- You know what?
I'm going to be brave and brake some new ground here in 2017
by saying it doesn't make sense that Han Solo would
shoot second after Greedo in the cantina scene,
scientifically speaking that is.
Look, I'll be honest, it'd be really easy for me to jump
on the internet bandwagon and say
that it's a crime that Lucas reedited this scene
to make Han shoot second, but I don't really care.
Because no matter which version of
the scene you choose to believe in
technically Han always shoots last.
Don't think about it too hard #HanShotLast
Either way, as if the internet needed anymore
reason to hate the reedited version of that scene,
I wanted to provide a more objective reason
why it doesn't make sense.
And not just a character story arc reason
about how Han has to go from scoundrel to hero
or whatever.
And yes I know that I am attempting to bring science
into a completely fictional world that involves the
equivalent of space magic but,
it's kind of what we do around here,
especially this month it's our theme science.
So the cantina scene right here involving two gun slingers
Han Solo and Greedo, kind of resembles
and old school western shoot out,
like a duel but less formal which is helpful
in case you don't want to memorize the ten duel
commandments even though there is a very
catchy song about it.
It was pretty common in old Western
movies to have the villain make the first move
in the duel, only to be thwarted by
the lighting fast hero gun slinger.
Somehow.
In fact, this idea of how the hero
could win by shooting second in a duel
caught the attention of none other than
renowned physicist Niels Bohr.
Bohr proposed this idea that the reason why a
second shooter in a duel might win, is because,
its slower to act, than to react.
Essentially we all know that our brains
are wired to react to certain stimuli faster
than we can consciously think it through.
Like when a door slams and your instincts
(door slams)
tell you to jump before you can
even process what's going on.
Evolutionarily this is an incredibly great
advantage to have.
Just wire in some automatic responses
you don't have to think about what to do when
there's a potential threat, you just do it.
Basically your body is better at surviving than you are.
Bohr's hypothesis was that consciously
deciding when to shoot, being that first shooter
would always be slower than simply tapping
into your survival instincts and letting
your body react to being shot at.
In other words, the second shooter
in a duel has a survival advantage.
He reportedly tested this out in a
very non scientific method by just
shooting fellow physicists with toy guns.
He would always be reactive instead of proactive,
the Han Solo to his colleagues Greedo.
At least in the reedited version of that scene.
And he claims he won every duel.
Though most would argue that he was just either
really lucky, or a naturally gifted shot.
But how about some actual scientific studies
Years later Andrew Welchman from
The University of Birmingham did test out
this theory of reacting versus acting in duels.
But you know, instead of having people
shoot each other because that would be really
hard to find participants for,
they instead had a set up involving an array of buttons.
It was two opponents facing off, there was no
countdown timer telling them when to go,
no noise signaling them off to the races,
they just sat there.
Waiting for the other person to make the first move.
And whoever went for it first, the second one had to
go in and hit the series of buttons
even faster and try to survive.
Survive, again, it's just buttons,
they're just pressing buttons.
And again I want to stress that neither
of the opponents knew if they were going
to be acting first, reaching for those
buttons first, or reacting to their opponent
going after it first.
There were no assigned roles it was just
kind of a spur of the moment thing.
What the researchers found was kind of
interesting and supports Bohr's idea.
The reacting opponents, the ones
who were reaching for the array of buttons second,
actually completed the button pressing sequence
nine percent faster than their opponents
who started, the ones who acted first.
So if this were an actual duel or confrontation
in a space pub, the opponent who shoots second
is indeed faster than the one who shoots first.
So I guess Bohr was on to something.
Looks like it does make sense for Han to shoot
second after all, except it doesn't.
Why would I title the video the way that I did.
You've seen what the thumbnail looks like.
Obviously there's a catch here.
As it turns out that nine percent speed increase,
for the second shooter only equates
to around 21 milliseconds in actual time.
Which, is not a lot.
It's about 12 times shorter than the average
human reaction time to visual stimuli.
That being around 250 milliseconds so
quite a bit of difference there.
Still though humans react to audio
stimuli even faster than visual ones
and of course those blasters make loud noises.
(blasters shooting)
So, benefit of the doubt let's
say that Han was reacting to that,
could that 21 milliseconds make a difference, no.
Yes, reacting to audio is typically faster,
but it still takes around 170 milliseconds.
That is still around eight times
longer than the 21 millisecond advantage
of being a second shooter in a duel.
So taking this all into consideration,
this scene doesn't really make sense
for a completely new host of reasons.
Although I guess if you really wanted
to be apologetic for this scene,
there are at least two reasons I can
think of how this scene would make logical sense.
The first one being if Greedo was
as bad of a shot as a stormtrooper.
Then after that low hanging fruit there,
the second one is if Han is force sensitive.
Which would actually explain a lot.
Other than having that incredibly quick
reaction time to dodging blaster fire,
he's an incredible pilot having taking
the millennium Falcon out of light speed manually
before it crashed, always beating the odds somehow.
And having unbelievably favorable
luck in battle even when blind.
Although as Obi Wan points out,
- In my experience, there's no such thing as luck.
- Huh, that seems like that could be some
sort of follow up video here.
In the meantime, I'd love to know
what you guys think.
I look forward to reading 800 comments
about how Han shot first even though
as we all know, no matter how you look at
it Han shot last #Hanshotlast.
Also we're going to be trying something new,
the day that this video goes up,
later today sometime we're going
to be going live on our Facebook page
that you probably didn't even know we had,
we've never promote it before.
But we have it and we're doing some live stuff over there.
It's kind of a post show, conversation,
discussion it's going to be a good time.
We're going to be talking more
Star Wars, more Han Solo,
we're going to be talking about why
I lied to you guys on Twitter.
Fun times they'll be linked to
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can just search for NerdSync Productions, you'll find it.
Normally we do two videos a week here
but the second one this week won't
be on this channel,
it'll be on Mr.Sunday Movies' channel
he is an awesome guy definitely go check him out.
But also that video will be out tomorrow,
as of the time this video goes live.
If you're watching in the future
it's already up, I'll probably
have a link somewhere but until then
until you wait for that go ahead
and watch our entire Star Wars playlist.
All about how the Star Wars logo is different
than you think it is, or how C-3PO
got that red arm in The Force Awakens.
That's one of my favorites personally.
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My name is Scott, reminding you to read
between the panels and grow smarter through comics.
See ya
(techno music)