Luke Skywalker survived the arctic conditions of the planet Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back only because Han Solo killed his tauntaun (a native beast of burden) and shoved Luke inside the animal's warm carcass. This led the blog Wolf Gnards to ask, as a practical question, how long could Luke really survive in a tauntaun's body?
It's an interesting hypothesis, but it should be followed with rigorous scientific testing. Any volunteers?
Link via Forces of Geek | Image: Lucasfilm
In a normal environment, a carcass gets cold in 8 to 36 hours losing an average rate of 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit per hour. However, the ice world of Hoth is not an average environment. The Star Wars database lists that Hoth reaches nightly temperatures of -60 F. In a frigid, sub-zero environment, body heat can be lost almost 32 times faster. This means a Tauntaun's body heat could drop almost 51.2 F every hour. Considering that Han Solo's Tauntaun died of severe hypothermia even before it was cut open with Luke's light saber, one could assume it's core body temperature was already well below normal. The problem for Luke is if the Tauntaun's body temperature reaches freezing point those once toasty guts, blood, and assorted alien goo, will in fact become a frozen coffin. If the Tauntaun died of cardiac arrest due to hypothermia with an average body temperature of 75 F (23 C), and if Tauntaun blood freezes at 28.4 F (-2 C), then Han has roughly 56 minutes to set up a shelter before Luke once again is in danger of losing his life in the barren wasteland of Hoth.
It's an interesting hypothesis, but it should be followed with rigorous scientific testing. Any volunteers?
Link via Forces of Geek | Image: Lucasfilm
Who said it had to still be warm? Styrofoam isn't warm... but it'll keep your drink hot for a while. Maybe its fur is super insulating, or its guts... or the chemicals in its cooling coagulated blood. Who even says this is your average carbon-based life form? Maybe its got some weird alien system made from different base elements or something.
Maybe the Taun-taun's hypothermia was still pretty damn warm for human standards, but cold enough to kill a Taun-taun.
*hmmph*
Obviously, Luke did survive so the author's analysis must be wrong.
Geek, yes,
Loser, only at games of chance.
Aside from that- Does anyone know a good Tauntaun dealer or even perhaps by now even a Tauntaunbreeder here on our own planet...? I have it from some source that the import of Tauntauns is a bit of a complex and expensive affair with all the quarantaine-restrictions, the high cost of interplanetary transport of living animals and the choice of spaceport in relation to all these reg's on terrorism prevention by the US.