Unless we assume that the bullets are outright vaporized, which a saber seems capable of doing based on damage to droids and other light-metal objects. In that case, it's going to start getting warm as you're pumping out that much metal gas (and you probably don't want to be breathing that much...
Ah...so...plasma in a helical configuration, keeping the charges balanced? But then it would recombine in flight - what a mess. My God...I am going to have to invoke space magic, aren't I? :frown:
If it happens to be on your way, that would be great. But please don't go to any trouble.
The paradigm I think I'm going to settle on at the moment combines this discussion and the basic principles behind an electrolaser. A fuel (as yet undetermined) is ionized, the electrons dumped overboard...
Honestly, Ryan, I'm right there with you in your line of thinking. I've always thought the concept of plasma weapons to be a little, well, off. Unless you're going to really cook the books and claim there's some free-flying magnetic field that keeps the plasma bunched up until impact (and good...
Uhoh, then I may've run myself down the wrong road.
If I'm creating a plasma, I'm ionizing the atoms of my fuel. While I understand that would separate my fuel into positive and negative components, does the nucleus not necessarily lose cohesion? The neutrons and protons remain as they were...
Well, insofar as I can reason it out, when scifi authors talk about plasma weapons, they're talking about using energetic plasma to inflict damage, and the most reasonable means for that to occur is thermally rather than kinetically (as plasma dissipates without continual confinement). So unless...
I know the models aren't made up; they're best explanations for what we see and know. And, for what it's worth, I'm not just hurling this stuff out blindly, either. It's...well, call it a curious mind attempting to make sense of what appears to be a plot hole. Experimental results can be...
Okay, against my better judgment, I'm going to go ahead and kick the hornet's nest. Superluminals. FTL. Whatever you want to call it, moving faster than the speed of light.
One of the things a lot of physicists have a conniption over is that FTL would mean causality violations. Special...
Actually, it's a little-known Starfleet regulation that you always have to walk clockwise around the ship, which makes going to your next door neighbor in the other direction incredibly inefficient. o_O
Really, though...it was just sloppy directing.
There are plenty of reasons for generating plasma in substantial quantities other than fusion. There are propulsion methods under study that could harness directed plasma as reaction mass, using it to create thrust, not a fusion reaction. At the moment, the state of the art with usable plasmas...
Honestly, they keep changing their minds on this one, so it's hard to establish a true canon answer. First, it was lightsabers could cut through anything but another lightsaber blade. Then it was anything but a lightsaber and special alloys. Then they added "charged" metals. Then, with Episode...
Isn't it a little simpler than this? Because an hour can be considered an arbitrary definition unless you path it out all the way to an SI source like oscillations of a predictable atom. When our clock system was first devised, they just...made the call. Who's to say an hour has to be 60 Earth...