Nitpicking The Empire Strikes Back – Worm Gravity

Once again we’re looking at Space Worm. Space Worm has adapted to live in space. It generates its own atmosphere, heat, and as we discover gravity.

Newton’s law states that every object in the universe with mass attracts every other object in the universe that has mass. This force is proportional to the product of the two masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers. Thus two coffee cups have an attractive force on each other, and two planets also have an attractive force on each other, as will a planet and a coffee cup. All objects possess inertia (a tendency to maintain their state of motion). Objects with greater mass have greater inertia. So when the coffee cup and the planet are free to move, the cup does the moving because the planet has too much inertia to move any appreciable amount. Thus the cup “falls” to the planet. The force of gravity on an object on Earth is the “weight” of the object.

The larger object always (at least in our galaxy) has a greater gravitational influence on the smaller object(s). Thus, Space Worm, the Falcon, Han, Leia, and Chewie should all be pulled to the center core of the asteroid. That said, it is quite obvious that the Falcon, Han, Leia, Chewie, and C-3PO inside the Falcon are all pulled to the side of Space Worm and not the tail.

This gives us three possibilities; 1, Space Worm is curved in the asteroid and thus the “floor” is pointed at the asteroid core (Though we didn’t see the Falcon flying through a curving “cave”). 2, The Falcon has gravity plating similar to Star Trek and Han, Leia and Chewie are wearing gravity boots. Or 3, Space Worm generates gravity in addition to atmosphere.

I like Option 3.

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