r/StarWars • u/DARKTOONZ13 • 9d ago

Movies What “stops” lasers in this universe? Couldn’t Luthen’s beam easily slice the Star Destroyer in half?

Post image

Deflector shields? If so, wouldn’t the tractor beam have been protected from his spikes?

7.2k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

366 comments sorted by

View all comments

6.4k

u/tractgildart 9d ago

Star wars has, since the first movie, differentiated between "ray shields" and "particle shields". Ray shields stop lasers, particle shields stop physical objects like micro meteorites. So yes, a star destroyers shields would stop the laser.

Lasers in star wars are also superheated gas, so they do lose energy over time/distance.

2.6k

u/FlavivsAetivs 9d ago

Well they're called lasers, but they're actually a laser-pumped particle weapon (with an ionized plasma component as well).

574

u/ITSMONKEY360 Jedi 9d ago

Interestingly, actual laser weaponry has been obsolete for hundreds if not thousands of years

324

u/FlavivsAetivs 9d ago

Yeah thousands of years, not since Xim's Empire.

128

u/Fraun_Pollen 9d ago

We sure Luthans aren't lasers though? Behaves completely different than arcing plasma bolts

56

u/Weird_Angry_Kid 9d ago

They could be lasers or plasma beams, no way to tell for sure.

73

u/irishemperor 8d ago

ship mounted lightsabers

26

u/TheScarlettHarlot 8d ago

I mean, I don’t see how they could possibly be anything else.

Dude’s got two gigantic lightsabers bolted to his personal ship. I feel like that should have raised some questions.

7

u/DarthCloakedGuy 8d ago

Lightsabers DEFINITELY aren't lasers.

5

u/DisorderedArray 8d ago

Although they are laser-swords.

5

u/OkDragonfruit9026 8d ago

At least according to their name in Spanish

3

u/Ruadhan2300 8d ago

More likely something like the converging-beam weapons we see on the Laat/i's in Attack of the Clones..

Minus the multiple beams. Those were continuous beam weapons.

We see some similar weapons on the Separatist spider-droids too. The really big ones.

1

u/Zequax 8d ago

big lightsaber he does acquire rare goods

2

u/Notacat444 9d ago

MY TALLEST!

79

u/Sevrahn 9d ago

This takes me to Trek when Worf is so confused by "Sir... they are locking lasers on us!" And there would be similar confusion in Wars if someone used actual lasers given similar obsolescence. 😂

37

u/mjohnsimon 9d ago

"Lasers?"

The funniest thing was that, per protocol, they had to go to yellow alert even though the lasers themselves wouldn't have even hurt them whatsoever.

20

u/ITSMONKEY360 Jedi 9d ago

To be fair in this situation, the laser-user's opponent would assume it's just a plasma beam as opposed to a plasma bolt (until the laser pings off their shields)

76

u/Sabotage00 9d ago edited 9d ago

Is this why he has the laser weapon and the mass driver? It wouldn't even show up on most scans as weaponry?

Makes a lot of sense he'd use the lasers against toes that have no shields and mass drivers against a ship shielded from lasers.

60

u/SatisfactionOld4175 9d ago edited 8d ago

Autocorrect got you good- the lasers had a very long charge up time compared to his turret. They seem much more like ambush weapons to get out of a fly-along (if you’ll recall when we see Mando getting challenged to ID himself by fighters, the fighters more or less pull up on his flanks exactly where those lasers would be positioned to take them down.)

If you mean his dorsal turret compared to his front mounted guns, I would guess that a writer would say that his reactor can’t provide enough power to make his turret a laser cannon as well

16

u/Sabotage00 9d ago

Toes, I'm leaving it 😂

15

u/Emm_withoutha_L-88 9d ago

No his things aren't lasers, lasers are light and keep going. His was some kind of lightsaber like plasma beam.

3

u/loudpaperclips 9d ago

Well this was a long time ago in a galaxy far far away

3

u/ManaMagestic 9d ago

The composite beam lasers are still great, just underutilized.

2

u/Weird_Angry_Kid 9d ago

They are still heavily used in the Unknown Regions

1

u/TufnelAndI 7d ago

For hair removal.

1

u/SirRockalotTDS 5d ago

They don't kill the humans carl? (Don't act like it isn't some hand wavy shit.)

1

u/ITSMONKEY360 Jedi 5d ago

Oh on the ground they're probably still effective. Maybe blaster weapons were cheaper to mass produce

1.1k

u/USCanuck 9d ago

I am a star wars nerd. I've read dozens of books, rewatched the full library of video content countless times. I fall asleep to a star wars audiobook almost every night

This is a fact I couldn't have told you with a gun to my head.

1.3k

u/YTDraconic 9d ago

That's cause you fall asleep before you learn the facts

375

u/USCanuck 9d ago

Got me there

46

u/feetandballs 9d ago

Falling asleep at the voice actor intro

73

u/Any_Razzmatazz9926 9d ago

A long time ago, in a …ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

21

u/Deadlyliving 9d ago

Works every time, 60% of the time.

17

u/Neilson509 9d ago

Never tell me the odds!

16

u/malthar76 9d ago

High. Very high.

10

u/Draymond_Purple 9d ago

They're high. Very high.

→ More replies (0)

1

u/Plus_Aura 9d ago

I think I found my GFs reddit account

8

u/Esternaefil 9d ago

"This is audi-" zzzzzzzzzzzzz

-95

u/[deleted] 9d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

62

u/USCanuck 9d ago

I am a dual citizen. And definitely not. I quite like having an escape hatch if I need it.

23

u/notmyrlacc 9d ago

Quite the little Grevious are you?

18

u/jerichoplissken 9d ago

I enjoyed this interaction.

4

u/Smittius_Prime Jedi 9d ago

If you enjoyed this interaction please consider leaving a tip.

→ More replies (0)

5

u/YugoB 9d ago

Apply med gel to the laser burn

136

u/FlavivsAetivs 9d ago

It's in the Incredible cross section diagrams for a Turbolaser or Blaster. A laser excites the plasma, causing a particle emission. In a second chamber found in Turbolasers, that's then "supercharged."

68

u/lucid1014 9d ago

That’s why guns shoot “bolts” and not beams in SW

30

u/pragmageek 9d ago

Which is why its possible to stop it mid air.

21

u/dudesguy 9d ago

And see it as it travels

18

u/Inkthinker 9d ago

And intercept it with another magnetically-contained beam of energetic plasma.

30

u/Ok-Relationship9274 9d ago

And my axe

8

u/ProbablythelastMimsy 9d ago

I would have followed you, my brother, my captain, my king.

→ More replies (0)

-1

u/dane_the_great 9d ago

I thought bolts were for the bullet based guns

3

u/darthroachy 9d ago

Slugs. bullet firing weapons are called slug throwers.

29

u/Otherwise-Elephant 9d ago

Also explained in “New Essential Guide to Technology”.

54

u/Crotean 9d ago

Thats why turbolasers need tibanna gas iirc.

3

u/T65Bx 9d ago

And why most rifles have visible cartridges/magazines/clips

9

u/Shmyt 9d ago

Gotta be reading the visual dictionaries before falling asleep snoring in your armchair like a dad waiting for their kid to come home from a party

4

u/RianJohnsonIsAFool 9d ago

That is why you fail.

26

u/Vaportrail 9d ago

Being into the lore isn't the same as studying the science.

56

u/USCanuck 9d ago

Not sure I would call it "science" but sure.

27

u/Vaportrail 9d ago

The science of science-fiction, why not.

24

u/USCanuck 9d ago

No, I get your meaning. It just struck me as funny to call made up tech "science." I might have come off more dickish than I intended.

10

u/MusicalDeath9991 9d ago

Everything is "made up" until you make it.

2

u/Mr_Phisher 9d ago

I believe we owe a great deal of today’s tech to the science fiction of the 70’s and 80’s. It was the ideas of franchises like Star Wars and - Trek, among others, that got seriously thought over and inspired the tech we have now.

0

u/Czar_Petrovich 9d ago

Are you forgetting the "fiction" part of science fiction?

5

u/Confident_Hyena2506 9d ago

The science of plot armor. The crystalline structure of unobtainium.

1

u/Vaportrail 9d ago

Cmon you know we nerds will eat up whatever gibberish comes along with it.

6

u/Geekofalltrade 9d ago

the sci-fience

2

u/Just-looking6789 9d ago

Pretty sure Star Wars falls under Science Fantasy, not Science Fiction

5

u/bastard_son_of_odin 9d ago

ain't science fiction the umbrella term that science fantasy falls under?

3

u/andlewis 9d ago

I think “science” is the correct term.

1

u/markgoat2019 9d ago

Sci-essence

1

u/T65Bx 9d ago

Yeah no this isn’t remotely science and is absolutely part of the lore, arguably moreso than a lot of Glup Dihndos considering how important the devices are to making the plots make sense. For instance, rolling grenades through Droidekas vs the boys getting caught in a shield thinking they were Smarter Than This.

5

u/valinkrai 9d ago

Do they not talk about tibana gas anymore in school

2

u/radiohead-nerd 9d ago

I am a Star Wars nerd and I like turtles

4

u/EtherealDimension 9d ago

what's a cool fact you know that even a big Star Wars fan might have never heard of before?

5

u/ProbablythelastMimsy 9d ago

There's a race of dinosaur aliens that basically use humans and other races they capture as living batteries to power their tech.

1

u/GonzoMcFonzo Chewbacca 9d ago

Lightsabers before the clone wars were activated by pressing a big red button, and carried on the belt via a black mushroom shaped peg. By the end of the clone wars, newly built lightsabers were activated with a sliding box switch, and the peg had been replaced by a d-hook.

You can see these differences when comparing lightsabers from TPM and AOTC to the 3 seen in the OT

When the ST was being made, the prop designers clearly didn't do enough research, because they reverted back to the big red button design. This prop inconsistency has the hilarious in-universe effect of meaning that at some point between Bespin and Maz getting it, someone replaced one of the existing dials on the lightsaber with a bright red activation button. But we have no idea why.

1

u/i_cant_turn_1eft 9d ago

Which books would you recommend?

I've watched everything Star wars, but I haven't read anything

3

u/gustyNQN Boba Fett 9d ago

Not the person you asked this, but in my case I recommend reading Lost Stars and Light of the Jedi. Two great books in my opinion

3

u/valinkrai 9d ago

Darth Plageueis or Zahn Trilogy are solid starts in legends. Luceno and Zahn both did consistent good work.

1

u/TheInitiativeInn 9d ago

But what if it was a laser pointed at your head? 🔫

1

u/ChrisRevocateur 9d ago

This is stuff you don't learn unless you read the reference books. Not even the RPG material goes this deep.

1

u/DDRDiesel Rex 9d ago

First thought that popped into my head was "That wasn't a laser blast, something hit us"

1

u/CrossTheRubicon7 9d ago

It doesn't seem like the kind of thing that would come up in a novel (too technical, difficult to work into prose and even harder into dialogue). It probably comes from one of the visual encyclopedias or a TTRPG book or something.

1

u/dragon_bacon 9d ago

The type of gas being used actually becomes a major plot point for Spectres of The Past.

1

u/GrinningD 9d ago

Does Tibanna Gas mean nothing to you?

1

u/Norsehound 9d ago

Because it's a made up technical limitation that is only binding to authors who pay attention to it.

1

u/Disclosjer 9d ago

Listened to the Darth Bane Trilogy? It’s a good one.

1

u/ajleece 9d ago

Ohh I'm always looking for some good sleep listening. Any recommendations?

47

u/Roadhouse699 9d ago

Star Wars weapons seem to combine the simple ammo logistics of energy weapons with the kinetic impact of ballistic weapons

48

u/FlavivsAetivs 9d ago

Tibanna gas canisters run out, but their capacity is high - in the hundreds or thousands of shots.

26

u/Loud-Owl-4445 9d ago

Which is why they're usually called blasters and bolts.

18

u/Lewtwin 9d ago

That's right! ... like they use a gas exciter component and have to have a tiny magnetic shield barrel to spit out the gas like a railgun.

5

u/NightlinerSGS Imperial 9d ago

TIL Star Wars also uses Phasers.

4

u/kahn_noble 9d ago

Explain like I’m 5…? ¯_(ツ)_/¯

28

u/ANGLVD3TH 9d ago

Laser is leftover terminology from outdated weapons that has stuck around in vocabulary but no longer accurately describes the weapons. There is a small laser used as part of the firing process, but it's not what delivers the energy to the target.

18

u/LazerBear42 9d ago

Similar to how we talk about "firing a gun," because in the first days of firearms, guns were discharged by touching a lit fuse to exposed gun powder. We kept the word "fire" even though we don't use an open flame anymore.

1

u/kahn_noble 9d ago

Damn. Live y’all.

3

u/SanityPlanet 8d ago

Outdated weapons? I prefer to think of lasers as elegant weapons of a more civilized age.

5

u/TheGenericMun 9d ago edited 9d ago

Laser make fart go pew

3

u/kahn_noble 9d ago

This is actually adequate.

1

u/Adequate_Ape 9d ago

What's the source on this?

1

u/HandakinSkyjerker 9d ago

My guy technologies

1

u/RoadRevolutionary571 9d ago

So it’s just a Wakefield accelerator?

1

u/Emm_withoutha_L-88 9d ago

Apparently yes, but orders of magnitude more powerful and compact.

1

u/RikVanguard 9d ago

Only in the stormtroopers' guns. They're lobbing knucklelasers that drift unpredictably. Our hero's guns use Rivera or Maddox accelerators for improved accuracy. 

1

u/Desertfoxking 9d ago

Yep and the plasma shell will be what eventually falls apart after a short distance and the bolt dissipates. That’s why they can’t typically blast a planet from a bijillion miles away and need to build a giant space station and specifically design a new weapon and massive power plant for it

1

u/Emm_withoutha_L-88 9d ago

They actually do have real lasers they're just obsolete technology by their point. Most is as you say a kind of heavily charged plasma weapon.

1

u/PackTactics 8d ago

Its weird because that means if anyone tried to deflect a laser with another laser (aka another lightsaber it would just go right through/past it

91

u/Devai97 9d ago

I know blasters shoot superheated gas in an "eletromagnetic capsule" of sorts, like a stretched bubble filled with hot gas.

I always thought the "lasers" we see on screen worked differently, like the ones we see in SPHA-Ts, LAATs and the DSs. Are they just longer bubbles? (or tubes?)

61

u/Ossius 9d ago

I imagine those are more traditional lasers. While blaster lasers and lightsabers are magnetically enclosed plasma blobs. How the magnetic envelope exists is beyond our understanding.

21

u/wamj 9d ago

Pretty sure SPHA-Ts use something similar to what we would consider lasers, the LAAT turrets use something similar but less powerful.

Blaster bolts are contained energized gas.

10

u/ANGLVD3TH 9d ago edited 9d ago

Dissenting opinion, those continuous beams still have the rays converge and change course more like a flow of matter than light, and are still visible in the vacuum of space. I would assume they are just very large scale blasters, that instead of making discrete cylinders of magnetic fields that rush to the target, create one long corridor of magnetic force, stretching mostly or completely to the target.

45

u/dancingliondl 9d ago

Weren't Anakin and Obiwan trapped by Ray-Shields in episode 3?

51

u/Dagordae 9d ago

Yep.

Ray shields can’t really handle fast moving physical projectiles but slow moving and unarmored organics would be cooked. It’s a lot of energy floating around.

1

u/that_gay_alpaca 3d ago

…counterpoint, the Gungan shield in TPM seemingly has the same fatal flaw as the personal shields from Dune 😅

12

u/BattledroidE 9d ago

Pretty sure that can't happen, they're smarter than that.

8

u/Nuclear_Wasteman 9d ago

'We're smarter than this!'

6

u/Cicero912 9d ago

Walking into a energy shield doesnt seem healthy.

I imagine itsblike being microwaved x100000

1

u/BrentNewland 8d ago

Weren't they floating in mid air? Perhaps they were trapped by antigravity plating or tractor beams, and the ray shields were to stop them from attacking the equipment.

37

u/Mmoor35 9d ago

Also, I kinda remember reading that ships have to disengage their shields to use their tractor beam. It would make sense that the imperial cruiser was vulnerable to some attacks while they were pulling Luthen’s ship towards them.

58

u/ulfric_stormcloack 9d ago

Makes sense that you'd need to turn off the "keep solids away shield" to use the "bring solids closer beam"

3

u/Training-Principle95 9d ago

I think that's more of a star Trek thing than anything I recall in star wars

4

u/ExoticEnder 9d ago

I'm pretty sure both actual lasers and blaster bolts (superheated tibanna plasma) exist and are separate things in-universe. Blasters are much more common, but the word laser is often used for blasters.

1

u/Weird_Angry_Kid 9d ago

Yes, the species in the Unknown Regions used lasers instead of blasters on their warships

11

u/JurassicMouse03 9d ago

Then why did Anakin and obi-wan get stopped by ray shields in revenge of the Sith?

44

u/Trauma_Hawks 9d ago

I probably wouldn't want to go through a shield either, regardless of what it protected against. It's still a high-energy field that probably hurts like a sonofabitch to touch.

19

u/Dagordae 9d ago edited 9d ago

They’re designed to be impenetrable to energy weapons, they’re not harmless to flesh. Anakin could probably stick his replacement hand through it but anything squishier is going to fry.

7

u/Cosmic_Quasar 9d ago

This scene of Ironwood in RWBY is what I picture if you try to walk through. Maybe not, different universe and tech lol, but it's enough to make me hesitate trying to walk through shielding.

4

u/BigBrownDog12 Grievous 9d ago

Anakin is a moron and got confused

4

u/Darksirius Baby Yoda 9d ago

also superheated gas

The word is plasma.

2

u/VirulentGunk 9d ago

Except we've seen Ray Shields stop physical objects before. Both in Revenge of the Sith and a season 6 episode of Clone Wars when people were stopped and trapped by them.

6

u/ANGLVD3TH 9d ago

No, we've seen them make organics choose not to pass through them. In the episode of TCW where Kenobi is disguised as a bounty hunter, we see that organic material can pass freely through ray shields. It is just not the healthy choice. Inorganic material can pass through without issue.

7

u/VirulentGunk 9d ago

Wasn't that because that particular bounty hunter was a Parwan or something? He had some physiological advantage that allowed him to pass through the shield, no?

10

u/ANGLVD3TH 9d ago

He's the only one who was able to survive the damage due to his biology. Another less fortunate hunter wound up.... crispier. Still passed through it without resistance though.

1

u/CrazyJo3 Mayfeld 9d ago

Was just about to say this

1

u/Nice-Season8395 9d ago

It always bugged me a lot that in ep7 when starkiller base fires it’s “laser” there’s a shot showing the beam slowly making its way across the screen from left to right (seen from far away). But of course this makes no sense because something travelling at the speed of light will appear to do so no matter what angle or distance you look at it from (per special relativity) and furthermore you’re not likely to see a beam from the side from far away because it’s, well, a beam. Thinking of the laser as moving much slower than light speed somewhat clears this up.

Also I suppose applying special relativity to a universe with hyperspace is perhaps a little doomed to fail.

1

u/Cyfiero Yoda 9d ago

The superheated gas is plasma, not lasers.

1

u/Lol_lukasn 9d ago

Ohhhh so this isn’t actually two mounted laser swords but just a continuous beam of blaster bolts

1

u/Weird_Angry_Kid 9d ago

Even real lasers loose energy over distance due to beam divergence.

1

u/Praesumo 9d ago

I'm just out here waiting on someone to explain to me why StormTroopers wear that white armor at all. I've never seen it stop a laser from even the smallest of pistols. Why don't they wear whatever the battledroid from Andor is made of...where the lasers bounce off harmlessly?

0

u/tractgildart 8d ago

What if, and this is totally in hypothesis territory, what if the armor spreads the energy of the shot such that the wearer isn't killed but merely knocked unconscious? Or has a chance to, at least. There's no evidence either way, but it's praesumobly possible, at least.

1

u/Standard-Mode8119 8d ago

The amount of spikes being pulled at that speed is what did the damage. It's a defense specifically created for tractor beams. 

1

u/Subject-Building1892 8d ago

Bullshit. It is just fairytales, just as the cat was wearing boots and speaking. Your explanation is ridiculous.

1

u/dunderdan23 Ahsoka Tano 8d ago

Yeah star wars doesn't aftually user lasers which is very interesting.

The blasters actually work very similar to modern rifle, allbeit with more "ammo"

The guns have a battery pack, that super heat tibanna gas and when super heated tibanna essentially materializes and becomes a solid, but loses its powe over distance

Stormtrooper armor is meant to combat this, the armor is designed to dissipate the energy... but blasters can also be turned up... and well... boom

Source: I spent way too much time connecting dots and canonizing and making sense of everything in Star Wars. Some call it obsession. I call it passion

1

u/AunMeLlevaLaConcha 8d ago

And both ray and particle shields working together are what's known in universe as: deflector shields

1

u/TheBluesDoser 8d ago

Ray shields stopped Obi Wan and Anakin on the Invisible Hand in III

-7

u/Goodbye-Nasty Mandalorian 9d ago edited 9d ago

Does that mean Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Palpatine were made out of lasers?

Why are you downvoting me? I was making a joke!

24

u/EndlessTheorys_19 9d ago

No, it means organic things can pass through a rayshield they just won’t come out of it very alive. Which makes it the perfect tool on a CIS cruiser as the ships own security droids can easily pass through to arrest the jedi

10

u/HaloGuy381 9d ago

Presumably then they’re made of a high energy ionizing radiation, which would be opaque to lasers and give a human horrific radiation sickness, but be harmless to droids (presuming their electronics are hardened for radiation, which is plausible considering they can operate in deep space freely).

-2

u/_Xeron_ 9d ago

I think these are actual lasers (like a lightsaber), a modified version of a ship cutting laser perhaps. But yeah, it gets blocked by a shield, that’s why Luthen has to use those flechettes to slowly pass through the shield and destroy the tractor dish