- This episode of Because Science is sponsored
by Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.
Because no one's ever really gone,
how might Force lightning work?
Let's get technical.
(maniacal laughing) (upbeat music)
Jedi and Sith are the superheroes of the Star Wars-iverse.
They can sense the future, they can become ghosts apparently
and they can levitate things with their minds.
Some can even summon what's called Force lightning.
Bleurgh!
Which appears to be at least
some kind of electrical discharge.
But how might Force lightning actually work?
And how powerful would it have to be to fry us up some Jedi?
Well let's don our
thinking robes
and figure it out.
(chuckling)
Good.
To understand what's going on,
the robe was too hot,
to understand what's really going on here,
I believe we must consult the
sacred texts of electrical engineering!
Oh jeez!
Yoda hates books.
Force lightning needs to move through the air
and so the study of electromagnetism tells us
that a substance like air is traditionally
a very good insulator in that it doesn't
conduct electrical charges very well at all.
However, even an insulating material like air,
has what's called a breakdown voltage.
This is when you're running so much voltage through
some material that it literally breaks down and becomes
much more conductive if it was insulating before.
Pretty much everything, aside from like superconductors,
has a breakdown voltage and we don't
just have to talk about this in the abstract.
You can experience breakdown voltage personally.
Have you ever shuffled your feet across
a carpet or something, unknowingly or not,
and then touched something metal,
like a doorknob to get a pretty bad shock?
Well this is breakdown voltage at work.
When you shuffle along a carpet
or you rub a balloon against your hair or what have you,
you are literally transferring more
negatively charged electrons onto the surface
of your body, which creates an imbalance.
When you then encounter something that's,
relatively speaking, more positively charged,
like that metal doorknob,
this imbalance wants to equalize itself
and, if the potential difference is great enough,
a visible arc of electricity will break down the air
in between you and a surface to equalize itself
and this can involve a lot more voltage than you may think.
Ah!
Don't be alarmed, do not try to adjust your device,
I know I'm out of focus and everything's dark
but it's because I want to
show you breakdown voltage in air.
For whatever reason, inside of the void,
every few minutes I build up a very large
electrical charge on my body.
So, to demonstrate electrical breakdown in air for you,
I'm going to wait a few minutes
until I am charged and then I'm gonna touch something metal,
like this pole here, and you will see
just how much of an arc you can generate from
a lot of voltage just moving around your everyday life.
So okay just give me a second to get charged here.
Ah!
(slow motion shouting)
Ah jeez!
Ah!
Because of breakdown voltage requirements,
even something small like that packs a punch.
That shock that I constantly get here
in the void for some reason, isn't very big,
maybe like half a centimeter long,
but the breakdown voltage for air
is 3000 volts per millimeter of air
turning from insulator to conductor.
This means that a decent static shock,
like one you can see just touching a doorknob
after shuffling around because you don't pick up your feet,
why don't you listen to your mom?
Could be around 15 to 30,000 volts of electricity,
which is in
taser territory.
Just think about that.
Oh man.
Argh!
(groaning)
Clearly, whatever voltages a Sith like Palpatine
is generating must be a lot larger
to arc all the way across the room
from a certain point of view.
A certain point of view?
Yes.
I'm not a Force ghost anymore.
To make Force lightning and to punish
young Jedi for their lack of vision.
A Sith like the Emperor would need to break down
all the air between himself and his target
and do so with enough voltage to initiate
what's called an electron avalanche.
Which sounds even cooler than Force lightning.
And it works like this.
If there's a big enough potential difference
inside of this electric field,
an electron can be accelerated so much so
that it smashes into another atom in the air
and has enough energy to ionize that atom.
In other words, rip its electrons from it.
Those electrons are in turn accelerated
in this electrical field and they go on to smash
into other atoms, creating a snowballing
avalanche like effect of ionization.
The larger the voltage, the bigger
the avalanche and the longer the arc.
So what about the Emperor?
Bleurgh!
Bleurgh, Jedi, bleurgh!
Thankfully for our purposes, we've already measured
the breakdown voltage of normal Earth air,
at standard temperature and pressure.
Assuming that air is similar in a galaxy far, far away,
to arc across just one meter, around three feet, of space,
the Emperor would need to generate
around three million volts.
Now we need to know just how far Force lightning can travel.
The first time we see the technique is when
the Emperor decides to destroy Luke in the throne room.
Now it's hard to measure this distance
because of perspective but it looks like the arc
is maybe two and a half Luke body lengths, maybe.
If that's the case, then
unlimited power is around 15 million volts.
But this isn't even the longest
electrical arc that we see in Star Wars.
No, that honor goes to Count Dooku
in this scene in the prequels.
Again it's hard to measure because of perspective
but if we use Count Dooku's height and this
breakdown value, you get around 22 million volts.
And interestingly enough, both of these values
are within the actual range for real lightning.
Which means that Force lightning
is as powerful as real lightning.
It's not unlimited power but it is
certainly enough to fry up some Jedi.
No, you can't fry a baby Yoda.
So, if Force lightning works by more or less
creating short circuits between Sith and Jedi,
this power must have something to do
with moving electrons around at will.
The Emperor, or other Force user, then may operate
like a humanoid Van der Graaf generator.
Able to use the Force to create large
electrical imbalances on their person
that gets so large, they encourage a large breakdown
of air in between them and their targets.
At that point, the air in between them
turns from insulator to conductor
and then the flow of electrons shocks a target
into a state where they just need
to ask their robo daddy for help.
Please.
Remember that?
I know this sounds weird but the basic process
happens with actual lightning during thunderstorms.
As negative charges build up at the bottom of clouds
and then equalize in the form of lightning strikes
with the more positive ground beneath the clouds.
And this would all mean, of course, that Force users
can manipulate electrons on an individual level.
Which sounds fantastical but if Force users
can also use their minds to lift
many ton X-wings up out of puppet swamps,
I don't think this is that much of a stretch.
This might be how Force lightning works
but we're not done yet because, if it does work this way,
we have a very important announcement
for anyone who is likely to challenge a Sith lord.
A Sith lord?
Yes.
According to the laws of physics,
anti Force lightning armor should be really easy to make.
Please, consider the following.
If you were standing near a strong enough tesla coil
just a couple of feet away, you could be struck
by millions of volts of electricity and yet,
a simple metal box can save you
from having to call your robot papa for help.
Why?
Well that's because a long, long time ago
in a galaxy far, far away called Britain,
a legendary scientist named Michael Faraday
invented what I am now in, a Faraday cage.
A Faraday cage looks like a simple metal mesh box
and that's because that's all it is.
Faraday's insight though was that in the presence
of an electric field with this orientation of metal,
the electrons in that metal act in a certain way.
Thanks to the shape of the box and the free electrons in
the metal, in the presence of an external electric field,
the electrons tend to bunch up on one side of the box.
Creating an opposing electrical field
and this results in no charge flowing
on the inside of the box.
And because of this, you can be
insulated from Palpatine like lightning.
To make anti Force lightning armor then,
we would want some kind of garment
that incorporates the idea of a Faraday cage into it.
And guess what?
We already have that.
Our power line workers routinely service power lines that
have hundreds of thousands of volts running through them.
The kind of voltages that would fry them
and yet they are fine because
they wear these, Faraday suits.
Which have metal mesh woven into the garment
and they operate like a Faraday cage operates.
And so, with our knowledge of this kind of fabric
and of equalizing electric fields,
we can make a bold recommendation to the Jedi Council.
Honored members of the Jedi Council,
anyone who is to face off against a Sith lord
should be wearing robes lined with Faraday mesh.
It would protect your people from Palpatine like lightning
and it should be easy enough to just weave
some space metal into your clothing there.
My galaxy already has the technology to do this
and it would make sense, even if
it's not in the sacred text.
So, do you grant me the rank of Master?
No?
It's not fair!
I'm gonna grow my hair out and get
a scar on my face and live in a volcano planet.
So, how does Force lightning work?
Well, if Force users can manipulate the universe
down to the level of individual electrons,
they might be able to encourage those electrons
to form giant imbalances on bodies, breakdown the air
and form large arcs of electricity
between themselves and their targets.
And it wouldn't even require unlimited power.
Just a few million volts.
And that should be more than doable for a senate seat
throwing monster face having evil space ghost right?
Because Science.
Well, not the ghost part, the electron part.
Star Wars is weird not the other...
You get it.
(maniacal laughter)
Thanks again to Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
for sponsoring today's episode.
You play Cal Kestis, a young Jedi Padawan
who narrowly escaped the purge of Order 66.
Following the events of episode three, Revenge of the Sith.
On a quest to rebuild the Jedi Order,
you must pick up the pieces of your shattered past to
complete your training, develop powerful new Force abilities
and master the art of the iconic lightsaber.
All while staying one step ahead
of the Empire and its deadly Inquisitors.
Star Wars Jed: Fallen Order is available
now on Xbox One, PS4 and PC.
(upbeat music)