Obvious question: how can they travel faster than light? If they can violate the laws of physics which prohibit this, then why should we assume that any scientific laws apply at all?
Literary analysis: because the author says so. He doesn’t know or doesn’t care that it’s impossible. And physical laws do not apply … unless I want them to apply, eg- when I assume that a high-megaton explosion should take down a TIE fighter. Suspension of Disbelief: we don’t know. If we saw a UFO in real-life that could definitely exceed the speed of light, we would say “we don’t know how it works, but it obviously does work.” We would not say “well, I guess all of the laws of physics which work perfectly for everything we currently do must be garbage”, and start burning science textbooks. From these case studies, we can see that in general, suspension of disbelief methods tend to produce more conclusive results (far more conclusive in some cases) and often with less complexity. Even in worst-case scenarios where it is impacted by inexcusable sloppiness on the part of a show’s producers, it is merely reduced to the same conclusions forced upon us by the literary method anyway.
Related Questions
- Obvious question: how can they travel faster than light? If they can violate the laws of physics which prohibit this, then why should we assume that any scientific laws apply at all?
- The inflation scenario predicts the universe expands faster than the speed of light. Doesn this violate the laws of physics?
- Does sound travel faster through the dark or through light?
