Star Wars Set Getting Buried by Sand Dunes
- 11 years ago
Buildings that served as the set for part of the movie Star Wars Episode I: A Phantom Menace are being threatened by moving sand dunes in the Tunisian desert.
Buildings that served as the set for part of the movie Star Wars Episode I: A Phantom Menace are being threatened by moving sand dunes in the Tunisian desert.
In the Star Wars movie, the buildings were the city of Mos Espa on the planet Tatooine, the hometown of young Anakin Skywalker, who eventually becomes Darth Vader.
In the desert, wind blown sands create crescent shaped dunes called barchans that move approximately 50 feet per year.
One barchan is moving closer and closer to the buildings, which are being used as a geographic reference for scientists studying the sand dunes, to compare how fast they move.
The first author of the report, Doctor Ralph Lorenz from Johns Hopkins University said: “Even if the threatening barchan fizzles out as it meets the set, a larger, slower-moving barchan is lumbering behind it.”
Similar sand dunes are also known to form on other celestial bodies like Mars and the largest moon of Saturn called Titan.
Scientists say that the barchans on Earth move 10 times faster than the ones on the surface of Mars.
The desert set from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope was buried by sand in 2003.
Buildings that served as the set for part of the movie Star Wars Episode I: A Phantom Menace are being threatened by moving sand dunes in the Tunisian desert.
In the Star Wars movie, the buildings were the city of Mos Espa on the planet Tatooine, the hometown of young Anakin Skywalker, who eventually becomes Darth Vader.
In the desert, wind blown sands create crescent shaped dunes called barchans that move approximately 50 feet per year.
One barchan is moving closer and closer to the buildings, which are being used as a geographic reference for scientists studying the sand dunes, to compare how fast they move.
The first author of the report, Doctor Ralph Lorenz from Johns Hopkins University said: “Even if the threatening barchan fizzles out as it meets the set, a larger, slower-moving barchan is lumbering behind it.”
Similar sand dunes are also known to form on other celestial bodies like Mars and the largest moon of Saturn called Titan.
Scientists say that the barchans on Earth move 10 times faster than the ones on the surface of Mars.
The desert set from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope was buried by sand in 2003.