Jedi Knights, Wookies and hyperspace travel were once merely the imaginings of George Lucas, creator of the Star Wars saga, but visitors to a new exhibit at the Museum of Science this weekend learned that many technologies seen in Star Wars are not far ahead of what is possible in the real world.
Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination, which opened to the public Thursday night, demonstrates the relationship between technologies of the Star Wars movies and real-life technologies of today and the future.
Visitors to the exhibit can observe the similarities between trains powered by magnetic levitation technology and floating vehicles in the Star Wars universe, learn how researchers are teaching robots to be as intelligent as C-3PO and R2-D2 and discover how astronomers are designing spaceships that may one day be capable of interstellar travel.
The exhibit was popular during its opening weekend, according to Astrid Meyersiek, a Museum of Science employee who conducted a magnetic levitation demonstration for museum-goers yesterday. Three hundred and fifty tickets are sold every hour, and most of the times were sold out, Meyersiek noted.
“Everyone seems to really enjoy it,” she said. “George Lucas loved it.”
Many of the props, costumes and models used in the production of the movies are on display at the museum, but the focus of the exhibit is on interaction rather than on observation. For example, visitors can build their own floating vehicles using Legos and use a computer screen to create different facial expressions for a virtual robot.
Meyersiek said the interactive components of the exhibit were especially popular.
“There are a lot more hands-on components in the exhibit than we ever had before,” she said, comparing this year’s exhibit to The Lord of the Rings exhibit last year, which she said did not have as much of a scientific focus as the Star Wars exhibit.
Graham Aldridge, a computer programmer from New Zealand, programmed one of the most popular parts of the exhibit, an interactive 3-D simulation in which museum-goers try to create sustainable communities set in the Star Wars universe.
“It’s hopefully showing people a really intuitive way to interact with a computer in 3-D,” Aldrige said. “When you see five-year-old kids being able to use it right off the bat, it’s quite wonderful.”
Karry Orelup, who came to the exhibit from Torrington, Conn. with her family, said she enjoyed the exhibit because it allowed her to see how the moviemaking process translates to the final product on the screen.
“This is how it all came together,” Orelup said. “This is how you make what happens in your imagination come to life.”
Besides the interactive exhibits and the props and costumes on display, visitors could ride in a full-size replica of the Millennium Falcon, the spaceship used by Han Solo in the films, and watch a movie on robotics inside a replica of the “sandcrawler” vehicle used by the alien Jawas in the films.
Several other Star Wars-themed presentations will be held throughout the year, among them a Planetarium show about planets in the Solar System that are similar to planets seen in the Star Wars films.
Aldridge called the Star Wars exhibit “fantastic” and said he thinks it will serve a useful role in educating people about important technologies under development.
“Hopefully a lot of people are going to go home and say, ‘Look, I know how magnetic levitation works,’ … and that’s brilliant,” Aldridge said.