In Star Wars: A New Hope, Obi-Wan Kenobi describes the Force as, “an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together.”
It’s a more poetic explanation than the one in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, which suggests that every Jedi has a bad case of worms. Or, to be more precise, that they get their powers from microscopic cellular beings called midi-chlorians.
“The idea that a parasite living in a creature could change or determine the way the host behaves is a very real thing,” says Patrick Johnson, author of The Physics of Star Wars.
“And in theory, that small creature could give the host the ability to do things that they might not otherwise be able to do.”
A theory that makes more sense to Johnson, though, is that the Force represents some kind of sophisticated control of electromagnetic fields.
“The fundamental basis of electromagnetic fields is that everything that has a charge (such as protons and electrons) creates an electromagnetic field around it,” says Johnson. “And depending on how these particles interact, they can either attract or repel one another.”
This could explain how Jedi such as Ahsoka Tano – the hero in the new series Star Wars: Ahsoka – are able to move objects around, says Johnson. “So, for instance, if I’m hanging upside-down in an ice cave on Hoth and I need my lightsaber, in theory I could make my hand very positively charged to attract the electrons on one side of the lightsaber and pull it towards me.”
But, even if this were possible, it would also require you to be able to focus on a specific object. “Otherwise, you would end up attracting all kinds of things,” says Johnson.
One of the most powerful elements of the Force, however, is how it can be used by the Jedi to control others’ minds. How do electromagnetic fields play into that?
“In terms of Jedi mind tricks,” says Johnson, “our brains have neurons that communicate with one another using electrical signals.
"Theoretically, a Jedi with knowledge of brain chemistry could exert very precise electromagnetic fields to cause certain neurons to fire or not. Let’s say the thought ‘this is the droid I’m looking for’ is neuron one and ‘this is not the droid I’m looking for’ is neuron two. If I could stop neuron one from firing and cause neuron two to fire instead, that would then create that thought inside of your head.”
Johnson is keen to stress that this kind of thought control is highly improbable. There are 86 billion neurons in the human brain and, “it would be very difficult to execute such a precise manipulation of individual neurons – or to figure out what neurons you would need to control. It would require you to map a person’s brain to a level that we’re currently not capable of.”
Even so, that doesn’t mean that scientists aren’t trying. Johnson references a 2008 study in which researchers asked participants to hit a button with either their right or left hand while recording their brain activity.
“The researchers were able to figure out what the brain activity would look like just prior to the subjects pressing the button with their left hand versus their right,” says Johnson.
“Even stranger, they were able to use this activity to predict which hand was going to be used up to seven seconds before the person made their choice.”
So, maybe there’s something to the whole midi-chlorians thing after all.
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