if I round with pure disrespect for physics, 100,000 times weaker than earth’s gravity. Essentially it’s totally negligible compared to their artificial gravity. Hell, I don’t even think a marble on the floor would overcome it’s own grip and roll towards the center of the space station.

My maths is almost certainly wrong somewhere here, I failed it badly.

source

Sort:hotnew top

lolcatnip@reddthat.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Our moon is huge for a planet of Earth’s size, but not compared to the big moons of Jupiter and Saturn.

Last time I looked it up, I used Pluto’s moons as a reference because some of them are smaller than DS1, but Charon is quite a bit bigger. Based on the shapes of Pluto’s moons, I think even if DS1 were solid it would still be too small to compact itself into a sphere with its own gravity.

Fun fact: Charon is even more huge relative to Pluto (just over 50% of Pluto’s diameter) than Luna is compared to Earth (about 25% of Earth’s diameter).

source
- ASeriesOfPoorChoices@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  fun fact, pluto and charon are technically a binary planet(oid), because the point they orbit is in-between them. (Charon doesn’t orbit Pluto, they both circle empty space)
  
  source
  - FinalRemix@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    For kids who like a movie reference to rely upon: miro.medium.com/v2/…/0*xXyiSLAkfeFW_Q76
    
    source
- Klear@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Pluto has more than one satellite?
  
  source
  - lolcatnip@reddthat.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    It has five that we know of.
    
    source
    Klear@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Must have missed that. Cool!
    
    source
MotoAsh@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I mean, we mostly only have info on our solar system for moon sizes. We could easily be an oddball, although it’s not good science to assume we’re special in any way.

source