Blaster/Legends

Blasters are weapons that can fire blasts of energy at targets. Blasters range in size from pistols to starship cannons. To understand blasters, one first needs to understand how a laser works since this is the key to the inner workings of a blaster.

Laser is an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. A laser beam is a coherent shaft of light. When referring to light (or any other wave pattern for that matter), coherence is the "sameness" in multiple waves. In other words, each light wave emitted from the laser device has the same wavelength and amplitude as all the other waves emitted from the same device.

Lasers are generated by introducing energy to the lasing medium. The lasing medium is the substance used to generate the laser beams. In the early days of lasers, solid-state mediums were more commonly used (i.e. ruby, emerald, etc.); today gases such as neon, argon, and krypton are used. In the Star Wars universe, Tibanna gas is a common medium. When an atom of the medium is excited by energy, one or more of its electrons will “jump” to a higher energy level. When the atom stabilizes again, meaning that the electron(s) have returned to their original energy levels, a photon is released. A photon is a “packet” of light and the reason that light travels in both a wavelike and a particulate manner.

In the Star Wars universe, the laser fired from a gun is not just light. Some of the gas used to generate the beam is energized to a plasma-state and is fired with the highly energized light at supra-light velocities. This combination of light and plasma forms the deadly bolt fired from a blaster. Because the bolt travels at faster-than-light speeds, targets may show signs of damage before the visible portion of the bolt hits. This is because the visible portion, as well as most of the heat, is a waste product of the actual, lethal bolt.