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From reading Jedi Search Luke discovers an Imperial scanner which shows whether or not an individual is Force-sensetive ( a scan is passed over the body, and a projected hologram with a blue aura is a positive).

Could some scanner measure the "force" emanating from a Jedi/Sith as he/she levetates an object...aka a gravitic or electromagnetic potentiometer?

Well, i would i dont know about EU--fucking anything goes there--but the closest thing i can think of would be a simple meaurement of a persons midichlorian count--the more midichlorians, the higher the force sensitivity. This wouldnt exactly show how much "force" a person is channeling at any given moment, but--and this is pure speculation on my part--its possible that observing the activity of said persons midichlorians during force usage could yield results; perhaps the midichlorian reaction could be meaured and some sort of "force measurement" be derived. I have no idea how feasible this is because the functioning of the midichlorians is pretty vague.

TCUSWE wrote:Force Detector
a device developed by Emperor Palpatine, the Force Detector used two unique sheet-crystal paddles and a control pack to determine whether or not a person was Force-sensitive. Thaissen crystals, found only on the planet Circarpous V, were used in the paddles. If the person had some sensitivity to the Force, a bluish aura was displayed around them when the detector was activated. An individual with a strong connection to the Dark Side of the Force registered a reddish aura. The strength of the aura had come correlation to the amount of Force sensitivity the person had. Anyone without Force sensitivity did not register the blue aura. (JS, PJSB)

This is indeed taken from Jedi Search, and the Power of the Jedi Sourcebook.

I personally thought that it could go about measuring the thin layer of air just around the skin, a force-user may unconsciously heat up/cool down the air in a certain way around them without them noticing. Someone steeped in the dark side would have a different pattern from that of the light side. The advantage of this is that the sensors could be fairly mundane, but simply knows what to look for.

Mind you, I also doubt that KJA was ever that smart, or the people that write the sourcebooks were ever this smart, so the above idea is worth pretty much nothing.

Good point, Stan. Although they're not directly related to the Force, using it probably causes distinct physiological effects like perspiration, EKG, brain activity etc in an individual that can be detected with conventional (medical based perhaps) sensors. It probably won't be a 100% guarantee, but if there's some weird shit happening, and someone in the crowd is displaying activity that fits the profile, you could probably identify them.

One thing that totally throws this idea out the window is that you'd need to obtain a completely different set of effects to look for in different species. Remember that these sentient species evolved from completely different places/planets, hence might have totally different physiologies.

Sort of related to this is the fact that Force sensitive beings are supposed to be extremely rare, something the EU seems to forget.

Anyway, about the EU's Force Detector, the EU comes up with a lot of stuff at a whims an instant plot device, so unsurprisingly, sometimes silly stuff comes up, generally (not citing the detector as a particular example).

Ah, but can the sensor/machine detect the Force in and of itself?

The Force is supposed to be a "field" generated by living things.

Can a potentiometer detect a disturbance or distortion of this field, such as physically manipulating an object during levitation?

That's an even better point!
Since the Force can be channeled so that it interacts with matter (i.e. levitating an object), it stands that you should be able to detect the Force by looking for those same interactions.
Then again, does the Force interact with "ordinary" matter and energy all the time, or only when a user wants it to?

Of course, this leads to bigger questions, like whether (use of) the Force adheres to conservation of energy, and the whole thermodynamics shebang...