No it isn't. I was drawing a parallel. You said that you can see blaster bolts so they can't be lasers, because, as we all know, you can't see a laser... I said you can also hear things where you shouldn't hear them... there are fiery explosions where there shouldn't be fiery explosions. The special effects obviously don't obey the laws of physics, thus, simply because we can see a bolt when we shouldn't be able to see a laser isn't a good arguement against them being lasers.

And assuming they aren't when things of equal canon say that they both are and are not is also fallacy.
Besides... the movies call them lasers... after all, they're called 'turbolasers' and the cannons on other spaceships are called 'lasers'.
It'd help if you'd link. I can figure out what SW means there... but not the rest.

So how is this relevant to whether or not they are blasters or lasers?

It is not. It would be a fallacy if I said (canon source) is contradicted by (not-so canon source). However, since both of them are of equal canon, we must look to the films, and the films prove visually that it CANNOT be lasers.

Sorry about that. Here ya go.

http://www.stardestroyer.net/tlc/index.html

It's not, but it invalidates:
The films can't prove or disprove any kind of physics visually if they're going to have giant fiery explosions that give off soundwaves in deep space.

The only thing we CAN take from the films is that they are called 'lasers'.

So... basically... turbolasers are some magical form of energy which doesn't exist in the real world, that people just decide to call lasers? That seems to be the basis of that page: They can't be lasers because of y, they can't be plasma because of x, they can't be blah blah blah, because of yada yada yada.

They also try to relate it to lightsabre technology... but aren't you the one who goes around saying lightsabre's are a physical manifestation of the force... which is pretty easy to argue against (non-force users have picked them up and used them to cut holes in things and what have you in the novels), but still... if you believe lightsabres are a physical manifestation of the force, then that invalidates at least one large section of their arguement.

Besides that, everything they say is derived from the visual effects, which I've already proven as having a VERY good possibility of meaning nothing at all. There are thousands of sci-fi flicks with 'lasers' that have similiar visual characteristics as the SW weapons... and they were mostly created around the same time as SW. Special effects do not a physical proof make.

I ask you to suspend your disbelief for this... otherwise we can also write off shields, hyperdrives, hyperwave comms, etc because we cannot duplicate them in the real world. Who's to say that the soudns we hear aren't a form of aural aid to help the pilot gauge how close the flak explosions from turbolaser blasts are?

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/...eam/Beam2.html

Pretty much.

I have never commented on lightsabers, nor do I intend to, krylo. Please get your facts straight before pinning them to me.

But they are all we have to go. GL certainly was not an astrophysicist. You can't expect him to respect the laws of physics in a creative project.

Dude... Unicron faced down a planet full of sentient robots with built-in laser weaponry, which themselves had their own fleet of armed-to-the-teeth battleships. Which didn't so much as chip his paint (the only damage they did to him was breaking the plate for his eye, and that took an entire battleship rammed through it). And while it might take Unicron more than a minute to eat all of the Death Star, I'd imagine once he'd taken a good solid bite or two out of it, that'd manage to sufficiently disrupt it's operation. Hell, Unicron's personal gravity alone would probably be enough to cause the Death Star to tear itself apart.

And Galactus? Galactus survived the end of the universe along with the creation of the next one. The Death Star's big gun may be impressive, but it still isn't the Big Bang.

Well, when you're arguing based on a movie, what else do you purport to go by? I should think it would at least be more reliable than the books -- it's the original source material for the books, and when you're arguing based on fiction, the movie's as close as you're going to get to physical proof.

We can't duplicate them, but we can at least try to explain them. Hyperdrive might be wormholes, or maybe einstein's theories were eventually disproven and it is possible to travel faster than light... the shields could merely be magnetic fields around the ships, or some kind of gravitational field capable of bending light... if they can make gravity wells to stop hyperspace they should be able to do that, etc. etc. That explanation is just slightly less probable than: Which is what I've been saying all along. He's not respecting the laws of physics in any of his other effects, whose to say he didn't mean for them to be lasers but then simply made the special effects poor for an actual laser.

I like my explanation more...

Then I'm confusing you with someone else, and I apologize. Could have sworn it was you way back in the day who mentioned that, though. Maybe it was lyc... bah, I'm too lazy to look it up.

But if Lucas didn't respect the laws of physics while directing those physical effects, and there are other parts of the movies that make little sense in respect to the laws of physics...

You know, the easiest explanation may be to just say that the laws of physics are different in the SW universe...

Edit: Fifth, I've already said, you can only take knowledge of technology from a movie when they explain it within the movie. They called them lasers all throughout all of the movies. Special effects rarely, if ever, obey the laws of physics.

That's what you can support it with.

And I've said that sounds pretty ass-backwards. If I jump up and down a bunch of times, and say that this shows I can fly, that doesn't prove much of anything. I have no intention of judging movies by a different standard. As the old line goes "Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?" And nuts to that.

Damnit, I'm sick, but there was a disturbance in the Force that called me here...

Any technology that is sufficently beyond the level of explainable knowledge qualifies as Magic. Thus, Star Wars blasters are powered by Magic, and shoot concentrated beams of Magic...

krylo, they are the Yuuzhan Vong, and they shoot Plasma as in the material that Stars are made of. Thus you are correct in that blasters cannot be plasma based.

The Death Star could beat Unicron (Unicron is the size of a planet, Death Star blows up planets. Case closed), but not Galactus (If he can shrug off the end of the old universe and the beginning of a new one, he could laugh at the Death Star's Superlaser...).

Darth Vader would beat Samus. If she stays in normal form, he Force Chokes her. If she goes into a ball, he picks her up and hurls her into orbit with the Force. Energy blasts he would reflect with his lightsaber, and missles he could throw off course with the force.

Now try and hold off on the Star Wars battles until I feel better and can argue them at 100% efficency...

(Unicron is the size of a planet, Death Star blows up planets. Case closed)

Unicron is a planet that transforms into a robot. Different rules apply.

[edit] I will grant that the big gun could likely take a decent sized chunk out of Unicron, but I would argue that Unicron could more than likely be expected to shrug off the turbolasers, after which it's just a matter of keeping out of the way of the big gun -- or hell, just jamming his fist into the Death Star and ripping the thing right off.

The beam may move at the speed of light, but they still have to aim the thing (let alone whatever charging interval exists), and I doubt Unicron's going to just sit there and let them point that thing in his face. [/edit]

I mean, Galactus wasn't even as big as a planet -- that doesn't stop him from surviving the end of the universe.

Size ain't everything, as they say.

Not really. Superlaser travels at near the speed of light. It is capable of not just drilling through a planet, but incinerating it and reducing it to rubble, then hurling the rubble away from the point of origin. It takes an incredible amount of power to do that, so I assume that at best it annhialates Unicron, and at worst blows a hunk out of him so huge, he won't recover in time for the Death Star to get even a 50% charge and fire again, finishing him off.