Last week, there was a section in my favorite football column, <i>Tuesday Morning Quarterback</i>, where the author complains "that the Star Wars scenes in which Jedi knights use their light sabers to deflect laser blasts don't make sense: since laser energy moves at the speed of light, the Jedi's arm would need to move faster than light to get into position to block a blast before it arrives."
After thinking about that for a minute, I realized that TMQ had it wrong. You can see a blaster bolt flying through the air, after all...if they were moving at the speed of light, the impact of a bolt after firing would be near-instantaneous.
Then, after I thought about it a little more, I realized that every time someone fires a blaster in Star Wars, you can hear the "pteeoo" noise of the blaster shot dissipate *before* the bolt hits its target - so forget the speed of light, blaster bolts don't even move as fast as the speed of sound!
So, I wrote TMQ (also known as author Gregg Easterbrook) an email about it. I've done this several times before, talking about football stuff and other random things (particularly haiku, which he has a small fascination with) but have never been cited - until today, that is.
Check out this week's article - it's a good AFC preview on its own - and my comment is included at the very end.
http://www.nfl.com/news/story/8739142
(Note: Even though it wasn't quoted directly, my email ended like this:
"Of course, the fact that blaster bolts are that slow and are that easily deflected (by lightsabers, shields, etc.), makes you wonder two things: 1) how an energy weapon consisting of bolts of coherent light can possibly be that slow in the first place without violating the laws of physics, and 2) why the heck they were the predominant weapon in the Star Wars universe. Forget the Death Star - even with all of the advanced space-age technology in use, whichever side developed something as mundane as an M-16 first would have ended up winning the civil war!")
After thinking about that for a minute, I realized that TMQ had it wrong. You can see a blaster bolt flying through the air, after all...if they were moving at the speed of light, the impact of a bolt after firing would be near-instantaneous.
Then, after I thought about it a little more, I realized that every time someone fires a blaster in Star Wars, you can hear the "pteeoo" noise of the blaster shot dissipate *before* the bolt hits its target - so forget the speed of light, blaster bolts don't even move as fast as the speed of sound!
So, I wrote TMQ (also known as author Gregg Easterbrook) an email about it. I've done this several times before, talking about football stuff and other random things (particularly haiku, which he has a small fascination with) but have never been cited - until today, that is.
Check out this week's article - it's a good AFC preview on its own - and my comment is included at the very end.
http://www.nfl.com/news/story/8739142
(Note: Even though it wasn't quoted directly, my email ended like this:
"Of course, the fact that blaster bolts are that slow and are that easily deflected (by lightsabers, shields, etc.), makes you wonder two things: 1) how an energy weapon consisting of bolts of coherent light can possibly be that slow in the first place without violating the laws of physics, and 2) why the heck they were the predominant weapon in the Star Wars universe. Forget the Death Star - even with all of the advanced space-age technology in use, whichever side developed something as mundane as an M-16 first would have ended up winning the civil war!")
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