But one field we don’t talk about too much is our hardcore nerdiness when it comes to Star Wars. Pretty much everyone has a soft spot for George Lucas’ classic space opera (unless you happen to be a Star Trek enthusiast) but we take our Han Solo, Boba Fett and Princess Leia pretty seriously around here.
We don’t get to talk much about our obsession too often, seeing as there’s not a lot of land development in space. However, we just stumbled upon possibly the most relevant Star Wars related article of all time.
The question: Could you build a scale lego model of the Death Star?
The pop nerd publication Wired tackled the admittedly very intriguing question in one of their science blogs. According to the article, the Death Star has a diameter of 160 kilometres. Pretty huge right? Using some super complex mathematical calculations, the writer determined that a to-scale lego model would be 3.52 kilometres in diameter (based on the average human height of 1.77 metres).
Here’s a handy image of what this massive scale model would look like next to the world’s tallest buildings:
For a little more perspective, here’s a very awesome photo of the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa:
So yea, you get the idea. This would be a very large scale model. Assuming average lego piece size, the writer estimates there would be 10 to the power of 14 pieces in the model (that’s 1 followed by 14 zeroes or one hundred trillion).
Based on the average cost of a lego piece, the writer also estimates a model of this size would cost almost 10 trillion dollars. Not exactly something you’d be placing underneath the Christmas tree for your 9 year-old nephew…
