How Lightsabers Work 613
SirMutex writes "How Stuff Works explains the inner workings of the Jedi weapon of choice. Complete with alternate uses and safety considerations, the article is a welcomed companion for those still learning the ways of the Force." From the article: "Chances are that you have seen a lightsaber at one time or another, whether on the evening news or down at the local cantina. Therefore you know that a lightsaber is an amazing and versatile device that is able to cut through nearly anything in a matter of milliseconds. Have you ever wondered how these remarkable weapons work? Where does the energy come from, and how are they able to contain that energy in a rod-like column of glowing power?"
Cut, not Slash/Slice (Score:4, Interesting)
There is a big difference between slicing/slashing and CUTTING. According to Miyamoto Musashi [wikipedia.org], perhaps the greatest swordsman to have ever lived -- it is the act of CUTTING, and not slicing/slashing that makes a great warrior. Siege your opponent -- and cut them in two. It's all in the follow through.
With light sabers, perhaps they allow slicing/slashing to be as effective as cutting? Let's examine this premise.
A jedi who does not perfect his craft is not a jedi.
A jedi who does not follow the way of great sword hands, falls in battle.
A jedi who slashes, slices, is off balance.
A jedi who cuts, falls like leaves on his opponents.
The jedi master will only cut.
So, please Mr. Lucas, when you are buying How Stuff Works adverts, keep in mind that the people at Slashdot will cut, and surprisingly we won't actually slash, after all.
Hmm... cutdot.org anyone?
Re:Cut, not Slash/Slice (Score:5, Funny)
Huh?
Re:Cut, not Slash/Slice (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Cut, not Slash/Slice (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Cut, not Slash/Slice (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Cut, not Slash/Slice (Score:5, Funny)
2. Patent it.
5. Profit!
Err... "3. Profit!", Sire.
Right, "3".
<angelic choir>ooooo ooooo</angelic choir>
BOOM!
Re:Cut, not Slash/Slice (Score:3, Informative)
"thy" before a consonent.
"thine" before a vowel.
Just like "a" and "an".
Re:Cut, not Slash/Slice (Score:5, Insightful)
Jedi do both cut and slice, depending on your point of view. If by cut you are referring to the act of swinging a blade in order to sever (which would seem to line up with Musashi's samurai style) and by slice you refer to the act of swinging a blade in order to damage but not sever, then I would say that Jedi do both.
However, in my opinion, a slice by a lightsaber is fairly useless in the long run as any wounds incurred are instantly cauderized, so a prolonged fight would not bleed an opponent the way a traditional blade would.
XMA was crap for a basis (Score:5, Interesting)
The show was designed for eye candy and omits much of the history and function of forms of fighting, including the weapons (getting back on topic). Many weapons, such as the Chinese broadsword (dao) or Japanese katana, could be used for cutting (severing), slicing (think eviceration), and hacking (repeated strikes). If we take this to the Jedi, using Luke as our whining reference of choice, cutting is obvious when he loses his hand. Slicing is done when he opens the Tauntaun. Hacking is done when he gets Vader down in RoTJ on the walkway and repeatedly attacks until making his daddy a lefty again.
I agree with the parent that the instant cauterization kind of limits the effectiveness of the weapon, but hey, who wouldn't want to pull a Black Knight routine on someone?
Re:XMA was crap for a basis (Score:3, Funny)
No offence, your honor, but my client never laid his lightsabre upon the poor, defenceless, and mostly dead tauntaun. I believe, if you go back and review the video evidence, it was the man known as 'Han Solo' who eviscerated the poor, defenceless creature. And if you insist on blaming my client, I am going to have to roll out the Chewbacca defence. and you call your selves nerds. *shakes head in shame*
Re:Cut, not Slash/Slice (Score:3, Funny)
A lightsaber is evidently some kind of precisely contained energy field. It also glows, which is to say it dissipates an extremely tiny amount of its reportedly massive energy as visible light.
Depictions of lightsabers do not typically show them annihilating objects, melting them, or setting them on fire. No smoke appears to be produced when a lightsaber cuts through an object, and the cut produce
Re:Cut, not Slash/Slice (Score:5, Funny)
When I was a little kid I tried to work out how a light-sabre could be built. The problem I had difficulty with was making the beam stop at a fixed length.
So I figured what was needed was a thin conductor that could extend from the handle and have a small circle / dome on the end. This would be charged to a massive potential and the top of the handle (other than where the thin central conducting rod emerged) would be oppositely charged. This would then create a plasma between the two. The only remaining problems once I'd figured that out were finding a material for the central conductor that was able to withstand heat in the 1000C's, thin enough that the whole still seemed to be made out of energy, yet rigid enough that it didn't become a lightwhip. That and finding a powersource equivalent to a maglev train that would fit in a small handle. Um, and would work in a vacuum. And some other things... but I was twelve, you know? I figured I'd work on them later and went on to try and decide what colour I wanted.
Re:Cut, not Slash/Slice (Score:3, Insightful)
But this is bullshit. It's a contentless, soft-science fiction half-assed lame pile of crap. Goddamnit, it pisses me off.
Re:Cut, not Slash/Slice (Score:3, Informative)
"Halo" is not a Ringworld, but an Orbital (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Point. or uh, edge. (Score:3, Insightful)
A science fiction needle or flechette gun has hundreds or thousands of the damn things packed into each casing. How would you feel if a thousand needles hit you at several hundred feet per second?
Re:Cut, not Slash/Slice (Score:5, Insightful)
Only problem is, he doesn't make swords anymore . . .
Re:Cut, not Slash/Slice (Score:3, Funny)
erm, yes you can... when it's frozen...
My old maths master had to re-write all his favourite questions to specify that the string in question for his applied maths questions was not only light and non-elastic, but also at normal room temperature...
I use mine for toasting bread (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I use mine for toasting bread (Score:2, Informative)
Yoda Fighting Style (Score:3, Funny)
Only they can't... mu ha ha ha ha.... oh yeah that is funny!!!
Re:Yoda Fighting Style (Score:4, Funny)
Oh wait... oops, wrong movie!
Did I ever wonder how they worked? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Did I ever wonder how they worked? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Did I ever wonder how they worked? (Score:3, Funny)
It's all in the mitachlorians, kid.
Safety Warning (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Safety Warning (Score:3, Funny)
Ouch!
Light Saber Safety Video (Score:3, Funny)
Uhh? (Score:5, Funny)
No?
Re:Uhh? (Score:5, Insightful)
The parent post was modded as funny (and it is), but I consider it insightful too. What was so cool about The Force in the original movies was that it was basically magic. Lightsabers too. When reading about King Arthur, I didn't have any questions about how Excalibur was forged. I don't care how the magic used by Gandalf and Saruman in LOtR works. It just does.
That's why, to me, the biggest offense of Episode I wasn't Jar Jar or the stupid and ridiculously prolonged fish-eat-fish scene. It was less than a minute of stupid technobabble dialogue about chlamydians or whatever (OK, I know it's midi-clorians, but I get a chuckle out of this alternate name). In that brief bit of dialogue, the magic of The Force was ruined and reduced to a mere blood condition. Seriously... could a simple shot of penicillin have avoided the whole Darth Vader situation, and with it the Galactic Empire?
I prefer The Force as it was in the original trilogy. It was magic! In Star Wars Han Solo even disparaged The Force as a "hokey religion" and lightsabers as "ancient weapons," saying that the combination was no match for a good blaster at your side. I wasn't as cynical about The Force as Han (and even Han changed his view, wishing "May the Force be with you" to Luke before leaving the Yavin IV base before the attack on the Death Star). I thought it was pretty cool. But I really never wanted to know the nuts and bolts of how it worked. Jeeze, if I wanted ridiculous technobabble "explanations" of how things work, I'd watch ST:tNG reruns and and get my fill of tetrions and subatomic bacteria and such.
Actually hearing about midi-clorians ruined the magic of The Force for me. I don't see how Jar Jar can "ruin" people's memories of the original series, because one has nothing to do with the other. But the babble about the chlamydians did ruin The Force.
It really surprises me people complain so much about Jar Jar and so little about the midi-clorians.
Fuck midichlorians! (Score:4, Insightful)
I always thought that The Force was an awful lot like The Tao, and probably that's where Lucas got the idea. Try this on for size:
-- adapted from Lao-Tzu, "The Tao Teh Ching" Chapter 1
Tell me that doesn't sound like it could be Jedi scripture! And certainly, the Jedi Knights and the Shaolin Monks seem to share quite a few similarities.
Another thing that pissed me off about this Jedi-in-a-blender stuff that Lucas has been doing in the prequel trilogy: a Jedi can go and have a roll in the hay, so long as s/he doesn't get "attached" to that person. OK, midichlorians are one thing, but the Jedi philosophy as the Playboy Philosophy? That dog won't hunt, bubba.
It would certainly make more sense that the Jedi were sworn to celibacy after a point in their training...probably when they lost their Padawan braid. Celibate warrior-monks are a fixture of both Western and Eastern history. The Knights Templar, the aforementioned Shaolin Monks, the Yamabushi of Japan...all warrior monks for whom celibacy was one of the requirements. Of course, in all those cases, there were always cases where vows were broken. The sexual urge is like that...bubbling up especially when it is repressed.
I hope that Episode 3 renews a certain amount of wonder and mythic power to Star Wars it has lost with all this damn tinkering. I've read a purported script: if it's authentic, this is the prequel Lucas should have made all along.
Lightsaber Depot? (Score:5, Interesting)
> controls will be slightly different on each individual lightsaber
> that you buy.
This is a pretty cool/funny article. "A lightsaber can help convince an assailant that no means no."
But I thought according to Star Wars lore, you couldn't "buy" a lightsaber. The Jedi (or Sith) had to build their own lightsaber. The story is the Jedi uses the Force to shape the lightsaber crystal and then uses the Force to put it into the cylinder. Because of the "Force" dexterity required, building a lightsaber is supposed to show that the Jedi has mastered the Force.
That's why in Episode VI Darth Vader notices that Luke built a new lightsaber (and subtly threatens Luke with it), and says, "Indeed you are powerful" or something like that. If all the Jedi had to do is buy a lightsaber, then having a new one wouldn't be any more impressive than having good credit.
Then again, I guess in Episode III (and the Clone Wars episodes), we learn the General Grievous collects lightsabers like baseball cards, so maybe the article was written especially for him.
Although I can't imagine General Grievous slicing bagels with his lightsaber, Anakin, with the cavalier attitude towards using the Force he showed in Episode II, probably did.
Re:Lightsaber Depot? (Score:4, Funny)
And we all know how bad Luke's credit was, when he couldn't charter anything but Solo's crappy old dirt-bucket ship.
Re:Lightsaber Depot? (Score:4, Funny)
The only reason I looked in here was to find who posted the funniest comment. I had no idea that someone would have accually posted something that would merrit a "+5 INTERESTING". But you did.I'm thinking that budweiser is gunna take this thing and run with...
Today we solute you, Mr. +5 INTERESTING. You darelingly take on ficticious articles, and provide a realistic common ground. Who cares if you pull from other ficticious rhelms in order to do so. For without you, this /. article would not have been as fun.
Chorus: Mr.+5 INTERESTIIIIIIIIING
Re:Lightsaber Depot? (Score:5, Funny)
a Blue Light Saber Special on Aisle 6...
Re:Lightsaber Depot? (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe that was what Vader was commenting on instead of his prowess with wielding The Force. We could interpret it as "Wow, you manage to keep a good credit rating while staging a rebellion against the Empire? Indeed you are powerful, as the Equifax has foreseen."
Re:Lightsaber Depot? (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, but with Gentoo you can build your own lightsaber with 'emerge lightsaber'.
Re:Lightsaber Depot? (Score:3, Funny)
Check Ebay (Score:3, Informative)
The article addesses this in the section "Using Your Lightsaber Around the Home": Although a lightsaber is typically used as a defensive weapon by Jedi knights, the availability of lightsabers on consumer sites such as eBay is growing. It is a sad fact of life, but if a Jedi knight falls on hard times, his lightsaber is one source of quick cash. He can always build another one.
I particularly like the photos of cutting hedges and s
Re:Lightsaber Depot? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Lightsaber Depot? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Lightsaber Depot? (Score:4, Informative)
You don't need to be a Jedi to use a lightsaber, only to build one. See Ep V, where Han Solo uses Lukes lightsaber to cut open the tauntaun.
Re:Lightsaber Depot? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Lightsaber Depot? (Score:4, Funny)
Rumor has it that's only for Sith lightsabers. For the light side, you have to ssh in and edit a text file..
Re:Lightsaber Depot? (Score:3, Funny)
kill -HUP `cat
Re:Lightsaber Depot? (Score:3, Funny)
Now where do I get a Diatium Power Cell from? (Score:2)
I really can't believe . . . (Score:5, Funny)
Oblig. (Score:2, Funny)
"Uh the force?"
"Man, that's your answer to everything."
Heck Yes! (Score:5, Funny)
-bradly
Re:Heck Yes! (Score:3, Funny)
This is stupid... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.thinkgeek.com/cubegoodies/toys/69de/ [thinkgeek.com]
portable (Score:2, Funny)
It was a godsend to duelling Jedis, because they no longer had to plug them in while they were fighting...
The Real Question (Score:4, Funny)
After all, not only is there a geek quality to it if it does, but I'd hate to suddenly encounter the Blue Lightsaber of Death right in the middle of a fight with the Dark Side, and suddenly find myself needing to reboot.
Re:The Real Question (Score:5, Funny)
Seeing as how nobody had to type furiously to activate the sabre, I'd say probably not.
Do you see any Jedis around? (Score:2)
Funneh (Score:2)
Who's the bigger fool? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Who's the bigger fool? (Score:5, Funny)
May I be the first to say (Score:5, Funny)
*schweeooooooorzzhhhh*
*vwom vwooorm vwoosh woomv*
*kza* *kjzt* *tzkch* *skrztle*
etc.
Re:May I be the first to say (Score:5, Funny)
Re:May I be the first to say (Score:3, Funny)
Stupid detail (Score:3, Interesting)
If you happen to find yourself hanging upside down in a cave, a lightsaber is the perfect tool to use to cut the rope.
I just want to be the first nerd to point out that Luke wasn't hanging by a rope - his feet were stuck in the ice. It bugged me because I fail to see how one swipe of his lightsaber could (safely) melt all that ice and free him.
Follow the money trail (Score:5, Interesting)
Since the Parks site claims no affiliation with Lucas and the official Star Wars marketing outlets, I'm wondering how long before he gets slapped with a cease-and-desist.
I see.... (Score:4, Funny)
Razor Burn (Score:5, Funny)
Needless to say, I am back to using my Mach 3. Skin grafts cost far more than replacement razors. Trust me.
porp
Spoilers (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.supershadow.com/starwars/episode3/spoi
For a good history on jedi and sith, there is another page on the same site:
http://www.jedipurge.com/ [jedipurge.com]
The reason I mention this? There is a bit of history about lightsaber development that is pretty intriguing, including a "yellow" saber that has the ability to "actually slice through any other light saber". Good stuff if you're willing to deal with a few spoilers (mostly events between Episode 2 & 3) to learn more about the history of the Jedi and Sith.
It gave me a new outlook on the prequels, and I'm finding that Phantom Menace really isn't as bad as I thought it was around 1999.
Your Lightsaber and You (Score:4, Informative)
Smith & Wesson (Score:3, Funny)
There's a really good chance that, Force or no, lead bullets will go right through a sword blade made of LIGHT!
It's a perfect Indiana Jones moment.
BRUUUmmm-BRUM-BRRUM!
Bang
Flop
a REAL how to (Score:4, Interesting)
Rod-like power! (Score:5, Funny)
Ladies: Creep!
--Rob
In a word... (Score:3, Funny)
Viagara.
is it a wave or a particle? (Score:3, Funny)
at the center of the blade, light tends 100% towards the characteristics of a particle; this is the actual cutting core, all those really high energy photons bouncing around.
at the edge, light tends 100% towards the characteristics of a wave, in fact it forms a sort of standing wave that wraps around the outside of the blade. this wave a) accounts for the colored fringe of the blade (since it has a set wavelength, it has a set color) and b) keeps all those high energy particles in.
when the blade hits something, the outer wave is parted, allowing the core to contact said something.
yes, i am aware i've thought this out way too much.
Article fails to mention all dangers! (Score:3, Funny)
With practice you can also use a lightsaber like a knife. For example, if you need to cut open the belly of a large domestic animal like a horse or a tauntaun, the lightsaber is the perfect tool.
Mystery farm animal mutilations of the 1970's and 1980's explained! Were crop circles done with a sabre also?
Nearly anything you would normally find around the home or office is easy to cut with a lightsaber, including steel pipes, reinforcing beams, mounting struts and so on.
No warnings about exiting a building as you cut through its utilities (gas leaks leading to explosions) and support structure (building falls dowm, most likely in YOUR direction)?
If you happen to find yourself hanging upside down in a cave, a lightsaber is the perfect tool to use to cut the rope.
Even when hanging a 'safe' distance, less than a foot above the ground, it's too easy to lose control of the sabre when you hit the ground, and cut yourself open.
This article plays so slipshod with safety that I'll have to rate it (Score: -1, Danger Will Robinson).
A few ideas. . . (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's how it might work. .
A light saber is a force field functioning on two vectors instead of three. Sabers do not burn or cauterize when they cut. There was blood on the floor of the cantina when Obi Wan liberated that spaceport scum of his arm. My guess is that what is happening when you see melting blast-doors is that the atoms of blast-door metal are being moved around and compressed when the saber is pushed through them, and that the metal heats up and gets red-hot and sludgy as a result of this.
But how does a forcefield work?
Well, think of it this way. .
All matter is connected to an energy body. --Like the aura around a human, even a stick of wood is directly linked to its energetic reality. Those who are sensitive to such energies can feel where a person or object is without normal sensory input, and even people who are not consciously sensitive to energy are nonetheless affected by it. When energy is dense enough, one's experience of it can easily manifest as tactile.
So. .
If you used a crystal to hold the 'memory' of a physical weapon shaft and if you were able to project that energetic memory while adding power to it from an energy-cell, as well as use technology to regulate the qualities of the energetic expression of that shaft, you might get something which behaves rather like a light saber.
I like this solution as it exists nicely along side the concept of the Force.
-FL
Re:Dumbest. Story. Ever. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Dumbest. Story. Ever. (Score:5, Funny)
I have my credit card in hand and am still searching KB Toys for a working model. Dammit I want one
Re:Dumbest. Story. Ever. (Score:3, Funny)
How do they know?
Re:Dumbest. Story. Ever. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Dumbest. Story. Ever. (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Dumbest. Story. Ever. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Dumbest. Story. Ever. (Score:5, Insightful)
OF COURSE it casts a shadow! Light can't pass through it! If it could, how would it deflect laser blasts?
I can't believe I'm arguing about fictional physics on Slashdot, but geez, the fact that it casts a shadow is completely consistent with its other properties.
Re:Dumbest. Story. Ever. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Dumbest. Story. Ever. (Score:5, Funny)
The explanation, of course, is that the picture does not show an actual light saber, but a prop, for safety reasons.
Re: Is your sidekick with you? (Score:2)
Re:Dumbest. Story. Ever. (Score:3, Interesting)
But what I STILL don't understand is... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Dumbest. Story. Ever. (Score:2, Interesting)
It's actually a clever little marketing ploy with the movie coming out and all.
Besides, your title says "dumest.story.ever." I would vehemently disagree and say most stories suck on slashdot these days. Either they are dupes, days old, or advertisements. The old, beloved slashdot is dead. At least this post made me smile
Re:Dumbest. Story. Ever. (Score:3, Insightful)
{sniffle}
Re:Dumbest. Story. Ever. (Score:3, Interesting)
Many of us have come around to viewing the entire films of "Star Wars" and "The Empire Strikes Back" as happy accidents.
If the SE changes and subsequent prequels are anything to go by, George Lucas clearly never actually understood what made us like his movies in the first place, but rather he merely stumbled into making a couple great moments in film h
Re:Dumbest. Story. Ever. (Score:4, Interesting)
Notice the "Photo courtesy Lucasfilm Ltd."? This is nothing more than a coordinated piece of PR. Now, the real question is: Is Slashdot getting a small piece of the pie by graciously helping perpetuate it? Considering the glut of obvious bought-and-paid-for submissions lately, it wouldn't suprise me in the least.
Oh get over it (Score:4, Interesting)
The tragic thing though is to think about how much detail they have on how those lightsabers would theoretically work. I assume that those concepts all came from Lucas. And I think, maybe if he'd spent a little less time on figuring out how a lightsaber would work, and more time on figuring out how to write dialogue, the first two prequel movies would have been much better.
Re:SUBMITTED BY A FAGGOT (Score:2)
Yes...thank you for noticing. I was actually yelling as I typed the previous post.
Re:Dumbest. Story. Ever. (Score:3, Funny)
*Moderator Hint: Joke*
Re:Force power (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Solo Fired First - Evidence of Force Powers (Score:4, Funny)
Thanks Lucas and AC! Now I realize that Han Solo was never cool.
What about Han you insensitive clod? (Score:5, Funny)
Now I will go and soak in bleach for awhile, in the hopes that if I wash enough of the dork smell off that my wife will come near me again.
Re:Force power (Score:5, Funny)
Or maybe he just had to poop and was trying to hold it. I think they're both potentially valid theories.
Stuff that... (Score:3, Funny)
No, but it's even better. This is stuff that energizes!