Star Wars has enriched the minds and imaginations of children and adults for decades, yet how realistic can 1970s science fiction really be?

Almost 50 years on from the release of Star Wars: Episode IV, Dr. Alex Baker, Assistant Professor of Chemistry at The University of Warwick is turning science fiction into science fact on May the 4th, International Star Wars Day.

What would lightsabers on Earth be like?

Lightsabers are the ‘civilised’ weapons of the Star Wars galaxy. Despite being called laser swords, these blades would actually be made of plasma, the fourth state of matter.

Dr. Alex Baker explains that “to get a lightsaber you would need to ionise the air at the end of the lightsaber hilt to create plasma.

“The plasma would then be held in the nice blade shape by a magnetic field. The problem is creating a magnetic field that is a straight line, as doing what I just described would essentially create a fountain of plasma that would recombine at the end of the magnetic field and return to a gas.”

While Dr. Baker can’t (yet) produce a lightsaber, he can show off a ‘donut’ lightsaber blade by ionising xenon gas in a glass sphere with an electric-coil-induced magnetic field. The result, a donut shaped plasma blade in the sphere with an eerie lightsaber likeness (see photo).

A real lightsaber also wouldn’t use xenon, but would take gas from the surrounding air to ionise to become plasma. Rather than a fictional crystal deciding the colour of the blade, the predominant gas in the atmosphere would, hence all Earth lightsabers would be nitrogen-fuelled blue!

The bright colours of lightsabers can be reproduced with a school chemistry classic - the flame test. Different elements produce different colours when heated, e.g. Lithium (or Sithium) blasts a clear red, while Boron is a clean Jedi green.

Could Gallium work as real-life carbonite?

In the real world, liquid nitrogen and solid carbon dioxide are common examples of cryogens that can be used to freeze objects, such as human eggs in IVF treatment. This works for small objects but not yet for freezing an entire person. Star Wars used a fictional material to freeze Han Solo, carbonite, a metal that hardened around him as it cooled.

Mercury and gallium are liquid metals at room-temperature and an earthly equivalent of carbonite. Mercury is toxic, but studies have shown that gallium can be used to store small organisms like nematode worms. The worms can be dehydrated, stored in liquid gallium that is cooled and solidified, before being recovered a week later.

To demonstrate, Dr. Baker has produced a ‘Gallium Solo’, a miniature figure stored in solid gallium that can be released under a small amount of heating to 30 degrees Celsius, showing the feasibility of gallium as a metal storage medium.

Why Star Wars bounty hunters would be diamond-studded

Body armour in Star Wars doesn’t make a lot of sense. Stormtroopers walk around in ‘plastoid', bullet resistant plastic armour, while bounty hunters wear metal that can deflect superheated lightsabers.

‘Plastoid’ isn’t real, but earth-based polyethylene (yes - the material in plastic bags!) could be the answer to a functioning plastic armour. While plastic bags are made from low-density polyethylene, the polyethylene used in some chopping boards is high-density, with packed polymer chains, and is potentially strong enough to stop a bullet.

Beskar is the material in Mandalorian bounty hunter body armour, but Alex asks whether there is a material on Earth capable of saving you from blasters and lightsabers. Steel is strong but would melt under the intense heat of the lightsaber as each cation (a positively charged ion) in steel’s structure dissipates the heat too slowly.

Instead, Dr. Alex Baker suggests a lab grown diamond, like the ones created by fellow Warwick chemist Prof. Julie Macpherson. This is a material that has a chance at successfully redistributing the heat of a plasma-based weapon.

Dr. Baker says: “Synthetic diamond is very good at dissipating heat: when one carbon atom starts to vibrate, so does the next one, quickly transporting heat, even the heat from my hand. This property makes diamonds useful for a variety of applications such as dissipating heat in electronics.”

Why star destroyers could be powered by green energy

The main fuel in the Star Wars Universe is called Tibanna Gas, a classic hydrocarbon like methane, which needs oxygen to ignite and produces carbon dioxide.

According to Dr Baker, the Star Wars galaxy, like our own, would still need to use liquid oxygen in rocket engines. “Storing oxygen on a rocket as a gas would require huge heavy containers, whereas liquid oxygen is very efficient to transport. By igniting fuels like Tibanna Gas with oxygen in the engine of a rocket, you can produce huge amounts of thrust.

“This is demonstrated in a ‘purple cannon fire’ reaction that produces oxygen. The oxygen formed then catches light as it passes through a flame. You can see the incredible violence caused by burning of just a small amount of oxygen gas and fuel.”

Another common element found in our own universe, sodium, could also be used as a fuel in the Star Wars universe. “Sodium reacts with water to quickly produce hydrogen gas, often leading to an explosion. Yet, burning hydrogen gas with oxygen produces a lot of energy with only water as a by-product, instead of carbon dioxide”. said Dr Baker.

If space craft in Star Wars relied on sodium, water and oxygen, the only by-product would be water. Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs) in the real world can hold hydrogen gas and could be the future of storing hydrogen to use as a fuel for cars.

Dr. Alex Baker will be showcasing ‘The Chemistry of Star Wars’ at The Royal Institution on May 4th, after a successful show at the Edinburgh Science Festival on April 20th.

ENDS

Dr. Alex Baker is available for interview or to consult on science of Star Wars pieces on this year’s Star Wars Day.

Please reach out via the University of Warwick press office:

Matt Higgs – Media & Communications Officer (Sciences) Matt.Higgs@warwick.ac.uk | +44 (0) 7880175403

General and out of hours press office number +44 (0)7392 125605 (please call as emails are not checked out of office hours)

Image Credit

Images taken at ‘The Chemistry of Star Wars’ at the Royal Institution on May 4th, 2024. Image Credit: Royal Institution

Video Credit

Alex Baker demonstrating the rocket fuel experiments at The University of Warwick. Video Credit: Dr. Alex Baker/University of Warwick