According to this question (better citation needed), Yoda said to Luke: The Force is strong with your father, you, and your sister. Did Leia ever use The Force? Answer Within the movies - there's a couple of points where there seems to be an affinity between Leia and Luke. Whether this is because of Leia's latent talent, or Luke's own force ability, is up for debate. 1. She gets Lando to turn the ship around to rescue Luke from the bottom of Cloud City, because she "hears" him call out to her 2. She "knows" that Luke got off the Death Star II before it exploded In the Expanded Universe, however, there are many examples of Leia developing her force ability. While these are not the same canonicity as the movies themselves, EU canon is still held to be strong wherever a movie doesn't outright contradict.

We have seen during the movie that Kylo Ren's mask is really heavy . We also can guess that the primary reason Kylo Ren wears his mask is to mark his link with the Knights of Ren, as an intimidation tool and as an homage to Darth Vader.( Why does Kylo Ren wear a mask? ) But do we know if Kylo Ren's mask actually has any internal function, besides the obvious Voice Changer? Does it have an HUD that gets displayed in front of the wearer's eyes? Does it have some sort of built-in function to communicate with other people such as stormtroopers? Answer The answer is no . As shown in a diagram in the official visual dictionary (canon), Kylo Ren's mask has three functions: "Integrated vocabulator projects Ren's voice." (emphasis added) "Silver inlay radiates from the eyes as a symbol of power." "Kylo Ren's helmet conceals his identity and adds to his imposing demeanor." (emphasis added) Shown in the visual dictionary for the original t...

The question " How do Muggle-borns end up with magical ability? " got me to wondering how many wizards and witches there were on the planet during the events of the Harry Potter series. Was there any information given regarding this, either in the books or from JK Rowling herself? If there is not, then a best guess calculation would suffice. Answer I'm guessing between 300,000 and 1 million world wide. I'll explain how I got these numbers in the next paragraphs. We do have a few solid leads, as Ryan has pointed out. I'm going to take the numbers given by Ryan, and a few other things, and try to get some numbers straight. First of all, the biggest point is the size of the World Cup stadium. 100,000. That means there is at least that many wizards in the world, or at least, human-type creatures in the magical world. Hogwarts must have between 300-800 students, with a number of teachers as well. But, given that there must be between 40-100 per year, and a life expec...

I read this novel at least ten years ago, and likely more. It is a young adult book (labelled as such, I think), and I recall I read it at the exact same time as " Star Hatchling " (published in 1997, so I had to have read them after that). At the time they were both in the new arrivals in the young adult section of the library, but without remembering title or author I can't find it again since they have been shelved among the rest of the books in that section. The basic plot had a group of trouble-making students in some sort of space academy, who were tasked with an important test or project - to plan and complete an expedition with the goal of finding and landing on a new and unexplored planet and bringing the discovered information back to the school or the government for later expansion or exploration. To accomplish this, they had to plan everything out - supplies, navigation, where to look for planets not on the maps, how to get there and back, what kinds of tests ...

This story was about Earth scientists who were shown a film supposedly proving that Martian (?) scientists had perfected an anti gravity machine. After being convinced that it could be done, the Earth scientists built one. This may have been part of an Earth vs Mars book of short stories, probably written in the fifties.

Hearing a friend recently mention Clarke's Third Law ( Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. ) and me thinking about how Portkeys seem to act like opening possible wormholes got me wondering about this. Is there any scientific basis behind the magic in the Potterverse? For instance, does J.K. Rowling ever indicate that the Floo system is some kind of wormhole network or anything similar? Is it possible magic is using a technology that is not understood by Muggles? Or has JKR ever stated specifically that magic in the Potterverse is explicitly not related to any form of science? Answer Oh, I love this question! I personally interpret Potterverse to possibly include scientific connections to magic. A Time-turner, obviously, is related to time-travel, which I think touches on Einstein's Theory of Relativity: The theory of relativity overturned the concept of motion from Newton's day, by positing that all motion is relative. Time was no longe...

In Fellowship of the Ring , when giving Aragorn his gift, Galadriel says something I thought was unusual (emphasis mine): 'This stone I gave to Celebrían my daughter, and she to hers; and now it comes to you as a token of hope. In this hour take the name that was foretold for you , Elessar, the Elfstone of the house of Elendil!' Fellowship of the Ring Book II Chapter 8: "Farewell to Lórien" This suggests some mythological significance to the name "Elessar," which seems unusual; the only other name I can think of with that kind of significance is Durin . What "foretelling" was behind the name "Elessar"? Answer "Elessar", the name There's an oblique reference in Return of the King that this name was foretold at Aragorn's birth: [W]ord went through the City: 'The King is come again indeed.' And they named him Elfstone, because of the green stone that he wore, and so the name which it was foretold at his birth th...

I have seen the X-Men films, but have not really been a fan of the comic books. I have always wondered if Cyclops just bandaged his eyes permanently growing up, and how he came to realise that ruby controls his "optic portals to another dimension". Answer He didn't. He has never had full, permanent control of his optic blasts over his history. He has had brief periods where his power was under his control due to either temporary physical or psychological alterations to his body or mind. Origin 1: Scott Summers suffers traumatic brain injury as a child when he and his brother, Alex , parachute from a plane that is crashing. He uses his mutant power to break his fall and is injured. His mutant power later manifests randomly when he gets older and after causing an accident and nearly getting mobbed to death, he escapes, blind (powers were sporadic) but eventually he cannot even open his eyes. He is rescued and becomes a ward of Charles Xavier . He is also the first of the...

First, to explain some backstory of the Palantiri. The Palantíri were made by the Ñoldor in Eldamar, possibly by Fëanor himself in Aman during the Elder Days in the Time of the Trees, and then given by the Elves to the Númenóreans, who kept them as heirlooms until the Fall of Númenor during the Second Age. Then seven of these stones were rescued and brought to Middle-earth by Elendil and his sons. The Dúnedain placed the stones across large distances in order to communicate with one another. The stones were housed at the following locations: Annúminas, Amon Sûl (Weathertop) and Elostirion (Tower Hills) in the north, and Osgiliath, Orthanc (Isengard), Minas Ithil, and Minas Anor in the south. The Master Stone resides in Tol Eressëa, in the Tower of Avallonë. Four of the stones are known to have been lost. The chief stone of the north at Amon Sul, along with the stone from Annúminas was lost with Arvedui in the cold northern seas. The chief stone of the south in Osgiliath was lost during...

In Star Trek , characters generally have pointy sideburns. Clearly a production decision was made in the 60s. What's the history of this? (Related question: Is there any in-universe explanation or reference to why pointy sideburns persisted for so long? ) Answer There is a section on this in "The Making of Star Trek", by Stephen E. Whitfield. According to the story, the producers (that was basically Gene Roddenberry) wanted 'futuristic' hairstyles. However the actors pointed out that they had to live in the real world, and weren't going to spend their off days looking like freaks from the future. The pointed sideburn was the compromise. There isn't a record of exactly who came up with the idea. Presumably some combination of Roddenberry and the hair department.

I always wondered why Admiral Motti and Governor Tarkin in the movie "A New Hope" (IV) insinuate that the Force is an old, dead religion? Tarkin : The Jedi are extinct, their fire has gone out of the universe. You, my friend, are all that's left of their religion. Motti : Don't try to frighten us with your sorcerous ways, Lord Vader. Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the stolen data tapes, or given you clairvoyance enough to find the rebels' hidden fortress... Tarkin, as human, must be around age 50, so, if in Episode IV Luke is about 20, when he was just born at the end of Episode III, Tarkin must have been around 30, so a perfect young man in a Galaxy that used to know Jedis, Jedi Council, Force etc.. Why, 20 years later, he just looks like someone who never saw a Jedi/Sith? Also, besides from Force sensitives (Obi-Wan, Yoda, Vader, the Emperor), nobody else looks like they ever heard of the Force ... that's really wei...

I was read this short story on a school field trip in 6th grade or so, so it is probably from the 70s or 80s, but never knew the title or author. It's about a boy who slowly discovers that he is in fact the animal in an alien zoo. I'm fairly sure what leads him to the discovery is the realization that the only way the moving sidewalks in his world, which are motionless until he steps on them, could only work if he is the only one using them. Thanks! Answer This sounded really familiar so I started browsing the internet and found this link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0734611/ which sounded very familiar as well. It is a Twilight episode about an astronaut (played by Roddy McDowell) who crashes his ship on Mars. His shipmate is killed in the crash but Roddy's character ends up meeting the Martians and the story proceeds from there. On the IMDB page, the writer of a short story is referenced, Paul W. Fairman. After more searching I found this link: http://www.facebook.com/...

How many possible types of wands can Ollivander make, if the variables are only core material, wood material, and length in inches? This is a small subquestion related to this , and intended to establish a definite cap on how many maximum possible wands would a wizard be able to choose from (assuming, for any wizard, SOME wand will always choose him, with the choice determined by core material, wood material, and length) Please note that the combinations are finite, based on Pottermore, since Ollivander does not use random materials. Answer Fortunately for the sake of a reasonable answer, Ollivanders limits himself greatly as to which wands he will actually make . From Pottermore, articles on Wandlore: Every single wand is unique and will depend for its character on the particular tree and magical creature from which it derives its materials. Moreover, each wand, from the moment it finds its ideal owner, will begin to learn from and teach its human partner. Therefore, the following m...

In The Expanse they show New York and also the Statue of Liberty. I know it's on an island, in the show there is a wall around it. How high did the water rise? I think it’s more than 15 meters (45 feet), based on this map . Answer I'm not too sure how high the water has risen in the show, although your estimate looks reasonable. There are some additional shots from the tenth episode in season 2, "Cascade", that give you a look at the ocean and the city, but I couldn't draw any conclusions from it. Take a look yourself. In the books, we also don't know too much, but we have this description of the city of Baltimore in The Churn : Sparrow Island stood out in the waves like a widow watching the sea for a ship that would never come home, and Federal Hill scowled back at the city across shallow, filthy water, emperor of its own abandoned land. From this, it sounds like Federal Hill is an island or peninsula of at least some size. And presumably, "Sparrow I...

The book features multiple parallel story lines: a poor child accidentally ends up possessing an AI driven book; the voice for the AI is crowdsourced to a woman, who gradually figures out that she's involved in helping out the child; genetic engineering is pervasive, and various factions of society spread viruses into the air as a way to fight wars, communicate, etc... Membership in a subsection of society buys you protection from the viruses; if you're not protected, you can end up severely damaged or otherwise not autonomous; some of the story line features a mysterious religious sect which subsume their consciousness to a collective, which performs some sort mysterious, of massively parallel computation, possibly using its members' brains; they form their habitats under water for cooling purposes. Answer This is Neil Stephenson's The Diamond Age . The protagonist in the story is Nell, a thete (or person without a tribe; equivalent to the lowest working class) livin...

In this story, the characters live in a world with a wall that cannot be crossed. One day someone finds a way to get to the other side and discovers that as he's getting away from the wall and further into the other side, he's just coming back to his own world.

The tenth anniversary edition of American Gods is Gaiman's "preferred text" version of the book. In the foreword, he claims to have restored about 12,000 words that were edited out of the original for various reasons. I assume that many of those edits are scattered across the book in small parts, but were there any significant scenes that were edited out completely and then restored? I'm not so much interested in "cosmetic" changes, especially the various errata and such. Things that add some flavor to a scene but don't really change it or the story is more detail than I'm interested it. As a benchmark, the "Shadow meets Jesus" scene included as a bonus appendix is roughly two pages long, that's the kind of thing I'm looking for. Some place where at least 1/2 a page of continuous text was removed, such that an entire event/conversation/etc was removed from the story. Answer Based on a quick comparison the vast majority of the cha...

As noted in the answer to the question Does Spock have a PhD? , Spock is never referred to on-screen as "Dr. Spock" in Star Trek . However, the "doctor" title has persisted amongst the general population for many decades. Out-of-universe, what is the earliest instance of this error? Did someone write it in a newspaper? Was it mistakenly used by an interviewer or interviewee? Perhaps it appeared erroneously in a TV Guide entry? (Note that TV Guide began in 1953, thirteen years before The Original Series .) Clarification: I am aware of Dr. Benjamin Spock, whose name is often connected to the confusion about Spock in Star Trek being called "Dr. Spock". But that's not what I'm asking about. I'm asking for the first instance of Star Trek 's Spock being called "Dr. Spock" by someone. Answer Why Dr Spock? Dr Spock was a real person , an American pediatrician whose book Baby and Child Care , published in 1946, is one of the best-sel...

Back in the eighties I saw an apparently sixties-era film on afternoon UHF TV. In it a crew of men and women were on board a time-travelling vessel. I think it was not a ship, more of a stationary pod a la H.G. Wells' time machine. Through the film the crew finds themselves in troubling time-related predicaments. I remember two of these situations, only because even at my young age it was clear to me how illogical these situations were and how great the plot holes were. One of these situations occurred when the crew time-travels to their own recent past--a previous scene of the film, I think. But the "past" version of the crew is frozen still, and the "present" crew comes to realize it is because time is flowing for them at a greatly accelerated pace, so that the world around them is almost, but not completely, still. Later the crew travels again to the past. While in transit to the past, the crew discovers their vessel is on a collision course, through time , ...

This is quite a spoilerish question for the last jedi so the title is cryptic and some text is here to stop spoilers appearing in the preview. Luke is determined to burn down the Jedi tree and the books inside. However, there is an intervention from Yoda, who burns it down himself. At first, I thought this intervention was nice but a little pointless. But at the end of the film, you see Rey had stolen the books Which leads to a reassessment of the intervention. Given that Luke was adamant that he would not pass on the Jedi lore, did Yoda choose that moment to intervene to stop him from finding out what Rey had done? I found the dialog in that part quite hard to follow so I could have missed the intent. I don't know what Luke would have done in any case, but it seems that it could have been done to prevent Luke from carrying through with his intent. Was this the point of the intervention? Anyone who has secondary sources or followed the dialog better may have a more accurate viewpoi...

Now that I have almost finished reading The Lord of the Rings , one of the differences between the books and movies puzzles me more than any other: In the books, Aragorn always intended, and expected, to claim the throne of Gondor - he even carries the Shards of Narsil around with him. He probably wants to become King for other reasons as well, but he also has to become king before Elrond will allow him to marry Arwen. No one who knows him ever doubts that he will be king, and Narsil is remade before he even leaves Rivendell. In the movies, he is reluctant to claim the throne, to put it mildly. He is more committed to his role as a Ranger. He barely even touches Narsil before it is reforged. He avoids giving the impression that he is interested in the throne. No one who knows him, except Arwen and perhaps Gandalf, thinks he will ever be more than a Ranger. Elrond only reforges Narsil after Arwen forces him to choose between fixing the sword or watching his own daughter die. Aragorn on...

Fred and George gave the map to Harry because his needs were greater than theirs. When he was just closing the map (mischief managed), Newt Scamander's name was there. According to the timelines, Newt was expelled from Hogwarts long before Harry was even born, wasn't he? Harry Potter: The Prisoner of Azkaban . Answer There are few theories for the visit and none of these are mine. Theory 1: Visiting Dumbledore The theory that makes the most sense is that Newt was visiting Dumbledore. People who have seen Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them in theaters will know that Dumbledore was Newt's teacher at Hogwarts. When Newt was expelled from Hogwarts, Dumbledore strongly opposed and fought against the decision, suggesting that there's some sort of kinship between them. Dumbledore also writes the forward [sic] to Newt's book, so maybe Newt's visit was in regard to that. Theory 2: Saving Buckbeak Another theory only gets stronger once you consider one of the key ...

In Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality , Harry Potter plans to use the Philosopher's Stone to guarantee immortality for everyone . (Yes, ambitious goal, dreams are free, etc etc...) Obviously, things are a bit different from HPMOR to Harry Potter canon, where: Spoiler! If you are planning to read HPMOR (and you should), DO NOT read the spoiler. Nicholas Flamel is not an immoral transgender liar who claimed that the ancient relic (the Philosopher's Stone) was actually made (not stolen from the previous owner), thus shutting out billions of people from immortality. In the original Harry Potter universe, why didn't Flamel make more than one stone ? He already knew how to do it and he had done it before, why didn't he make more stones so that everyone else could benefit? Surely a 'good' wizard—companion of Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, Order of Merlin (first class), Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Grand Sorcerer, Supreme ...

During the attack on Starkiller Base, Mon Calamari cruisers, Star Destroyers and all the other capital ships were conspicuously absent. In fact, the only spaceships I saw in that scene were X-wings and TIE fighters. I understand that the Resistance is underfunded, but are they really so poor they can't afford a corvette or something? Or at least a few Y-wing bombers to take out the oscillator? For a major military installation, Starkiller Base seems very poorly defended as well. Is the Finalizer the only star destroyer the First Order has left? If the Order can turn an entire planet into a weapons platform, they must be able to crank out something better than TIE fighters. TFA fighters are significantly improved over their OT equivalents, but the lack of bomber cover, capital ships or light cruisers are highly unusual. Does the novelization/other sources clarify this? Answer Yes. TL;DR Yes, Resistance basically has nothing else. 3 X-Wings, a rowboat, and a barefoot drummer boy. N...

'Tell him that on the night Lord Voldemort tried to kill him, when Lily cast her own life between them as a shield, the Killing Curse rebounded upon Lord Voldemort, and a fragment of Voldemort's soul was blasted apart from the whole, and latched itself on to the only living soul left in that collapsing building. Part of Lord Voldemort lives inside Harry...' Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - pp.550-1 - Bloomsbury - chapter 33, The Prince's Tale What we have here, then, is a soul fragment existing outside of a body for long enough to "latch itself on to" another host, when its body is destroyed. Why, then, can this not happen again? Why is the soul fragment destroyed in the Forbidden Forest, when Voldemort hits Harry with a Killing Curse? Why does the fragment of Voldemort's soul, blasted apart from its new host, not "[latch] itself on to [any] living soul" in the forest? I answer this by saying that it is simply the nature of Horcruxes. ...

I am just rewatching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine . I was wondering whether the producers planned the Dominion plot, and especially that the Founders are changelings, from the beginning. In the first episodes it was established that Odo was the only (known) one of his kind. It is only natural to explore his origin within the series. Was this meant to be the Founders/Dominion plot from the beginning? Answer While it may or may not have been planned from the conception of the series, it was very well thought and planned out from at least season 2 . This Wikipedia article contains some good comments from interviews and discussions with the Deep Space Nine writers. Among the comments: In 2002, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine producer Ira Steven Behr stated that unlike some plots, which originated from a single small idea, the creation of the Dominion villain and story arc was "very much thought out." And this: Behr said that the earliest mention of the Dominion was purposely planted ...

Which Harry Potter related writings has J K Rowling written (not counting the seven main books)? I'm ideally looking for writings set in the Harry Potter world, not writings about the books. (i.e. The Tales of Beedle the Bard is good; an essay about her experiences with the fandom is not) I'm also only looking for writings that were published at one point in some form or another (be it online, in print, or even for a now defunct official fan club). Answer Note: Many smaller tidbits ( example ) are not mentioned in this list. Lots of these can be found on Accio-Quote Companion books Quidditch Through The Ages Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them (both the 2001 and 2017 editions) The Tales of Beedle the Bard Book of Spells (stories and descriptions were written by Rowling) Book of Potions (stories and descriptions were written by Rowling) various early drafts/sketches of the books Rumor tabloids Wizard of the Month FAQ's with long answers ( Thestrals , Mirror , Mark ...