Saber Forum

okay, so most of you probably know lightsabers dont exist right now. but what if you just had a super heated blade, kind of like a giant soddering iron. the only problem is getting the power....

The radiant heat would make it a very difficult weapon to wield.

That's just what we want you to think.

cant wait till we can tell physics to bugger off and mind its own business so lightsabers are possible... I give it 50 years tops. so yeah I will be a 75 year old codger running around his lawn swinging a real lightsaber at those damn kids! look for it in the news.

Heck, by then, they'll have figured out how to extend the human lifespan well past 100 years, so you'll be able to make it your mid-life crisis!

lightsabers, second mid life crisis at 75, and portal guns. future sounds awesome!

One of my favorite parts of the Old Man's War series is in Ghost Brigades when they've all finished downloading the Star Wars movies, communally decide that the Ewoks should be killed, that they all want lightsabers and are pissed off they don't really exist. This civilization has instantaneous galactic travel via skip drives, nanobiotic ammunition that configures itself on the fly into numerous wildly different payloads, scratch built species that can thrive in vacuum... and lightsabers are still just a fantasy.

I'm afraid that sounds fairly reasonable.  :-\

I've got a carbon dioxide laser that puts out about 600 watts of laser energy. Anything you put in it's invisible beam will burn. But I guess it dosent count because the power supply and the laser itself weighs like 300 pounds.

Only a matter of time.

A computer used to fill an entire room.  Now that same computing power is in a processor smaller than a pea.

No doubt we'll have powerful enough beams, but, convincing those beams to suddenly end a few feet after they start will be the trick. Also, this is not my expertise so correct me if I'm wrong, but computational power is shrinking at fairly constant predictable and super fast rates, but, it seems power sources are not. Car batteries are still the size and weight they were 30 years ago right? Camera batteries are still tiny and round. Chemical electricity generation seems pretty well explored at this point. Again, no clue, just on the outside looking in. Nuclear reactors are still the size of nuclear reactors. The tanks for plasma cutters aren't shrinking either.

Oh, I keep forgetting to talk about this, but this is a good place for it. IF they were ever possible, don't you think "light" sabers perform way more like giant forced gas plasma cutters than beam weapons? I seriously doubt we're ever going to get a laser to suddenly end, since, hey, continuing on in much the same way it started is kind of light's forte right? Black holes "stop" light (sort of) but that seems to be about it. But, with plasma, the whole trick would be getting the gas blade that long. That's seems additive: We could progress towards that goal. Power supply is still a bitch, as is packing around the gas.

Oh shell. Wait. So, say you've got a tiny fusion reactor in your hilt. You've got a little capsule of hydrogen in there. Fuse it to helium, use the power for ever, force the helium you just created (out of thin air ;-)) out the top for your hilt for the plasma arc. Tada: Light saber! OK, so, it's plasma, not light, but it's bright as hell, has an adjustable length blade and cuts stuff up with ease. It also doesn't have any "crystals" but that's a small price to pay for a lightsaber right? Of course, like lightsabers, you still really can't fence with the things because the blades would actually just go whistling right through each other, but, this is the "real" lightsaber thread! :)

EDIT: Wait just a damn minute. Unlike laser blade lightsabers, my plasma cutter lightsaber blade would actually have mass, and not only that, it would ejecting from the hilt with a LOT of velocity. So much you'd have to invent some sort of reaction less compensator for the thrust or it'd just shoot out of your hand. BUT, if you did figure that out, maybe you COULD use it to block another similar blade. It has (a little) mass, and it's moving fast as hell. If it meets another one on a different vector maybe they'd slide off each other. You'd have to be damn sure of the vectors though, and it might come bouncing back right at you. Jesus, these'd be dangerous, you'd have to be, oh, I don't know, a Jedi or something to wield them.  ;)

I saw a video linked on here a while back where this was looked into.  I believe the plasma problems (other than power source) would be partially solved by a ceramic hasbro style blade with holes in it to release the plasma.  That way, you have a superheated blade while still maintaining solidity.

Science is constantly evolving soon we will have nano tech and after that who knows what. Here next year over in europe scientist will fire off that particle accelerator which will move an atom at the speed of light around a mile round railway to collide with another atom moving at the same speed. Light travels at approximately 186000 miles per second!! Over 70 years ago if you told someone we could make a bomb with over 20 mile blast diameter they would have had you commited. Computers are now the size of phone, hell look at a 1950s IBM they where house sized now they fit in micro chips. Watch Nova science or subscribe to mensa or a tech magazine of your choice you would be shocked at the advancement the last 15 years has given. We today might not even be able to fathom what 50 to 100 years will hold for science   ;D

Remember guys, the world ends next year...

I have seen a concept at Lawrence berkely Laboratories in California where they shoot two laser beams
into a container of plastic powder. Where the beams intersect is the only spot hot enough to melt the plastic.

They can make any computer generated models out of hard plastic by shooting the beams thousands of
times melting one spot at a time where the beams touch each other to finally make a solid object in the powder.

It happens quickly because sometime the beams stay on melting large areas.

NOW to transfer this technology to the light saber....

Generate thousands of beams that intersect at the point where light saber beam ends and you have a lightsaber tip!

To create and entire blade more intersections would have to happen along its length.

Of course all the same OLD problems exsist....

There is NO physical nature to laser beams, it just light.

And generating enough power in something the size of a flashlight.

One problem down 2 more to overcome. :)

Well, you've kinda got the death star weapon going on there.  Not sure if it'd work with lightsabers.

You might have the beams close enough together that they intersect all the way up the blade, and intersect somewhere in the middle and then disperse slowly, creating the second half of the blade.  It'd be a thin hourglass shape, but it might work.

I'm thinking the trick is to produce 10s of thousands of beams that may only intersect once.
But interlace enough and we have a plausible theory.

The problem is, if you plan for them to intersect only at the tip, they're traveling in the same pattern past that tip.  Thus, if there is any interlacing to make the blade below the tip, it'll be mirrored above it as well, making it extra long.

A question for a math wiz, creating a grid that only intersects at the tip AND along the lower part of the blade.

Keep thinking.... it will come.

 :o I got it.... a ring of beams around the edge of the emitter focus their energies on making the tip of the blade
all the rest (in the center part of the emitter) radiate slightly outward making their intersecting happen a
distance so great its un-noticeable. Who care if the other half intersect after the tip as long as its a 1/4 mile away! lol

Might work.  And the lasers probably wouldn't be strong enough that far out to do any damage.

So that only leaves the problem of having collision.  Light isn't solid enough to deflect anything.  Unless you had some sort of magnetic field around your blade that gave it collision.  I think it's safe to assume that 50-100 years out we'll have the power supply problem solved.

Can someone substantiate the assertion that the power problem will be solved in so short a time with some examples? I never ask rhetorical questions: I honestly want to know if I'm missing something everyone else is observing. We've had chemical battery technology for decades and it is not progressing at anywhere near the rate that computational ability is. It seems in fact to be relatively stagnant. People seem to confuse or meld the two concepts. If we're assuming hand held fusion reactors as I posit in my forced gas plasma blade, I think we're looking at more than a few decades.

remember the original lightsabers had external power supplies.

I know battery technology is getting better, they are smaller and more powerfull.... but its never going to be powerful enough
to power a weapon that can melt through BLAST DOORS!

It will have to be something fission / fusion / nuclear.... and I don't see anything getting smaller there.

Maybe the military isn't sharing with us on what kind of progress is being made in that area?!?

this is what I came up with. Its like a light saber but a bit diffrent.
If you want a better view try this link. photobucket is kind of stupid for making my images low resolution. Theres nothing I can do about that. :P http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh272/foxray/saberconstruction.jpg (http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh272/foxray/saberconstruction.jpg)
(http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh272/foxray/saberconstruction.jpg)
well you probably can't see the text so i'll explain.
The hilt has an external power supply. Extending from the the hilt is an extending rode with attraction/repulsion magnets on it. At the top of this rode is a reflecter/ conducter; there also one in the emmiter too. When activated a high watt laser is bounced between the reflecters turning the air into a plasma. Once the plasma is created it becomes a conduit for high voltage current to pass through. The high voltage sustains the plasma by keeping gases ionized. The magnets keep the plasma close but not too close to where they melt.
Its more of a lethal stun club if you ask me. What do you think?

Nice, nice.  It'd be good for cutting, but maybe not so much for stabbing.  Also, it seems that it would leave trails of superheated plasma behind if you swung it too fast.

Plasma is no good for cutting unless you introduce high pressure air into the mix. We use plasma cutters
in our sheet metal shop at work.

What protects the person holding this thing from the high voltage?

It seems that most of these inventions and ideas are more lethal to the person wielding it then
the object of the attack!

But I suppose a REAL light saber would be just as unforgiving.  :P

Yeah, hence my giant forced gas "blade" and requisite kinetic compensator. Another thing I thought up while mulling this over the weekend was, while my concept operates as closely as I think reasonably possible for mimicking what we see in the movies, the wound it leaves couldn't be anymore different. Because of the enormous velocity of this blade it wouldn't leave nice tidy severed limbs behind, it would spray ashen bits of its victim in a massive arcing swath like a wave of organic slag.

Yuck.

I'm not sure if that's elegant nor civilized. Though, really, neither is chopping people in half during a bar fight.

I didn't think about cutting through walls when i thought this thing up. However it dosen't cut through things, it vaporizes them. Its true that without air pressure a plasma cutter wont work. The compressed air is ionized by high voltage forming a plasma that heats the material to its melting point. Then the pressure from the ionized gases blowes the melted material away. The device I showed works more like a Jacob's ladder.
check out this video. its a jacob's ladder that formes a conduit of plasma and gets really big. Its also probably how this device will sound too.
http://youtu.be/PXiOQCRiSp0 (http://youtu.be/PXiOQCRiSp0)

check this out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSNubaa7n9o#ws (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSNubaa7n9o#ws)
the possibility of a lightsaber in our lifetime may be at hand?
lol who knows we can only hope and dream right?

What the heck?! When did this show start it looks pretty cool. Like most History / Discovery channel type things it's pretty cursory and basic, but dang, neato! And don't leave me hanging, he sounds like he's about to talk about something like my idea.

Guess I'm off to find this show.

Thanks.

that youtube i linked is the first part in a 3 part clip, it would work for dueling but not so much at stabbing as some have wondered i mean ya slightly unless you can figure a way to lock the extending blade in place while in use and not when it isn't but ya that guy is a freakin genius i love his idea and to think only 50 year's or so at worst for the actual technology. we have the tech at the moment it just needs improvement/upgrading the power source....MANY MANY MANY nanotech batteries to heat it to nearly the temperature of the sun a super powerful fan to produce the vast amount's of air and pressure and magnetic force of some kind flowing through the blade to contain the plasma.....everything completely doable now it'd just cost more money than the entire world has.

Not to mention, I'm pretty sure that would be made illegal in a heartbeat. Same with any "real" lightsaber.

I'm about as far away as you'll find a person from supporting any type of prohibitionary law. Even so, I think I might go ahead and vote "Yes" on the Should Lightsabers be Illegal initiative.

I'm in agreement with navajas as far as most prohibitive laws, but I wouldn't vote for them to be illegal, but maybe a license to carry would be in order.  Although, by that time, it'll probably be illegal to carry any type of weapon.

Hey all
   I just joined the forums today and as far as a real saber goes the only two problems are #1: the power plant. at this time there is no way to generate that much power in something less than the size of an SUV
#2: since it's based on light there is no way to create an end point so you would have a blade stretching into infinity!!!
lol not too sure if people have already touched on those points because I didn't read the entire thread. That's my two cents though.

I've heard somewhere that the armed forces have the technology to make a functioning "lightsaber" but they're not practical in modern warfare. If you think about it, someone with any type of melee weapon vs someone with a ranged weapon is well, bringing a knife to a gun fight.

Ya the guy he visit's at MIT for the nanotech in the 3rd part of that clip I linked the tech is somewhat available but no one has actually put it into making batteries, IF they had made some sort of molecular battery then and only then would it have a chance at being made. We can always dream until then i suppose right? Too bad there hasn't been any massive jumps forward in battery tech. But as was said in the video carbon nanotubes grow at an INCREDIBLE rate (minutes to reach low earth orbit) but ya the amount of batteries that would have to be put into it would be insane like on a level of thousands stacked one on top of the other to make single tube and at least a dozen or so tubes but nanotech is totally how it'd be made possible. As far as it being legal, we can only hope humans become ready for a weapon of a more civilized age, currently I'd say there isn't a chance. But with the problem with it being light based ya you'd have to use plasma and magnet's and as far as the military looking into this, the MIT research for nano-structured material's is all top secret who knows what's gonna end up popping up from that.

Lightsabers are like a loop. The energy, if you could see the sides, would be like an eye of a needle squished from the sides.

The only problem is how do you get the energy to turn around and come back?