Just 48 years ago, film director George Lucas used the phrase “A long time ago, in a very, far galaxy” as introduction to the first film of Star Warslater entitled Episode IV: A new hope. But at least four important aspects of the saga of Star Wars They are much closer, Both in time and in space, what Lucas showed.
First, the possibility of adding blue food coloring to milk It was already possible at the time of the first film premiere. But in 2024, blue milk with theme of Star Wars It began to be available periodically in supermarkets.
And we, an environmental Health engineer and a civil engineer, We know that there are at least three more elements of these ancient and distant stories of Lucas They might seem science fiction but, in fact, they are not.
Some “Star Wars” stories have already come true
In the first film, the Episode IVUncle Owen by Luke Skywalker was a farmer on the planet Tatooine. He cultivated air in the middle of the desert.
It may seem impossible, But it is exactly what experts discussed at the second International Summit on Atmospheric Water Harvest organized by the Arizona State University in March 2025.
Every day, a human being needs to consume approximately the equivalent of 0.8 gallons of water (3 liters). With more than 8 billion people living on the planetThis means that engineers need to produce almost 2.6 billion gallons (10 billion liters) of drinking water per year. Worldwide, the rain would be enough, but its distribution is very unequal, including its arrival in the oceans, where he immediately becomes too salty to drink it safely.
The deserts, which cover approximately a fifth of the earth’s surface, are home to approximately one billion people.
Researchers in places like Berkeley have developed solar energy systems that can produce clean drinking water from air. Generally, they use a material that catches the air water molecules inside their structure and then take advantage of sunlight to condense it and turn it into a drinking liquid. However, There is still a long way to go before they are ready for commercial distribution and are available for a large number of people.
Space waste
when the second death star was destroyed in THE RETURN OF THE JEDIcaused a tremendous disaster, as expected by exploding in pieces an object of at least 140 kilometers in diameter. But the mythology of the film explains, in a useful waywhich opened a hyperspatial worm hole briefly, which dispersed much of the debris through the galaxy.
As far as it is known, a hyperspatial worm hole has never appeared near Earth. And even if it existed or happened, Humans could not have the technology to throw all our garbage there. So we stayed with a lot of things around us, even in space.
According to the Orbiting Now website, at the end of April 2025 there were just over 12,000 active satellites orbiting the planet. In total, the United States and other nations with space programs try to track almost 50,000 objects that orbit the land. And there is Millions of fragments of space trash too small to be observed or tracked.
As on land roads, space vehicles collide with each other if traffic is too congested. But unlike the rubble that fall to the road after a land impact, all the fragments that detach themselves into a space clash fly at speeds of several thousand kilometers per hour (10,000 to 30,000 km/h) and They can hit other satellites or spacecraft that cross their way.
This accumulation of space waste is creating a growing problem. With more satellites and spacecraft in orbit, and more moving material that could impact them, Space trips are increasingly resembling Fly the millenary hawk through an asteroid field.
NASA engineers, the European Space Agency and other space programs are exploring a variety of technologies, including a network, a harpoon and a laser, to eliminate the most dangerous pieces of space garbage and clean the space environment.
The force itself
For the majority of the land public, the force was a mysterious energy field created by the life that joins the galaxy. This was so until 1999, when the Episode I: The ghost threat He revealed that force came from the Midiclorians, A microscopic and conscious way of life inhabits each cell.
For biologists, Midiclorians sound suspiciously similar to mitochondria, the energy source of our cells. The current hypothesis is that mitochondria arose from bacteria that lived within the cells of other living beings. And mitochondria can communicate with other life forms, including bacteria.
There are many different types of mitochondria, and medical professionals are learning to transplant them from one cell to another, as organs from one person to another are transplanted. Maybe one day a transplant procedure can help people discover the luminous side of force and move away from the dark side.
That on July 4 – and the force – accompany you.
*Daniel B. Oerther, Professor of Environmental Health, University of Science and Technology at Missouri
**William SchonbergProfessor of Civil Engineering, University of Science and Technology at Missouri
