OK, you’ll notice that each installment in the series contains at least one scene where an image is projected more or less into space, as opposed to on a screen. For example: the “Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope” sequence in Episode IV; the projection of the Death Star and the Forest Moon of Endor in Episode VI; and the projection of Senator Palpatine in the Queen’s chambers in Episode I.
Is this technology even remotely feasible in the forseeable future? Can light conceivably be manipulated in such a way that a 3-D image can be projected into empty space?
What about the light that comes out of their light sabors. How does light just come out three feet and STOP. What kind of focusing crystals do they have in those things???
True 3d virtual images are technically impossible. Remember, this is a FANTASY movie.
Even holograms and advanced autostereo systems require you to view the image from the front. If you are at a 90-degree angle to the screen, you will see nothing. 3D images can be made to appear in front of the screen, but the images are limited to appearing within the visual boundary of the screen.
I don’t know about technically impossible chas. It seems to me that all you’d have to do is create a real (as opposed to virtual) image in that space. Which might, for instance, be acheived with a extremely precisely timed set of lasers. This is beyond our current technology, but that does not mean that it is beyond possibility.
The requirement was to project a 3dimage into empty space, not necessarily arbitrary empty space.
Another idea that I’ve been kicking around in my head for a few years is to have a large block of some material (yes, not empty space) which is normally very clear. Use intersecting non-visible spectrum lasers to excite a particular area of this material in such a way that it flouresces in the visual spectrum. 3d images could then be drawn in the block of material by moving the lasers’ intersection point.
Your concept is already reality. It is called “stereolithography.” It is very expensive, but it is used by large manufacturers to produce physical prototypes from CAD designs. Two lasers are projected into a transparent material that hardens once the threshold of light intensity is passed. When the two lasers are pointed at they same spot, the material hardens. Control the process with computers, and you can create solid objects, even objects with hollow interior spaces. Stereolith is really cool.
As to the issue of projecting a 3d image that can be viewed from behind, nope, it is beyond the laws of physics. Unless you have an object to reflect off of, light will continue to travel in a straight line, it cannot be viewed from behind the projector. You cannot project images into empty space unless you fake it by making them appear inbetween the source and your eye.
A real image is an image you can project on a screen, right? (e.g. something that is formed by a slide projector, as opposed to virtual images which is what you see inside a telescope) If you point a slide projector at you, do you see a full-size image? No, because there is no light coming towards you from all the parts of the real image. For you to see an image, light has to reach your eyes from all angles. A hologram is a big sheet so light reaches you from all parts of the sheet.
So, to make a 3-D projector, you somehow have to use a screen that scatters or emits light in all direction, including into your eye. If you had some force field to make air molecules emit light at will, you could do that. Or as you suggested, have something that fluoresces only at the intersection of two beams - but I don’t know of any such reaction.
The irony of the light saber’s advanced technology is that the original props were made from the flash bulb attachments for old Speed Graphic press cameras.
…and as a consequence it’s virtually impossible to find an authentic Speed Graphic flash. They’ve all been converted into light sabers and sold to Star Wars fans.
scr4 Yep thats a real image (I just completed a Physics 20 course and that was part of it… Physics 30 starts on Monday oy…)
But I have the perfect idea to solve the problem of not being able to see it from beyond the critical angle! Have a bit of smoke (like that fog stuff they use for dances and in laser tag places) and blast the image through that! It would reflect the particles and stuff and there you go! (Yah its not very technical but I only remembered enough to get me past the test… I would remember more when its not so late as well)
The problem with this idea is that smoke and other aerosols scatter light rather than reflect it. A page someone cited earlier shows a transparent cube of some solid material that seems to do the same thing. Interesting.
But in longer contemplation of the problem, I think I have a possible solution. It involves an environment that has projectors EVERYWHERE so that no matter where you look, you’re staring into a projector. That way the image can always appear somewhere in a straight line between you and the projectors. Doesn’t seem very practical to me, and definitely doesn’t address the star wars issue of a projector issuing a 3d image in empty space…
Why dont you take two lasers (or more) of harmless energy and running at a nonlethal frequency and get them to collide at a specific point in space and thus either intensify at that point or cancel each other out.
This way, you could use a colour model with faster processor and more RAM to create a threed pic or a raw power MAC type usit without the colour option and less RAM to create the sabre (and cancel out at around a meter).
Gund, the problem is not getting light to certain points in space: That’s easy, as you point out. The problem is to get light going to your eye, in the right directions. Trace back the path of any given photon that ends up in your eye: It has to have come either directly from the projector (which means that you can’t see it from an arbitrary direction), or it must have reflected off of something (which means that it can’t be empty space). Maybe they have some way of causing the air to fluoresce, maybe they can produce forcefields that reflect light, maybe it’s all an induced hallucination, but whatever it is, it isn’t holography, and we currently have no clue how to do it.
Well, keep in mind that most sci-fi supergizmos rely on an “unknown” technology coupled with known science in order to work (hyperdrives, warp drives, transporters, Boba Fett’s coolness). I’d imagine that holograms would be no different. I imagine that for the images made by lil’ Artoo would have been made by some “field manipulator” (probably explained as an electro-magnetic field manipulator or something). Or maybe it creates a small energy field on which to project the image.
And lightsabers… there’re supposedly two emitter nodes on the hilt, and the blade curves back around on itself after it reaches a certain length. How this is controlled, I don’t know. Perhaps, again, some sort of energy field manipulation around the blade?
In either case, it’s sci-fi. You’re not going to be able to explain everything with 100% accuracy
Good point Chas.E I thought of that after I had posted and thought about it a bit more. It was a good idea though… just wouldn’t work too well.
Gund The only thing with that idea about lasers is that with lasers if their bouncing around and hit you in the eyes your gonna wreck your eyes in a very short period of time. The only ones that possibly might work are Class 1 lasers and they aren’t very powerful having only 0.5 mW of power (which is why they won’t wreck your eyes as fast as other lasers though they probably would still do damage)
