LightSaber Mechanics

[Jauhzmynn Enz]

Does anything I've said on sabers have any bearing or is this guys only? :-D (No sarcasim, only genuine humour but also curiosity.)

[Starkindler (The Naked Jedi)]

OOOoops.
No slight intended Jauhzmynn.
It seemed as if you were kinda agreeing with me at first so I tried to respond to the "other" side.......Then we both seemed to lean to the other side........

[Jedi Magus]

Before I post a full theory on the subject, I wanted to post a few things for all to ponder.

Who says:
It HAS to use light?
It cant have anything in the center of the blade to attract particles or anything charged? (like a motorized antenna)
It can't use charged particles emitted?

Power is the only thing holding back making one anyway, 4 AAA batteries wont do it, hehe.
Anyway, Here's something I found for inspiration.

[Jauhzmynn Enz]

No problem Tenrik. :-)I know that there's few girls who'll talk techie stuff. I was always and still am, a gadget person. I had to resist like mad to NOT take my EL sabre apart. Oh boy I reallly wanted to but at the time, I hadn't the tools. <eyes tool box> Now I do.:-D <VBG>

Ok onto the graphic of the light sabre. Hhumm. From loooks of it, the stuff around the battery must be some sort of ceramic material ment to disiapaite heat. What it's made of, maybe it's a cermaic substance. The shuttle's heat sheild tiles can take extremes in heat but never go through to the other side of the tile.

The battery/ power cell defiantly is nothing like we have. I think even a Litium, NICad or Nickle metle Hyrid batteries would be draine dry before the blade would light. SO maybe they'd be puttering around with cold fusion power sources or something.

The golden rod items, ar these some manner of magnetic coils to possibly aid in funneling the enegry to the tip? maybe magnets? Now I'm only guessing at this stuff because I haven't the manual in any form in front of me. Nor do I own one. Some jedi I am.LOL

[tanzanlinnear]

starkindler said:

I find your argument compelling and tend to lean that way (since my original reason for this thread was to indicate that a Lightsaber couldn't be a literal laser-sword)...there are a few questions....

Best to answer this a bit at a time...

starkindler said:

ever try to push two magnets together with the same pole facing?
If the sabers are charged they would act on each other sort of as solids. the presence of the charge would also affect their interaction with any conductive material (which seems to be when they appear to meet any resistance since organic things seem to part like butter)

That's true, magnets can repel each other, but, think of all the times two lightsaber blades come into contact with each other... They don't instantly bounce away from each other, they (unless moved away for another swing) remain in contact with each other. If there was a magnetic repelling effect, the Jedi's initial swing might have the momentum to make the two blades touch, but it wouldn't be able to then keep them together...

starkindler said:

In the saber anatomy I've seen the first of the magnetic portions of the saber occur directly after the focusing crystals. then there is a second magnetic ring as well near the emitter. This mandates a function for these parts. How does that figure into the force field issue since they are controlled graviton emissions.....unless the magnetism is the shaping agent.

It could be that the magnetic sections of the saber are there to have an effect on the graviton emissions, possibly by creating a rotating effect within the graviton stream itself (lightsabers are rumoured to have a strong gyroscopic action that makes them difficult for the untrained to handle)

starkindler said:

SHips shield do conform to the shape of the ship, but isn't that due to the overlapping array of both generators and emitters on the surface of the ship? If not then how could only "part" of the shields go down.

I think there are two forms of shielding used in starships... The large bubble kind (which are caused by overlapping generators) and the 'skin' kind (also seen in a Borg Drone's personal aresenal) They may use several emitters, or just one, but still create a shaped efffect.

starkindler said:

In TPM Qui-Gon's saber seems to be melting the blast door of the Neimodian bridge. How would this be accounted for by the force field "Vaoprization" you mentioned. Friction would account for heat, but reducing heavy steel to a molten state seems to imply something else.....no?

I think that when the blast doors started to melt, it was simply because the saber was held in place. If there is a rotational aspect to the blade (as suggested above) then the friction would have remained constant (and there were small parts of the door breaking off around the saber blade) and the heat the friction generated would simply have radiated through the metal.

With that graphic of the saber cut through shown, it makes it clearer to me that the blade is some form of focussed graviton emission rather than something utilizing plasma. Think back to the ST:TNG tech manual and the description of the entire warp assembly, and how huge the deuterium storage tanks were (especially incomparison to the anti-deuterium storage tanks) There simply are no fuel cells in a saber hilt (for the plasma), simply the power cell (which as Jauhzmynn pointed out, is heavily insulated).

[tanzanlinnear]

jauhzmynn said:

Does anything I've said on sabers have any bearing or is this guys only? :-D (No sarcasim, only genuine humour but also curiosity.)

Sorry Jauhsmynn, the only reason I didn't respond to your suggestion was because I knew that sabers didn't have an inner/outer layer construction (other than the insulation around the powercell) as the now posted diagram shows, and I didn't want you to feel that I was dismissing what you were saying

[Jauhzmynn Enz]

Well no offense but it did feel like I was being dismissed even if it wasn't your intent. But please incldue the the females, some of us are quite intellegent out there even if I don't have the terms for what it locked within this head of mine. Writter's block or whatever it is. Hashing out ideas is the best way I can think of to understand things.

Back to disagrams most of them don't always show reality. This one doesn't 'seem' to make much logical sense. If I were to construct a sabre it WOULD have an inner sleeve. It'd make for ease of repair, and extra insulaition of the engery feilds. (Or whatever the substance is used to create the blade.)

[Starkindler (The Naked Jedi)]

www.thelightsaber.com/IndexFolder/index2.htm

source of the pic above (I believe) and a short treatise on the working of the saber........click the anatomy pic on the page.


exerpt:
"The enhanced energy now passes through a negatively charged magnetic coiled shaft, organizing the particles into a linear stream.

From there they either tap through a focus pin or through another set of polished lenses next to a positively charged magnetic ring. It is from here the blade is exposed. The energy travels up the projected length of the blade and back down through, traversing its way back to the core."

[Jauhzmynn Enz]

Humm. you hope it does, or it'll be a pretty big burn.Ow. Self recycling energy..
One person's website did propose a theory of how the blade's length could be limited to only a certain size. They mentioned a type of very tiny filament that's is in ultra tight bundles down inside the hilt until it's extended. On a extrme close up, it appears as tight curls of 'wire'. The tiny'curls"(FOr the lack of a better term) act as a guide for the energy to travel up, around the tip, and back down into the handle.. The writter surmossed it's why the center is white and a colored outter corona.(Electron interaction with anything they hit, air dust objects.) It'd explain why the thing has such a reletivly small cutting width when it slices and the cuaterising effect. Interesting concept, but could it work?

[tanzanlinnear]

starkindler said:

www.thelightsaber.com/IndexFolder/index2.htm

source of the pic above (I believe) and a short treatise on the working of the saber........click the anatomy pic on the page.


exerpt:
"The enhanced energy now passes through a negatively charged magnetic coiled shaft, organizing the particles into a linear stream.

From there they either tap through a focus pin or through another set of polished lenses next to a positively charged magnetic ring. It is from here the blade is exposed. The energy travels up the projected length of the blade and back down through, traversing its way back to the core."

That's a fantastic site, and I've always loved the custom saber competition Reading that passage, I think it pretty much discounts the theory of the blade being plasma, but still refers to it as energy, and 'particles'

The enhanced energy now passes through a negatively charged magnetic coiled shaft, organizing the particles into a linear stream.

I'd suggest that that 'enhanged energy', and 'particles' could easily be graviton particles, as in the forcefield theory I suggested.

[tanzanlinnear]

jauhzmynn said:

Humm. you hope it does, or it'll be a pretty big burn.Ow. Self recycling energy..
One person's website did propose a theory of how the blade's length could be limited to only a certain size. They mentioned a type of very tiny filament that's is in ultra tight bundles down inside the hilt until it's extended. On a extrme close up, it appears as tight curls of 'wire'. The tiny'curls"(FOr the lack of a better term) act as a guide for the energy to travel up, around the tip, and back down into the handle.. The writter surmossed it's why the center is white and a colored outter corona.(Electron interaction with anything they hit, air dust objects.) It'd explain why the thing has such a reletivly small cutting width when it slices and the cuaterising effect. Interesting concept, but could it work?

I have to admit, I used to think that maybe a lightsaber worked in that way, but from looking at the cutaway diagrams, it pretty much precludes there being any moving internal parts (other than blade length/intensity controls)

[Jauhzmynn Enz]

Yep. Guess we won't truly know until our understanding of physics advances more and we start thinking "out of the box". The power core must emite a LOT of energy or it'd not have so much sheilding. Now I wonder exactly what manner of 'battery' that is?

[tanzanlinnear]

jauhzmynn said:

Yep. Guess we won't truly know until our understanding of physics advances more and we start thinking "out of the box". The power core must emite a LOT of energy or it'd not have so much sheilding. Now I wonder exactly what manner of 'battery' that is?

If I recal, most lightsabers have a diatum power cell (Qui-Gon's had multiple power cells in the handgrip). I think it is simply supposed to be a powercell that can handle an enormous amount of power (both in and out)
In the TPM Visual Dictionary, the covertec knobs are listed as 'charging ports', so since reading that, I've wondered if the saber draws power from the belt unit while worn (possibly using the swing of the saber to act in the same manner as wrist watches that are powered by the motion of the wearer's wrist) and stores that power until the saber is then activated...
Just another theory

[Starkindler (The Naked Jedi)]

I ws just thinking about your Graviton force field thing and realized that that would make the lightsaber actually a Graviton Chainsaw...

[tanzanlinnear]

starkindler said:

I ws just thinking about your Graviton force field thing and realized that that would make the lightsaber actually a Graviton Chainsaw...

That's certainly one way of visualising the energy motion in the blade. Given the glow surrounding the core, I wondered if maybe there is a constant upward motion of the graviton stream, so rather than rotating, it could be that the bottom constantly replenishes the top, and the decaying particles bleed off at 90 degrees, and fall into the visible spectrum as they decay?