Lightsabers and heat...

I remeber reading an old thread about how light sabers don't emit heat and that wounds don't cauterize because something about the molecules get excited....

Anyways, I was wondering if this is actually true. I remember in one of the Dark Tide books when Corran put his arm next to a lightsaber to feel the heat in order to get someone out of an embrace of pain. Seems this conflicts with the no heat theory.

Any thoughts or clarifications?

 

Nope. Corran didn't feel heat, as I recall. He wasn't bringing the blade to his arm to feel heat. He was bringing his blade to his arm to burn the skin and create waves of immense pain.

Lightsaber blades do not emit heat (I'm afraid I forgot where I attained this information from, however. ). The blade speeds up the molecules of any object it comes into contact with, except for the hilt, which is built with safety precautions.

It makes sense, if you think about it, I guess. For instance, when Jinn applied his blade to the blast doors of the viceroy's ship in Episode I, the blade wasn't literally melting the metal. The blade was encouraging the molecules to speed up, using kinetic energy to create the heat needed to melt the door.

If you're freezing, try moving around--walking, running, whatever. You'll start to feel warmer. Kinetic energy results in heat. Thus, the blades aren't the direct source of heat, but they can cause heat when brought into contact with an item.

 

Temperature is the measure of kinetic energy, in fact.

 

Face: Wow! I didn't know that. I never even thought about measuring kinetic energy.

 

In Dark Force Rising, Thrawn specifically instructed his men to look for evidence of microscopic cauterized wounds on dead people, thus suggesting VERY HIGHLY that lightsabers cauterize wounds.

 

Yep

 

Their no such thing as causing molecules to speed up with out heat that's what heat is. If Qui-Gons lightsaber is causing the molecules the oscilate is because he is heating them.

 

Master Halcyon: Hmmm...
So, how does this equation work?
Does kinetic energy yield heat?
Or does heat yield kinetic energy?

I think it's the former...But now I'm confused.

Edit:

Example of kinetic energy yielding heat:
Bill's hands are cold. He starts to rub them together. The friction (kinetic energy) starts to warm up his hands. Thus, kinetic energy yields heat.

 

I'm a little rusty, but IIRC, heat energy is a byproduct of other forms of energy. That's why you always lose energy when you're transferring from one battery to another -- some always bleeds off as heat. When you move something, the movement of the molecules produces heat. The more rapidly they move, the more heat is produced. That's how microwaves work, too. They're not heating anything, but using microwaves to excite the molecules, causing them to move, which itself produces the heat.

 

IATD: Yes. I once read that lightsabers worked similarly to how microwaves do.

 

lightsabers are a fantasy creation not bound by traditional physics.
I always assumed there was no heat unless the lightsaber came in contact with a solid object... then heat was given off.
and
spoilers!!!!!!!











Luke's hand was cauterized on Bespin.

 

I can imagine how the first lightsaber was invented. That would be a funny site.

 

A lightsaber's got very strange characteristics, in that it reacts with different substances differently:

ANH: it doesn't cauterize the wound; blood flows.

ESB: It cuts right through support struts, clearly heating them but not encountering much or any resistance. It does cauterize wounds.

RotJ: Same as above.

TTT: It cauterizes, but leaves a wound so thin that you wouldn't even notice it unless you knew what to look for.

TPM: It encounters heavy resistance from the blast door, giving off intense heat.

It would seem that a lightsaber has an intensely hot core, so if it cuts through a material (like flesh or thin metal) quickly, it will heat it some, but if it stays in prolonged contact with something, it will give off a lot more heat.

 

ANH: it doesn't cauterize the wound; blood flows.

I took that as a by-product of the initial cut -- much like Darth Maul in TPM. The initial cut produces a stream of blood, but cauterizes the wound so he's not bleeding all the way down. So the Aqualish's arm is lying near the pool of blood accumulated from the cut, not that it was bleeding out as it were laying there.

With ESB and ROTJ it's almost impossible to tell, since the limbs do not land anywhere where they can be examined or are mechanical in nature.

 

personaly I think that Darth Ludicrous theroy has merit. More or less the molocules of another object speed up, which then casues heat, and cautrization to surronding tissue.

 

Ok, then how did Qui-Gons lightsaber heat up and melt through the metel doors in Episode I if they dont creat heat??

 

Lightsabers are lasers swords. Lasers create heat. And yes it DID look like it was melting the door. In the Star Wars Insider magazine they say that lightsabers DO catarize wounds. Otherwise there would have been a lot more blood in Ep 1 when Qui-Gon got stabed and in Ep 5 when luke gets his hand cut off. But then what about Ponda Bobba? He bleeds when Obi-Wan chops off his arm in Ep 4.

 

"Ok, then how did Qui-Gons lightsaber heat up and melt through the metel doors in Episode I if they dont creat heat??"

Are you kidding me?
Read my posts...one of them refers to that.

And, as for the blood in the Tatooine cantina from Episode IV, I think there was just an ensuing continuity error in regards to lightsabers afterwards.

 

Ponda Baba's arm was cauterized. That's a simple fact. Talk to anyone who's been in a war or a doctor who's performed an amputation. There's a -lot- of blood when a limb is removed. In Ponda Baba's case... there was also a large area to cauterize in a relatively short period of time, meaning that the blood you see in ANH is most likely due to an incomplete cauterization of the entire area.

 

Yeah, Howlrunner is right. Also, it could related to Ponda's species. Aqualish may have higher blood pressure, or more arteries or vains in the limb, so more blood would be pushed out in the span it took to cauterize.

 

yeah thats probably true guys thanx now i kno! ive been searching for that answer forever

 

Absolute Zero is the absence of all heat, .

 

thanks for all the replies guys but I think my question is still unanswered.

If we go w/ the theory that the saber does not give off heat, it speeds up the molecules which in turn creates heat, this does not explain why Corran felt pain.

Under this theory, the blade would have to touch his arm in order to speed up his molecules, but he merely put his arm next to it. How could it speed him up...when he never touched it?

 

lightsabers are basicly energy beams...energy as anyone who has taken phyisics, chemistry, or basic science will tell you, does not come in only one form, but several, including light, HEAT, radiation, motion, etc...a beam of energy like a lightsaber emits light, heat, probably even some radiation...unless light is cold...lightsabers give off heat!

 

this does not explain why Corran felt pain.

It says somewhere that the core of the beam is very hot, but it doesn't radiate the heat.

lightsabers are basicly energy beams...energy as anyone who has taken phyisics, chemistry, or basic science will tell you, does not come in only one form, but several, including light, HEAT, radiation, motion, etc

radiation and motion are not forms of energy. Motion is one way of using energy and radiating it. Radiating just means emitting. A red hot piece of metal will be hot because its molecules were excited, and will be radiating both heat and light.

...a beam of energy like a lightsaber emits light, heat, probably even some radiation...unless light is cold...lightsabers give off heat!

Light is neither cold nor hot, however, when it reacts with the molecules it hits, some of it will reflect off as light and some will be transformed into heat. A lightsaber is a beam of light. It definitely radiates that light, or else we wouldn't be able to see the pretty colors, it also definitely heats up the air or whatever other medium it's in.