Talk:ARC Caster/@comment-125.237.150.42-20170314031331/@comment-33995754-20171230012056

Ok, I know I am a bit late on this but I have to claify something:

There is NO NEED for a medium to cast a spark/arc/lighning (call it what you want). There is a concept called Vacuum polarization which basically means that if you have a field of critical strength, the energy is sufficiant to create electron-positron pairs (more precisely these are created at any field strength as virtual pairs, which leads to a correction to the lamb shift and other effects as well). Under the right conditions these particles will be percivable as an arc, especially since the "vacuum" of space isn't really a vacuum but there is a pressure of about 10^{-17} mbar, which means, that there is matter, which can be ionized, though it isn't much.

About the solar panels: I duscussed this in detail with some frineds of mine (we are all physicists if you are wondering), and came to the conclusion that the white "solar panels" are in fact just surfaces for photons to "bounce off", so that the TIE/FO fighters could generate thrust sideways (the light source being on the side) to surprise the enemy ;)