how do lightsabers work?

Started by Tangible God2 pages
Tangible God Lets all love Lain

And that Vong armour crap.

chinabing Senior Member
Originally posted by Tarvos
Point is, lightsabers can cut through any known material besides Cortosis.

Is that why Obi-Wan and Dooku's lightsabers make that "clanking" sound when they both strike the floor of the Geonosis hanger during their duel? When I saw that I thought "production error" or the floor is impervious to lightsabers!

DarkC -KMC THREAD KILLER-

Originally posted by Darth Vious
So you think trolling is acceptable? That's what the guy was doing.

What, you think being sarcastic is trolling?

Wow, some people seem sensitive in the SWF's.
Put him on your ignore list or something if you don't want to read his so-called worthless posts.

Originally posted by Darth Vious
Plasma is super-heated gas. There are no 'gas cells' in a lightsaber, simply power cells. If a lightsaber blade was some form of plasma, it would be a) too hot to hold near the body, as Jedi do, and b) would heat the hilt to a point where it was impossible to hold without severe burns. Also, an electromagnetic envelope would not account for how the blades can be held against each other, rather than repelling instantly...

There's no gas-cells in a lightsaber, correct, because there is no need for them. We do need a power source from which to heat the surplus plasma, and likely from those power cells you mentioned. Kinetic energy is the energy of movement of molecules/ions and this is what causes heat.

A proper plasma-based lightsaber would not heat the hilt as you described. If the kinetic energy of the active ions in the lightsaber were only confined to the limits of its magnetic field, then how can it affect the environment outside without any physical means?

Explain to me scientifically why the electromagnetic envelopes would not account for the fact that they can be held against another, albeit with difficulty.

It's the most likely way how a lightsaber works. Matthew Stover, author of the official novelization of ROTS. He continuously mentioned Anakin's lightsaber as a "bar of blue plasma", especially during his turn to the dark side.

chinabing Senior Member

And how does a lightsaber know when to stop extending from the hilt?

Darth Vious Restricted

Originally posted by DarkC
What, you think being sarcastic is trolling?

No. I think being an argumentative **** and trying to pick a fight in every thread you post in is trolling though, and that's precicely what they were doing at the time 🙂

Originally posted by DarkC
There's no gas-cells in a lightsaber, correct, because there is no need for them. We do need a power source from which to heat the surplus plasma,

Surplus from what? Plasma is not a substance that just 'appears' out of nowhere, so there would have to be something to either create it, or store the gas which is then energized to become plasma.

Originally posted by DarkC
Kinetic energy is the energy of movement of molecules/ions and this is what causes heat.

Yes. If the blade of a lightsaber was composed of a rotating stream of gravitons, then the motion of those particles would indeed induce heat in things it came into contact with (as a file will heat the metal it is filing, despite neither being hot to start with)

Originally posted by DarkC

A proper plasma-based lightsaber would not heat the hilt as you described. If the kinetic energy of the active ions in the lightsaber were only confined to the limits of its magnetic field, then how can it affect the environment outside without any physical means?

Magnetic fields can not contain heat. It might be possible to contain a stream of plasma inside a magnetic bottle, but that would do nothing to contain the heat, which would still escape. Think of the blade of a lightsaber. It has a white core, and then the colored glow surrounding it. Lightsaber cuts are not the thickness of the entire visible colored glow, but only the thickness of the inner core. It could be that the colored glow is particle decay from the main core, and the color simply a result of the type of crystal used in the refraction of the particles.
That suggests that there is not a 'magnetic field' either confining the shape of the blade, or preventing the particles of the blade escaping, therefore, if there was plasma involved, then its heat would escape. If however, there is no plasma, and the blade is some other form of coherent energy (I suspect gravitons) that would explain why the blade of a saber does not produce heat (despite the particle decay) but creates heating effects when it comes into contact with a solid object.

Originally posted by DarkC

Explain to me scientifically why the electromagnetic envelopes would not account for the fact that they can be held against another, albeit with difficulty.

Magnets (and magnetic fields) either repel or attract. The blades of lightsabers neither attract nor repel each other in the way magnets do. What you call the 'difficulty in holding the blades together' is not a case of the blades trying to repel from each other, but a case of the fighters trying to physically push their opponent and using the blade as the balancing point.

Originally posted by DarkC

It's the most likely way how a lightsaber works. Matthew Stover, author of the official novelization of ROTS. He continuously mentioned Anakin's lightsaber as a "bar of blue plasma", especially during his turn to the dark side.

No it's not. Star Wars rarely displayed tractor beams or forcefields of the same type seen on Star Trek, but graviton devices (forcefields/tractor beams) are the kind of technology that would best explain not only a lightsaber's blade, but the properties that it displays. And the official LFL answer on lightsabers is that the blade is 'pure energy', which is not plasma. Energy, however, can take many different forms, and a graviton would indeed be a form of energy.

jobi-wan Junior Member

how lightsabers work

Hi I'm new here.

I was told that lightsabers are powered by some sort of crystal that gives off its own energy source, which is then concentrated by a mechanism inside the actual handle.

Does anyone know if I'm right?

Council#13 The Omega Male

Yup, I know they have to do something with crystals, but beyond that I'm baffled