Crouching Tiger, Hidden… Jedi?

Comments

1. Charles says:

   September 4, 2008

   One question: how does a sword withstand an energy weapon that can burn through plate metal?

   ;)

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2. gordsellar says:

   September 4, 2008

   Dude, you don’t know this?

   Alright, so I guess I need to explain how lightsabers work. As Wikipedia notes:

   Within the fiction of Star Wars, the lightsaber “blade” consists of a very tight loop of highly focused energy, or a loop of plasma contained in a strong magnetic or other field.

   It’s laymanism to describe it as “plasma or energy” because it’s really a soup of temporarily “borrowed” virtual particles (different kinds in different models of lightsaber, hence the coloring differences) in a constant process of sublimation between the two states.

   What is used to bind this “energetic plasma” of virtual particles is an electromagnetic field, along with massive networks of shielded femtomachinery that is designed not only to herd the “borrowed” particles (snagged mostly from their dissolution routes across adjacent branes, rather than from inside our own brane, into the blade field, but also to maintain the plasma in case of field disruption.

   Which is an important consideration, since all it takes to disrupt the field binding the blade is a nice well-designed Faraday Cage or similar electromagnetic field disruptor.

   It took a a century or two for the design to get perfected, since the patent was illegal within the Empire and the Space Blossom PEach Planet was busily pirating designs from the Empire, via rote memorization among their post-industrial spies, but the design of weapons among the anti-Jedi troops of the Space Blossom Peach Planet began to implement this principle through the use of modern machining techniques involving the etching of nanocircuitry throughout the blade (as well as throughout the plating in matching suits of armor, which are exceedingly rare), resulting — in even the lowliest of such objects — not in a
   Faraday cage or EM shield but rather a Faraday-cage like EM-shielded solid — ie. a solid object the whole of which acts as a Faraday cage internally.

   A strong electrical current is run through the blade’s internal nanocircuitry (which is shielded so that the blade itself is not charged, although some shifty types with no regard for the Universal Warriors’ Convention have weapons where a deadly electrical charge can be activated in the blade), and when a lightsaber strikes it, then the electromagnetic disruption is sufficient — just barely — to disrupt the energy focus. The femtomachines maintain blade focus on either side of the Faraday solid, and repel the disruptive Faraday object away from the blade focus zone, causing only minor scarring damage to the surface of the sword in most cases. (Although in certain circumstances, especially in older Faraday blades, the blades internal circuitry can be damaged by the energies released from disruption and the blade can lose its resistance to lightsabers.)

   In some cases, Mu-metal-like materials are also used, increasing the Faraday-solid effect.

   Some items of conductive textile can also be used for a similar effect, though such clothing is more susceptible to attack by smart femtomachines in newer generations of lightsaber.

   God, don’t they teach anything in Jedi college anymore? ;)

   (Now excuse me while I cringe in wait for someone to pick apart all the nonsense in the above. All I can say is, let’s less nonsensical than midichlorians.)

   Reply
3. Charles says:

   September 5, 2008

   Nope, I don’t buy it, just going on empirical evidence alone. The video shows that there is clearly no disruption of the energy focus in the lightsaber (the lens flares that appear in the video every time the lightsaber strikes the sword also appear when it strikes (and doesn’t cut through! (nested parentheticals!)) the wooden handles of the spears stacked up against the wall, which would indicate to me that nothing special is happening when the lightsaber strikes the sword).

   Also, if it were so possible to develop Faraday weapons to foil (heh) lightsabers, don’t you think that at the very least the clone forces sent against the Jedi would have been equipped with Faraday armor?

   Your technical knowledge is impressive, but it just doesn’t jive with the Star Wars universe.

   :p

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4. gordsellar says:

   September 5, 2008

   Charles,

   Actually, any strike causes a degree of electromagnetic field disruption in the blade focus: it’s a feature (not a flaw) in that it allows the energetic plasma to act upon the target. That’s on page 271 of the standard Light Blade Energy Weapon Series 3 owner’s manual, which covers most Jedi-line blades made in the last 50 years.

   As for explaining the Clones’s gear, well… okay, you got me. I made all that crap up, and I could probably make up more, but you can’t make nonsense wholly sensical. I just wanted to see if I could get close. :)

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5. Charles says:

   September 7, 2008

   Indeed, I was very impressed at the amount of plausible BS you were able to spew. ;)

   Reply
6. gordsellar says:

   September 7, 2008

   Between GMing and tech writing, I have a lot of practice… and that’s not even counting SF-writing!

   Reply