PT Yoda was wrong, size DOES matter.

Lucas said it does.

 

No, he didn't. He only said that Vader lost his ability to be the greatest Force user ever.
This is because his ability to control his body has diminished. The Force isn't just a power of the mind or the spirit; it's very much physical, too. Vader may have a powerful mind, but physically - and spiritually - he is weak.
That's how the Emperor's prize was damaged.

 

Considering that midi-chlorians reside in all living cells, losing body parts does change the amount of cells one has (and by extension, their midi-chlorians). However, if midi-chlorian count is based on concentration, it won't change wether you lose limbs or not.

Either way, midi-chlorians don't equal power. This isn't Dragon Ball.

 

That is correct. And since Qui-Gon says "His cells have the highest concentration of midi-chlorians I've ever seen in a lifeform", it should be concluded that the midi-chlorian count does not change.

 

There's a lot of computer game logic at play here! I can't comment on the DBZ logic as that cartoon passed me by.

Disclaimer: Biology is not my field.

Midichlorians are of particular relevance to one scene in TPM where they're a scifi way of having Qui Gon's intuition scientifically confirmed.

As I understand it, MC's were George's 'tribute' to mitochondria, and in the real world calculating the volume density or number per-cell of mitochondria is fantastically complicated (and potentially meaningless).

https://www.researchgate.net/post/I...l_through_isolation_of_mitochondrial_fraction

Assuming MCs are energy converters like mitochondria you'd necessarily find different numbers/concentrations and formations in different organs, at different times, and under different circumstances. In Starwarsy terms, losing a hand or an extremity would still leave you with a complete brain, which is where I'm guessing the important Forcey stuff happens (I believe Vader does some hand gesturing telekinesis with his robot hand, which suggests the flow of Force doesn't come from there). After a short time the lost limb itself would lose its potential to convert energy as the cells (and the organelles within them) die, but I can't see why a bit of lost mass and added scar tissue at an extremity of an arm or leg should affect brain cells. Losing a hand doesn't age, shrink, or otherwise damage the brain. Being cooked by lava and inhaling all that poisonous gas might, I guess.

But this is Star Wars, and real science doesn't work very well here. Thinking logically, someone with Palpatine's skin complexion should have weaker cells and therefore the energy converters within them would be less healthy (and maybe occur in fewer numbers/at lower volume densities). Someone literally decaying before your eyes should not have a higher concentration of healthy cell maintaining organelles! Or maybe the stress of constant emotional turmoil causes MCs to arrange themselves in super-powerful formations that enable higher Force powers at the expense of maintaining cell health. Or something.

 

Power at the expense of health... I like that! It goes hand in hand with the notion that Anakin sells his soul to the devil for more power.
In Star Wars, that's more than a figure of speech.

 

Just thought of something: If a Force user becomes obese, does that mean their Force potential increases?

 

To quote George Lucas

 

Thanks!
No mention of midi-chlorians. His ability to use the Force are curbed because there's not much left of him as a living form.
My point stands.

 

Midichlorians are part and parcel of the living form.

 

When are you all going to realize that Lucas changes his mind every single day?

 

He didn't change it on this.

 

Losing limbs decreases your force potential because you have fewer total connections to midichlorians. It doesn't change your midichlorian count because that count is the average number of midichlorians per cell.

 

So all things being equal, a salad dodging, morbidly obese Force user (with more fat cells) would have more total connections to midichlorians than a physically fit Force user, right..?

What does it mean to have more 'total connections' to organelles exactly? Doesn't that imply that the more cells you have, the more potential you have? How is this compatible with Yoda's insistence that body mass is trivial?

 

That's why I believe that communicating with midichlorians tends to happen through nerve cells (why else would it be described as "feeling" the Force?), or at least through something like acupuncture meridians, for example (not sure if acupuncture meridians are actually nervous system pathways - I think it's more complicated than that). Adding extra adipose tissue wouldn't make a real difference in either case, while meditation (a known jedi training technique) would, as that would be increasing nervous system sensitivity. Otherwise, yes, we would expect to see all the Jedi and Sith packing on weight to increase their power, which I agree would be ridiculous and not in keeping with Yoda's teachings. So I agree that something as simple as comparing body masses of different jedi to judge power is obviously wrong.

 

oh good Lord...

where has it stated Sidious has 20,000 midichlorian per single cell or whatever?

 

Supershadow a k a George Lucas said that.

 

It's only the midichlorian count that was cited in the films as a determinant of Force potential, so "total connections to midichlorians" may not even be relevant. But there may be other factors influencing Force potential, and these may not have to do with absence of midichlorians per se.

 

That's speculation on my part to explain why losing limbs would decrease one's force potential (something George Lucas has explicitly claimed is true) while not logically resulting in the kind of scenario posited by the original poster, where force potential is purely a function of total body mass times midi count. In that scenario, the best training a Jedi could do would be to go on an eating binge - doubling his body weight would double his force powers. Clearly this isn't the case in the movies - and Yoda directly says as much in ESB. But I agree that there are likely numerous subtle and unquantifiable factors that affect one's connection with the Force.

 

What Lucas was referring to is one's connection to the Force being stronger with living tissue over non living cybernetics. The Force is everywhere, but it is something that is created by life. A machine isn't truly alive like a living being. Artoo, Threepio and BB-8 would be considered alive in the strictest sense. They function, they interact, they have emotions, etc. But they're not organic life. Anakin's bionics aren't alive. So being Vader and more machine than man, he's not nearly as powerful as before. He's no slouch as we saw in "The Siege Of Lothal", where he lifted up an Imperial Walker and could fight fully trained Jedi like Ahsoka. But he's not like Palpatine is.

 

I was expecting phallic objects after seeing this threads title...

 

Well the question that does arise is, why can all the midis in ONE cell cooperate but not all the midis in ONE organism?

If the count per cell is what matters and not total number of cells, then this is the result. Midis in one cell work together but they don't work together with the midis in the next cell. Why?

Other question, since 20 000 midis can fit in one cell, the midis are rather small. Maybe the size of a starch molecule.
Microscopic lifeform indeed.

Bye for now.
The Guarding Dark

 

Condition 1: Qui-Gon took a blood sample, so he was testing blood cells.
Condition 2: Qui-Gon said that midichlorians live inside all cells, so that means they do not live only in nervous tissue.
Condition 3: Vader lost body mass and lost ability with the Force. More specifically, Vader retained a greater proportion of his neural/nervous cells than he retained of his non-neural/nervous cells.

A solution: "midichlorian count" is Jedi medical vernacular for the more clinical and descriptive 'midichlorian baseline blood density', which gives a number of average midichlorians per red blood cell (or chartreuse or taupe blood cell depending on your species.) This number represents the lowest density of midichlorians in the body. It is a convenient number because a blood test is a convenient method of assay when a traveling Jedi strikes upon a Force potential. To know more about the real quantification of the Force user, one has to incorporate that into a more complex partition function, that reflects the user's particular biology, that weights the potential by (remaining) kinds of body mass. For humans, blood cells would have lowest density but be representative of the most *types of cells that represent the most *quantity of cells in the body. Whereas higher function cells (looking at you, nervous system cells and neurons) would exist in necessarily lower total numbers, but would each have a higher density of midichlorians. One can make estimates about humans using knowledge of human anatomy, but this is suitable for apples to apples comparisons. To compare apples to oranges, like comparing a young male human to Yoda, a first order approximation is more suitable, and so the midichlorian count gives that first order approximation, but is not reflective of an actual integration over all cell numbers of specific cell types that have varying densities of midichlorians per type.

And so, Vader's loss was mostly in cells of lowest midichlorian density, and Vader retained most of his cells that were of highest midichlorian density. And so, he lost some net amount of Force sensitivity, but can still be very powerful relative to other Force users.

Yoda is allowed as a different species to have a different makeup on a cellular level. He can have a distribution function or partition function that has a very high density in his highest function cells, what his species would call neurons, and still have his baseline blood cell density be something that is useful as a first order when comparing it to Darth Sidius, who may have a different (lesser) density in his highest function cells. Highest function I would stretch to mean *any cell that has to do with *any remarks by the Jedi Masters who have trained Luke and say things like stretch out with your feelings, your eyes can deceive you, play mind tricks, make stormtroopers hear things, 'I can't get the visions out of my head', your feelings do you credit but bear them deep down, your thoughts betray you, I can feel the hate flow through you, etc. Any medical components expressly dealing with the mantras on fear, hate, anger, like the endocrine system and adrenal glands.

In this configuration Vader retained most of the types of cells that sustain a relatively high Force potential vis a vis other perfectly whole bodied Force users.

 

...and?