What are Turbolasers

[Isolder74]

According to Faraday's law a large enough eletric potential can influence even a neutral partical. Any way from my research into high energy lasers magnetic lenses do work. The major problem is that visible light has a frequency that makes it very hard to bend so it takes a very strong or concentrated Magnetic field. BTW i've seen this done at our LASER lab here at Weber State University. Now it is much easier to deflect high energy E-M energy like Gamma Rays and X-rays cause they more resemble particals in their nature than does visible light. On the other end it is also easier to manipulate radio waves cause they behave very close to waves. That is one of our problems is light a particle or is it a wave the jury is still out on that one.

[Isolder74]

In my physics textbook (4th Ed Paul A. Tipler). It states:
Force Electromagnetic
Acts On Electric Charge
Particles Experiencing Electrically Charged

And although light is a combination of electric and magnetic fields, it doesn't actually have any charge. Hence no deflection.

That does not look like a direct quote to me. Is this a college level text cause this data is very limited and really say nothine. BTW then how do you explain Neutrons being accerated the using a magnetic field they are neutral particals.

[Patrick Ogaard]

Standard blasters use a gaseous lasing medium (blaster gas) that is turned into high energy plasma by the lasing process. The lasing medium itself is then projected out the front of the blaster, and in most instances is further compressed, heated and accelerated by a sequential array of magnetic coils in the barrel of the weapon. The primary damaging agent of a blaster is the plasma bolt, though with some possible damage effect from the coherent light component. Small arms blasters can also be set to fire a form of expanding plasma "smoke ring" carrying a high-voltage/low-amp electrical charge which grounds out when it strikes a suitable target.

Plasma cools and expands very rapidly. Also, how would you tell the difference between a pure plasma weapon and your laser + plasma weapon? Aren't you multiplying mechanisms without cause?



The addition of the laser component to the blaster's damage effect is hardly something I'm wedded to, and I would hardly expect it to have any significant effect. On the other hand, the AOTC Visual Dictionary confirms rather unequivocally that all standard blasters are weapons firing charged plasma. Therefore, regardless of the potential problesm (expansion & cooling) of plasma, it's what we've got. It also explains why a magnetically sealed hatch and walls could divert a blaster bolt and cause it to ricochet madly. There is also the matter of velocity and duration: the expansion and cooling of a high energy charged plasma bolt may not be particularly significant over the typical time it takes a bolt to strike home.

Lasers and masers would be plausible and durable parts of a system to generate such a plasma. There may well not be any major point to using a laser component to augment the damage effect of the charged plasma itself. On the other hand, a low-powered laser bolt fired the instant before the plasma bolt is released would tend to ionize the atmosphere along the beam path, producing a tunnel along which the plasma bolt would tend to travel. That would be completely pointless in a vacuum, of course.

Turbolasers further increase the level of excitation of the blaster gas, possibly by the injection (turbo-injection? ) of antimatter. The exceptionally high energy levels of the lasing medium produce a graser effect. The energy levels in the lasing medium are so high that the entire volume of blaster gas used in a firing cycle breaks down and is ejected. The greater portion is accelerated down the beam path as a plasma tracer, with the remainder circulated along the length of the plasma accelerator barrel and ejected at low velocity from the muzzle as part of the cooling cycle.

Again, this has all the problems of plasma, but in addition there are green turbolasers. Plasma, which emits EMR with a black-body spectrum, does not glow green. It's also really hard to believe that gamma radiation would be produced by a lasing plasma. Gamma rays are produced either by nuclear processes or synchrotron processes.
The "waste" also seems to have more effect on targets than is reasonable. For instance, there's a Falcon shot available somewhere on this site where the energy of a TL bolt is derived from the angular momentum transferred to the Falcon. The Falcon exhibits no reaction until the visible part of the bolt arrives. If there is a laser beam impinging on the Falcon before the bolt arrives, it certainly doesn't make itself apparent in either the Falcon's motion or resulting damage.

Good points.

Regarding the green Imperial turbolasers and their red Rebel counterparts, that would have to be attributed to the tracer element, not to mention that it would be potentially important in a jammer-rich environment to be able to eyeball which bolts are from friendlies and which are from hostiles. Simply injecting a fluorescing layer into the outer layer of the plasma bolt, its fluorescence fueled by the waste radiation of the plasma bolt itself, should do the trick.

Another possible answer is that blaster gases are so valuable specifically because of their bizarre properties: perhaps blaster gases are such excellent hyperdrive coolants and blaster ammunition specifically because they have a limited emission spectrum? It's implausible, but high quality naturally occurring blaster gases are supposed to be rare, so that blaster gases have to be rather exotic.

One idea would be that they are extremely complex molecules, similar in basic structure to proteins, but built around encapsulated flecks of neutronium such as a star or gas giant might have picked up at its creation, such as from the outer surface of a neutron star that was binary with a supernova star and had portions of its surface blown off. The neutronium, possibly in clusters of just four to a few dozen neutrons, is encapsulated by the complex molecular structure. The exotic and complex structure of the molecule would be entirely dependent on the neutronium inclusions for its existence and survival in the corona of a star or the depths of a gas giant's atmospere, not to mention its existence as a gas. That also brings with it a justification for the different types of blaster gases and the existence of artificially and naturally spin-sealed forms of blaster gases. The spin-sealed forms might have a robust, braided structure that makes the blaster gas exceptionally resistant to breaking down under high energy inputs. A plasma including antimatter microdots would possibly make a particularly damaging plasma.

On the gamma radiation front, I'd have to say that your objection would be why I touched on the possibility of injecting antimatter into the mix, though there's also the fact that high quality natural blaster gases (such as tibanna) are rare enough on a galactic scale to be worth building extensive extraction industries around finds of them in remote quarters of the galaxy. That indicates that these gases must have unusual properties, one of which may be the ability to produce extremely high energy photons if enough energy is pumped into them, up to gamma rays. An antimatter injection, as another option, would produce plenty of gamma radiation photons. The trick then would be to have force fields or other such superscience act as the mirrors for a split-second, with the collapse of the field at the muzzle end allowing discharge of the radiation and plasma.

The "waste" portion of the bolt is, like the energy level of the bolt overall, almost certainly selectable both in terms of overall firepower and in terms of the share (of plasma or EM) in the firepower. It seems plausible, possibly only to me, that a turbolaser would be designed to allow the bolt's energy level and composition to be modified based on the target and the desired effect. A real-world analogy would be the option of loading modern large caliber guns with different types of ammunition: a modern tank can potentially fire a long, finned dart of tungsten or depleted uranium to destroy other tanks; a shaped charge to destroy older tanks or blast bunkers; a cannister round to shred infantry with a bucketload of steel pellets; a high explosive round to destroy lightly armored targets and infantry; a high explosive fragmentation round to kill infantry at long range; a high explosive squash head round to blast the external fittings off enemy tanks or spall off huge slabs of concrete inside enemy bunkers; etc. The turbolaser firing on the MF may well have been using a low-powered blast of straight plasma to knock down the target's shields and throw it off its evasive course, since the point did not appear to be the outright destruction of the ship, but rather its capture.

Superlasers dispense with a large portion of the physical lasing chamber, allowing even higher energy levels of coherent light to be generated than conventional high energy weapons of the same size. Multiple high energy plasma emitters fire plasma at the focus of an electromagnetic field that acts as a virtual lasing chamber. (The potentially huge levels of waste electromagnetic energy generated by such a scheme could in part explain why the Rebel fighters attacking the first Death Star were not shown attempting to damage the firing mechanism of the DS superlaser; even the prefire sequence would likely have fried any fighter in the vicinity.)

This electromagnetic focussing lacks any means for feedback. How do you expect lasing to occur without it? (in conventional lasers of today, mirrors at either end serve this purpose).

Another good question. At this point I would have to point at the dish form typical of superlaser arrays, even down to the tiny, flattened versions used by the clone army. The only reason I can see for the dish form would be if the dish serves as the foundation of a mirror array composed of virtual mirrors (deflector-based, perhaps?). Not a perfect answer, but it's what I've got.

Ion weapons, typified by the ion cannon used by and against starships, are essentially blasters designed to fire plasma bolts specifically formulated to disrupt shields and disable electronic systems. Should they strike an inadequately shielded target, the effects can be ... unpleasant.

Why doesn't the ion cannon bolt appear to affect the atmosphere as it passes through it (the shot showing the Hoth cannon firing). Why don't they just use an X-ray laser?

The Hoth ion cannon is the only canon ion cannon I ken to have fired on screen, and its bolts are visually indistinguishable (to me) from the standard Rebel turbolaser bolts. A pathfinder laser can't be the answer to the lack of interaction with the atmosphere, since such a powerful laser would produce an enormous spark trail while ionizing the air along the beam path, so the only idea I can come up with is a form of cavitation effect (or something similar) vaguely analogous to that encountered by modern researchers trying to develop underwater projectile weapons and extremely high speed torpedoes.

It's an effect that pretty much has to exist for other Star Wars weapons as well. Otherwise the fire of an AT-AT's guns, or even that of a conventional blaster, should produce a spectacular ionization trail and thermal effects along the path of the bolt. Essentially, the outermost layer of a conventional blaster to turbolaser or ion cannon bolt has to interact with the atmosphere it passes through in such a way that the bolt moves along as if sliding down a frictionless tube, with minimal disturbance of the atmosphere itself.[/b]

[Neko_Oni]

Isolder74: Yes it is a direct quote, its only a summary section. BTW I'm only a first year university physics student.

Also isn't it impossible for a magnetic field to accelerate anything (it can change the direction of a velocity vector but not its magnitude), since the direction of force is perpendicular to the direction of motion of the particle?

As far as light being particle OR wave, isn't the accepted theory that it is both. Some properties of light (diffraction through a diffraction grating) only work when light is considered a wave, while other properties (photo-electric effect) can only work if light is considered a particle. In any case even normal 'matter' particles can be given a wavelength (electron diffraction for instance). Anyway I'm open to being corrected.

[ClaysGhost]

Light does bend in a magnetic field. This is because light is a form of ELECTROMAGNETIC Energy. According to Maxfield's Theorom light can be bent by magnetic field cause all E-M energy contains both a E field and a B(Magnetic) Field at 90 Degrees. BTW they use magnets to point X-Rays at you at the hospitol. A suffichentally large Electric field can also bend light this one principle on how a Deflector shield works.

I'm perfectly aware of Maxwell's equations, and since you mentioned them perhaps you'd accept this challenge:

Using Maxwell's equations, determine the form of the magnetic field required to bend light. Not interested in field strengths or actual deflection amounts, just the analytic form of the field required to do it. Go on, you know you want to.

BTW, they do not use magnets to point X-rays at me in the hospital. Perhaps you should investigate X-ray machines further.

According to Faraday's law a large enough eletric potential can influence even a neutral partical.

Care to demonstrate this? In fact, care to state Faraday's law for me, just to make sure we're talking about the same thing?

Any way from my research into high energy lasers magnetic lenses do work. The major problem is that visible light has a frequency that makes it very hard to bend so it takes a very strong or concentrated Magnetic field

I suspect you're talking about free-electron lasers, which are very nice, although they don't work in the way you seem to be claiming. The "magnetic lenses" are there for the first stage of the device, in which only electrons are involved. It is the corrugated field that causes coherent emission by the electrons, but the emitted light is not affected at all by the magnetic field.

Now it is much easier to deflect high energy E-M energy like Gamma Rays and X-rays

Of course, this is why optical telescopes are so much harder to build that X-ray telescopes. Except that it's the other way round.
If I had an image of Mr T with "I pity the foo'!" on it, it would make an appearance here. Unfortunately, I don't.

BTW then how do you explain Neutrons being accerated the using a magnetic field they are neutral particals.

Neutrons aren't accelerated in magnetic fields, so no explanation is called for. Go look at some bubble chamber photographs.

Also isn't it impossible for a magnetic field to accelerate anything (it can change the direction of a velocity vector but not its magnitude)

Since acceleration is a change in velocity over time, rather than a change in speed over time, the altered direction of the velocity vector is acceleration (centripetal acceleration is a good example of this). Magnetic fields cannot change the velocity component parallel to the field, though, for the reason you state.

As far as light being particle OR wave, isn't the accepted theory that it is both.

Yep.

[ClaysGhost]

The addition of the laser component to the blaster's damage effect is hardly something I'm wedded to, and I would hardly expect it to have any significant effect. On the other hand, the AOTC Visual Dictionary confirms rather unequivocally that all standard blasters are weapons firing charged plasma. Therefore, regardless of the potential problesm (expansion & cooling) of plasma, it's what we've got. It also explains why a magnetically sealed hatch and walls could divert a blaster bolt and cause it to ricochet madly. There is also the matter of velocity and duration: the expansion and cooling of a high energy charged plasma bolt may not be particularly significant over the typical time it takes a bolt to strike home.

Any reasonably hot plasma would both expand rapidly (thermal velocities of a few km/s at 10,000 degrees K), and cool very quickly (at 10,000 deg K, the plasma would radiate at > 10MW if it were a 10cm diameter sphere, I think).

Lasers and masers would be plausible and durable parts of a system to generate such a plasma. There may well not be any major point to using a laser component to augment the damage effect of the charged plasma itself. On the other hand, a low-powered laser bolt fired the instant before the plasma bolt is released would tend to ionize the atmosphere along the beam path, producing a tunnel along which the plasma bolt would tend to travel. That would be completely pointless in a vacuum, of course.

Yes, this would happen for UV lasers and above (in frequency).

Regarding the green Imperial turbolasers and their red Rebel counterparts, that would have to be attributed to the tracer element, not to mention that it would be potentially important in a jammer-rich environment to be able to eyeball which bolts are from friendlies and which are from hostiles. Simply injecting a fluorescing layer into the outer layer of the plasma bolt, its fluorescence fueled by the waste radiation of the plasma bolt itself, should do the trick.

Shouldn't the bolts lose colour over time, as the tracer becomes progressively diffused into the bolt and the tracer atoms become ionised?

Another possible answer is that blaster gases are so valuable specifically because of their bizarre properties: perhaps blaster gases are such excellent hyperdrive coolants and blaster ammunition specifically because they have a limited emission spectrum? It's implausible, but high quality naturally occurring blaster gases are supposed to be rare, so that blaster gases have to be rather exotic.

The thermal emission spectrum's behaviour over frequency would not depend on the particular plasma material, only its temperature. The only way I can think of is that some part of the blaster gas is excited, rather than ionised (producing a nice green line in the spectrum). I think this is unlikely, since we need it to ionise for the acceleration stage. If the blaster gas is not evenly ionised, it will not travel as a bolt, but as a "spray" because different parts would be accelerated to different velocities. Further, the line would probably appear as absorption rather than emission, since the line emitting part of the gas would have to be cooler (to avoid ionisation) than the rest. It wouldn't look green. I don't think there is such a problem with the rebel lasers - behold the rosy plasma at

http://www.fusion.org.uk/mast/dec01-2.html

Nice.

One idea would be that they are extremely complex molecules, similar in basic structure to proteins, but built around encapsulated flecks of neutronium such as a star or gas giant might have picked up at its creation, such as from the outer surface of a neutron star that was binary with a supernova star and had portions of its surface blown off. The neutronium, possibly in clusters of just four to a few dozen neutrons, is encapsulated by the complex molecular structure. The exotic and complex structure of the molecule would be entirely dependent on the neutronium inclusions for its existence and survival in the corona of a star or the depths of a gas giant's atmospere, not to mention its existence as a gas. That also brings with it a justification for the different types of blaster gases and the existence of artificially and naturally spin-sealed forms of blaster gases. The spin-sealed forms might have a robust, braided structure that makes the blaster gas exceptionally resistant to breaking down under high energy inputs. A plasma including antimatter microdots would possibly make a particularly damaging plasma.

I'm not a fan of neutronium; I can't see how it could be expected to survive outside neutron star pressures.

On the gamma radiation front, I'd have to say that your objection would be why I touched on the possibility of injecting antimatter into the mix, though there's also the fact that high quality natural blaster gases (such as tibanna) are rare enough on a galactic scale to be worth building extensive extraction industries around finds of them in remote quarters of the galaxy. That indicates that these gases must have unusual properties, one of which may be the ability to produce extremely high energy photons if enough energy is pumped into them, up to gamma rays. An antimatter injection, as another option, would produce plenty of gamma radiation photons. The trick then would be to have force fields or other such superscience act as the mirrors for a split-second, with the collapse of the field at the muzzle end allowing discharge of the radiation and plasma.

Yes, antimatter would provide gamma-rays. The only problems I see are the safety issues around antimatter. Hypermatter seems to be a safe substitute in SW, but I know nothing about it. Could that be involved? The only materials I can even imagine producing gamma-ray photons in the way that most atoms produce visible, IR or UV transitions (through electron state changes) would be with the use of (very) trans-uranic materials. There are obvious undesirable aspects, including stability and mass.

The "waste" portion of the bolt is, like the energy level of the bolt overall, almost certainly selectable both in terms of overall firepower and in terms of the share (of plasma or EM) in the firepower. It seems plausible, possibly only to me, that a turbolaser would be designed to allow the bolt's energy level and composition to be modified based on the target and the desired effect. A real-world analogy would be the option of loading modern large caliber guns with different types of ammunition: a modern tank can potentially fire a long, finned dart of tungsten or depleted uranium to destroy other tanks; a shaped charge to destroy older tanks or blast bunkers; a cannister round to shred infantry with a bucketload of steel pellets; a high explosive round to destroy lightly armored targets and infantry; a high explosive fragmentation round to kill infantry at long range; a high explosive squash head round to blast the external fittings off enemy tanks or spall off huge slabs of concrete inside enemy bunkers; etc. The turbolaser firing on the MF may well have been using a low-powered blast of straight plasma to knock down the target's shields and throw it off its evasive course, since the point did not appear to be the outright destruction of the ship, but rather its capture.

Yes, such flexibility would be very valuable, I imagine.

Another good question. At this point I would have to point at the dish form typical of superlaser arrays, even down to the tiny, flattened versions used by the clone army. The only reason I can see for the dish form would be if the dish serves as the foundation of a mirror array composed of virtual mirrors (deflector-based, perhaps?). Not a perfect answer, but it's what I've got.

Hm. I'll have to think about this; it's a bit odd.

The Hoth ion cannon is the only canon ion cannon I ken to have fired on screen, and its bolts are visually indistinguishable (to me) from the standard Rebel turbolaser bolts. A pathfinder laser can't be the answer to the lack of interaction with the atmosphere, since such a powerful laser would produce an enormous spark trail while ionizing the air along the beam path, so the only idea I can come up with is a form of cavitation effect (or something similar) vaguely analogous to that encountered by modern researchers trying to develop underwater projectile weapons and extremely high speed torpedoes.

It's an effect that pretty much has to exist for other Star Wars weapons as well. Otherwise the fire of an AT-AT's guns, or even that of a conventional blaster, should produce a spectacular ionization trail and thermal effects along the path of the bolt. Essentially, the outermost layer of a conventional blaster to turbolaser or ion cannon bolt has to interact with the atmosphere it passes through in such a way that the bolt moves along as if sliding down a frictionless tube, with minimal disturbance of the atmosphere itself.

Yes. Incidentally, what do you think of the ground combat scenes in ROTJ, where AT-ST cannon bolts hit trees? The tree trunks appear to splinter - I'd expect plasma to burn through.

[His Divine Shadow]

It wouldn't prevent cooling by radiation (I may have said this to you before) at all, and such cooling is very powerful. That's apart from the undesirability of forcefields.

Yes, but how powerfull? And they are said to have short ranges I believe due to their instability.
And I find the forcefields a good explanation, since it explains why the bolt doesn't radiate as visibly as it should.

[His Divine Shadow]

Yes. Incidentally, what do you think of the ground combat scenes in ROTJ, where AT-ST cannon bolts hit trees? The tree trunks appear to splinter - I'd expect plasma to burn through.

Thermal stress?

[Patrick Ogaard]

Any reasonably hot plasma would both expand rapidly (thermal velocities of a few km/s at 10,000 degrees K), and cool very quickly (at 10,000 deg K, the plasma would radiate at > 10MW if it were a 10cm diameter sphere, I think).

The question would be this: how hot is a Star Wars blaster's plasma? Blaster small arms all use the standard red bolts, and if we assume (perhaps erroneously) that the red bolt is "cheaper" than the green bolt in not using a tracer jacket, the red light radiated by the bolt might give a vague clue to the heat of the plasma.

For larger weapons, like turbolasers, an effect like thermal mass might come into play. A turbolaser bolt could be a roughly cylindrical mass of plasma a meter or more in diameter and several times that length, so that its surface area would be reduced relative to its volume, possibly reducing the rapidity of cooling relative to a plasma bolt from a small arm.
There is also the possibility that the plasma of the bolt is kept in shape by such forces as the spin apparently applied to the beams of Star Wars high energy weapons (ref: AOTC ICS), which may play into the admittedly odd fact that these weapons don't cause noticeable ionization effects in the atmosphere when they pass through it. It does, of course, bring up the question of why the spin applied to the beam does not make the bolt rip itself apart immediately in a spectacular fireworks display.

Lasers and masers would be plausible and durable parts of a system to generate such a plasma. There may well not be any major point to using a laser component to augment the damage effect of the charged plasma itself. On the other hand, a low-powered laser bolt fired the instant before the plasma bolt is released would tend to ionize the atmosphere along the beam path, producing a tunnel along which the plasma bolt would tend to travel. That would be completely pointless in a vacuum, of course.

Yes, this would happen for UV lasers and above (in frequency).

Shouldn't the bolts lose colour over time, as the tracer becomes progressively diffused into the bolt and the tracer atoms become ionised?

Once again the AOTC Incredible Cross Sections book comes to the rescue, or so I hope. The entry on the Geonosian fighter refers to the weapon's beam having greater spin imparted to it by the long barrel, reducing collateral bolt glow relative to destructive power.

The thermal emission spectrum's behaviour over frequency would not depend on the particular plasma material, only its temperature. The only way I can think of is that some part of the blaster gas is excited, rather than ionised (producing a nice green line in the spectrum). I think this is unlikely, since we need it to ionise for the acceleration stage. If the blaster gas is not evenly ionised, it will not travel as a bolt, but as a "spray" because different parts would be accelerated to different velocities. Further, the line would probably appear as absorption rather than emission, since the line emitting part of the gas would have to be cooler (to avoid ionisation) than the rest. It wouldn't look green. I don't think there is such a problem with the rebel lasers - behold the rosy plasma at

http://www.fusion.org.uk/mast/dec01-2.html

Nice.

I'm not a fan of neutronium; I can't see how it could be expected to survive outside neutron star pressures.

I'm hardly wedded to neutronium in this regard, but the last I'd heard (as rumor) was that small clumps of neutronium, no more than 4 neutrons, had been artificially produced. The gravitational pressure of a neutron star seems to be necessary for the formation of any significant masses of neutronium, but it may not be necessary for the formation of neutronium once it is created. A weak analogy would be that of the diamond: creating diamonds requires substantial heat and pressure, but a diamond is perfectly happy to stay a diamond once taken out of the environment that created it.
Regardless, my speculation on the nature of tibanna and other blaster gases is just that: speculation.

Yes, antimatter would provide gamma-rays. The only problems I see are the safety issues around antimatter. Hypermatter seems to be a safe substitute in SW, but I know nothing about it. Could that be involved? The only materials I can even imagine producing gamma-ray photons in the way that most atoms produce visible, IR or UV transitions (through electron state changes) would be with the use of (very) trans-uranic materials. There are obvious undesirable aspects, including stability and mass.

Antimatter apparently figures prominently in the warheads of the heavy missiles fired by Republic LAATs, at least according to the AOTC Incredible Cross Sections, and a technology base that can configure an antimatter warhead to act as a shaped charge (per the AOTC ICS) should have no huge problems with controlled antimatter injection into a turbolaser prefire chamber. Considering the massive power drains and outputs turbolasers seem to have, I would not put it past GE science to produce antimatter on demand for every shot, bypassing safety and storage problems in return for the need for huge power inputs.

As for hypermatter and transuranics, both are ciphers that could be involved but may not be. There just isn't enough information.

The "waste" portion of the bolt is, like the energy level of the bolt overall, almost certainly selectable both in terms of overall firepower and in terms of the share (of plasma or EM) in the firepower. It seems plausible, possibly only to me, that a turbolaser would be designed to allow the bolt's energy level and composition to be modified based on the target and the desired effect. A real-world analogy would be the option of loading modern large caliber guns with different types of ammunition: a modern tank can potentially fire a long, finned dart of tungsten or depleted uranium to destroy other tanks; a shaped charge to destroy older tanks or blast bunkers; a cannister round to shred infantry with a bucketload of steel pellets; a high explosive round to destroy lightly armored targets and infantry; a high explosive fragmentation round to kill infantry at long range; a high explosive squash head round to blast the external fittings off enemy tanks or spall off huge slabs of concrete inside enemy bunkers; etc. The turbolaser firing on the MF may well have been using a low-powered blast of straight plasma to knock down the target's shields and throw it off its evasive course, since the point did not appear to be the outright destruction of the ship, but rather its capture.

Yes, such flexibility would be very valuable, I imagine.

Another good question. At this point I would have to point at the dish form typical of superlaser arrays, even down to the tiny, flattened versions used by the clone army. The only reason I can see for the dish form would be if the dish serves as the foundation of a mirror array composed of virtual mirrors (deflector-based, perhaps?). Not a perfect answer, but it's what I've got.

Hm. I'll have to think about this; it's a bit odd.

Remember, it's only an idea, and not necessarily the best. It's the best one I've been able to come up with, however.

The Hoth ion cannon is the only canon ion cannon I ken to have fired on screen, and its bolts are visually indistinguishable (to me) from the standard Rebel turbolaser bolts. A pathfinder laser can't be the answer to the lack of interaction with the atmosphere, since such a powerful laser would produce an enormous spark trail while ionizing the air along the beam path, so the only idea I can come up with is a form of cavitation effect (or something similar) vaguely analogous to that encountered by modern researchers trying to develop underwater projectile weapons and extremely high speed torpedoes.

It's an effect that pretty much has to exist for other Star Wars weapons as well. Otherwise the fire of an AT-AT's guns, or even that of a conventional blaster, should produce a spectacular ionization trail and thermal effects along the path of the bolt. Essentially, the outermost layer of a conventional blaster to turbolaser or ion cannon bolt has to interact with the atmosphere it passes through in such a way that the bolt moves along as if sliding down a frictionless tube, with minimal disturbance of the atmosphere itself.

Yes. Incidentally, what do you think of the ground combat scenes in ROTJ, where AT-ST cannon bolts hit trees? The tree trunks appear to splinter - I'd expect plasma to burn through.[/quote]

That one I would attribute to the one thing the rain forest of the Ewoks was likely blessed with in abundance: water. The plasma bolts slamming into the trees would likely have produced only a small scorch on the surface and then immediately converted a large portion of the water in the trunk into steam, blasting the trunks apart from the inside. That would be consistent with the visuals of small arms blaster effects against human targets, including armored ones.

Most blaster bolts produce only a small external scorch mark, but the target immediately drops if struck in the torso. Think of Greedo and countless stormtroopers. A hot, charged plasma bolt striking the torso would, likely as not, scorch right through the outer layer of skin and then convert a part of the water in the torso into steam. The steam produces an explosion inside the target's torso, shredding the internal organs. A bolt to the shoulder, on the other hand, would be disabling but not necessarily immediately fatal, though a shoulder joint replacement would be in order. The charge of the bolt could also potentially contribute to the stopping power of a blaster bolt, producing something like a nasty DC jolt (which could be particularly useful against droids, and Jedi with bionic hands).[/quote]

[His Divine Shadow]

I highly doubt it's plasma(actually, I know), saxton almost hates the plasma idea.

Blasters(hand and ship) are plasma and thats it, because official evidence says so.

Turbolasers are massless and use either laser light, gravitons, gluons
or some analogous energy of that type.
I'm partial to it being some EM weapons due to quotes describing it as that.

[Connor MacLeod]

Photons do not seem to be the "total" component. Rather, whatever massless particle comprises the blaster bolt appears to spontaneously decay into photons - hence the "flashes" we see on impact with shields (Saxton goes rather in depth into this part on his site under the TPM section).

Regarding the "plasma" theory, onscreen canon presents us with a few problems as well (whether you consider it a star-like "hot" plasma or something else.):

For one thing, the bolts do not appear to have much in the way of momentum. We NEVER see a complete shoot through that leaves most of the object intact (the tiny asteroind in TESB that appears to be vaporized when a TL grazes it does not count.). Two examples of this include:

ROTJ - a stormtrooper hit by an ewok dropping rocks from a glider fires up at said Ewok glider, hitting it in the hide "skin" of the wings. The bolt strikes the wing, there is some sort of flash/vaporization effect, but the bolt does not even punch through.

TPM: Amidala uses grappling lines to ascend to a higher level of the Naboo palace. To get inside she fires her blaster at the door/windows, blowing them apart. Yet these relatively thin, mostly glass doors appear to be able to block the bolt (it does not penetrate through.)ye

This is also frequently true of asteroids in TESB, and the superlaser (a giant, compound turboalser) in ROTJ (and that beam is moving at EASILY thousands of km/s, if not faster)

Additionally, we know that Jedi can block, even reflect blaster bolts without any sort of "recoil" knocking their sabers out of alignment. A plasma moving at even a low velocity should exhibit SOME sort of "jarring" to the saber. If we drag the EU into this, lightsabers can even block blaster fire from an AT-AT (ref: Dark Empire.)

Third, if we assume that the blaster is mostly or entirely the visible component, they move substantially slower than a bullet or projectile. As I understand it, any such projectile should experience some "drag" pulling it down - we would see arcing of blaster bolts (since we can see the bolts propogating)

Again, there's also the supposed use of "crystals" as a part of the blaster component and the lack of acceleration coils in the EGW&T, even in the larger scale weapons (only ion cannons appear to have acceleration coils.) prior to the AOTC VD, there was no official proof that blasters used acceleration coils of any kind. And the status of THAT book is no worse than the ICS.

And lastly, we have at least ONE example of a hit where the visible component does not do damage (the A-wing that rams the Executor's bridge in ROTJ) which meshes with official sources claiming that the visible component is a (generally harmless) byproduct and sometimes tracer. Another one I believe exists during the Tantive IV boarding scene - one of the stormtroopers is hit by a Rebel blaster bolt and the visible component penetrates partway in before the "blast" effect hits, which is far different than a number of other stormtrooper/blaster interactions.

This is not to say the massless theory is perfect, because there are certain scenes it doesnt work with (ANH trash compactor scene) and the glacial movement of some bolts relative to the invisible, but the point is that the so-called "plasma" theory has (as Saxton has astutely illustrated on his website) a number of problems associated with it as well (some of which I have elaborated on in this post, and in prior ones.)

When it comes to the "plasma" theory, the only sources that directly relate blasters to plasma weapons are the SW VD and the AOTC VD, but neither really STATE that it applies to capital ship weapons. Likewise, the ICS talks about massless beam weapons and refers specifically to ship, fighter, and vehicle mounted weapons, and by implication (EGW&T) can be tied to blasters. Logically, we infer that the term "blaster" encompasses a wide variety of beam weapons technology, rather than a specific knid (and not neccesarily a hybrid.) Differences between the "massless" bolt and a "plasma/particle" one might be accounted for by said variation, moreso where hand weaponry is concerned.

[Connor MacLeod]

We can also make other distinctions. Capital scale laser cannons (and ion cannons) have been classified as different weapons from particle beam weaponry (SWSB) as well as plasma weapons (which the Yuuzhan Vong use, NJO)

[omegaLancer]

To ghost comment about light bullet / soliton needing a medium.. Well the good mad scientist in the Soviet union has form laser soliton by using optical cavities...see the following :

http://alexandra.di.uoa.gr/Dienst/UI/2. ... /TR97-0012

and

http://home.rclph.spbu.ru/journal/artic ... Kozlov.htm

So the best model of a Turbolaser is a Gamma ray soliton, and the light bullet models show the varies interactions, like merging of bolts and flak explosions that TL undergoes.

[ClaysGhost]

It wouldn't prevent cooling by radiation (I may have said this to you before) at all, and such cooling is very powerful. That's apart from the undesirability of forcefields.

Yes, but how powerfull? And they are said to have short ranges I believe due to their instability.
And I find the forcefields a good explanation, since it explains why the bolt doesn't radiate as visibly as it should.

A spherical blackbody of 10cm diameter at a temperature of 10,000K will emit EM radiation at a rate of 17.8MW.

These would have to be magic forcefields. Not only are they capable of resisting physical pressure, they can also prevent thermal radiation. Forcefields in SW do not seem to be opaque or reflective. Blaster bolts definitely do not seem to be reflective, so we would have to posit that the forcefield is absorbing (some of) the radiant plasma energy, and since the forcefield would have to be generated by the gun firing the bolt, that means that the gun ends up absorbing the radiant energy. Quite apart from this being a highly strange action-at-a-distance forcefield anyway.

Thermal stress?

Does thermal stress cause splintering like that, without burning? I would have thought that the tree would at least burn or scorch in addition to splintering.

[His Divine Shadow]

According to MW an analogy to that would lightning hitting a tree, that usually causes splintering like that, not sure about the burns though.

[ClaysGhost]

The question would be this: how hot is a Star Wars blaster's plasma? Blaster small arms all use the standard red bolts, and if we assume (perhaps erroneously) that the red bolt is "cheaper" than the green bolt in not using a tracer jacket, the red light radiated by the bolt might give a vague clue to the heat of the plasma.

Yes, possibly. I might have a go at working this out.

For larger weapons, like turbolasers, an effect like thermal mass might come into play. A turbolaser bolt could be a roughly cylindrical mass of plasma a meter or more in diameter and several times that length, so that its surface area would be reduced relative to its volume, possibly reducing the rapidity of cooling relative to a plasma bolt from a small arm.
There is also the possibility that the plasma of the bolt is kept in shape by such forces as the spin apparently applied to the beams of Star Wars high energy weapons (ref: AOTC ICS), which may play into the admittedly odd fact that these weapons don't cause noticeable ionization effects in the atmosphere when they pass through it. It does, of course, bring up the question of why the spin applied to the beam does not make the bolt rip itself apart immediately in a spectacular fireworks display.

Assuming an ideal (and spherical) bolt, the lifetime of the bolt is proportional to radius. Increasing the radius would increase the lifetime proportionally. Increasing the temperature linearly produces a forth-power decrease in lifetime. Large, low temperature plasma bolts therefore would be expected to have the most range, but also would transfer less energy per unit surface area to the target.

The spin would only be stable if something were holding the bolt together right down the path to target.

Once again the AOTC Incredible Cross Sections book comes to the rescue, or so I hope. The entry on the Geonosian fighter refers to the weapon's beam having greater spin imparted to it by the long barrel, reducing collateral bolt glow relative to destructive power.

This again implies that something else is maintaining the spin of the plasma up to the target, interestingly.

Antimatter apparently figures prominently in the warheads of the heavy missiles fired by Republic LAATs, at least according to the AOTC Incredible Cross Sections, and a technology base that can configure an antimatter warhead to act as a shaped charge (per the AOTC ICS) should have no huge problems with controlled antimatter injection into a turbolaser prefire chamber. Considering the massive power drains and outputs turbolasers seem to have, I would not put it past GE science to produce antimatter on demand for every shot, bypassing safety and storage problems in return for the need for huge power inputs.

As for hypermatter and transuranics, both are ciphers that could be involved but may not be. There just isn't enough information.

Fair enough.

That one I would attribute to the one thing the rain forest of the Ewoks was likely blessed with in abundance: water. The plasma bolts slamming into the trees would likely have produced only a small scorch on the surface and then immediately converted a large portion of the water in the trunk into steam, blasting the trunks apart from the inside. That would be consistent with the visuals of small arms blaster effects against human targets, including armored ones.

Most blaster bolts produce only a small external scorch mark, but the target immediately drops if struck in the torso. Think of Greedo and countless stormtroopers. A hot, charged plasma bolt striking the torso would, likely as not, scorch right through the outer layer of skin and then convert a part of the water in the torso into steam. The steam produces an explosion inside the target's torso, shredding the internal organs. A bolt to the shoulder, on the other hand, would be disabling but not necessarily immediately fatal, though a shoulder joint replacement would be in order. The charge of the bolt could also potentially contribute to the stopping power of a blaster bolt, producing something like a nasty DC jolt (which could be particularly useful against droids, and Jedi with bionic hands).

That seems reasonable. Given the apparent speed of bolts, I wonder if personal magnetic shields would be in use in SW? They might offer useful protection against charged plasmas.

[Isolder74]

Isolder74: Yes it is a direct quote, its only a summary section. BTW I'm only a first year university physics student.

Also isn't it impossible for a magnetic field to accelerate anything (it can change the direction of a velocity vector but not its magnitude), since the direction of force is perpendicular to the direction of motion of the particle?

As far as light being particle OR wave, isn't the accepted theory that it is both. Some properties of light (diffraction through a diffraction grating) only work when light is considered a wave, while other properties (photo-electric effect) can only work if light is considered a particle. In any case even normal 'matter' particles can be given a wavelength (electron diffraction for instance). Anyway I'm open to being corrected.

Depends on who you talk to. Many physicists beleive that light is both. There are others that only espose to only to either the particle or wave theory. And since a Electron can produce a wave dispersion pattern niether side can really prove the other's right or wrong. that's what i meant by the jury is still out on this matter.

[His Divine Shadow]

Here is a nice shot of the effects of a blaster bolt, from an E-11:

[His Divine Shadow]

That seems reasonable. Given the apparent speed of bolts, I wonder if personal magnetic shields would be in use in SW? They might offer useful protection against charged plasmas.

Personal shields are in use, but I doubt they are magnetic, given Macleods points on Blasters, the word blaster is just a common name for small energy weapon, that work on some basic similar tech, whilst the end result can be a plasma projectile, which I believe is the majority of weapons, or one of those beams with the visible pulse travelling along it(which one is the true damaging component is not known).

[2000AD]

DONT FEED THE TROLL[/img]

[His Divine Shadow]

I got more newly captured shots here:
http://hisshadow.123hostnow.com/misc/im ... r_fire.jpg
This one shows that blaster bolts are translucent, this would be possible if they where plasma, would it? Unless the contaniment field is very different...
Or, if these weapons are of that other sort, as opposed to plasma weapons?

http://hisshadow.123hostnow.com/misc/im ... r_hit1.jpg
This one shows the effects of a blaster bolt hitting stormtrooper armor

http://hisshadow.123hostnow.com/misc/im ... r_hit2.jpg
Just shows a blasters effect on walls, quite explosive

http://hisshadow.123hostnow.com/misc/im ... r_hit3.jpg
This one shows a rebel get hit, and here there is the regular flash, but also something that looks like crimson cloud billowing from his shoulder.
This is a shot fired by an E-11.

[His Divine Shadow]

DONT FEED THE TROLL[/img]

What troll?

[Isolder74]

DONT FEED THE TROLL[/img]

What troll?

you don't want to meet him.

[His Divine Shadow]

you don't want to meet him.

I see, is he in this thread?

[Isolder74]

not yet