North Side of Kashyyyk
Suddenly Star Wars has become a cartoon as Han Solo suggests landing on the north side of the Wookiee homeworld of Kashyyyk in order to avoid Imperial trouble. What do they plan to do once they land, catch a tree taxi? That’s the sad, but also cute, innocence of children’s television… planets are small, nobody really dies, and there’s a waterfall at the end of EVERY river (with a branch sticking out).
Rofl. Love the description.
brings to mind George of the jungle. “No one ever really dies in these stories, they just get really big boo-boos!”
I always got mad when Star Trek (and other Sci Fi show) solved the mystery/problem of a given planet in 1 episode, weve had hundreds of thousands of years and have “solved” very little on this planet, so how can Kirk, Spock and McCoy get it right in an hour show? We do seem to have gotten peanut butter and a few other things right so far.
At least they won’t have to pack a change of underwear, cause their isn’t any in space.
OK, I’ll get off that dead horse now.
What deternines “North” and “South” hemispheres on a planet anyway?
Are they arbitrary terms found on a globe, or does it have to do with the magnetic poles, popular preference, orientation, or what?
Any real science people out there?
I studied Archaeology and Anthropology, but that does not help much with such complicated scientific terms as “North” and South” (unless perhaps your talking the American Civil war).
Thanks in advance!
For Kashyyk, the choice of “north” and “south” would depend on how much their culture and cartography had been influenced by human culture. And how much the human home world of Star Wars resembles Earth.
Humans (of Earth, anyway) tend to assign the North and South Poles of a planet to either end of the planet’s axis of rotation in such a way that the planet’s star rises in the East and sets in the West, as seen from the planet’s surface.
hth
I love having smart friends! 😀 Thanks for the insight, Tek.
Also a distinction between North and South can be made by the magnetic poles, not just culturally. As most planets have magnetic poles you can then say this is the North Pole and this is the South Pole, it won’t be the vertical summit of the planet, aka the top, but it would determine North Side from South Side.
Now ironically on Earth, when we assigned magnetic poles to magnets we assigned them for what direction they point. A magnet’s north pole will point north, so in a compass the needle part the points north is the north pole of the compass needle’s magnetic field… as we know opposite poles attract, because of this the Earth’s North Pole is actually a south polar magnetic field…
But I digress, the principle could be used on most planets that spin like a top to determine North and South… although planets like Uranus which don’t spin like a top and instead spin like a football (American Football) could be a bit more difficult… as its magnetic fields would be where our East and West are.
A valid point indeed!
However, we humans are predisposed to the psychologically familiar. If we were faced with a planet where the magnetic poles were at odds with the rotational poles, we would inevitably assign “North” based on the rotational poles, because the direction the sun moves across the sky is something we can see and feel that resonates with something deep in our Lizard Brain, whereas magnetic poles are an intellectual concept that we can only “see” with the aid of a compass or similar equipment.
(For the record, I can’t take full credit for these observations; I believe it was in a book by Isaac Asimov, probably in the Foundation series, that I first encountered this … )
Thanks Tek Server, and Jamion, now I can annoy my wife with more mostly useless knowledgs 😉
Isn’t that why we all become SciFi fans in the first place?
BTW, BMS, I for one like the Holiday Special tribute/parody as it is both refreshing to see something so obscure brought back more entertaining as the original, and it just builds up the anticipation for the much awaited Empire Strikes Back (for me this rivals how enthusiastic I was 30 years ago).
Are you still going to do the Alan Dean Foster novel Wassit called?
I’ll have to read the book before you spoof it.
What he said.
The book you are thinking of is Splinter of a Minds Eye.
Erm,
from my limited knowledge the magnetic field comes from a planets rotation around its solid core.
So while it may be true that the magnetic poles may shift from time to time, even to the point where they switch completely, it really doesn’t matter that much whether you judge by rotation or by magnetic poles where you WANT north to be on a given planet.
(please excuse me, its kind off hard to write something like this in an foreign language)
It reads beautifully! If I wasn’t the admin and you never said anything, I would not have known English was not your first language. 🙂
The right-hand rule. Curl the fingers of your right hand in the direction of the planet’s rotation. Your thumb is pointing north.
The right-hand rule also tells you a) which way a screw moves when you turn it b) which way current flows through a magnetic field c) the direction of the cross product of two vectors
In Northern Kashyyk, they make their Snurfle chowder with cream. In Southern Kashyyk, they make it with tomato.
What? Quit lookin’ at me like I’m nuts!
Good strip today Rod! Was the planet blue earlier or was I imagining things?
It must be a Star Wars thing. The Trade Federation landed their droid army on the other side of the planet from the Naboo capital. Maybe that’s how folks get exercise in that galaxy?
It really is a Star Wars Thing…
You are lucky if you ask somebody where someone is, and he replies: On that planet near the core, Coruscant, I guess.
Can’t be too hard to find’em, eh?
One Kotor game referred to the Inhabitants of a planet as ‘locals’. More like ‘globals’…
Hey Dad, where’s Mum?
On planet Earth, son! In The kitchen!