Starcraftsmanship Compo: The Results
On Friday we gave you guys the chance to win a mammoth stash of StarCraft 2 merchandise, including the above canvas artwork of Arcturus Mengsk. We asked you to describe, in 50 words or less, what you'd craft a star into, and why. And boy, did you ever respond. If I read one more answer relating to Dyson spheres I think I'm going to turn into a Dyson sphere.
Read the best answers and find out who our winner is after the jump. Good Luck Have Fun!
Let's get huge nerdcase Chris Allen out of the way first. If it hadn't been for our word limit he almost certainly would have won.
Following the theory of mass-energy equivalence, a star has a finite amount of stuff it can be crafted into. E=mc2 lets us know that, providing we don’t change our frame of reference, we can directly convert stuff based on mass alone.
For our star, let us assume that it has a mass of 1 Solar Mass, the same as our own sun, and that we’ve already neatly got it matching Earth’s velocity, to avoid having an relativistic mass differences due the differences in velocity.
This means I can have 1.98892×1030 kg of “stuff”.
For my chosen “stuff” I’m going to go for 2 Krispy Kreme Donuts and a bottle of Cider. Scientific measurements (kitchen scales) tell me that these have a mass of 52g and 603g respectively. Hence 1 Duodonutcider Unit is equal to 707g.
So, 1 star is equivalent to 2.81318x1030 Duodonutcider units.
Current estimates put the world population at 6,860,523,070[1], which means that 1 Sun will provide 4.10053x1020 Duodonutcider units per person. That means that for the next 1.12266x1018 years, every person alive would be able to enjoy a couple of donuts and a bottle of cider.
As the sun will have become a Red Giant in roughly 5 billion years[2] and caused all life on Earth to cease to exist, this means I’ve pretty much got us covered. So yeah, chill out, have a beer and some donuts, we’ve got plenty to go around.
Danny Dreijer tried his luck with some clever wordplay, very nearly putting our own John Walker out of a job.
I would craft a star into a star, so you can star as a star while you stare at a star.
This entry from Richard Clifford almost brought me to tears. I think I must have been exhausted.
I would fold the star in two, so that it may burn twice as bright but half as long.
Another near-winner was Seb Horsewell, whose brave effort was scuppered by its final four words not making any sense.
At the start of the universe only hydrogen existed. As hydrogen collected, increasing temperature and density due to gravity the hydrogen gets hot enough to start fusion. Fusing light elements produces heavy elements like iron, or carbon. So, technically everything you know is crafted from stars. I'd craft this.
Which is a better than Andy Barnes, whose entire entry makes no sense but is totally awesome.
It would totally be a sword. How awesome would it be to weild a sword made out of startdust, I mean a guy has made one from a meteorite but I reckon a Star is the way to go.
Been a while since we had a nerdy contestant, hasn't it? What'choo got for us, Daniel Harris!
Stars are inefficient, because they're spherical - only one fairly narrow band of the orbital plane can support life. Crowded! So I'd craft the star stuff into a very wide, very skinny torus, allowing thousand of habitats to closely orbit around it like little rings on a big ring. Ace.
Genius Owen Pallaway provided the first and the best of the "alternate star" entries.
I would use the movie star Robert Pattinson. I would roll him in glue, then glitter. Then stuff him full of (well-wrapped) sweeties, hang him up and let poor children with big sticks use him as a sparkling, bloody Twilight-themed pinata.
And now, the runner up! Renegade Andrew Stark bucked the rules and touched our hearts.
I wouldn’t craft a star – A star is probably the most wondrous thing in this universe. Burning for millions of years giving heat and light, providing the raw energy for life. Without their gravity no worlds would exist. They don’t need crafting, stars are perfect.
But sadly, there can only be one. By popular consensus, it was Andrew Morris' thought-provoking entry which we decided was best of all.
I would craft some sort of man, who would then be waiting in the sky. He’d probably want to meet us, but he may just blow our minds, the ‘Starman’. So he’ll be still waiting in the sky, informing us not to blow it, because he knows it’s all worthwhile.
Congratulations, Andrew! Your stash of StarCraft 2 goodies will be winging its way to you shortly.
That was fun, wasn't it? A big thanks goes out to all of our contestants. Now, let's close with this YouTube video that I selected entirely at random.