The Science of Starcraft

Moved to general. Keep up your good work, your articles are fun to read. I've just started the marine one because I can't get over how the narrow shoulders of a person allow its arms to fit in the suit arms perfectly (though being shorter and having the fists controlled by a mechanism). Shouldn't the person's arms be at about 45° held by the armpit part of the suit?

 

Very nice article and a good read

I remember reading a story on the Starcraft 2 official website about how banelings came to be. Dunno if you've already read that, but you'd probably like that (I don't think it went into heavy scientific details per-say, but if you were researching into stuff like that it might help).

 

kuvasz: Thanks for moving this to general discussion!

I just watched the Marine trailer again and I see what you mean about the arms. The key part of the video when the arms are being assembled is such a close-up that it's hard to tell exactly how the fitting works. Big Shoulders is the Blizzard style though, and the marine himself had some huge shoulders before getting suited up. I think in this case I'm willing to let it slide, since it's more of a design question than a science question.

ijffdrie: Regarding Terran buildings lifting off, I'm assuming they use whatever technology allows all the terran flying and hovering vehicles to stay suspended. We don't see rocket plumes underneat a battlecruiser when it's hovering over a planet, so I'm ok with there being no obvious exhaust for the buildings either. But just because they're self-consistent doesn't mean it's scientifically valid.

I think a blog post about the possibilities of antigravity or hovering of some sort would make sense, but i'll tell you right now, it probably will require a lot of hand-waving. The best bet would probably be something to do with high-temperature superconductors, but then you'd still need magnetic fields to hover.

TheSneak109: Thanks for the tip about the banelings origin story. I'm embarassed to say that I don't know as much as I should about the actual game lore. Will have to brush up on it as i dig into more detail on the various units.

 

I figured it was about time I took on some Protoss tech, so I just finished a new post about Plasma Shields and Force Fields: http://starcraftscience.com/2010/07/30/force-fields-plasma-shield/

The great thing about this blog is that I get to learn about cool stuff too: I had never even heard of "plasma windows" but I guess they're a real thing!

 

I've got another new article posted, this time about how the heck Zerg can survive in space. (No, I didn't tackle the age-old question of how Zerg flyers can move in space. That's a can of worms I'm not ready to deal with yet!)

http://starcraftscience.com/2010/08/11/can-life-really-survive-in-space/

And as always, let me know if you have any burning science questions that you think I should address! I'm always looking for new ideas.

 

After a brief hiatus (had to go get married and go on a honeymoon, which tends to cut down on gaming and blogging time!) the Science of Starcraft is back! The latest post takes a look at the "railguns" on the diamondbacks in the SC2 campaign and compares with railguns in the real world. IMHO the real-world ones are cooler!

http://starcraftscience.com/2010/09/06/what-is-a-rail-gun-and-how-does-it-work/

 

Gongrats on your marriage. Great article btw!

 

Freaking awsome! I'm deffinitely gonna read all of it!

 

New Science of Starcraft post! This time, the campaign mission "Supernova" prompted me to explain what, exactly a supernova is, and why it's not the same thing as a nova.

http://starcraftscience.com/2010/09/13/what-is-a-supernova/

 

Congratz mate!

Was wondering if you could explain how zerg with wings fly in space

 

Heh, I would love to be able to explain that. maybe I'll take a crack at it next week, but the short answer is: I don't know! Wings obviously don't work in space...

 

Very cool. I'm a science geek at heart and love exploring the fictional science worlds of Star Trek, Star Wars and the like. Keep it up!

 

New post is up! As a sequel to my post about rail guns, I took a look at what a real gauss rifle is, and why the ones used by the marines in Starcraft are not particularly accurate...

http://starcraftscience.com/2010/09/20/what-is-a-gauss-rifle/

As always, if there's a topic you'd like to see me write about, just let me know!

 

Hah! And I wanted to ask you for a look into gauss rifles and how the marines in videos seem to be swimming in shells, lol

Edit: And yes, the pic you have at the end of it is exactly the thing I was thinking about!

 

Those aren't really wings, they are solar sails.

 

Yeah... I'm debating whether or not to even attempt to explain flying in space. Or for that matter a lot of the protoss tech. I'll probably try, but really, a lot of it is essentially magic hidden in technobabble about warp fields and psionic waves.

 

Ok kiddos, two new posts over at The Science of Starcraft. The first is my review of the game since I finally managed to finish the campaign. http://starcraftscience.com/2010/09/25/starcraft-2-review/

The second post is a quick one about the color of acid: http://starcraftscience.com/2010/10/08/the-color-of-acid/

(Hint: It's not actually bright green in real life)

I'm looking for more topics to write about, so let me know if you have suggestions!

 

In case my assertion that Mutalisk wings act as solar sails is disproved, I hereby backup posit that their wings operate in a higher dimension, propelling through the 3rd dimension off something we can't see as limited 3-dimensional beings.

 

Should def. do a blog on mechanical suits like the marine. I know of two...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UpxsrlLbpU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW2pBLQLHj0

It would be interesting to see your input about mechanical suits
Maybe a few facts and new breakthrough's you've heard of!

 

Hodl pu: Take a look at the first post on my blog. I picked apart the teaser trailer showing Tychus' suit being assembled and talked a bit about powered suits in the real world. Didn't see that XOS 2 video though, very cool!