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Is their anything left for speculative science to squeeze out?

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I’ve been wondering about science and scientific progression in the Star Wars universe. Even though people have pointed out that Star Wars is science fantasy and doesn’t care about science- that really isn’t true. Scientists are mentioned all the time in Star Wars. The society runs on science just like ours does. The stories were are shown are those of a religious order so science obviously takes a backseat but even the Jedi use technology. Lightsabers aren’t made out of wood! I just wonder what could be the next thing in science that scientists in Star Wars can pursue. They had FTL for millennia. You would logically think that whatever sci fi stuff you isn’t exist is fair game like teleportation and time travel BUT both those two things are something all people (sentient beings) have wanted since the beginning of time so the fact that they don’t exist must mean they tried and those things are impossible. Star Wars does have nanotech. It’s mentioned in several mediums so you would think that the logical next step would be pico and femtotechnology but the whole midichlorian thing makes me think it’s impossible. I also don’t really believe you can go smaller in the real world either. Matter replication and simulated reality seem to be good bets and I bet both exist BUT I bet the former exists and they won’t let it hit market because it would destabilize the economy and lead to a post-scarcity society like Star Trek. The latter also probably exists but probably isn’t healthy; may only exist for rich people on rich planets or just isn’t spoken about. That being said: What could be worked on by scientists in Star Wars.
 
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Terminus

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The next step once FTL travel is invented is increasing its speed. Most fictional universes make it so inter-galactic travel is too time consuming to be feasible.

The next next step after slowly increasing speed and efficiency to where anywhere in the entire universe could be visited is to break into alternate timelines and parallel universes.
 

Dio

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Well considering how advanced in technology they are the fact there is no cure for cellular aging in humans is quite crazy. Everyone seems to get old and die and in a scientifically advanced civilization this shouldn't be the case.
 

Spiritual Mask Salesman

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Well considering how advanced in technology they are the fact there is no cure for cellular aging in humans is quite crazy. Everyone seems to get old and die and in a scientifically advanced civilization this shouldn't be the case.
To cheat death is a power only one has achieved, but if we work together, I know we can discover the secret!
 
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Star Wars is not speculative fiction. Speculative fiction is science fiction that speculates on the effects and ramifications of advanced sciences. Jurassic Park is speculative fiction since it speculates what would happen if cloning was used to bring dinosaurs back to life and what would happen if advanced automated computer systems were used to control them. Star Wars never wonders about any of that. Droids, for instance, are obviously sentient in the Star Wars universe. But yet they're used as slave labor and nobody ever seems to mind. This entire concept is completely hand waved by the movies and dismissing it discourages audiences from thinking too much about it. Blade Runner - along with a bajillion other works of science fiction - takes this concept and runs with it.

But as for the question at hand, I also wonder if writers are running out of new ideas to speculate about in science ficiton. But it could just be that I lack creativity. New science fiction concepts often come on the heels of newly emerging theoretical sciences. It's pretty rare that a scifi writer strikes up an idea decades ahead of its realization and it's becoming rarer all the time. New scifi ideas thrived in eras when science was still largely unexplored. But today, we have uncovered so much science and brought forth so many scientific technologies that a great deal of what was once science fiction isn't fictional anymore.

We've seen a lot of speculation in regards to automated surveillance in more recent science fiction. and I think that is a major issue that is going to affect our daily lives in the near future. The most recent new novel idea that I have already seen explored several times in science fiction is the manner in which social media can be used to enforce a strict social credit system. This is already happening in China today.

Otherwise, I think science fiction is always due for revision. One of the neatest things that the Mass Effect series did was rethink the way that future technologies work to be more up to date with modern theories and developments. There was a time when the future was all chrome. But today we have synthetic nylon materials and ceramics that are looking like they'll end up being the materials of the future. Mass Effect did away with lasers as advanced weaponry and instead featured more conventional ballistic weapons powered by mass accelerators which is much more plausible and practical. Mass Effect dealt with all the usual scifi staples and features, it just brought them all up to date.
 

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