Via the excellent movie hounds at Tagline, we find this geekily-hilarious analysis of the dubious engineering behind the Death Star’s trash compactor:
If the Empire insists on ejecting trash into space, why do they bother compacting it? Space is infinite, is it not? In such an environment, it hardly matters what size the trash is. In fact, a persuasive argument can be made that it’s actually better for the trash to take up more space, so that it appears on radar systems as something for Empire ships to avoid. Compacted trash creates smaller chunks of harder trash that would undoubtedly cause serious damage to Empire starships.
As Stephen at Tagline observes, an excellent conversation topic for your next geek meet-up.
DarrenBarefoot.com 
I may just have to quote you on that ‘excellent movie hound’ thing, Darren. 😉
And here’s me thinking a man like you would have seen that article, already….
Perhaps the more important question is: where does the Trash Compacter monster go when presumbly all the trash is ejected into space?
Simple – the whole in the hull from which the garbage gets ejected is only so big……
:)~