The Star Wars saga takes place “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” which should put it completely out of the reach of human interference. But fandoms don't work like that, particularly one as large as the Star Wars fandom. Geeks gonna geek, and now Georgetown University assistant physics professor Dr. Patrick Johnson is speculating about the "when" of "A long time ago." In his new book The Physics of Star Wars, Johnson creates a timeline from the beginning of the universe.
The first galaxies were formed around a billion years after the big bang, so that cuts out a billion years. The films depict many star systems with mature planets and intelligent life. It took the solar system about 500 million years to form, and it formed 4.6 billion years ago, so it’s reasonable to assume that Star Wars is about 5 billion years after the formation of the first galaxy1. There are also fully formed multicellular creatures of many different shapes and kinds. It took about 2 billion years for single-celled organisms to evolve into multicellular organisms, and another billion years before those took the form of life that we could recognize as creatures.
Although it took billions of years for life to evolve on Earth, that does not mean the process would always take billions of years. The first eukaryotic cell is thought to have formed from a bacterium entering a prokaryotic cell and living symbiotically rather than being destroyed by its host cell. This was a random fluke that took millions of years to happen. If that event had happened on the first day of prokaryotic life, it could have shaved off a significant chunk of time for evolution.
That pegs the Star Wars story at least at big bang plus nine billion years, but Johnson is just getting started. Read more about the possibilities of the Star Wars timeline in a book excerpt at Wired. -via Uproxx
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Gunpowder loader for a cannon?
a tiny bell mount,
the link between the bell and the rope.
Good guesses - but so far, nothing that sounds like the real answer! Come on - a free shirt awaits.
These were some type of plastic container about 3/8"thick and 2"X2" square, colored bright Red with a DANGER warning printed in White letters and had a Lead strip about 6" long X 3/16"thick and 3/8" wide adheared to the bottom.
They were then filled with explosive powder and sealed tight.
When the Section Car, or work car, was a predetermined distance from their assigned work spot they would stop and one of the "Gandy Dancers" would dismount and place 1 Torpedo upon the top of the rail by squeezing that Lead strap around the rail. They would then proceed on to thier work area. When a train came along and hit that Torpedo it naturally exploded with a "report" that could be heard by the engineer over the noises of that monstorous steam locomotive and by the work crew..
This report was as loud as a quarter stick of Dynomite and there were instances of kids being killed when they struck one with a stone or a hammer!
When the "report" was heard everybody started doing what they needed to do to clear the track and the engineer slowed the train down to a safe speed..
As a kid, 1940 thru 45 we used to walk the L&N tracks in Wildie Ky and pick up those lead strips for the WW2 scrap metal drives. We would flatten it out and then roll it up like tape or cut it into smaller pieces to wrap around our fishing line as a sinker.
The Torpedos were also used by the Brakeman riding in the caboose on a fraight train or a Conductor on a passenger train, to warn a follownig train to be on lookout for a train being stopped to take on water at one of those big trackside tanks..
They would place between 1 and 3 torps on the track. There would be a space between each Torp and that distance told the engeneer something about the train out in front of him..It would be like "bang"--------
"bang"--"bang" ...Or "bang""bang"------------"bang".
It's amasing how that photo and caption brought out all those memories from so many years ago!!