The Force explained?

[A35K]

So, I was wondering, is there a 'scientific' way to explain what 'the Force' in Star Wars is? Now I know they talk about midi-chlorians and that stuff, but in terms of real physics, I figured there is an explanation for most force powers (although no explanation on how these are controlled). I figured that it essentially boils down to the control of 2 of the fundamental forces: Gravity and electromagnetism. Control of gravity would explain how Force users can move objects around with their mind (by creating gravitational fields), and other powers such as force lightning are easily explained by control of electromagnetism (inducing a very strong electric current in a particular direction). Now the Jedi mind tricks is somewhat harder to explain, but I figured that it can also be explained by electromagnetism: The Force user simply induces tiny electric currents in the neurons of the victim's brain, causing them to do what they are told to. Well, this is just an attempt to explain using real physics something that can't really be explained (and isn't really ment to), (also makes no attempt to explain how the Force user controls this), but what do you think?

Edited December 28, 2015 by A35K

[Shpaget]

It just magic. There is nothing scientific about SW.

[A35K]

27 minutes ago, Shpaget said:

It just magic. There is nothing scientific about SW.

I know, I was just trying to see if it can sort of be explained using real science...

[RainDreamer]

Midi-chlorians could possibly be a form of biological nanobots that all life forms in that universe have but need to be learn to control through Jedi training by syncing brain signal with their control mechanism. They are emitted from the body of the lifeform forming an invisible cloud around them. High Force power requires a large amount of these, or expert skills to control other's midi-chlorians, or both. They can induce electromagnetic current to perform all we have seen: lighting, force lift by control enemy's midi-chlorians to run opposite current from the cloud around them, induce signals to the brain, etc.

[Pwnstarr]

Root access to the Matrix

[Bill Phil]

It's supposed to be vague, with many interpretations. Not necessarily scientific.

[Nibb31]

It was supposed to be vague and somewhat magical in the original trilogy. Lucas trying to explain it with blood samples and midichlorian counts is one of the things that ruined the prequels.

[KerbMav]

6 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

It was supposed to be vague and somewhat magical in the original trilogy. Lucas trying to explain it with blood samples and midichlorian counts is one of the things that ruined the prequels.

Yup.

But as they are there anyway: What if they are trans-dimensional beings and as such are able to influence the physical world "from outside"?

[magnemoe]

10 hours ago, Pwnstarr said:

Root access to the Matrix

That would made the death star pretty pointless as you could just reverse gravity in the area around the planet

[cubinator]

47 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

That would made the death star pretty pointless as you could just reverse gravity in the area around the planet

But they needed to have an overengineered war machine to make people afraid, that also had an X-Wing/Millenium Falcon-sized hole in it so that it was "impossible" to destroy.

[Vanamonde]

There are numerous ways to explain applying physical forces to things. The real trick would be to explain how they could be invoked by someone's thoughts, and how they could be used to read or change another person's thoughts. 

[Apexazimuth]

If one assumes downward causation via consciousness, then the force could be a name given to a person who's somehow learned to actively influence the collapse of probability waves on the quantum level to such an organized level of detail that they can do the things that force users do.

However, if you could alter things even slightly in the way they do, there's nothing stopping them from just blinking the universe out of existence altogether.

[silversliver]

19 hours ago, Pwnstarr said:

Root access to the Matrix

sudo apt-get install Force

[*Aqua*]

@A35K
There's another force use: Jedis and Siths are supposed to be able to predict a possible future. Anakin can at least predict a few seconds (they said that in Episode I) and the Emperor a few years (mentioned it a few times) ahead.

In theory if you know the state of all important variables at a given point in time you could calculate what will happen in the near future. But I don't think they all have some kind of super sensors and a super computer to do that. If you think Force = Midi-chlorians = nanobots it might be possible to let the nanobots sense and calculate things. But how can you control and coordinate thousands of thousands of nanobots with your mind? Most people have difficulties to concentrate on more than one thing at a time.

[magnemoe]

18 hours ago, cubinator said:

But they needed to have an overengineered war machine to make people afraid, that also had an X-Wing/Millenium Falcon-sized hole in it so that it was "impossible" to destroy.

to have some sort of restriction on power yes, else it would be as stupid as playing KSP with all the cheats on. 
Simply the laws of nature is different in the Star Wars universe and magic works. 

No problems with that, you can still do math on it like an normal effect, remember doing it for Oblivion to find good spells to make. 

[PB666]

You could not even begin to describe all the bad physics in star wars, there are no obvoius visible glitches,  but to give an example suppose we take the falcons ground collision, the outer dimensions of the m falcon was approximately that of a 737, its descent and was about 25 degrees and rougly going 200 knt, the sine of 25 is roughly 0.4 which means its verticle descent rate when it impacts the ground is 80 knts, to survive the hull would have to be something like a foot thick with interior walls struts and trusses equally robust, so then lets just the passenger is 2 meters from the hull on impact at 40 meters per second and his decelleration is constant (obviously its not but we could asses the minimum g-force). 2 = 0.5 a t ^ 2,  a = 40/t therefore 4 = 40t, t = 0.1, 2 = 0.5 a 0.01, 2/0.005 = a, a = 400. Using the continuity therom, it is therefore deduced that the passengers could not survive because at some point when the falcon hit the ground the passengers experienced maximum g forces greater than 30g in fact it had to be greater than 40g. They all died. 

The list of similar g-forces throughout the movie are the same. So since the laws of physics do not apply over much of the a tion physics the governing law must be non-physical or mathematically defined, its fantasy. 

[cubinator]

3 hours ago, PB666 said:

You could not even begin to describe all the bad physics in star wars, there are no obvoius visible glitches,  but to give an example suppose we take the falcons ground collision, the outer dimensions of the m falcon was approximately that of a 737, its descent and was about 25 degrees and rougly going 200 knt, the sine of 25 is roughly 0.4 which means its verticle descent rate when it impacts the ground is 80 knts, to survive the hull would have to be something like a foot thick with interior walls struts and trusses equally robust, so then lets just the passenger is 2 meters from the hull on impact at 40 meters per second and his decelleration is constant (obviously its not but we could asses the minimum g-force). 2 = 0.5 a t ^ 2,  a = 40/t therefore 4 = 40t, t = 0.1, 2 = 0.5 a 0.01, 2/0.005 = a, a = 400. Using the continuity therom, it is therefore deduced that the passengers could not survive because at some point when the falcon hit the ground the passengers experienced maximum g forces greater than 30g in fact it had to be greater than 40g. They all died. 

The list of similar g-forces throughout the movie are the same. So since the laws of physics do not apply over much of the a tion physics the governing law must be non-physical or mathematically defined, its fantasy. 

My hypothesis is that they have some sort of Gravity Ignotatron^TM 9000 inside all the ships that creates a kind of warp field or something all the time. It would provide the weird artificial gravity somehow present everywhere, the ships ability to fly wherever they want without giving a damn about gravity and orbital mechanics, probably because the warp field has some insane acceleration, like the kind you only get with a pod spammed with monopropellant rockets and Alt-F12. But it doesn't matter because the warp field creates it's own, conveniently 1G gravity field inside which protects the crew from the effects of said acceleration. The ships all likely have some kind of super strong materials tech which allows them to not get shredded (like the crashed Star Destroyers on Jakku should have). But of course, it's not really meant to be scientifically accurate, it's meant to be a space war adventure with giant starships, even more giant lasers, good-vs-evil battles, etc.

[GeneralVeers]

Okay, let's get something straight here.

Rule Of Fiction Writing #381-A: you do not attempt to explain magic. Magic is by definition something that has no logical explanation. It's obviously impossible for a rabbit to suddenly be in a top hat that was shown to be empty two seconds ago. So how did the rabbit get there?

"By magic!" It's the generic fallback when something cannot be explained.

The idiot writer who was working on The Phantom Menace and came up with that incredibly lame attempt to "explain The Force" in that movie should have been fired. Though in all likelihood he's the same idiot who came up with Jar-Jar Binks, therefore he probably was fired.

[lajoswinkler]

No. Star Wars is fantasy, not science fiction. It's just situated on another planet.

[magnemoe]

17 hours ago, WedgeAntilles said:

Okay, let's get something straight here.

Rule Of Fiction Writing #381-A: you do not attempt to explain magic. Magic is by definition something that has no logical explanation. It's obviously impossible for a rabbit to suddenly be in a top hat that was shown to be empty two seconds ago. So how did the rabbit get there?

"By magic!" It's the generic fallback when something cannot be explained.

The idiot writer who was working on The Phantom Menace and came up with that incredibly lame attempt to "explain The Force" in that movie should have been fired. Though in all likelihood he's the same idiot who came up with Jar-Jar Binks, therefore he probably was fired.

Agree here, you can not explain it and attempting to do so fail.
You could however easy have an magical device who measure how strong in magic someone is. 
Point sensor at kid, optionally get an sample, look at result and say that the force is strong in him as in 350 mana. Yes they could sense it but they needed tools to get accurate data. 

[GeneralVeers]

Uhhhhh......magical device that measures a person's magic strength......

"So, how do you find out how strong a person's magic is?"

"With a magic detector."

"But how do you make a magic detector work??"

"By magic."

"So, how do you find the magic that makes the magic detector work???"

"With a magic detector."

"And you're not seeing a problem with that....?"

"Nope."

 

Anybody got a Tylenol????

[PB666]

54 minutes ago, WedgeAntilles said:

Uhhhhh......magical device that measures a person's magic strength......

"So, how do you find out how strong a person's magic is?"

"With a magic detector."

"But how do you make a magic detector work??"

"By magic."

"So, how do you find the magic that makes the magic detector work???"

"With a magic detector."

"And you're not seeing a problem with that....?"

"Nope."

 

Anybody got a Tylenol????

Only those have a strong force can measure the force in others. The rest of us are third eye blind, without the royalties of course. 

[technion]

13 hours ago, WedgeAntilles said:

Anybody got a Tylenol????

You measure with one of these.

 

[GeneralVeers]

That's not a real midichlorian detector, it's just a Photoshopped picture of one.

(that crunching sound you just heard was my suspension-of-disbelief hitting a brick wall....)

[Sanic]

Gravity manipulation.