As the holiday spirit begins to infuse the general population I have just received my favourite reference question of the year.  Keep in mind I did receive this from a staff member…

My nephew just asked me “Do you think a Wampa could throw you from Hoth to Tattooine?”

I have replied as a librarian and member of the 501st Garrison Star Wars Charity group.

Dear XXX,

Stormtrooper TK6474 of the 42 Outpost member of 501^st Garrison says in short , No!

Why?  Because a Wampa is a Wampa ice creatures were carnivorous predatory reptomammals indigenous to the remote Outer Rim Territories ice planet Hoth.  Tattooine is a different planet.  But I will answer that later on.

Please see the Wiki of the Wampa
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Wampa

However, there is something called the Tatooine Howler, also known as a “desert wampa” due to its resemblance to the ice wampa of Hoth, was a creature native to Tatooine. While it possessed characteristics of a Wampa, such as tusks and fur, the Tatooine Howler had no actual relation to it at all.

Well, Hoth is 52,250 light years away from the Galactic Core, and Tatooine is 43,000 light years from the Core, so they could be anywhere from 7,250 light years apart to 24,750 light years apart, because the galaxy is 120,000 light years across. (It is approximately 9 trillion kilometres).

I’m going to work out very basically the physics involved.  Work is a transfer of energy so work is done on an object when you transfer energy to that object. The amount of work done on an object depends on the amount of force exerted on the object and the amount of distance the object moves.

Work = Force x Distance

According to Newton’s Second Law of Motion, the net force on an object is dependent on the mass of the object, and its acceleration during the movement.

Force = Mass x Acceleration

The common unit of force is the Newton (N). One Newton is the force required to accelerate one kilogram of mass at 1 meter per second per second.

1 N = 1kg m/s2

The amount of work done to push a 76 N stormtrooper a distance of 9 trillion x 1000 meters would be

76 N x 120,000 x 9,000,000,000,000,000 m = 82,080,000,000,000,000,000,000 N  or 82,080,000,000, terajoule or 82²¹ joules.  And at this energy the Stormtrooper would simply combust and vanish as he is vaporized.  (A human body vaporizes with about 2.99 Gigjoules of energy applied to it.) So that won’t work.

Alternatively put the Wampa on the Millenium Falcon at it would take a shorter time.  See how fast the Millenium Falcon can go,

http://www.tor.com/2014/12/08/star-wars-how-fast-is-the-millennium-falcon/

Therefore, basically it would take one day as the Millennium Falcon’s top speed is 25,000 light years per day, 1041.66 light years per hour.

So the Answer is that if the Wampa weighing 150-200 Kg could throw this stormtrooper onto the Millenium Falcoln and it could transport me there.  Done!