Simply 48 quick years in the past, film director George Lucas used the phrase “A very long time in the past in a galaxy far, distant” because the opening to the primary Star Wars movie, later labeled Episode IV: A New Hope. However at the least 4 essential facets of the Star Wars saga are a lot nearer—each in time and house—than Lucas was letting on.
One, the power to add blue food coloring to milk, was attainable even on the time the primary movie got here out. However in 2024, Star Wars-themed blue milk grew to become periodically available in grocery stores.
And we, an environmental health engineer and a civil engineer, know there are at the least three extra components of those historical, distant Lucas tales that may look like science fiction however are, in actual fact, science actuality.
Moisture farming
In that first film, Episode IV, Luke Skywalker’s Uncle Owen was a farmer on the planet of Tatooine. He farmed water from air in the midst of a desert.
It would sound not possible, nevertheless it’s precisely what specialists mentioned on the second International Atmospheric Water Harvesting Summit hosted by Arizona State College in March 2025.
Every day, a human must devour concerning the equivalent of 0.8 gallons of water (3 liters). With greater than 8 billion individuals dwelling on the planet, meaning engineers want to provide almost 2.6 trillion gallons (10 trillion liters) of clean drinking water yearly. Taken globally, rainfall would be enough, nevertheless it’s distributed very unevenly—together with touchdown within the oceans, the place it instantly turns into too salty to drink safely.
Deserts, which cowl about one-fifth of the Earth’s land space, are home to about 1 billion people.
Researchers at locations resembling Berkeley have developed solar-powered systems that can produce clean drinking water from thin air. Generally, they use a fabric that traps water molecules from the air inside its construction after which use daylight to condense that water out of the fabric and into drinkable liquid. However there’s nonetheless a methods to go earlier than they’re prepared for industrial distribution and obtainable to assist massive numbers of individuals.
House particles
When the second Demise Star was destroyed in Return of the Jedi, it made an enormous mess, as you’ll count on when blowing to smithereens an object at least 87 miles across (140 kilometers). However the film’s mythology helpfully explains {that a} hyperspace wormhole briefly opened, scattering much of the falling debris throughout the galaxy.
As finest as anybody can inform, a hyperspace wormhole has by no means appeared close to Earth. And even when such a factor existed or occurred, people may not have the expertise to chuck all our trash in there anyway. So we’re left with a complete lot of stuff throughout us, together with in house.
In accordance with the web site Orbiting Now, in late April 2025 there have been just over 12,000 active satellites orbiting the planet. All in all, america and different space-faring nations are attempting to maintain observe of nearly 50,000 objects orbiting Earth. And there are millions of fragments of house particles too small to be noticed or tracked.
Simply as on Earth’s roads, house automobiles crash into one another if traffic gets too congested. However not like the particles that falls to the highway after an Earth crash, all of the bits and items that break off in an area crash fly away at speeds of several thousand miles per hour (10,000 to 30,000 kph) and might then hit different satellites or spacecraft that cross their paths.
This accumulation of space debris is creating an growing drawback. With extra satellites and spacecraft heading to orbit, and extra stuff up there shifting round that may hit them, house journey is turning into extra like flying the Millennium Falcon through an asteroid field on daily basis.
Engineers at NASA, the European House Company, and different house applications are exploring a wide range of applied sciences—together with a web, a harpoon, and a laser—to remove the more dangerous pieces of space junk and clear up the house surroundings.
The Power itself
To most Earth audiences, the Power was a mysterious energy field created by life that binds the galaxy collectively. That’s till 1999, when Episode I: The Phantom Menace revealed that the Power got here from midi-chlorians, a microscopic, sentient life kind that lives inside each dwelling cell.
To biologists, midi-chlorians sound suspiciously much like mitochondria, the powerhouse of our cells. The present working speculation is that mitochondria emerged from bacteria that lived within cells of different dwelling issues. And mitochondria can communicate with other life forms, together with micro organism.
There are lots of totally different sorts of mitochondria, and medical professionals are studying how to transplant mitochondria from one cell to a different identical to they transplant organs from one individual’s physique to a different. Perhaps at some point a transplant process may assist individuals discover the sunshine aspect of the Power and switch away from the darkish aspect.
Could the Fourth—and the Power—be with you.
Daniel B. Oerther is a professor of environmental well being engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology.
William Schonberg is a professor of civil engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology.
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