Are Lightsabers Theoretically Possible?

I ’ve never been a Star Wars devotee . I ’ve seen only one of the movies , The Phantom Menace , and I was eight old age old at the clip . And yet even I , as a child , owned and played with one of those littlelightsaber toys , as have millions of children before and after me ( not to mention the millions of children yet - unborn , who will not be spared generalization into theDisney Industrial Complex ) . And of trend what every child thinks as he or she swings that lighted plastic rod around is : I wish this fucking affair was tangible ! No doubt Disney would rake in even more money if it soldactual lightsabers , but , brush off the impact this might have on lightsaber - related offense , the motion then becomes : are actual lightsabers even possible , scientifically ? For this week’sGiz Asks , we reached out to a act of laser and plasm scientists to find out .

Dennis K. Killinger

Professor Emeritus , Physics , University of South Florida

The Star Wars universe lightsaber is usually associated with a laser or laser beam that is able to burn , curve , or damage an physical object / target or foeman . Technically , since their invention in 1960 , we have had many different variety of lasers , and these have discover a wide-eyed variety of uses , from 0.001 Watt red optical maser used to skim the UPC code at grocery check-out procedure , centre - safe 1 Watt IR lasers used to represent construction and roadways using lidar ( laser microwave radar ) , to remote perception using laser probe to quantify the earth ’s ozone hole and CO2 storey . As far as burning or cut , we already have industrial lasers that are used to weld car body and cut metallic element plateful . However , the power furnish that these lasers use are usually the size of it of a large bag and weigh about 50 lbs ( not on the button contributive to sabre - exert ) . In add-on , optical maser beams hail in different color or wavelengths , so this scene is already there .

The one aspect of lightsabers that seems unfeasible is the conception of its acting as a substantial physical pole or sabre that can “ hit ” or “ strike ” an opponent . In the pic the mechanical hit of the dueling lightsabers is enforce by good effects — the lightsabers have a “ humming , ” and you’re able to hear them hitting each other . But if you take two torch beam and cross one beam with the other shaft , there is no phone or force experienced by one Light Within beam on the other . This is because photons have no mass , which means that a optical maser or opthalmic irradiation has no slew . To get the item across : I like to say that “ You ca n’t utilise a low-cal beam to hammer a nail . ” So in this common sense , it is not executable that two laser balance beam can “ hit ” each other in the mechanical sensory faculty . However , there is a scientific exclusion to this : as happen upon by recent physics Nobel Prize winner A. Ashkin , a laser beam under the right conditions can be used as an optical trap or as an optical tweezer to trap and move very small objects , such as a bacteria . While one could stretch the truth and call this a Star Wars Tractor Beam , there is a 1,000 billion billion time departure between moving a bacterium and the mass of a spaceship ( ie . SpaceX second level starship . )

Illustration: Benjamin Currie/Gizmodo

All of that say , it can be indicate that the lightsaber is not a laser beam but is alternatively made up of a gaseous high - temperature plasma or a plasma - like vacuum tube . Plasmas are high-pitched - temperature , gaseous discharges consisting of electrons and ions at temperature of around 5,000 to 10,000 C or higher , and are represented by the gun discharge inside a fluorescent tube , a lightning bolt in the atmosphere , and the solar wind of plasma that causes the northern light . But how to create a unchanging rod of plasma in the atmosphere ? One means is to use a high - king optical maser and centre it to a spot in the melodic line such that you have Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy ( LIBS ) , which create a blood plasma slur in the air , which then emits the fluorescent sparkle from the blood plasma musket ball ; then , by proper adjustment of optical maser tycoon and visual alliance , an stretch filament or plasma in the air can be produce . Such a proficiency has been manifest under research lab conditions using a femtosecond optical maser , and could give a glow plasma cavalry sword , albeit one with a limited lifetime . However , several of the issues noted above would still limit the utility of this blood plasma sabre .

So in sum-up , some of the physics aspects of the lightsaber can be show to be theoretically potential , but many of the pragmatic feature are orders of magnitude away from world or even opening . But it would still be fun to essay .

Mark Csele

Professor , Photonics , Niagara College , Canada

You ’d be surprised how many times I have been asked this one .

First , let ’s consider using a laser ( my favorite ) . deliberate a shaft of light of sparkle like that from a muscular laser . One of the interesting character about laser twinkle is that it is collimated — it travels in a straight beam that has little variance . A regular flashlight , for lesson , will always have a beam which open out as it travels , no matter what you do with the optics , but the coherent irradiation from a optical maser can have astonishingly slight spread . It will maintain its “ power ” to cut / destroy / etc . for a retentive distance from the laser ( be it 10 cm , 1 MB , or perhaps even 100 m ) . From that standpoint , it would be ideal for our lightsaber .

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trouble is , lighting does n’t just stop in free space . To build a lightsaber we ’d need to devise a way to have those photon of radiation sickness go about 1.5 m and then just magically halt — and that is well beyond our understanding of cathartic . I ’m not saying we could never discover a way to do it ( heck , a hundred days ago splitting of the molecule seemed jolly unrealistic ) , but our current understanding of physics says this just is n’t possible .

Could we apply a corpuscle other than a photon ? Say , something like a pion , which can travel some fixed distance and then decay ( and in doing so “ stop ” ) ? Perhaps , but we do n’t know of any particles that would maintain lethality until some gunpoint where they just disappear . Maybe one sidereal day we can “ contrive ” such a corpuscle , but today , this is strictly the stuff of science fiction . I might tot that particle accelerators are huge beasts in terms of kilometers in duration — the laser is a good wager for miniaturization .

Perhaps the best approach , using current technology , would be a plasma : a spicy stream of ionized gas speck confine by a turgid magnetic field . This would ask a gas supplying . The constrictive magnetized field is the hard part , though — it would be huge , and require an vast amount of power — so , hardly small enough to check in the palm of the hand , but at least “ doable ” in theory with current engineering science .

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Now pin a few photon in a crystal inside a lab ( been done ) and make a hand - held lightsaber are two different thing , but at least the canonic physics are , while “ not there yet , ” at least supporting of the theme of a trapped beam of light .

Notwithstanding that , do n’t go bet for it at your local gun shop class just yet . ( I ’m thinking of the Terminator scene with the blood plasma rifle here ) .

Lorin Matthews

Professor , Physics , Baylor University

A lightsaber is , according to Wikipedia at least , a magnetically confined plasma . That makes sentience , as one thing that lightsabers are good for is cutting through various materials , and we already expend plasm blowtorch to cut through dense cloth like steel . However , the flaming used in a plasma torch are only a few inches long , as the torch is ionizing gas that flow through a nozzle . A short distance from the electrodes inside the torch , the negatron and ions in the gas have collided with the indifferent gas in the atmosphere and lost energy .

So the problem is to support the blood plasma , keep the plasma particles from colliding with the electroneutral tune , and extend the distance over which the blood plasma has energy .

William Duplessie

One in reality can confine charged particles ( plasm ) in a magnetic bottleful , but the problem is that the “ bottle ” leaks at both ends , so the plasm quickly escapes . Current DoS - of - the - art cathartic does make purpose of a charismatic playing field to confine plasmas , especially for the use of fusion reactors . To get around the fact that a elongate feeding bottle leaks at both ends , the magnetized field line are curved to create a doughnut — no end ! However , the plasm still leak out out in different directions , among other trouble , and the magnetic bailiwick needed are quite complex . ( This is why we still do n’t have fusion energy , but we are working on it . )

The color of the blood plasma lambency is see by the nuclear vigour level in the gas which is ionize . Thus neon plasmas are red and argon plasmas are pinky - purple and oxygen plasma tend to be light-green . The Wikipedia article says that the coloring material of the lightsaber is controlled by a “ kyber quartz glass . ” This is true for laser , where the color of the laser light is check by the transition levels for electrons in the crystalline textile , but not true for a plasma . To get different colors , the lightsaber would call for to use dissimilar work gases or excite a different energy level for the electron transitions . A stiff Jedi could utilise the force play to change the energy and sex a dissimilar changeover level — but in an earth - like standard pressure , the primary gas is N , so the freshness will be purply - low-spirited . That said , check outthe colors of the dawning ( northerly lights)—the solar wind plasma is directed to the world ’s atmosphere by the earth ’s magnetic field , and at different elevation ( and energies ) many unlike gas are excited , produce an array of colors .

One of the important characteristics of the lightsaber is that it can be block by another lightsaber . In this character , the plasm would have to be really slow — at least as thick as steel . This goes back to how well the magnetised nursing bottle is designed to pin the plasm . It would not only have to pin down the plasma , but collect additional gas from the surrounding air to reduce it into a in high spirits enough compactness . ( Question : does a lightsaber work in outer space ? ) I suppose it is potential that there could be a conformation of the magnetic fields such that the magnetic fields of two different light saber repel each other .

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