The problems with LIGHTSABERS: Star Wars

shada versity t-shirts and hoodies they are special available through teespring link in the description [Music] greatings i'm chad and i want to talk to you a little bit about energy swords because what's better than a regular sword an energy sword whatever an energy sword kinda is and that's what we're going to be talking a little bit about as well you see science fiction has an ability to bring back swords into the mainstream of combat far more so then you know any modern setting because you have the added advantage of from pseudoscience really you can make stuff up to have them fit and make more logical sense in regards to combat swords in the modern day they don't do very well because there is a much more superior weapon available guns but in a futuristic setting you have available to you certain technological conditions that could nullify guns like shields or super advanced armor in which swords actually are able to overcome and that would bring them back into the mainstream and then we actually see this idea used in the sci-fi series book series June where a slow blade penetrates the shield and because swords are awesome having swords in this awesome futuristic sci-fi setting double awesome so I love it when energy swords are incorporated into any sci-fi sitting and of course this brings us to Star Wars one of the things that attracted me in my youth to Star Wars while some were lightsabers they are very very cool but as I learn and grow and will cut it in the maturing sense there's a couple of things that really don't make sense in regards to lightsabers which is unfortunate but why is it unfortunate people often criticize saying it things don't need to be realistic because it's fiction or it's fantasy or whatnot but this is open the doors and let you in on a little secret if you don't understand this see we nerds we love to try and figure out a way to make these fantasy anything real if it's fantasy but it's awesome we wish they were real because wouldn't you want to pick up a lightsaber and use it and so we look at okay could this thing actually be possible and we look over like okay that's not looking that's not working and in fact it's kind of impossible for this weapon to really exist it can exist in the Star Wars universe but the more realistic you can make something more immersive it becomes especially if you can try and figure out a way that might be possible to exist I just want to say even though it's probably gonna look like I'm ragging on the lightsaber without mercy throughout this video I love them okay I love Star Wars and stuff like that and I'm so critical of them because I love them so much I just wish they couldn't fix these issues and made it more believable and realistic cuz that'll make it more awesome now people have looked at lightsabers already and figured out possible ways in which they could be created but there are some very significant byproducts that would make these a very ineffective and efficient weapon to use in real life Kyle Hill from you know that because science is got his videos where he was part of the Nerdist now he has his own channel because science is I think it's like table of videos on earth but he explores this subject really in depth so I do recommend his videos in that regard yet when looking at the Star Wars universe from a broad kind of perspective there is a couple of issues that makes lightsabers kind of useless because those conditions that I mentioned before that make you know energy weapons over just do it really melee weapons more viable and logical in a sci-fi setting they don't exist in the Star Wars universe and because of that the same problems arise as exists in the modern day when you're to try to take a sword to a gunfight I bet Jedi are able to deflect you know all incoming projectiles and stuff like that there's a problem with this okay it is physically impossible for Jedi to be able to deflect all incoming projectiles if you just shoot them with enough laser bolts or blaster bolts or whatever you're gonna hit them because if two bolts are coming in or even three and you can't angle your saber to not you know book you know all of them you're gonna get hit and we actually see this in Star Wars Episode two the Clone Wars well you know Jedi's trying to block and he just gets hit but that's not even nearly as many you know blaster bolts that could be shot at something you know enough rapid-fire did I have superhuman reflexes but to have this as SuperSpeed enough to just you know move faster than the speed of sound or close to the speed of light to get all the projectiles no no the lightsaber is not really the best weapon for the Jedi to just pick as their best weapon based on their strengths and also magical abilities thanks to the force the Jedi would actually be orders of magnitude more deadly if they use guns you know blaster bolts instead of lightsabers why well it's already established in Star Wars Canon from the very first movie that was released that the Jedi can use the force to achieve superhuman aiming and accuracy to the point that they can achieve impossible shots use the Force [Music] and so imagine a Jedi with a really long range laser bolt that can shoot people kilometres away without acknowledges it for for stead gone right they would be the most deadly snipers in existence and if you can take out someone from a distance and getting in close you know melee range where you are at risk of course the logical answer is to always take people out at a distance oh but that's not the Jedi way they're more honourable than that not really they're not the Jedi perfectly fine in using laser bolts in a spaceship whether their opponents are aware of them at a distance or not and of course they are the best fighter pilots in the galaxy thanks to the force oh but it's uncivilized that's a stupid reason so uncivilized and an actual fact if we're gonna go on the whole I'm civilized thing a gun is technically more civilized than a weapon where you have to be you know this close to your opponent and killing a sh t I'm up to death and stuff like that and chopping them in pieces that seems a bit more brutal and a single laser bolt through the heart they're dead so is it really uncivilized I think I'll come on so that's the problem - this lightsabers from a broader overview but what about more specific issues that exists well Y same as they don't cut okay they melt or vaporize in fact they vaporize what looks to be 3 centimeters to an inch of material whenever they cut through something which I said it's not cutting and if you were to do that to a person the speed in which you know our organs and also bladder a lot there's a lot of liquids in this would vaporize so quickly that the expansion would cause people to explode pausing here and referring to the expansion of the resulting gases these are not elegant they're very very messy weapons the other thing the amount of energy you would need to pack into a lightsaber to produce the plasma and also the magnetic field to hold it in place because you know if lightsabers were to exist the most likely type of thing that the energy portion is made out of is plasma as many nerds have concluded thanks the amount of energy packed into this container they would be crazy dangerous like you see like lightsabers to get cut in half okay doesn't seem like they explode but with the amount of energy that containing them they should have the potential to explain and if they did it would be powerful enough to take out several Millennium Falcon's and that would actually be kind of cool if they paid attention to that that you could actually do a self destruct thing on a lightsaber and turn it into a massive grenade but it also means that the lightsaber becomes damaged and the catastrophic failure happens explosion you're dead talking about the person using it the Jedi didn't I should really be holding my lightsaber for this discussion I'm an idiot there are also some very big logical holes in regards to lightsaber construction how they're shaped and stuff like that now some of these problems could actually be answered if those things weren't directly contradicted in established hours canon to this day for instance no hand protection and the fact that there's no way to stop the your hand from slipping down on the white and black okay so what are the ways that you could explain why there's no hand protection is lightsabers are supposed to be out of cut through anything and so what's the point of a cross guard made out of the material or something we'll get to kylo ren's one in a second some type of metal cross guard would be useless because it just cut straight through get your hands a small little kind of disc thing to protect slippage would be useful because again you don't in the hand to sit down onto the blade but in the Star Wars universe there are materials that if not resistant to lightsaber strikes flatout able to resist it completely and so just from that material it would be very useful to have a cross guard and then of course we come to kylo ren's thing which establishes that you can split the flow of the energy thing to create an energy cross guard this could have been answered if kylo Ren's lightsaber was never created to contradict this fact by creating a technological limitation that there's no way to split the flow of the plasma beam coming out of a lightsaber but then there is actually a workaround to that limitation and it's if you were to create like a small lie separate to pretend the Sun was smaller and say you had small ones hanging off to the side that would kind of project a small you know energy thing to about this side and then you'd have one on the opposite side angled up a little bit so it's an eye up just up a little bit so the actual plasma be would be extending above each side protruding mini lightsaber and there you get your energy guard without the limitation of splitting the beam but that doesn't matter because now you can split beams thanks to the existence of kylo Ren's lightsaber and it just creates the biggest contradiction in logic where okay if there's no technological limitation in preventing this design and to my knowledge there is no such thing in styles canon to explain this why didn't anyone else think of this before it's a very obvious addition to this weapon I mean just swords in general have cross guards I mean most points in history very rarely do you find a sword without across god they exist more from the not proper cross guards or hand protection of some kind and then finally there's the inconsistency in how lightsabers are described to behave in certain expanded Canon and stuff and to how they're actually shown in the movies people say lightsaber beams attract each other and they don't slide once they connect but in the movies and the fight scenes they are sliding on the lightsaber blades very common and they bounce off each other very easily as well so there's no real attraction they do say the beam has mass or a feeling of weight to it and they explained it by some gyroscopic effect which is very you know pseudoscience see a beam of plasma held together by a magnetic field would not create any gyroscopic effects at all but it's a different technology so reasons the reason why people try and say that the beams have weight to them is because the props used in filming have weight to them very minimal weight but there is weight and one of the ways I guess you can prove this is when Darth Vader throws his lightsaber at Luke Skywalker to cut the A&I platform that is standing on the lightsaber is rotating around a center of gravity that separates to the lightsaber portion that's of course because they threw a prop when in reality this type of weapon would have no weight in the beam at all and so I wouldn't rotate like this it would rotate like this with the beam flying around in every and in actual fact that would be a far more effective thrown weapon if it was rotating around an axis like this instead of an axis like this and my last criticism of the lightsaber is a very nitpicky one so I apologize but please indulge me the name is really really stupid a lightsaber has very little in common with the actual sword that is known as a saver a saber is generally a single edged curved sword some are also straight with a fairly comprehensive either knuckle bow or just basket hilt overall and they're usually single handed okay you might say no no they're just using saber in the sense that it's a sword well if I was to invent a new car and okay a few tricity care to make the comparison a bit better that fly if I was to create a flying car and called it a flying Ferrari that would be stupid and wouldn't make sense because this car is not a Ferrari has very little in common with a Ferrari you see Ferrari is a sub classification of car as Sabre is a sub classification of sword and a light saber nothing in common with a sabre at all I mean George Lucas is on record calling it a laser sword and people say knives not lasers plasma have been even Jay all right laser sword plasma sword is a far more accurate designation than light saber all right with all those problems I've established how could we make an energy sword that kind of makes sense is a bit more logically consistent and even perhaps a little bit more possible now I'm not a physicist at all but I am an enthusiast with scythes and I think I have a basic enough knowledge to technobabble my way through this concept first of all we were on a look at what do we want to achieve with this weapon we want to cut and in all honesty a cut is a far cleaner and safer method than mounting okay so this energy blade we would want it to be out of cut not meltzer get rid of the plasma the super insane levels of temperature in them which would also save us from the explosion of people when you touch them with this weapon how does something cut effectively well there's three properties to the mechanics of cutting first of all there's the surface area of the edge the smaller surface area the easier is to push aside a material that comes in contact with and then you have the strength of the edge to maintain surface area if this edge doesn't have enough strength when it comes in contact with something it's going to blunt in which will actually make the surface area on the edge a little bit thicker which requires more force than to push aside the it's coming in contact with and lastly it's the thickness of the blade the thick of the blade again that means the material are trying to push aside needs to be pushed further aside and in regards to really thick dense materials that don't like to compress much that can create more pressure on the blade as it's trying to cut through something to the point but the blade can actually get stuck in something from the side pressure of the material pushing back in on it now regards to conventional sword design the thickness of the blade is a tricky balance to maintain because thickness also creates rigidity in the sword which is a beneficial property so you needed as soon as possible yet thick enough to maintain structural strength of the blade about we're in a science fiction sitting here and so we could theoretically achieve those qualities without losing certain other qualities that would ruin the sword and so here is one idea theory pseudoscience II thing to create energy swords in a science fiction setting and have them be far more logically consistent now first of all you would need a mechanic to make them even useful of course having something that can cut through anything is a very useful tool in and of itself but as soon as you come against someone with a gun and you can't reach them this tool is very useless so some type of advanced armor or shielding that protects against projectiles but would this armor or shielding protect against energy weapons well if it's able to cut through anything is not a large leap or even being disingenuous to say that these swords I can cut through anything can also cut through the shields and armor especially if the blade was like a few atoms thick I think about if you could have a blade that was legitimately a few atoms thick that means that when it's facing towards you you wouldn't be able to see it but turned on the side on the flat plane you would be able to see it my goodness is hard for me to think of any material that would be able to resist this because if the blade is only a few atoms thick it essentially doesn't need a push aside material at all once it cuts into something and you wouldn't need much force either for it to sever the connections between other atoms not saying silver atoms but I'm also perhaps what severing the covalent bonds the electron attraction between atoms and stuff that's what this weapon would do I can't be give anything that would the outer cut through and then this is a sword that is functioning on a cutting mechanic rather than a super hot melting mechanic like a lightsaber so in my sci-fi settings in fact I've run a whole role-playing campaign in this setting and if you wonder watch it's on the YouTube channel tabletop time the campaign is called rogue star I'll leave a link to the playlist I have things in there cold iron blades but I really assess my thinking and I think I'd be more accurate to call them particle blades and the mechanic works in a very simple way so I invent a new molecule that's created through some pseudo science II MacGuffin mechanic okay and it reacts very strongly to magnetic fields and so you have a handle that then projects a very fine and tight magnetic field and then it releases a gas of these particles that are attracted to the magnetic field and take whatever shape the magnetic field is in can you shape magnetic field probably not but it's science fiction and stuff like that we can say well it's technology that they can create to SIRT magnetic fields in a certain shape because what what shields are kind of like that in anyway and the field is so thin and tight it actually only has enough room to allow these molecules to form up in the shape to an atom or to atoms thick now what's cool about is going back to Kyle Hill again who has explored some of the mechanics of you know you lightsabers and even saws he talks about Wonder Woman sword that it can cut the electrons off atoms and if this weapon the science fiction weapon is kind of doing the same thing where it's cutting through covalent bonds I might has the same effect that Kyle mentioned Zins that it would leave a glowing trail of small sparks and lightning which would look awesome I'll link to Kyle's video in the description as well and so it would have the cool kind of glowing effect it can be projected from a single handle kind of in the same way that a lightsaber is and then when you turn the energy wall that magnetic field off it just that gas dissipates and so it also creates a fuel source which is an interesting and fun limitation because limitations are actually very useful in creating conflict in story and it also makes it a little bit more realistic that you need a compressed canister of this special molecule type gas that's attracted to the magnetic field that this handle thing is creating and you turn it on and it forms this cool growing you know blade that is as thin as a few atoms I can chop through anything include other shields and advanced armor and then you have awesome energy swords and a sci-fi setting with logical consistency now the other thing is is that this energy field because it interacts so strongly with these particles would be able to block other swords of the same type so I could chop through anything except on the particle blades and then we could put a technological limitation that the beam projected needs to be in a straight line okay so you can't see the beam in that sense so that could nullify the existence of cross cards because not or you could just say oh no you can make any shape you want you can have particle axes and stuff like that or a particle blade with a cross guard on it as well and there we go here's just one way in which we can technobabble our way through the concept of an energy sword and make it at least feel more realistic and consistent thank you for watching guys I hope you have enjoyed and of course I hope to see you again until that time [Music]

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Keywords: star wars, lightsaber, energy sword, sword, swords, halo, laser sword, plasma sword, jedi, jedi knight, knight, knights, knight's, the last jedi, the force awakens, the force, luke skywalker, george lucan, mark hamil, film, movie, lightsabers, han solo, solo, hema, darth vadar, katana, longsword, samurai, space, science fiction, scifi, sci fi, space opera, starship, starships, game, top ten, top 10, video, rpg, skyrim, return of the jedi, trilogy, rey, films, swordplay

Id: oqIb3bBdiwE

Length: 19min 29sec (1169 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 20 2018