The Star Wars universe is huge and getting bigger all the time, with new television shows and Disney Plus giving us new, high-budget shows to get excited about. We also have the comics, the books and the original movies to entertain ourselves.
We could argue for days about whether or not this is all canonical, but when it comes to technology, that’s not really relevant – it’s all about how cool the tech is! There are so many different types of technology we wish we knew more about.
Some of this tech is simply for fun – for example, the holographic gambling games and casino games we see in many of the Star Wars movies and stories. The next time you’re exploring online sports betting in PA, you’ll get plenty of options but you won’t see any little holograms on a board you can gamble on, just yet. That said, you shouldn’t be surprised if you come across a similar sort of gambling experience using AR tech in the coming years.
Let’s dive into some of the coolest tech that we wish we knew more about or could replicate in real life, bearing in mind that some of this technology has already been produced!
Prosthetics and biotechnology
Yes, I know, we have prosthetics, but the idea that you can replace a human arm or hand with something totally man-made is something the world could truly benefit from.
The Star Wars take on prosthetics is that anything is possible (of course, this is a fictional universe, after all) but like so many other inventions that were first seen in the world of science fiction, hopefully our biotechnology can catch up.
This isn’t just about limbs, either. Think of all the biotechnology that went into rebuilding characters such as Darth Vader.
Also, anybody who needs one should be able to get a Luke Skywalker arm, if they want one!
Carbonite freezing
This is another of the iconic scenes from the original films. Carbonite freezing is a form of cryonics, and this is a way of keeping a living being alive for a period of time, in a sort of suspended state. There are even rumors of pop stars being frozen so they can be brought back to life one day.
There are scientists legitimately working on this method. The carbonite method that is used is a type of dry ice method with an opposite charge.
Scientists and professors have actually hypothesized that the method of freezing isn’t that far from the tech we currently have, so we could freeze people in time but bringing them back to life would be more of a challenge.
The process we see in Star Wars is too fast, so it would be impossible to bring someone back to life after being preserved in this way.
A few years ago, there were researchers who managed to keep nematodes in a similar form in a Gallium cage, freezing them and then recovering them a week later.
Holograms
Yes, if you’ve seen the Tupac tour then you’ll know that we sort of have holograms now, but not in the same way as the Star Wars movies, in which they’re mainstream. You can even buy busts of holograms from The Mandalorian, which truly has some amazing merch.
Even in films back in the 70s, we saw R2-D2 sharing some holographic images from his little metal body, and the world has not yet caught up.
Landspeeders and hovercraft
Yes, okay, this is not as useful as some of the other technology in the Star Wars universe, but let’s face it, it’s cool. People have built some really cool models, but they’re not quite the same.
All we really want is to be able to fly around the flats of Tatooine.
Cloning and genetic engineering
Jeanne Cavelos has written about this a lot – she has even written a book all about the Science of Star Wars.
Cloning in the Star Wars universe tends to process DNA and then create clones in a sort of “factory” environment.
The clones also have the ability to be genetically changed before they emerge and this can make them more intelligent when they are eventually “born”. This is how they are manipulated to have less self-awareness, and, well…morals.
A lot of the cloning process could be replicated in real life, according to Cavelos, who knows what she is talking about (she used to be an astrophysicist, and worked with NASA). We wouldn’t be able to speed up the process of learning, though, which means we can’t engineer things exactly as experienced in the Star Wars universe.