SPOOFE wrote:That would mean that, if there is some sort of "invisible beam" along which the bolts propogate, then this beam - or some other mechanism - slows down the bolt or "damage-dealing" portion of the attack, for one reason or another. This would require exotic means of energy transfer, one which I can't think of to match the evidence as viewed. It could have something to do with the relative strengths of the variable yields of the blasts... a shot turned up to full intensity could behave differently than one set lower.
We have another problem if we assume that the bolt is just a side-effect of the actual damage-dealing portion: Why would the bolt travel slower than the actual blast? This would require either an energy expenditure that creates matter from energy - requiring a SHITLOAD of energy, and thus putting a huge differential of strengths based on range - or we assume, again, that there's some exotic mechanism that's slowing the energy down in a vacuum. Or we can assume that the actual blast travels at the same speed as the bolt, and the bolt simply travels immediately behind, but then we're back at square one anyway.
Furthermore, your screen caps of the Naboo transport being shot at demonstrates another interesting phenomenon... in that scene, you can see energy blasts travelling faster than turbolaser shots seen in, say, TESB. In fact, I think it's well-known that there's a HUGE variable between the propogation speeds of blaster bolts throughout the series. What would cause this? A mechanism of the targetting computer? Why would it ever be desireable to slow down the speed of your blast?
Frankly, I just call it funky and leave it at that.
EDIT: Just saw your "Helix" idea. Interesting, and one I'll have to think about...
My current work in progress hypothesis is an extention to the "ripple" theory. Under the ripple idea, an invisible lightspeed beam is fired and the visible bolt is a ripple in the beam. But that alone doesn't explain the delay between firing and damage in most instances.
So my hypothesis to fix that is that the beam is fired and the bolt appears at the start and "ripples" down the beam at sublight, but that initial beam is only a relatively weak warm-up beam as the weapon prepares to fire. After a couple frames (typically 2-4 according to HDS), there is a power spike where the main portion of the damage is released.
The speed of the bolt may be controllable, perhaps by the strength of the warm-up beam. This means that the bolt typically hits the target when the power spike hits. This may be intentional so as to assist in keeping the beam on target for when the weapon is ready to fire.
This helps explain both the delay between firing and damage, the reason for mismatched timing in some cases, and the visible bolts changing their vector in mid-flight in HDS' clips.
However, bolts don't always change their direction in mid-flight. Take, for example, the TIE fighter during the Battle of Yavin that fires at an X-wing, misses, and hits the Death Star surface. The bolts there all have different vectors, even though multiple bolts are in-flight. (This would mean multiple warm-up bolts being fired at once, each in a different direction, by my hypothesis.) Another TIE chasing an X-wing also had multiple visible bolts flying in different directions at once, as did the Falcon while escaping from the Death Star.
On the other hand, some weapons, like blaster bolts, can't have a carrier-beam to sustain them. This means they shouldn't alter their direction in mid-flight without hitting something. Such as when Han fires a blaster in the trash compactor, it bounces around but he moves his blaster while trying to evade the bolt (which is still dangerous, as seen in lightsaber bolt deflection). It would appear that a different operational theory is required for hand blasters than from ship-mounted lasers.
By the way, photons are affected by gravity just like any other known particle. Otherwise black holes wouldn't be theorized. It's just that light travels so fast that it's out of our visual range in most circumstances before gravity has a chance to visibly alter its course (at 300,000 km/s, it takes a lot of gravity to do anything before the photon is effectively out of range of the gravity well). That blaster bolts are apparently not affected by gravity does not imply that they are massless particles. In the case of turbolasers, it does imply the the bolt is a kind of ripple or something traveling along an invisible beam. But, as the trash compactor scene demonstrates (as well as Jedi deflecting bolts with their lightsabers), hand blasters don't have that invisible carrier beam.
Later...
