flights of fancy

[cellio]

"Existentially speaking, is there such a thing as half a piece of cake?" -- kayre

This evening at dinner the fundamental dynamics of lightsabres came up. Specifically, how does the color encoding work? Is Luke's blue because Luke prefers blue, or because any lightsabre Luke uses will channel Luke-specific force, which is blue? If so, do the admission criteria at Jedi University include "sabre does not glow red" (and if not, why not)? Are there important qualitative difference between blue and green sabres, both of which appear to channel the light side of the force? Surely these are important research topics for someone out there who has, you know, seen all the movies.

Comments

[grouchyoldcoot.livejournal.com]

If you had a meter-long, extremely strong fiber of some material which was extremely transparent to light of a particular wavelength, you could set up a very intense standing wave inside the fiber. The photon pressure would hold the fiber rigid, and the evanescent wave (basically leakage) would carry some energy outside the fiber. If something like air entered the evanescent wave you'd get scattered photons. If something denser, like a slow jedi, got close enough to interact with the evanescent wave, it would get very hot very fast.

That's my favorite light saber theory. It's only 90% physically impossible, rather than the traditional 100%.