http://gizmodo.com/5560206/the-spyder-iii-pro-arctic-is-a-real-life-lightsaber
Something I've always wondered; how does the light saber beam terminate at a given length?
This laser would be useless for fighting aboard a spaceship... turn it on and you've instantly poked a hole in the fargin' ship!
ansonivan wrote: Something I've always wondered; how does the light saber beam terminate at a given length? This laser would be useless for fighting aboard a spaceship... turn it on and you've instantly poked a hole in the fargin' ship!
i'm sure there are more "correct" theories out there, but i've always assumed that there was some sort of a reflector that extended a few feet out from the base of the light saber or some sort of a containment field involved. that's why the "blade" of the light saber extends out from the base when activated instead of just appearing at full length, and why two light sabers don't just pass right thru each other.
I always thought a light saber was actually some sort of expandable material that just was somehow able to contain a fusion reaction producing large amounts of heat.
PHeller wrote: I always thought a light saber was actually some sort of expandable material that just was somehow able to contain a fusion reaction producing large amounts of heat.
Probably more like some sort of plasma (make sure you say it like "mag-ma") being held in place by magnetic fields.
The light saber ejects a highly excited focused column of particulate matter that constitutes the center of the "blade". Upon reaching the terminus (point) of the blade this matter encounters a torus of electrophotonic energy produced in 3 to 5 focused beams from the handle. This transform the excited matter into excited antimatter that due to its spin properties is highly cohesive and destructive to matter that it encounters. This antimatter stream is repellant to the inner matter stream and reverses as a tube over the matter stream. Being highly cohesive it tried to collapse onto the inner stream while being held out by the repellant properties of the differing matter. Some leakage between the matter column (outbound) and antimatter tube (return) causes the glow or light phenomena to occur. Within an atmosphere this glow is also air reacting with the antimatter tube.
As for light saber blades stopping each other...The antimatter stream becomes more cohesive as it is compressed by another antimatter stream and will quickly become exponentially stronger. Think of magnets pressing together,
The toroidal nature of the terminus field would cause the "poking through the hull" symptoms as described...just poor design I guess.
Or I could be wrong...might just be magic or hokum.
Bruce
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