sort of real lightsaber

[Kaiden Shardsbane]

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.

[Scottie]

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.

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.

[Kaiden Shardsbane]

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.

[Scottie]

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.

[Scottie]

  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

[Kaiden Shardsbane]

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.

[navajas]

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.

[swam]

remember the original lightsabers had external power supplies.

[Scottie]

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?!?

[Foxray]

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. 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?

[Kaiden Shardsbane]

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.

[Scottie]

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?

[Scottie]

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. 

[navajas]

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.

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.

[Foxray]

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