Slashdot Mirror
How Hot Would a Light Saber Really Be?
Datagod asks: "Has anyone ever calculated the temperature you would need to be able to slice through steel like it was thin air? How hot would a light saber really need to be? Also, I am assuming that at least some of the metal would be vaporized and the expanding gas would fling bits of molten metal at the saber wielder. Wouldn't your average Jedi be horribly scarred from all this."
april fools! it's first.
-gjr
Very hot.
I think the heat from a light saber is like, local.
Hey maybe even I can get an article posted today! My article submissions obviously aren't prime-time material but from what I'm seeing on this special day .... off to do some submissions.
A real Jedi would jusst use the force to repel any bits away from him!
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Isn't this why Vader wore that mask? Sorry, I missed episode 3 so I'm not sure.
Power.
Buy one and point it at a thermometer.
http://wickedlasers.com/
O.K. so these aren't really lightsabers.
Could god create a burrito so hot, that he himself could not eat it?
Freezing cold, actually. It'd make your bladder freeze. That means... PISS FROST!
A nanotech style light saber would be the best way to go. Nanites could burn through their target and work on a whitelist principle: a friend's DNA would be ignored.
Quite literally you could ram your nanotech light saber through a hostage taker and the nanites would decline to harm the whitelisted hostage.
I can't believe no one else thought of this. PATENT!!!!!! OMFG I am teh pwnz0r take that George Lucas!!!!!!
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Light sabers work at the subatomic level, disintegrating matter. However, heat is generated within resistant materials, giving the impression that the sabers themselves are actually hot. Don't the slashdot guys know this?
In your heart, you know it's true.
not as hot as the pink on the site
Not necessarily, Padawan. If a Jedi cuts through a door/bulkhead/vehicle with a light saber s/he could avoid getting splashed with melted metal by applying a subtle Force push along with the slicing motion of the saber. To Saber 101 class you should return, youngling. ;)
Quantum mechanics: the dreams that stuff is made of.
More importantly, could a Jedi make a light sabre so hot that he himself could not wield it?
The light saber would need to be 6241 F to cut through metal. At that temperature, the metal would be separated into sub-atomic particles called 'fooltrons'. As I'm sure you are aware, fooltrons are far to small to cause damage to the human body.
OK, since today the weirdest stuff happens out here, can I get this comment modded up? Looks like there just has to ask. Thanks alot.
You just got troll'd!
- The extraordinarily detailed answers from people who spend a lot of time thinking about this sort of thing.
- The retarded answers from people who don't spend a lot of time thinking about this sort of thing.
- The retarded jokes forthcoming about people's pulsing hot lightsabers
- The prospect of spending all day sifting through stuff like this looking for real news
- The fact that I'm rather curious about this myself.
I know very little of physics, Star Wars or other. So I shall link to the disturbing Star Wars-related musings of my friend instead.Looking at this comment I found, the author makes a good arguement: If the light sabre were hot enough to easily melt stuff, wouldn't it radiate so much heat that it would burn the user?
Paulo's News: Apple CEO Steve Jobs, conservative pundit Tucker Carlson are Father and Son
Paulo's News: Bringing You the Best of the Mainsternative Media
could you toast marshmallows with a light sabre. On the one hand, there's plenty of energy, on the other hand the energy doesn't seem to go very far from the blade. I'm sure if you just touch the blade to the marshmallow it'll just vaporize though. Perhaps a wise Jedi, skilled in the force, could do this. Or maybe force lightnight. I guess you could heat a rock with a sabre and then toast with that, but it's just not the same.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I remember getting scolded by some fanboys for suggesting that lightsabers should cast no shadows (apparently they must cast shadows since shadows were present in Episode 4...) because the cutting edge - whether plasma or whatever else - would need to be hairline-thin regardless of temperature in order to slice through things without causing unmanageable explosions of melted and vaporized target material.
A-Bomb
... are HERE .
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
...hotter than you'd like it.
This post isn't girly enough! What will the girl users thing?!
OMG HOT!!! LOL!!!
It's an issue of temperature AND power.
Consider this: how hot does something have to be to melt an ice sculpture? Well, a match would do it, except a match can't provide the power necessary to melt a significant amount of ice.
You need the temperature necessary to turn steel into a vapor (look that up on a periodic table of elements); you also need the power necessary to turn some mass (per second) of steel into vapor. Anyone with a background in chemistry should be able to look up the required information on a standard periodic table.
The equation will look like this:
(Steel's specific heat) * (volume of steel to vaporize per second) * (temperature difference) = power necessary.
With some geeks having actually having calculated the force needed to tip an AT-ST walker (or the weight of a walker or something - I've seen the site years ago and tried googling but found nawt) using a suspended log, I guess someone would be glad to help you out.
More importantly, how hot would a lightsaber need to be to cut a pony into sausages? Pink hot?
Worst. Quote. Ever.
The correct quote is:
"Could Jesus microwave a burrito so hot that he himself could not eat it?"
pshh
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
I always though it was funny that people did not buy into the success of the Ewoks in the last skirmish. They'll buy into death stars, light sabers, but then balk at the Ewoks.
What does this have to do with ponies? :( I want my ponies! DX
They are of course running at room temperature. You think it's heat that cuts through this mental abstraction you call 'matter'?
Task Mangler
the correct answer is "who gives a shit?"
Light sabers (and all other Star Wars pseudo-science) work because Lucas has no idea how physics works in reality, and he doesn't understand that there is a point where suspension of disbelief can no longer support the premise,especially in an adult audience.
I submitted this as a serious question 24 hours ago (or so). Just my luck, the only time my question gets accepted its april fools, and the whole site is pink! LOL
A Lightsaber cuts pretty fast through materials like that. As for the metal bits we'll asume it propels them away from the user, somehow. As for the heat...a portable (55 amp) plasma cutter can cut 1/4" material at roughly 70 inches per minute. The plasma coming out is roughly 24,000 degrees, and is a stream traveling at 20,000 fpm. An industrial cutter can do roughly 1000 inches per minute. I wouldn't imagine its flame is any hotter than 30K degrees. a lightsaber, it seems, cuts WAY faster than that. I wouldn' t know how to estimate its temperature using the given info, but maybe someone else can.
You like your new Mac more than you like me, don't you, Dave? Dave? I asked...She said Yes.
is april 1st the one day a year slashdot is just a complete write off...
Get your torrents...
on how thick the light sabre active region is. If it's only a few molecules thick, the amount of material vaporized will be relatively low, given that most stuff it's slicing doesn't have very high thermal conductivity (limits heat spread away from the blade). It's too late at night to push the specific heat & volume numbers, but as a guess, if the active region could dump, say, 100KW minimum into a 10nm x 2" x 60" volume, there would be plenty of energy to immediately vaporize any material in that small volume. Since there's not much material being vaporized, there won't be much damage to surrounding entities (like the Jedi sword wielder) or fixtures. As for temperature, I think that will depend on the specific heat of the material being sliced, if we assume that the energy integrated over time being dumped into the material is constant. Something with a low specific heat (air, wood) will get to a higher temperature than something like water or flesh. Once you get over around 5000K, everything's a gas. Another way to determine the temperature would be to look at the emission spectrum of the air when the blade is energized. That would tell you how hot the air is within the blade active region. However, there seem to be big differences between the emission spectra of the Good Guys vs. the Bad Guys. That could complicate the determination of temperature. Just like the 4/1 Slashdot color scheme.....
Appearently, it would be just hot enough to cut through the support structure of the World Trade Center towers.
Part of the canon regarding lightsabers is that they don't use any energy unless they're in contact with something else, something about perfect energy conservation. Thus, lightsabers don't emit heat unless you're using them for something.
geeez! don't youy know anything?!
The example I found of a Tocamac plasma is only red, but is 20-30 million degrees C. However, the lightsabers in the original (and therefore One True) Star Wars were white. This means they must be considerably hotter. The page I found on near-solid high energy density plasmas also talks about tens of millions of degrees - my gut feeling would be that to produce totally solid white plasma would require 40-50 million degrees C.
Now, plasmas at that kind of temperature could quite reasonably be expected to slice through almost anything - steel included. Furthermore, anything that was vaporised would be repelled by the magnetic field and thus travel AWAY from the wielder. This does mean that if you are fighting someone with a lightsaber, you will get sprayed with high-energy plasma every time they hit something.
There is one minor problem, though. Energy. If you want to maintain something at 50 million degrees, AND a containment field, a couple of duracel batteries won't cut it. Even lithium batteries will go flat very quickly. My guess is that the handle of the lightsaber, therefore, contains a wormhole linked to a gigantic anti-matter reactor.
All you REALLY need to do, then, is find out where your opponent's reactor is hidden and turn it off. Their lightsaber will then be useless.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Why Yes!! as a spokesperson for Jedi Inc.. (LLC) I can safely state that all Jedi completing our online (tm) courses since 5/12/97 have an exemplary track record. Most scars from lightsabers now result in the loss of limbs and/or other LEBOoETO (Life Enabling Biological Organs of ExtraTerrestrial Origin). We have strived hard to maintain safe Jedi Training Environment, and can now report that most Jedi are not only scarred, but scared as well!
Remember boys and girls, a lightsaber can be a dangerous weapon, and improperly used, it can hurt! Here are a few simple tips for Lightsaber Safety...
e r
http://www.atomfilms.com/af/content/your_lightsab
SirWired
I've always found that reading slashdot on april fools is a good reminder that there are better things to do than read slashdot on april fools.
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
There is a good webpage that has detailed information on this subject...
http://www.exn.ca/starwars/plasmasaber.cfm
Paris Hilton says:
Thats Hot!
Most of the people seem to be assuming that you'd need heat to cut. Heat will melt something but you need pressure to cut. If a lightsaber was really just a forcefield a few molecules thick, you could generate a huge amount of pressure on the edge and potentially actually slide between the metal molecules and break the bonds. The breaking bonds would generate some heat but it shouldn't splatter everywhere. Naturally, the denser the metal, the harder it would be for the saber to slide between.
I always pictured the light saber to be something like tamed lightning. As it cuts metal, it doesn't melt it from heat but from the actual cutting action of really fast elecrons (or whatever) colliding with and knocking loose whatever the light saber touches. Except it couldn't be electrons because they'd be grounded out by the metal they're cutting, so it's some other sort of particle.
A plasma cutter makes short work of steel, copper, anything conductive and you can hold it your hand without gloves. A decent sized one chews through 3/4 inch steel plate like butter. Couple of inches a second. So it's not insane from that standpoint. Really the problem isn't heat, it's energy. Couple of thousand degrees and just about everything melts/vaporises. If you had a plasma knife that could cut a 1mm wide swath, then yes if it had enough energy behind it, it would cut through steel, flesh, bone, kevlar armor, etc without any trouble at all. Such a thing would pretty much be exactly like a light saber.
I once grabbed my light saber at the wrong end.....
It's not the heat...it's the humidity.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
So hot.
Reminds me of an old Fark thread. Could a Light Saber cut through Adamantium? Discuss.
It isn't so much the steel/wood/flesh/whatever being "vaporized" as whatever matter is within the localized field.
The resulting release of energy would blow the wielder of the light saber into nothingness, except for a second localized field that collects the energy and feeds it back into the mechanism to power the interior suppression field. It is leakage through the outer field that provides the visible "glow".
But I suppose I could be wrong.
For what it's worth, the steel will only spark and smoke when it conbines with O2. I think we need to assume that the saber's containment field would protect the moten metal from oxidizing.
So, where are all these ponies I keep hearing about?
1.21 Jigga-Kelvins!
As any true Star Wars fan would know, Light Sabers work by rapidly vibrating molecules to achieved the spectacular cutting effect and "wwrroggg" sounds.
On the other hand - a lightsaber may involve a different kind of physics where the material is actually displaced by other force and the light is actually only a visual representation caused by the displacement field.
Whatever - you have to study the physics of the StarWars universe first to come out with a solution to the problem.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Africa hot.
Heat has nothing to do with it. The Monofiliment effect of a ray segment of light waves splitting apart atomic bonds does.
Someone forgot to tag this story "aprilfools" with the rest of them.
--
"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." - Homer Simpson [1F10]
If it's just a heat transfer, don't forget that the rate of energy dissipation is dependent on temperature difference. All the power in the world won't do a thing unless it can be transfered.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
OMG SOOOOOOOO HOT!!!
Lightsabers aren't hot. The proof of this is in Empire Strikes Back. If they were hot, Han would have used it as a heating device. (Cmon! you know you want to mod this insightful!) :)
The specific heat of steel is 452 joules per kilogram per degree C.
.02 meters -- 0.0209 cubic meters of steel.
The melting temperature of steel is 1370 degrees C (room temperature is 20 degrees), so the the lightsaber has to raise the temperature 1370-20=1350 degrees C).
Now (to pull some numbers out of my ass) let's say our hypothetical jedi swings a 1-meter-long-and-.02-meter-wide lightsaber through a bulkhead in a circular fashion, sweeping out a 120 degree arc. The volume of steel he has to melt is (120/360) * (pi*r^2) *width, where r = 1 meter and width =
The average density of steel" is 7.85 grams/cubic centimeter. According to google calculator, 1 gram per cubic centimeter equals 1000 kilograms per cubic meter; therefore, 7.85 grams/cubic centimeter = 7850 kilograms/cubic meter.
Thus: the lightsaber must melt (7850 kilograms/cubic meter) * (0.0209 cubic meters) = 164.065 kilograms of steel. This will require (164.065 kilograms) * (452 joules per kilogram per degree C. ) * (1350) = 100112463 joules of energy. QED.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
On related topics ... :
1) anyone knows what propels bullets in the BSG universe? It seems that it is not ur usual gunpowder. Is it somekind of force field, or a combination of both?
2) Also what is the actual yield of the latest type of photon torpidoes in the TNG universe?
3) Can enterprises shields withstand a 40 megatone nuclear explosion? can they withstand a 40 kiloton one?
http://69.93.50.122/desktopgirls/photos/Jessica_Al ba_Widescreen_720200553644PM39.jpg
Don't use your light saber to open beer bottles
Don't use your light saber to pick your teeth.
Don't use your light saber to gut fish
If you do any of these things, you might be a jedi redneck.
Bubba-Boe-Bob-Bader: "Shoot, son come on over t' the dark side... it'll be a hoot"
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
The proper effect once one integrates with the force is one of negotiating the identity of the particles in such a way as to allow it's cooperation to joot paradigms. This is not technically *heat* at all.
I believe that the lightsaber is like the 1000th decendant of the ColdHeat soldering iron. So the minute you put it down, the tip gets cool.
As you know, the soldering iron reaches 800 degrees!!! So to find out the actual temperature of the lightsaber, you multiply the generation of the saber from the soldering iron (1000) times the temp of the original soldering iron (800 degrees), yielding the result 800,000 degrees.
Elementary.
Nitewing '98
Everything works...in theory.
Less than twelve parsecs.
"You don't need to know the answer.
"These are not the Slashdot articles you're looking for.
"You can go about your business.
"Move along."
hmmm...scars from molten metal bits flung from a light saber versus the scars from viewing /. 04.01.2006...yeah, that's a no brainer
Probably very hot, considering it had to cut through steel. I hate this stupid April Fool's idiocy. Give me real news!
But wouldnt the particles flying off be extreamly hot or come off in some sort of radiation? Im not to good at particle physics. I need a refresher. Im just saying even then it would be dangerous. A saber is not necassarily that hot. It could just be very well focused. That and it can cut easily because it has no solid pressance so theres little or no drag. Not to mention a jedi is very stong so they can put a lot of force behind the blade. Think of it this way. blades work on surface tension. when the blade is a few particles wide it doesnt need to be hot or need much force to cut.
Light sabers are pretty advanced pieces of technology. Let me try to explain how they work in basic terms.
;)
First off, you need to imagine a sort of 'shield' around the blade. It is this shield that actually forms the blade in to a specific shape and length. It uses micro-miniature deflector technology. It's all deflector technology these days. If you can picture a sort of transparent hollow tube you are on the right track. In fact, if a Jedi needs a non-lethal billy club he/she can simply switch off the fusion generators and start whacking you with the deflector shield. It won't cut your arms off, but it'll smart a bit. Now, last time I checked, if you've gone to the trouble to piss off a Jedi chances are he ain't gonna take the time to just beat you over the head with a deflector shield. He's just gonna slice you in two. So keep that in mind.
Also, it's these deflectors that Jedi use to do that cool hand trick maneuver. They want you to think it's their hand throwing stuff across the room. Ever wonder what 'the force' is. It's just a case of misdirection: "HEY! LOOK AT MY HAND!" (As the Jedi switches his deflector on his saber to maximum using his left hand, down by his side.)
Now that you have this sort of hollow tube shield deflector thing, fusion materials are inserted in to the tube. Then 'blaster' technology is used to ignite the materials and sustain a reaction. Blaster technology is pretty deep, and I don't have time to go in to it. Now, as you can imagine, it takes quite a bit of energy to keep such a reaction going. That's why you hear that cool 'whummm' sound as you move it around. You're holding a few megawatts of energy in your hands. It's also why you hear that crackle when you whack two of them together. Same tech behind the frekin' lightning bolt shooting out of the hands trick.
The question was raised, why doesn't the superheated component of the saber just burn the crap out of the user? Well - deflectors of course. The deflectors contain the radiated heat energy to within a few inches of the blade. In fact, most sabers have a feature to adjust how much energy is radiated. This is handy if you ever find yourself stranded on an ice world. You just pop the thing in the snow, turn up the radiated heat, and you have a nice bonfire.
You might be wondering, but Luke almost froze to death and he had a saber - what gives? Well - let's just say his saber was more of a 'hack.' You see, Jedi in the past have been burnt badly when Sith lords have used the 'dark side' to tweak the controls on their sabers turning up the radiated heat. You think Yoda was born looking that way?? No, saber radiated heat accident. Anikin really liked screwing with young Jedi by turning up the radiated heat when they weren't looking. Well, anyhow, one of Luke's "improvements" to his saber was to remove this feature. Oops.
So there you have it. Be sure to keep your eyes open for my O'Reilly book coming out soon: Light Sabers in a Nutshell.
Of course, the obvious answer to this is the Vibrablade, as noted in Knights of the Old Republic. Made of a special metal that is able to withstand contact with a lightsaber. So, make a vibrablade-inspired knuckleguard. But, if that's the case, then why aren't ships made of the same material as vibrablades? Surely if it can stop a lightsaber, it can stop (or at least reduce the damage from) blasters and other weapons. Or why not make vibrablade based armor? Doors? Vehicles? Or even lightsabers? Oh, sorry. I better stop. I think I'm making Lucas cry.
Rawr
[Darth Sidious mode]
Power!!! Unlimited power!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAH!!!!
[/Darth Sidious mode]
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
May it be with you.
the grits I just poured down my pants.
Also, just taking the above analysis one step further -- let's say our hypothetical jedi cuts through that steel bulkhead in 1 second. That would make the power output of that lightsaber is 100.11 megawatts. For comparison purposes, my city of 28,000+ people drawns about 58 megawatts [on a nice fall day - no heavy load from AC].
Sidenote: How do I know this value off the top of my head? A couple years back, in my parallel architecture class, we were discussing the power requirements of a world-class supercomputer. The rule of thumb is that one requires about as much power as a small city. I was asked to look into this and get real data. Luckily, getting the number wasn't difficult because I happen to know the head sysadmin of the local power company -- his stories always end with something on fire.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
what
28:06:42:12 - That is when the world will end...
Many Bothans died to bring us this article.
Out here in the "extended universe" (aka, Lucas's Outsourced Gameverse) my lightsaber can't break through organic matter in one swing...EVER and those aluminum grade shipping crates show no adverse markings after hacking at it for an hour. Some jedi i'm turning out to be.
Um, that's what "melting" means :).
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
My wife's high school boyfriend had a theory about things like Star Wars. It went like this.
All that exists is in the mind of God. To be in the mind of God is to exist. God is omniscient, therefore everything that's in a human mind is in the mind of God. Therefore Narnia, Barsoom, and Middle-Earth exist, and George Lucas committed genocide when he blew up Alderaan.
Oh, and it's not just the temperature, it's the heat capacity and conductivity. If a light saber beam is a superconductor and has some mechanical push to it, then white heat should be adequate for ruining most materials. All you have to do is weaken steel and let its service loads tear it to shreds: if it weren't under stress nobody would have spent the money to put it there.
Leaving open the question, why does a telekinetic Jedi who can lift a spaceship need a lightsaber? Why not just use the power of the Force to make unwanted objects fall apart?
remind me to not visit /. until monday.
sabers are like vacuums. they suck!
:)
so, the matter involved simply moves out of the way.
Understanding is much like a 3-edged-sword. in this: there are always 2 sides and the truth.
I'm actually a jedi myself, and I haven't had any problems with my stock Light Saber (TM) product. At one point it was overheating a bit (1025 kelvin), so I called in customer service and they fixed it up in no time. I highly recommend them.
Lightsabers do not generate heat. I forget which encyclopedia or other starwars resource that's from. But they do not use heat to cut. This does not mean that the things they cut do not get hot. I assume it's through some atomization process.
I'm surprised. All this talk about plasma temperature, antiprotons, electromagnetic bottles and all that high-techy stuff... Too complicated.
The real secret is how sharp an edge you can get on your photons.
Plasma cutters are something else again, real and possibly far more like a light saber would be if such a thing was real. Heating up a gas and making it behave a lot like a liquid to burn things away leaving nothing but a clean cut and hot dust is the way the things work - all you need is high voltage electricity, appropriate electodes and a good supply of pressurised gas.
http://www.starwars.com/databank/technology/lights aber/?id=eu
br> Once unleashed, the power channels through a positively charged continuous energy lens at the center of the handle. The beam then arcs circumferentially back to a negatively charged high energy flux aperture. A superconductor transfers the power from the flux aperture to the power cell. As a result, a lightsaber only expends power when its blade cuts through something. So efficient is the blade, that it does not radiate heat unless it comes into contact with something.
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore."
Now explain how two lightsabers hitting each other act like solid broomsticks...
APRIL FOOLS!
sic
In order to make a semi-solid beam of energy which could interact with both matter and energy would require containing a quasar and quantum singularity inside the hilt. The gravitational field would pull all the quasar's expelled plasma back moments after the quasar releases them. The speed of the returning plasma would form a chainsaw effect allowing it to cut through the matter with ease, while when being stopped by an opposing beam. A modulated gravity field would bounce allow for the reflection of energy beams.
HA! try another one
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore."
Because light sabers use dry heat technologies a Jedi doesn't notice the heat as much.
Normally, my interest in applying practicle science to the star wars universe would be astronomical, but reading the question in pink GUI made me realize what a nerd loser I was. Thanks a lot slashdot. :-(
I'd say about 3 fitty give or take a tad
You ever actually watched a scene where they cut through a door? It's not like it's going through thin air at all. If you believe the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a katana slices through metal much more easily and so a ninja would beat a jedi.
so that'd be one, maybe two pentiums. OWNED! OMG!!1111 LOLLOLOLOLOLOLO
Of course, melting steel with your light saber WOULD create sparks and WOULD burn you. If you're not a Jedi. A light saber is more dangerous to yourself than your enemy if you're weak in the Force.
The Force protects the Jedi, it guides his weapon to deflect the dangerous sparks and other things that would harm him. If he is strong in the Force, if he has faith in it, nothing can harm him.
This is one of the reasons why you see Light Sabers only in the hands of Jedis and not of the ordinary man. They're cool, so why do you think only Jedis wield them, hmmmm? It is so easy, Padawan. So easy, and so difficult at the same time. Like many things in the Force.
(Besides, metaphysical crap has worked as an excuse for other religions why some things work that make no sense in their li'l universe. Why shouldn't we use it as an excuse, eh?)
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Has anyone ever calculated the temperature you would need to be able to slice through steel like it was thin air?
No, I'm sorry. I'm heterosexual and that has to the gayest question I've ever heard. Fucking Star Wars faggot.
Everybody>/b> knows that the real reason for lack of miracles is the decline of pirates... I mean, SHEESH.
It's not the temperature that. The melting temp of any material can be looked up. It's how long you can *sustain* that temperature in your saver. The evaporation energy of the metal is drawn out of the saber and needs to be resupplied in enormous rates to be able to 'cut' fast. I do this for my work, metal sheet processing with lasers. We are very happy to be able to cut a centimeter thick metal sheet at several millimeters per second. We need a 1 kW laser for that, and the cut is only a hair thick. The laser light density is > 1 Giga Watt per square millimieter. If you want to cut wider and/or faster, no need more power. So with the light saver you'd need a small 1MW nuclear reactor strapped on your back for day-to-day use!
it has something to do with Hot Grits :-)
Can I get the particle beam in pink? With an I-heart-Ponies inscription on the handle?
My daughter is only 2 months old, but they say it's never too soon to start introducing them to Jedi weapons.
WTF is fpm? Furlongs per minute?
Yea, you show your lack of chemistry knowledge. I wonder if the high school you went to taught chemistry or at least, in this area, metalshop?
Well, for your information, steel isn't an element, it's an alloy of Iron (Fe) and Nickel (Ni) with some carbon (C) tossed in (like good knives, high-carbon, non-stainless steel, keep excellent edges) for extra strength.
Mod me up +5 Informative
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
We kinda need meta tagging on the tags, so we can filter out things like that.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
That's simple!
One's red and the other one is a whitey blue!
Everyone knows that when a red light sabre and a blue light sabre connect, it sounds like 2 broomsticks hitting each other.
You must've missed a few days at school....
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
Jedi Knights were good about keeping their military secrets. They want everyone to believe that light sabers use some sort of super hot laser beam. However insiders know that light sabers are nothing more than a mono-molecular fiber in a stasis field. Try thinking variable knife. These were described long before Lucas came up with the term light saber.
remember, when you strike to lightsabers together, they don't slice through each other. So that probably adds to the argument that they're not actually hot, like someone said. Either that or their melting points are 7000+ degrees F. Or they could be using special develocitator couplings or some such, I don't know :P
I believe a thermal lance burns up to 2500C.
I work in a shipyard as a welder. I can tell you that steel "melts" at approx. 2500 F. However, other metals such as aluminum and copper are welded at much higher temperatures, Of course, something like ceramic is much more "unmeltable" than metal, and we wouldn't want to think that you could fend off a lightsaber attack with a ceramic coffee cup. It's not just a matter of heat. Of course, lightsabering could be said to be more closely related to plasma cutting than welding. In simplest terms, plasma cutting is a process that uses a high velocity jet of ionized gas that is delivered from a constricting orifice. The high velocity ionized gas, that is, the plasma, conducts electricity from the torch of the plasma cutter to the work piece. The plasma heats the workpiece, melting the material. The high velocity stream of ionized gas mechanically blows the molten metal away, severing the material. Then again, welding and plasma cutting only works with conductive materials, like metal. You can't plasma-cut an arm off. The another issue is that both welding and plasma cutting require your material to be grounded, plasma cutting requires a source of compressed air, and an incredible source of electricity/ amps in a power source the same size, or smaller, than several of our "D" sized batteries. We do know, however, from watching "Empire" that they have portable welders, which they use (uselessly) to defend Hoth.
Huh - must be a april fool prank. Everyone knows Jedis cut through steel by thought. The saber is to just light things up a bit and make it brighter -to make sure power of the dark side does not work against the jedi.
I'm still trying to figure out what gas you are talking about. I *think* you meant that the vaporized metal would turn into a gas??? I don't think there are any metals in the periodic table that have a gaseous state, but perhaps I'm mistaken.
--
Those that think they know everything are annoying those of us who do.
This may be a little OT, but the lightsaber talk reminded me of a parliamentary debate I was at once... debating is a time-honoured tradition and very serious matter, but usually the university leagues have some 'fun' summer debates that are just silly. This one happened right around the time Episode I had come out...
One debate they decided to run backwards, so essentially the opposition got to build up the case for the government and proceed to destroy it, and they chose the resolution that Anakin skywalker should be anally raped by Princess Amidala with a lightsaber.
The arguments for it centered around how it was a typical hazing ritual for new Jedi Knights, it would bring him and the princess closer together, and would bring Anakin closer to the force. Arguments against were, well, it would probably kill him (or at least scar him horribly, requiring some weird life support -- oh wait...)
I just thought it was about the funniest thing ever. (yes, that may be quite sad...)
(Until the following year, when a team ran a case that a conservative and inexperienced young woman on said team should have sex with the notorious womanizer on the other team, forcing said womanizer to argue that she should not sleep with him... that was awesome...)
Considering that the human body is mostly water, wouldn't it flash to steam and blow up when struck by a light saber?
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
and it said "98.6".
No heat!
Straight from the book!
I remember reading this as a kid, too.
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=68
Maybe antimatter, if such stuff actually exists.
Or portable singularities, to be more precise. What the lightsaber handle does is trigger a foldspace from an alternate universe, foldspace which is a "line" extending a definite length from the handle.
Any matter approaching the singularity is accelerated until it forms a plasma which brightly glows (in vacuum, the glow is from virtual particles being caught in the singularity field). However, the high temperature around the plasma surrounding the singularity will also produce a positive pressure which will repel any rushing matter, thus balancing the "blade" and insuring that it does not suck outright anything like a black-hole; the constant pulsing of the plasma field interaction with the surrounding atmosphere is responsible for the "wvfooom-wvfooom" sound one hears near an active lightsaber.
As the linear singularity itself is not in this space, when it interacts with another like linear singularity, it will form an immovable object in respect to the other singularity, thus insuring that one lightsaber can mechanicaly block another lightsaber, giving it a solid appearance.
The high energy needed for the singularity sustenance is harnessed through the use of the Force, hence restricting lightsaber use to properly-trained jedis.
Can God create a rock that he can't lift? To give background information on this riddle, it is of the form where you have a card or piece of paper. On one side it says "The statement on the other side of this paper is true." On the other side it says "The statement on the other side of this paper is false." I'm not sure what the logical term for this type of paradox is called, but the God/Rock idea is very similar. The circular reference in the quoted riddle should be obvious. The solution to this riddle is not a question of God's power. As with most riddles the answer is found by using a vague or misleading definition of a word. The key term in this riddle is "lift." If God created a rock that consumes(replaces) all of spacetime then there is no concept of "up", therefore the rock can not be "lifted" in the normal sense of the term since "lifting" is relative to some other object. With this solution you have achieve a dual state instead of a nonsense state. If an entity can create this hypthetical "omnirock" then the free will of God comes into play. He can create a state where he can not lift the rock and can also create a state where he can by creating a smaller object in space move/lift the first rock; ultimately allowing relative movemnent. The final solution is that both states are possible and exist simultaneously. Look up 'Schrodinger cat' on google. QED
I always wondered how he would get it back.
That's what I'd like to know
Today, even my Journal is Pink!!
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
It glows, wouldn't that glow feel like heat?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Just slightly hotter than Angelina Jolie.
The light sabers aren't really made of light.
This is all a film, not reality. They're probably made of aluminium or something so the actors feel the right weight for their coreographed sword fight scene. In post production, ILM effects wizards sample the image into a computer and add the light effects. Light sabers won't cut anything, it's all done by trick photgraphy and CGI. The whole light saber thing is just done as a way to have sword fights in a sci fi movie, because George Lucas thought it would be cool. It doesn't stand up to any adult scrutiny.
People that argue about how the technology works in science fiction films are on the way to serious mental illness at worst, an unhappy and lonely adulthood at best. If you ever spoke to George, he'd tell you to get a life and then apply for a restraining order on you. He wants cute kids to see his films, creepy single thirty something guys are too small a market to worry about.
Ha ha, not really. April Fool. This post is just a reference to Emperor Palpatine's "where are your friends now" speech in Episode VI. Just testing your Jedi faith, padawan.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Actually, the plasma is held in place by a tightly controlled magnetic field (The exact formation method doesn't need to be known). Since the only way to do this without causing the plasma to stream one way is to have the field rapidly oscillate polarity. The chances of two lightsabers being in exactly the same polarity alignment for long enough to intersect are so infintesimally small the scriptwriters couldn't be bothered with it.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
I dont mean like little bits of metal. Im thinking of atoms and sub atomic particles. But like I said I do need to brush up
Especially after seeing This Web Site
Tag lost or not installed.
Just pose the question to world renowned Jedi expert SWK http://www.jedimaster.net/ As you may already know, he knows everything Jedi, including the delicate art of saber handling, design and manipulation.
There are 10 types of people in the world; those who can read binary, and those who can't.
If a light saber was, in fact, hot enough to slice through a steel bar like the proverbial hot knife through butter, Jedi would have no eyebrows.
- The Kessel run is for nerf herders. I can circumnavigate the entire Central Finite Curve in a lot less than 12 parse
Really, you guys need to spend more time on weldingweb.com. They all know that to cut steel you only need to heat it to about 2200F, then you simply spray it with oxygen and it oxidizes which releases more heat and.... continues the cutting process. You don't even need heat after the initial heating to its melting point, just a steady flow of O2.
Come into contact with something such as, oh, let's say, the air?
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
I wanted to email you about your sound convolver project but couldn't find an email....
1) Does this run in real-time without the convolution (i.e. just combining the streams together)
2) How do you handle different streams having different sample rates?
3) Are you summing all streamd and then applying the convolution? Or are you convolving a kernel with each stream and then adding the results?
4) How large are your buffers? Have you considered cache effects?
[For #3, both methods are equivalent, but one much more efficient than the other]
Gosh!!
Light Sabers are built by Jedi.
They need to have a Jedi activate them - to complete the circuit - so to speak.
They glow a certain colour depending upon the Jedi activating them - maybe?
The glow may be a result of fields of the force disrupting the molecules of
air as they randomly pass throough the force field.
Accordingly the force field must somehow break up bonds bewteen atoms in
a molecule without much input or traditional energy being consumed. This may
be because they operate at a quark quantum energy level ? a bit like having
the so called zero point energy field said to create and destroy particles
but so fast its hard to see the needle move from zero on the particle count.
SO the material's bonds are destroyed by a force field and only the density
and bond strengths involved release energy as they are breaking down would
effectively heat up the material as a side issue really.
So the heat evolved is immaterial - it is the use of the force that counts
and that is why so few true Jedi exist.
Kind Regards
CJT
The blades don't actually touch.
The handle just vibrates as if you hit something.
Put another way: You can't place God in a box called 'gravity' when God created such a thing as 'gravity' in the first place. If he is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient, then the question simply becomes NULL for lack of a describable or definable context that could actually limit such an all-encompassing God.
Light sabers do not rely on heat but the elimation of matter by an antimatter light saber "blade". That's why there is no splashing residue to scar the Jedi and why 2 antimatter light saber blades can clang against each other without damage. The humming sound the saber makes is a result of the atmospheric matter (air molecules) being destroyed as they come in contact with the antimatter blade.