No Force Awakens spoilers, just wildly speculative science.
LucasArts / Disney / Alex Kasprak / BuzzFeed
"LIGHTSABERS. ARE THEY POSSIBLE? I MUST KNOW." —lordleia
Short answer: Not with Earth technology — the problem is keeping the energy source small enough to be handheld, not creating the technology itself.
Longer answer: There are a number of challenges involved in creating a real-life lightsaber, many scientists told BuzzFeed Science. Both Suveen Mathaudhu, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of California, Riverside, and Marc Hairston, a physicist at the University of Texas at Dallas, agreed that such a device wouldn’t actually be light- or laser-based, but would have to be some sort of contained field of plasma (a charged state of matter unlike a solid, liquid, or gas). The trick, both scientists said, would be to contain such a field of plasma. “In theory you could produce a finite length plasma arc that would stop at a certain point,“ Mathaudu said, but the energy to do that is beyond our current technological abilities. “It would take huge magnetic and electric fields to confine and control the plasma to make it work like a lightsaber,” Hairston told BuzzFeed Science.
LucasArts / Disney
"What would happen if you tried to cut a mirror with a lightsaber?" —Taylor Nelson, Facebook
Short answer: It would fuck that mirror up.
Longer answer: If one accepts the plasma definition of a lightsaber, then the answer to this question is simple, said Hairston. “Since the lightsaber is made of a beam of high-energy particles, not light, it would melt and cut the glass/metal/whatever of the mirror.”
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