Essay: Theories of the Nature of Star Wars Energy Weapons - Part B (Torvus)

. . . of ion cannons is its use of the term “ion energy.” All ion cannons and like weapons are classified as emitting “ion energy.” The problem arises from the fact that the NEGWT lists “electrical energy” as a separate phenomenon. This is absurd; the energy transferred by ions is electrical energy. The implication is that ion cannons do not actually achieve their effects through electricity, which is in more-or-less direct conflict with its descriptions of said effects.

The text’s introduction states under its “Damage Type” heading: “Electrical Energy: Damage produced by electrical discharges. Often disrupts neurological functions.” In contrast, “Ion Energy: Damage that effects only electrical systems and components.” These shouldn’t be mutually exclusive, so their listing under separate headings is perplexing, to say the least. Still, we do see the unequivocal statement that ion energy does not inflict damage to any system which is not electrical in nature. This contradicts the idea of ion cannons using raw power to overwhelm shields.

Of course, this is a source which also lists “kinetic,” “slashing,” and “piercing” damage separately, taking “kinetic” to basically mean “blunt trauma.” This also makes little sense - all of these are the result of kinetic force.

The NEGWT’s entry on Jawa ionization blasters, as in the EGWT, provides more interesting details than the ion cannon entries.

1. “ . . . ion weapons are designed to short-circuit electrical systems . . .” More of the same.

2. “ . . . the Jawa ionization blaster overloads the circuitry of droids . . .” Again, the term “overloads” is used, although in this case it’s negated by the fact that these weapons are supposed to use a pre-programmed command to stop droids, not an overload of electrical energy.

3. “(I)n an ionization blaster, the restraining bolt is modified to release an ion stream configured to broadcast the bolt’s halt command over a short distance.” This simply reaffirms the EGWT’s explanation of this weapon, and that it does indeed emit ions to achieve the namesake ionization.

4. “As it moves through the blaster’s barrel, the energy passes through a series of ion accelerators, which amplify the beam.” We have here an ion accelerator . . . which amplifies “energy.” Ions are matter, not energy, again pointing out the confusion and/or fluidity of terms as used in these texts. Taking the term “ion accelerator” at face value, and in the context of the prior quote’s statement about an “ion beam,” it seems apparent that it’s ions, not “energy,” which are being acted upon.

5. “Jawa ionization blasters are virtually useless against organic targets, causing little more than a painful sting, even when used at close range.” This description is more consistent with the electrical nature of an ion pulse than with the radiative nature of an EMP, which could do damage but should not simply cause a “sting.”

6. “Republic weapon designers even combined ion technology with traditional blasters to create weapons that could damage both battle droids and organic assailants.” This, here, is a statement of great interest. Not only are blasters and ion cannons based on the same technological principles, they are in fact so similar that a single weapon can simultaneously produce effects comparable to both. The technologies must be virtually interchangeable to allow for such a degree of overlap in functionality. Claims that they just bolted ion cannons to blasters can be readily dismissed, since this statement would then serve no purpose - the technologies would not have been “combined” into a single technology, but merely used in conjunction while remaining technologically distinct from each other.

Before moving beyond the NEGWT, there are a few brief entries which may or may not be of relevance.

1. “A Chiss rifle, the charric fires a potent maser beam that causes both kinetic and thermal damage.” We see from this that proper laser weapons do exist in SW. In this case, the weapon is a microwave laser, or maser, specifically. Why it causes “kinetic” damage is uncertain.

2. “(The pulse cannon is ) A rapid-fire weapon that fires concentrated plasma bursts ideal for encounters with multiple, fast-moving targets. Pulse cannons are shunned by military forces because they cause a great deal of collateral damage.” Not only do plasma weapons exist in SW, they are apparently quite lethal. And apparently SW military forces normally try to avoid inflicting excessive collateral damage from their multi-kiloton artillery and fighter weapons.

3. “(The pulse-wave blaster is) The predecessor of the modern blaster pistol. Pulse-wave blasters fire small packets of coherent energy. Less powerful than blaster bolts, pulse-wave packets are nevertheless deadly when inflicted at close range.” What a “packet” of “coherent energy” is, I’ll never know. It seems this weapon fires discrete energy pulses, but in some sort of self-contained unit, rather than the expected beam. In what way the packets are “small” is also a mystery.

The EGWT and NEGWT are both rather confused works when it comes to technical terminology, but several things appear clear based on their claims: one, blasters, disruptors, lasers, turbolasers, and ion cannons are all outgrowths of the same basic technology, which makes sense given the canonical technological stagnation seen in the SW galaxy; two, these weapons fire particle beams, typically by converting and focusing blaster gas or components thereof (although the constant mixing-and-matching of terms like “particle,” “energy,” “beam,” and “bolt” does confuse this point); three, at least laser cannons can adjust the color of their bolts somehow; and four, ion cannons do not use the same damage mechanism as the others, instead doing damage only to electrical systems/components. A fifth point, that disruptors have some fundamentally unique damage mechanism, can also be made - but this is rather more tenuous based on these sources.

Section Two: Competing Theories

The Essential Guides establish without doubt that the common SW weapons - blasters, lasers, turbolasers, disruptors, ion cannons - are all fundamentally related. However, these same works seem unable to commit to any truly explicit explanation of how such devices operate. Certainly the general thrust of the evidence points to a basically particle-beam-type weapon, but the wording is grossly inconsistent or ambiguous in many places, and moreover how the stated mechanisms could produce the familiar “bolt” remains murky at the very best. In other words the Essential Guides are relatively inconsistent internally and may or may not be reflective of the phenomena depicted in higher canon.

And so we turn to other sources of canon to help clarify the situation. We discover immediately that no other canon source covers the issue in as much depth as the Essential Guides, and yet these less-comprehensive sources are much more bold in their certainty. There is no fence-sitting here.

On the one hand, we have the Visual Dictionary series, a widely respected source of canon (certainly more respected than the Essential Guides). This source says nothing about the nature of lasers or turbolasers, to the best of my reading, but two of the volumes have some interesting statements about blasters and disruptors.

From The Visual Dictionary: Attack of the Clones, we have the following quotes:

1) 'Weaponry
Clone troopers are issued plasma guns of two types. Like all standard blaster weapons, these guns create a charged bolt using a small amount of Tibanna gas.' We immediately see that this work fundamentally agrees with, and supports, the Essential Guides’ claim that blasters weapons that fire particles with mass (as opposed to the massless-luxon hypothesis). In fact, it goes a step further, and unequivocally states blasters to be plasma weapons. This has a number of implications:

2) First, any objection that the plasma weapon hypothesis is not a valid explanation, due to lack of scientific realism, is instantly crushed by the rules of canon. Plasma weapons exist in SW (actually already established in the NEGWT), and moreover, blasters - at least “standard” ones - are “all” plasma weapons themselves. That means every conventional blaster - the Clone rifles, stormtrooper carbines, Padme’s special model, Leia’s sporting blaster, Han’s souped-up pistol - is a plasma weapon.

3) Second, therefore, is that the effects of the above-mentioned blasters are also all effects of known plasma weapons. Therefore, the observed nature of these weapons (and their bolts) provides a baseline for comparison with weapons other than blasters.

4) The Essential Guides’ unwavering claim that blasters are all fundamentally the same as lasers, turbolasers, etc. would, together with this VD: AOTC information, demand that those other weapons also be plasma-based. Blasters are plasma weapons; blasters, lasers, ion cannons, etc. are all based on the same technology; ergo, lasers, etc. are plasma weapons. This, of course, is contradicted in other canon sources, and is highly controversial.

The VD: AOTC also offers more specific details as to the operation of blasters:

2. 'Tibanna gas is carried in a replaceable cartridge that lasts about 500 shots, depending on the weapon's settings and traits. Power-charge magazines supply the gun with energy to hyper-ionize the gas into charged plasma in an igniter chamber. The resulting bolt is accelerated out of the gun electromagnetically.” Finally, we have something which lucidly explains the mechanisms involved, without muddling around with multiple non-technical terms. First, this quote explicitly confirms the fact that the damaging energy of the bolt itself comes from the power pack, not the gas; it equally explicitly states that the gas is simply the medium by which this energy is transferred to the target. It also states, in reasonable accord with the known properties of plasmas, that this ionized gas is accelerated by a series of electromagnets. The traditional objection of the “plasma weapons are not realistic” crowd - that the plasma would explode if not contained by some external force - goes unmentioned and unexplained. Yet plasma-based blasters remain canon.

The diagram accompanying these quotes shows the Tibanna gas moving through the following components in sequence:

3. 1) Pressurized blaster gas cartridge; 2) gas release valve; 3) per-ionizer; 4) power amplifier circuitry; 5) igniter; 6) hyper-ionizer; 7) expansion chamber; 8) electromagnets; 9) magnetic pulse stabilizers; 10) accelerator; 11) galven circuitry; 12) collimating tube; 13) muzzle.

1) The relevance of this technobabble is that it differs markedly in many respects from that laid out in the Essential Guides, which share the gas cartridge, galven circuitry, collimating tube, and - in the case of ion cannons - the accelerator, but which have no commonality with the remaining components. The full significance of this is uncertain; is one of the sources here flatly wrong? Are they describing two versions of the same basic mechanism? Are they describing two essentially different technologies?

2) Given the sharing of the unique galven circuits and the collimating tube, I would propose that two versions of the same technology are being described. The Essential Guides claim to describe blaster technology in general. The VD: AOTC states that standard blasters are all plasma weapons, and that in this respect the Clone rifles are typical blasters, but it does not state that the Clone rifles use strictly standard blaster technology. Instead, while both Clone rifles and other blasters canonically produce plasma bolts, the Clone rifles can be interpreted as achieving this effect in an atypical manner, a manner not detailed in the Essential Guides’ more broad-based descriptions. This would reconcile these two sources of canon. However, it still demands that lasers, turbolasers, disruptors, and ion cannons operate according to the same basic technologies, which of course is still highly controversial.

The VD: AOTC does mention, on page six, the existence of “igniter cartridges,” which are included alongside “gas” and “charge” cartridges as elements of blaster ammunition and/or operation. This is another disparity with the Essential Guides, one not so easily dismissed in light of the fact that it is describing blasters in general.

The Visual Dictionary: Revenge of the Sith provides additional support for one facet of the claim of identity between weapons: its segment on Wookiee disruptors states right-out that they are plasma weapons, just as we might expect them to be based on the claims of the Essential Guides. There is no explanation of how disruptors are supposed to inflict a more fundamental (rather than just greater) type of damage than blasters, however.

We then arrive at the source which provides the major competing hypothesis of the nature of SW weapons: The Incredible Cross-Sections: Attack of the Clones. Here is the relevant passage:

1. “Energy Weapons
Energy Weapons fire invisible energy beams at lightspeed.” And we immediately see that this stands in stark contrast to the other canon so far explored, which do not in any instance use the term “lightspeed.” Since only massless quanta (luxons) can move at lightspeed in real physics, it is taken for granted that what this source refers to is indeed some sort of massless quantum.

2. “The visible “bolt” is a glowing pulse that travels along the beam at less than lightspeed.” No explanation whatever is given of how a beam of radiation can generate a discrete portion along its length - while changing position relative to the emission apparatus - which emits other, visible forms of EM radiation in directions skew to the beam. There is no analogue in known physics for this phenomenon.

3. “Therefore, targets can explode instants before the “bolt” actually arrives.” Note here the implicit statement that the bolt is closely timed to strike with the damaging energies emitted by the weapon. Since the bolt is traveling vastly slower than lightspeed, a deliberate effort would have to be made for the bolt to strike only “instants” after the far, far faster lightspeed element intercepts a target. (Unless the target were always the same distance away, which of course it would not be.)

4. “The light given off by visible bolts depletes the overall energy content of a beam, limiting its range.” This is an interesting and, as we shall see, problematic statement. It clearly states that longer-ranged beams suffer decreased power as the visible bolt draws off energy; the longer the range, the more time the bolt has in which to divert energy, and the weaker the resulting effects. We also note that, instead of the brilliant white-hot bolts of raw energy we might expect to see being produced as a by-product of bleed-off from multi-gigaton or multi-teraton weapons, this energy-depletion effect is achieved by relatively dim light in discrete parts of the EM spectrum - although it is possible that x-rays or gamma rays as also involved in this diminishment process, and therefore not visible to the naked eye.

5. “Turbolasers gain a longer range by spinning the energy beam, which reduces waste glow.” “Spinning” the energy beam? What the hell does that even mean? How does it reduce waste glow? Does this make any sense at all in light of a lightspeed-radiation weapon? As far as I can tell, this is just a shiny chunk of technobabble put forth to create a distinction between lasers and turbolasers.

6. “A gun’s range also depends on its aiming precision and the time-lag required to detect and anticipate target motions at a distance. For example, a massive warship mounts small point-defense guns that trade power for quick aim, while heavier guns are effective against slow, distant, large targets.” Nothing particularly useful or controversial here, although I note the phrase is not “slow, distant, or large targets,” but instead states that all three factors are necessary for effective targeting by heavy turbolasers.

This is the entirety of the passage which set off one of the most hotly debated issues in all of SW canon. One paragraph, in a book not about weaponry but about starships, and one which makes a number of other strange and in some cases widely dismissed claims about SW technology (e.g. “hyperspace” being vernacular for normal space seen at supralight speed, as opposed to a separate dimension which can be entered, as all other canon states it to be). To be fair, this lightspeed-beam hypothesis was a deliberate attempt to rationalize the weird effects witnessed in slow-motion viewing of the films. At any rate, this particular work has some other relevant passages regarding SW energy weapons.

First of all, it is pertinent to note that the author of the ICS: AOTC, Curtis Saxton, has made it clear on his personal website (or did at one time; he updates occasionally) that he believes blasters to be of the same lightspeed-radiation-based nature as lasers and turbolasers. Note, first, that his site - while widely read and very detailed in its treatment of the SW universe - is not a sanctioned Lucasfilm production but is instead no more canon than the average fan-created website. Second, note that two sources of canon - the VD: AOTC and both editions of the EGWT - each explicitly state Mr. Saxton to be in the wrong, as blasters are unambiguously described as plasma weapons in the former, and are strongly suggested to be mass-bearing-particle weapons in the latter, with the shared technologies described in both underscoring that they are in fact detailing the same basic mechanism. This is to say nothing of disruptors also canonically being plasma weapons.

Nevertheless, the ICS: AOTC does betray Saxton’s frame of mind in certain passages, relating to the ball turrets on the LAAT gunship.

7. “Two pairs of widely rotating blaster cannons defend the gunship with bolts of deadly precision.” Here, it is stated 1) that the ball turrets are blaster cannons, and 2) that they fire “bolts” despite producing, on-screen, what most fans would unambiguously consider “beams.” This demonstrates that even here, the two terms are at least loosely interchangeable.

8. “Firing dish exploits non-superposition of blaster energy to compose variable tributary beams into a finely aimed, intense composite beam.” Whatever “non-superposition” means exactly in this context, it seems to be suggesting that “blaster energy” can simply be channeled into single composite beams without the tributary beams deflecting or otherwise disrupting each other. One, this does not seem entirely consistent with other descriptions of how blasters operate; two, these same composite beams are cited by some proponents as small examples of the same technology as in the Death Star superweapon, which if true implies that the Death Star uses “blaster energy” as its mechanism of damage; and three - taking real lasers as our best analogue - this description is also inconsistent with a massless luxon explanation, as such quanta can only be redirected (again excepting mirrors, which are manifestly not in play here) by gravitational fields produced by objects of planetary or greater mass. In other words, this passage raises more questions than answers.

9. “4 composite beam, pinpoint laser turrets;” This little gem, taken from the “Data File” for the LAAT, demonstrates that even Saxton can’t keep his blasters and lasers straight.

10. “Laser cannon discharge stimulators” This is in reference to the smaller, “antipersonnel” cannons on the LAAT. It is of note because it mentions an element of a laser cannon which is never mentioned in the Essential Guides, underscoring the fundamental disagreement between the two.

The “AT-TE” entry has a similar passage.

11. “Laser cannon stimulator forward elements” This is especially relevant because both the LAAT and AT-TE cannons are five-gigajoule-per-shot (max) “antipersonnel” weapons, mounted in ball turrets, which appear virtually identical in size. Indeed, given this, and the fact that both are products of Kuat Drive Yards, it’s entirely possible and even probable that they are the same model. So we have at least one type of small-scale laser cannon with both rearward (made evident in the LAAT illustration) and forward “discharge stimulators.” To my knowledge such elements are not described for any other laser weapon in the canon.

Elsewhere in the ICS: AOTC we find other interesting, though often ambiguous, bits and pieces regarding SW laser technology.

From the “Jedi Starfighter” entry.

12. “Thermal discharge vent for waste mesons.” This quote refers to the Aethersprite fighter’s port laser cannon. Apparently, whatever process Saxton maintains is used by SW lasers, it produces mesons (e.g. pions, upsilons) as a waste emission. Of course mesons are also extremely short-lived - lasting no more than a couple dozen nanoseconds at best - so why “mesons” are described as being the waste product, rather than describing the ultimate waste products such as gamma radiation, is uncertain.

Incidentally, the Aethersprite’s two laser cannons each have a “beam splitter” at the tip, just like those described for the Millennium Falcon’s lasers (producing two separate bolts with each shot). Why this should be more effective than a single, more concentrated beam/pulse/bolt is terribly unclear; presumably SW shields have some mechanism of repelling force which makes this offensive technology valuable. It also begs the question of how the “beam splitter” can divert and re-direct the one-kiloton blast each cannon is capable of producing, per shot, especially if the weapon is firing a beam of massless luxons. Certainly the effort and expense involved in controlling those sorts of energies must be considerably greater than producing just a single unobstructed pulse, so the benefit must itself be considerable.

13. “Resonator shaft” More basically useless technobabble describing the portion of the Aethersprite cannon just prior to the beam-splitter complex. “Resonance” as defined in the AHD has two explanations relating to physics:

1) “3. Physics The increase in amplitude of oscillation of an electric or mechanical system exposed to a periodic force whose frequency is equal or very close to the natural undamped frequency of the system.”

2) “4. Physics A subatomic particle lasting too short a time to be observed directly. The existence of such particles is usually inferred from a peak in the energy distribution of its decay products.”

The second definition sounds closer to what we would expect of a high-tech weapon, but “subatomic particle” refers to particles with mass - the leptons, mesons, and baryons - not to massless quanta like photons. Still, some sort of subatomic particle would likely be involved in generating the lightspeed beams mentioned in the ICS: AOTC.

14. “Tibanna coolant gas hose” Tibanna gas is known to make an excellent hyperdrive coolant via a number of canon sources, the Essential Guide series included; here we have evidence of it being used as a coolant in a fighter-scale laser weapon.

From the “Geonosian Fighter” entry, we have these quotes:

15. “Long barrel of laser cannon imparts greater spin to the emergent beam and reduces collateral bolt glow relative to destructive power” Contrary to the initial implication of only turbolasers spinning the beam in this fashion, we have here a one-terajoule-per-shot fighter weapon which also “spins” the beam. How a beam of massless luxons can be “spun” when they should be traveling in straight rays remains a mystery.

The terminology of “imparts greater spin” sounds suspiciously similar to modern descriptions of rifled projectiles, and the spin they use to achieve straighter flight over longer distances. And the parallels don’t stop there: in laser cannons, as in rifled-projectile weapons, it is a longer barrel which engenders greater effective range.

16. “Blaster coolant gas refiller hose (disengaged)” It’s not quite clear if this is referring to “blaster gas” being used as a coolant or to a “coolant gas” being used on a blaster (or rather, laser cannon), but it certainly seems to be in the same vein as the “Tibanna coolant gas hose” referred to in the “Jedi Starfighter” entry.

Beyond the works discussed so far, various forms of evidence exist regarding SW energy weapons. Perhaps most prominently, one novel (Shadows of the Empire) claims that turbolasers fire an invisible beam with an “ionized tracer” (i.e. the visible bolt), which agrees with the ICS in the invisible-beam department but differs radically in the stated nature and function of the bolt, which the ICS claims is unavoidable, inherent, and EM-based, while the novel claims it to be a pulse of mass-bearing particles used as a deliberate element of targeting - hence the term “tracer.”

The electronic games of the franchise, without variation, portray bolts that can leave the axis of the weapon firing them, arguing against the idea that they are carried along by a lightspeed beam. Since this is a qualitative aesthetic choice on the part of the designers - rather than a factor determined by fundamental engine limitations or game-balancing issues - it provides substantial, though hardly overwhelming, support for the plasma-weapon hypothesis.

Interpretation and Conclusion

If we try to invoke the SW canon structure - which in practice I do not (see “The Nature of Star Wars Canon”) - we see first that all the sources of canon being discussed are of the same level of authority, C-Level. Even granting reference guides to be of higher reliability, we still have a mess of confliction - the hierarchy states that “newer overrides older,” but the VD: AOTC and ICS: AOTC were published in the same year, giving neither clear precedence, and the less-respected NEGWT was published two years later than either, which means that it, in fact, has priority according to this policy. The “more-popular equals more-canon” clause is of no help for any objective purpose, because no statistically sound study, involving a properly randomized sample of SW fans, has ever been conducted on this issue. Thus we have no data on which (if any) hypothesis is most popular within the entirety of the SW-fan population - instead having only the very vocal opinions of certain posters on certain message boards, who, in addition to being sharply divided, compose only a small portion of the complete fan community. In short, deferral to the canon hierarchy is of little use.

But, of course, the highest canon remains the films themselves, and the automatic response from some quarters is that the movies show strange phenomena, such as damage being inflicted before the bolt arrives, the fact that bolts always seem to strike in one-third of a second regardless of distance, and instances of bolts staying within the axis of the weapon that fired them despite the weapon itself changing position (though the reverse is also true, with bolts going off-axis from their weapon). Any one of these throws a wrench into the plasma-weapon hypothesis, but the lightspeed-beam hypothesis is also not wholly adequate, as presented, to explain all observed bolt effects. To top this off, ion cannons remain an enigma and disruptors still have an uncertain, unique damage mechanism. To my knowledge, no comprehensive, screen-by-screen, bolt-by-bolt analysis has ever been conducted to determine the incidence of such weird bolt behaviors. Until such a study is performed, we will lack the kind of hard data needed to help resolve this tangle of claims and hypotheses. Deferral to the film canon requires serious analysis of that canon itself; recourse to secondary, C-Level materials will always be inadequate so long as the films take priority.

The end result of all this is that the canon nature of Star Wars energy weapons remains unknown. The evidence forms a knot of wildy inconsistent, excessively contradictory technobabble which should be an embarrassment to the people in charge of the canon system. The Essential Guides are in large part an absurd cocktail of terms bespeaking little technical precision. The ICS: AOTC, far from being a Holy Grail that settles the issue, is an isolated work lacking strong continuity with other canonical explanations, which has raised more questions than it has answered and engendered more conflicts with other canon than it has resolved. Only the Visual Dictionaries provide some coherent, halfway-technical explanation relatively free of excessively vague technobabble. The electronic games are internally consistent but not widely respected, and the movies themselves, thanks to what in all rational likelihood were simple special-effects gaffes, contain a set of phenomena which have proven essentially impossible to fully explain in any logically consistent manner. Yet, due to the nature of the methodology used to study sci-fi films, we cannot accept out-of-universe explanations for these effects - as this would be invoking a subjective element in an ostensibly objective analysis.

In my final analysis, I conclude that the best way to rationalize all this utter nonsense is to state that multiple energy-weapon technologies exist in the SW univese. There are plasma weapons; there are beam weapons of one or more types; there are ion cannons which do whatever the hell it is they do exactly, and there are disruptors, which may or may not have a weird disintegration effect. The lack of consistency in terminology - even, in one case, within the ICS: AOTC - suggests that the inhabitants of the SW universe are sloppy with their language and refer to a diverse assortment of weapons under the same names, e.g. blasters, lasers, and turbolasers. Rather than referring to specific technologies, these terms probably only describe superficial traits. They allude to the visual effects of such weapons - they all produce bolts - and they define their scale, with blasters being any smallish weapon, (regardless of the technology employed) lasers being mid-scale intermediates, and turbolasers being the largest of any of a range of systems which may or may not be closely interrelated. Thus there could be plasma blasters, luxon blasters, and possibly other types; plasma and luxon lasers; and plasma and luxon turbolasers, again among other possible types. Some beam weapons may have inherent bolt glow; others may add a particulate tracer. Some weapons may have both plasma and luxon elements. The canon material is so desperately confused that, in my opinion, no more specific conclusion can be reached.

What a mess.

Record 1535 - ship - Last update 30 Nov 2007, 01:06:35

Entry written by: Torvus

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