Could a light saber be possible to make?

[The Long Road]

An actual laser sword wouldn't work, as said a million skillion times before.

Plasma wouldn't work either, as it would be too hot to be anywhere near. This is the same reason why you can't build your doom fortress around active lava flows, because the ambient heat would be enough to cook you where you stand. If you've ever been near a grill or campfire, you know you can only get so close before it starts to get very uncomfortable, and you can't stay there for long. A campfire can give you first-degree burns from eighteen inches away. Those are typically below 700 degrees. Now imagine superheated gas, at 2000+ or even 3000+ degrees, three inches from your hand and two feet from your body. Instant burns over all your body. Your hand in particular would be carbonized on the spot when you activate the beam and your torso would catch fire.

So unfortunately, it seems best suited to Jedi ritual suicide.

 

[thunderbird120]

michio kaku did a segment about this on the Science Channel. Here's part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSNubaa7n9o

 

[Isalan]

Something that looks like a lightsaber? Possible within our lifetimes.

Something that cuts like a lightsaber? Not for a very long time, mainly because of the power requirements someone mentioned above. You'd have to have a power station following you around which would be inconvinient for portability.

 

[Korolev]

The only way I can think of making a lightsabre is to somehow generate plasma in the shape of a long beam. This is, quite frankly, well beyond what we are currently capable of. Plasma doesn't behave itself and tends to go everywhere and dump its heat in the air, which you don't want. So somehow you'd have to create a VERY strong magnetic field that contorts the plasma into a beam and then you'd have to have an immense source of power and a fuel source capable of maintaining the beam for any amount of time longer than a microsecond. Plus, plasma is HOT - you'd probably burn your hands just holding the handle of the lightsabre.

So it's a very long way off - we can't even generate plasma properly in our prototype fusion reactors, so the idea of using plasma as a bladed weapon is a long, long, long way off. Besides, if you could generate that much plasma in a controlled, sustained fashion - wouldn't you just make a projectile weapon which fires bolts of plasma?

 

[FalloutJack]

Possble? Yes. Practical? No. I don't even know why they exist except Rule Of Cool.

 

[No_Remainders]

The question is, why would you want to limit the beam? If you have a laser powerful enough to cut through flesh, and a power source small enough to be practical, why wouldn't you just use it as a gun?

because lightsaber-blades AREN'T made of lasers!!! Laser fire-arms however, are definitly the wave of the future though, I think. They could be very practical (not to mention multi-functional. and let's face it...nobody's going to make/wear glass armour to stop lasers xD)

I'd definitely fucking wear glass armour...

I'd just wear stuff underneath it >.>

OT: Yeah, possible, but it'll probably never happen.

 

[renegade7]

In theory yes. In practice a normal sword would be just as efficient.

 

[crepesack]

We have infra red casting beams capabale of dealing long range burns being used by riot police today. I would imagine a future lightsaber being a beam of high power infra red beams or light that would be emitted and then it would instead of hitting a reflector hit a solar cell and so wasted light is converted back into electricity for further use. It wouldn't be able to cut but it would burn and scald. Sort of like a whip.

 

[Robert Ewing]

Technically, if you follow the lore, the blade of a lightsaber is made up from special light radiation that comes from the lightsabers crystal. This poses a problem, as if you somehow get the amount of energy needed to create this light, then theoretically instead of the blade being around a meter long (which is what it is in the movies) It would be millions of miles long. Because there is nothing to stop the light from calming down at 1 meter.

The images you provided do solve this problem, but doesn't that defeat the point? It turns it into more of a light-hacksaw. But yeah, provided that this form of light exists (Which it could do) Then we will have to just work with lasers. And getting enough power into a laser for the job this hacksaw will be doing, will be quite tough. Impossible with todays technology to get a laser that strong into the hilt of the saber.

 

[TheLastSamurai14]

Aren't lightsabers practically solid at their blades? Otherwise it's just go through anything it touches, whether it cuts it or not. Making lightsaber duels impossible, and making that stunt where Qui-Gon cuts the door look just a bit silly.

Shh! We don't talk about that movie, remember?

OT:[quote="viranimus" post="9.308336.12434560"However, there is one possibility I can think of that might be able to somewhat emulate the effect. Much like the NMH designs where there is a stopping point at the end of the blade, you need something that would act as an obstruction to light. Now if you were to take a high power laser, then at the tip of the blade area position a series of mirrors that reflected the blade back around to the hilt, to which the hilt also contained a series of mirrors that redirected the beam back up to the tip (contining infinitely) you could have a beam with enough intensity to cut like a laser, but look sort of like a light saber.[/quote]

I like this idea. It's very plausible to construct something like this, perhaps even in the present day.

 

[PinkiePyro]

I think it's more plausible for there to be a laser baton that inflicts heavy burns on contact. More inclined to inflict pain than to kill.

so in other words the stun club from the ape escape series

I'm not even going to lie, if anyone ever made a Stun baton that looked like that one the first thing I would do is go to the zoo and beat the crap out of some monkeys. I'd be arrested, but I bet the Ape Escape community would cover my bail.

OT: I think its within humanity's power to create a light saber but not for actual combat, and not for a very long time. It will most likely be the product of some future nerd, making a weapon from a story told a long time ago, possibly even in a galaxy far, far away.

I think you should rethink that as not all monkeys want to overthrow us
or did you forget about the adorable cuteness that was pipotchi?

http://images.wikia.com/apeescape/images/7/74/Ps2_ape_790screen013.jpg
(large image is large)

 

[lucky_sharm]

They have made it, if you remember that topic that the escapists shown, its very VERY deadly and costs a lot, its small and illegal to own.

Eh, the one you're talking about isn't really a light saber. It's just an incredibly deadly laser pointer that's modeled after a light saber.

 

[Wapox]

Well... the Batterypower is attainable, but it is immensely difficult and expensive to make, Nanotubes are more conductive than any metal today, and used in a coil, it could be even more effective and very much smaller than conventional batteries.. The Plasma is already able to cut through almost anything, atleast anything known to us on Earth. The problem is confining and directing the Plasma in a useful and "swordlike" shape. That may be attained with ceramics, all we need to find is a blend of ceramic that can withstand such hight temperatures. They had an episode on this in Sci-Fi Science on Discovery Science/Discovery Channel.

http://science.discovery.com/tv/sci-fi-science/

 

[k7avenger]

If you want to play with your laser weapons, just remember to leave the planet first. Atmospheres (and the things floating around in em) tend to not play nicely with light.

 

[rsvp42]

Pfft. If you want a proper lightsabre then just have a mono-molecular blade and put lights on it. Does the same job. Can't deflect blasters, but that's actually using the Force, so lightsabres can't do that either.

Like a Variable Sword? I should probably actually read Ringworld so I can make sense of these random bits of trivia I know about it.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Pfft. If you want a proper lightsabre then just have a mono-molecular blade and put lights on it. Does the same job. Can't deflect blasters, but that's actually using the Force, so lightsabres can't do that either.

Like a Variable Sword? I should probably actually read Ringworld so I can make sense of these random bits of trivia I know about it.

Very similar. Cyberpunk and Buck Rogers talk more about a mono-molecular cutting tip on a normal blade though. More sturdy.

And mono-whips are just a step beyond stupid. Sort of like the Sphere of Annhilation in D&D.

 

[Mr Companion]

Well of COARSE you can make a lightsaber, you just need a flashlight and some gems taped together! You never played Dead Rising 2 or something?

 

[Gibboniser]

The main problem here is power, and thermal energy, i.e heat. Lightsabers work with plasma, which would need to be contained within a very powerful electromagnetic fields, there would need to be two, which would meet at the furthest point, which envelope the plasma, making a form of blade, unfortunately, the power this would require would be tremendous, not to mention the fact, the plasma well might leak. Although a cool thing is the fact that since it's using very powerful fields, if you were to swing it into another "lightsaber", they would actually hit so to speak.

 

[conmag9]

A beam of plasma would be tricky, but thanks to the wonders of magnetic fields, at least possible in theory. As others have stated however, it would remarkably impractical, both because a gun is still going to kill you sans Force shenanigans and the power supply would have to be enormous.

However, the magnetic-fields holding them together would help explain how lightsaber duels make the slightest degree of sense: they're not physically hitting each other (the plasma bit that is), their fields are repelling one another while their users push forward.

 

[The Lugz]

but it could very well be possible to make some day in the future.

it's possible to generate pulses of light 1 foot long, right now.

the problem is light never has been and never will be a solid physical object
and that will likely never change, unless you can pack so-many photons into a space that it is physically intractable with, but at that luminosity i'm fairly sure anything close would be instantly vaporized as the radiation emitted would be FAR hotter than our sun... and we cant even approach that.

however, presuming we ever made one ( ie ignoring physics as we know it )

you do not have the skills required to wield such a weapon, the point of a light sabre is it's elegance as a multi-tool and it's ability to be offensive, defensive and be thrown with the force and retrieved

you cannot block bullets, you cannot demonstrate swordplay better than ninjas, you cannot force throw and do not have the absurd strength required to slash mega objects aside as shown in the star-wars universe ( massive objects such as boulders, cars, random machinery )

so, presuming you had one what the heck would you do with it?
...??? all i can think of is be a bad ass until someone shoots you, this really needs to be resigned to the hall of failed cool weapons from scifi, like scythes.. they just don't work and never will

( also, if you have the ability to contain the immense heat and radiation from the blade, a better option would be to just use that as a personal shield. )