- This episode of Because
Science is sponsored by Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Because no one's ever really gone, how might Force lightning work? Let's get technical. (maniacal laughing)
(upbeat music) Jedi and Sith are the superheroes
of the Star Wars-iverse. They can sense the future, they
can become ghosts apparently and they can levitate
things with their minds. Some can even summon what's
called Force lightning. Bleurgh! Which appears to be at least some kind of electrical discharge. But how might Force
lightning actually work? And how powerful would it have
to be to fry us up some Jedi? Well let's don our thinking robes and figure it out. (chuckling) Good. To understand what's going on, the robe was too hot, to understand what's really going on here, I believe we must consult the sacred texts of electrical engineering! Oh jeez! Yoda hates books. Force lightning needs
to move through the air and so the study of
electromagnetism tells us that a substance like air is traditionally a very good insulator in that it doesn't conduct electrical
charges very well at all. However, even an insulating
material like air, has what's called a breakdown voltage. This is when you're running
so much voltage through some material that it literally
breaks down and becomes much more conductive if
it was insulating before. Pretty much everything, aside
from like superconductors, has a breakdown voltage and we don't just have to talk about
this in the abstract. You can experience breakdown
voltage personally. Have you ever shuffled your feet across a carpet or something, unknowingly or not, and then touched something metal, like a doorknob to get a pretty bad shock? Well this is breakdown voltage at work. When you shuffle along a carpet or you rub a balloon against
your hair or what have you, you are literally transferring more negatively charged
electrons onto the surface of your body, which creates an imbalance. When you then encounter something that's, relatively speaking,
more positively charged, like that metal doorknob, this imbalance wants to equalize itself and, if the potential
difference is great enough, a visible arc of electricity
will break down the air in between you and a
surface to equalize itself and this can involve a lot more
voltage than you may think. Ah! Don't be alarmed, do not
try to adjust your device, I know I'm out of focus
and everything's dark but it's because I want to show you breakdown voltage in air. For whatever reason, inside of the void, every few minutes I build up a very large electrical charge on my body. So, to demonstrate electrical
breakdown in air for you, I'm going to wait a few minutes until I am charged and then I'm
gonna touch something metal, like this pole here, and you will see just how much of an arc
you can generate from a lot of voltage just moving
around your everyday life. So okay just give me a
second to get charged here. Ah! (slow motion shouting) Ah jeez! Ah! Because of breakdown voltage requirements, even something small
like that packs a punch. That shock that I constantly get here in the void for some
reason, isn't very big, maybe like half a centimeter long, but the breakdown voltage for air is 3000 volts per millimeter of air turning from insulator to conductor. This means that a decent static shock, like one you can see
just touching a doorknob after shuffling around because
you don't pick up your feet, why don't you listen to your mom? Could be around 15 to
30,000 volts of electricity, which is in taser territory. Just think about that. Oh man. Argh! (groaning) Clearly, whatever voltages
a Sith like Palpatine is generating must be a lot larger to arc all the way across the room from a certain point of view. A certain point of view? Yes. I'm not a Force ghost anymore. To make Force lightning and to punish young Jedi for their lack of vision. A Sith like the Emperor
would need to break down all the air between himself and his target and do so with enough voltage to initiate what's called an electron avalanche. Which sounds even cooler
than Force lightning. And it works like this. If there's a big enough
potential difference inside of this electric field, an electron can be accelerated so much so that it smashes into
another atom in the air and has enough energy to ionize that atom. In other words, rip its electrons from it. Those electrons are in turn accelerated in this electrical field
and they go on to smash into other atoms, creating a snowballing avalanche like effect of ionization. The larger the voltage, the bigger the avalanche and the longer the arc. So what about the Emperor? Bleurgh! Bleurgh! Bleurgh, Jedi, bleurgh! Thankfully for our purposes,
we've already measured the breakdown voltage of normal Earth air, at standard temperature and pressure. Assuming that air is similar
in a galaxy far, far away, to arc across just one meter,
around three feet, of space, the Emperor would need to generate around three million volts. Now we need to know just how
far Force lightning can travel. The first time we see
the technique is when the Emperor decides to destroy
Luke in the throne room. Now it's hard to measure this distance because of perspective
but it looks like the arc is maybe two and a half
Luke body lengths, maybe. If that's the case, then unlimited power is
around 15 million volts. But this isn't even the longest electrical arc that we see in Star Wars. No, that honor goes to Count Dooku in this scene in the prequels. Again it's hard to measure
because of perspective but if we use Count
Dooku's height and this breakdown value, you get
around 22 million volts. And interestingly enough,
both of these values are within the actual
range for real lightning. Which means that Force lightning is as powerful as real lightning. It's not unlimited power but it is certainly enough to fry up some Jedi. No, you can't fry a baby Yoda. So, if Force lightning
works by more or less creating short circuits
between Sith and Jedi, this power must have something to do with moving electrons around at will. The Emperor, or other Force
user, then may operate like a humanoid Van der Graaf generator. Able to use the Force to create large electrical imbalances on their person that gets so large, they
encourage a large breakdown of air in between them and their targets. At that point, the air in between them turns from insulator to conductor and then the flow of
electrons shocks a target into a state where they just need to ask their robo daddy for help. Please. Remember that? I know this sounds weird
but the basic process happens with actual lightning
during thunderstorms. As negative charges build
up at the bottom of clouds and then equalize in the
form of lightning strikes with the more positive
ground beneath the clouds. And this would all mean,
of course, that Force users can manipulate electrons
on an individual level. Which sounds fantastical
but if Force users can also use their minds to lift many ton X-wings up out of puppet swamps, I don't think this is
that much of a stretch. This might be how Force lightning works but we're not done yet because,
if it does work this way, we have a very important announcement for anyone who is likely
to challenge a Sith lord. A Sith lord? Yes. According to the laws of physics, anti Force lightning armor
should be really easy to make. Please, consider the following. If you were standing near
a strong enough tesla coil just a couple of feet
away, you could be struck by millions of volts
of electricity and yet, a simple metal box can save you from having to call your
robot papa for help. Why? Well that's because a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away called Britain, a legendary scientist
named Michael Faraday invented what I am now in, a Faraday cage. A Faraday cage looks like
a simple metal mesh box and that's because that's all it is. Faraday's insight though
was that in the presence of an electric field with
this orientation of metal, the electrons in that
metal act in a certain way. Thanks to the shape of the
box and the free electrons in the metal, in the presence of
an external electric field, the electrons tend to bunch
up on one side of the box. Creating an opposing electrical field and this results in no charge flowing on the inside of the box. And because of this, you can be insulated from Palpatine like lightning. To make anti Force lightning armor then, we would want some kind of garment that incorporates the idea
of a Faraday cage into it. And guess what? We already have that. Our power line workers routinely
service power lines that have hundreds of thousands of
volts running through them. The kind of voltages that would fry them and yet they are fine because they wear these, Faraday suits. Which have metal mesh
woven into the garment and they operate like a
Faraday cage operates. And so, with our knowledge
of this kind of fabric and of equalizing electric fields, we can make a bold recommendation
to the Jedi Council. Honored members of the Jedi Council, anyone who is to face
off against a Sith lord should be wearing robes
lined with Faraday mesh. It would protect your people
from Palpatine like lightning and it should be easy enough to just weave some space metal into your clothing there. My galaxy already has
the technology to do this and it would make sense, even if it's not in the sacred text. So, do you grant me the rank of Master? No? It's not fair! I'm gonna grow my hair out and get a scar on my face and
live in a volcano planet. So, how does Force lightning work? Well, if Force users can
manipulate the universe down to the level of individual electrons, they might be able to
encourage those electrons to form giant imbalances on
bodies, breakdown the air and form large arcs of electricity between themselves and their targets. And it wouldn't even
require unlimited power. Just a few million volts. And that should be more than
doable for a senate seat throwing monster face having
evil space ghost right? Because Science. Well, not the ghost
part, the electron part. Star Wars is weird not the other... You get it. (maniacal laughter) Thanks again to Star
Wars Jedi: Fallen Order for sponsoring today's episode. You play Cal Kestis, a young Jedi Padawan who narrowly escaped
the purge of Order 66. Following the events of episode
three, Revenge of the Sith. On a quest to rebuild the Jedi Order, you must pick up the pieces
of your shattered past to complete your training, develop
powerful new Force abilities and master the art of
the iconic lightsaber. All while staying one step ahead of the Empire and its deadly Inquisitors. Star Wars Jed: Fallen Order is available now on Xbox One, PS4 and PC. (upbeat music)
