GE Engineer Explains Why Lightsabers Couldn't Work

Stupid scientist, ruining my dreams:

The first snag you run into is that battery. "Although real-life battery technology is coming along great," Gluesenkamp writes, "we are a long way off from creating handheld batteries with capacities like that the ones found in the lightsaber's diatium power cell." In Star Wars, Jedi didn't have to worry about that because "diatium" is a convenient bit of fiction and are attuned to the Force, so, really, they could do anything.[...]

There's another problem in getting a focused, powerful blade of plasma with an exact length and shape, which is where the concept of a lightsaber gets "really convoluted," according to Gluesenkamp.

"There are also no crystals that can 'direct' a plasma," Gluesenkamp writes, noting that today we use magnetic fields are used, but are limited as the machinery involved has to enclose the plasma. "In fact, a plasma 'being directed' by a crystal lens doesn't make any physical sense anyway. A plasma is really just an ionized gas — a gas in which the electrons have been stripped from their atomic nuclei."

Well, yeah, he has "facts" and "science" on his side. But we look really cool when we hang out at the mall in our Jedi robes. So we have that going for us.

Link | Image: Lucasfilms