How do blasters work in star wars

They could deliver variable levels of damage intensity, from stun to kill settings. Blaster bolts could also deliver a variable degree of concussive force on impact, which allowed it potential cause additional damage around the impact area, depending on the level of hardness and density of the target.

As such, some blaster hits could cause bleeding instead of burning, or could do both, with the force of the impact being enough to rupture organs and break bone, especially if the target is armored in any way. Despite their blazing concussive blasts, those ranged energized particle weapons could be countered by magnetic seals and deflector shields. Dedlanite was a material used in the manufacture of blasters, and could power them.

Blaster bolts came in different colors. Red was the most common color, and was made from cheaper gas. This was an ionized type of blaster bolt that specialized in disabling machinery such as droids but was also effective against organic beings.

This was a more expensive and more powerful type of blaster gas. Plasmas are common in space but they rarely exist naturally on Earth. However, it is possible to produce them in laboratories. A common misconception about blasters is that they are laser weapons. This means that blaster bolts glowing projectiles are simply blobs of plasma — similar to a lightsaber flying through the air. Coherent masses of plasma and their associated magnetic fields are known as plasmoids.

This is an explosive reconfiguration of magnetic field lines that can take place wherever there is plasma present, in particular when plasmas are forced together. When this happens in our magnetosphere, charged particles are accelerated into the top of the atmosphere — causing the aurora, or northern lights. A huge amount of material is also ejected away from the Earth as plasmoids.

Many of the demonstrations that we can do unlike the ones in space produce structures which quickly expand and dissipate in the air. The solution to this problem is to use magnets — their fields can contain the hot plasma. Thankfully, though, there is a solution. If I use the distance above, I can say the bolt speed is about 1. Here I assumed the uncertainty in the time was sufficiently small to be ignored compared to the uncertainty in the distance.

Also, I am using the "Crank Three Times" method for estimating the uncertainty -- just because it is easier. What about non-space shots? Here is the very next shot fired in the movie:. I know it is a poor frame, but I want to be complete. The analysis of this shot is a little different.

The camera seems to be far enough away that maybe I could try a real video analysis. Here, I assumed the distance from the Storm Trooper's belt to top of his head was 0. Here is the plot from Tracker. In this case, the slope of the position-time graph should be a fairly good approximation to the blaster bolt speed.

Already you can see a possible problem. The space bolts are way faster than the handheld bolts. Well, maybe this isn't a problem so much as further evidence that they are not lasers. Lasers would all travel at the same speed. Ok, that was just two examples. Let me see if I can get more data from the rest of the shots. After going through the whole movie, I would estimate that I have data on about 10 to 15 percent of all the shots.

These would turn out to be complete guesses -- especially the ones that were moving toward or away from the camera. So, what I have are 91 shots with data. I didn't include the space shots. You will see why after this histogram for just the space shots except for the Death Star shot.

The blaster shots from spacecraft are just in a whole different speed range than the ground-based shots. There is one way to show them together -- it is sort of a cheat. If I take the natural log of the speeds, you can see all the velocities in one histogram. The red circle shows the data from the Death Star Shot.

Yes, there is some overlap in speeds for the space and ground shots. Well, there are a couple of far-away ground shots and a couple of close-up space shots like when they show R2 in the X-wing fighter with shots whizzing past. But it still seems clear that these ground and space shots are different. One other quick point: Why are there green blaster bolts in space, but for handheld weapons, they all fire red blaster bolts?

I am not sure if this shoots "blaster fire" or not, but I analyzed it anyway. If the Death Star has a diameter of km, then I can get a rough estimate for the speed of these things coming out as it destroys Alderaan which is a peaceful planet without weapons. Here is a plot of the stuff before it combines into one beam. The units here are in kilometers.

Once the beams combine, I get a speed of 9. You have no idea what I am talking about here? Here is a shot:. Here is the odd part: In the next shot, the beam is shown to travel toward Alderaan a peaceful planet. It takes about 0. If the speed of the shot is constant, this would make Alderaan a peaceful planet only km away from the Death Star. I'm not sure how big Alderaan a peaceful planet is, but the space station is about km away from the surface of the Earth Don't worry, I am not completely delusional.

I know that Star Wars is just a movie.