A Pale Blue Dot Among the Stars

Sometimes, I look at pictures of Earth taken by the exploration satellites (the Voyagers, Cassini, New Horizons...), to remember that in the great void of the universe, we are nothing more than that pale blue dot among the stars.

Re-Atomization?

     Earlier today, I watched Elysium at the theaters. It's a film (starring Matt Damon, Jodie Foster and Sharlto Copley) about the social clashes between the rich and the poor with a twist of science fiction technology. The poor are left stranded on the over populated and over crowded Earth, whilst the rich live on the Elysium, an advanced space station and try to get richer.

     The technologies we see in the film are: robots, exoskeletons, energy weapons, neural information storage and extraction, space transportation and habitats and a very mysterious healing machines. One way or another, most of these technologies appear in other popular works of science fiction. Out of all of these, the healing machines seem to be the most interesting one to me (most likely because it's something alien to the science fiction technologies I'm familiar with).

     The machine looks and functions like an MRI scanner. The injured person lies down on a bed, a rotating arm scans his or her body. During this process, an image of the inside of the body (similar to the images seen on the screens connected to MRI scanners) appears on a computer. Once the injuries or sicknesses are detected, whether they are multiple fractures, cancerous tumors, missing limbs or even the facial damage caused by being close to an exploding hand grenade, the body is healed in a process called re-atomization. What exactly is this re-atomization process?

     Based on what we see in the movie, re-atomization seems to be some sort of process where the atoms in the body are reorganized in order to reverse all damage. How does this work exactly? We aren't given any clues in the film apart from the rotating arm (which also re-atomizes the damaged areas it goes over). So we can assume that the rotating arm does the re-atomizing. Yet, regarding the nature of the process itself, we can only leave that to imagination. Whatever it is, I hope scientists and engineers come up with it soon...

     

The Fate of Jabba the Hutt

Jabba the Hutt is one of the most popular villains of the Star Wars universe. His most famous appearance is in the beginning of Episode VI, Return of the Jedi. He is the major crime lord of the planet Tatooine. For those of you who haven'r watched the Star Wars series (specifically episode 6), I advise you to watch it before you continue reading this post. 

Episode VI was filmed in a time before CGI was possible, so the creatures that appear in the movie are either costumed actors or puppets. This includes Jabba.

I also advise you  to watch: From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga, 
for those of you who are interested in the construction of these creatures.

What interested me after the film was the fate of these puppets, specifically the fate of Jabba the Hutt.

Last month, I finally achieved one of my lifelong goals and attended a Start Wars Celebration. Among various activities, I also happened to learned the fate of Jabba. 

Whilst having a chat with Toby Philpott (one of the puppeteers inside Jabba) and later with John Coppinger (who built Jabba), one of the questions I asked was the fate of the puppet. I was sad to find out that after the shooting was done, the puppet was stored in a warehouse for a while. About a year later, the puppet was thrown away to the trash. John Coppinger who discovered Jabba in a trash container managed to save his tail (which was sold in an auction earlier this year). He told me that someone else took Jabba's radio operated eyes.

Its sad, learning that something that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and countless hours to make was eventually discarded to the trash. I wish that they donated Jabba to a museum where it would probably attract thousands of fans every year...

Yet, it was an honor meeting the John Coppinger and Toby Philpott and learning about their experiences designing and operating Jabba the Hutt.



Above, Toby Philpott and John Coppinger behind a small model of Jabba.