[jr2]

http://www.cnet.com.au/physics-students-design-real-world-star-wars-deflector-shields-339347173.htm

Problem is they would blind the user and use too much power for small craft to generate with current tech.

Possible to use them to hold radiation in instead, useful for fusion reactors perhaps?

[Bobboau]

well, for the first problem you just leave the cockpit with weaker shielding. yeah, it's a weak spot now, but it's a much smaller target.

[headdie]

or you could extend sensor booms through the shield layer and use a virtual cockpit.

another thing more close term how would it work out if you stuck one of these between you and the local star

[General Battuta]

One of my friends worked as a plasma physicist, and he taught me just enough plasma physics to know that nobody in this thread is going to know enough plasma physics to meaningfully discuss this development in plasma physics.

Apparently plasma fields could be a big deal but are kind of a pain in the ass to handle within an atmosphere.

[Dragon]

Make that almost nobody. It's funny when people yell "Star Wars" every single time anyone does anything interesting with plasma. Plasma is a very finicky form of matter, either out of atmo or within. Shields are hardly impossible from physical standpoint, but to say they're anywhere near is a stretch. Being unable to see through the shield is the least of our problem. In theory, it could be done, but magnetic fields intensities required are astonishing, and completely beyond what any mobile installation can currently produce. That's not to say I don't love news on plasma in general. The more we know about plasma, the closer we are to fusion power, and that's the most interesting thing about this field (pun intended ). It'd be nice to have the actual paper (preferably not behind Nature's paywall...).

Oh, and BTW, SW-style shields don't exactly block light, except for a brief moment at impact when they become opaque. A good idea, when you think of it, and also fits neatly with FS handling of shields (you only "flash" the shield with stored energy when you need, and it's running at minimum power rest of the time). What we know is that they block either other plasma, or solid objects (but not both at the same time). Besides the Superlasers, I don't remember any direct-beam weapons in SW. Well, there were beams in the prequels, but they were the dumbest thing ever, since they were supposed to be artillery. How did they hit anything beyond the horizon with direct-beam weapons is anyone's guess...

[Phantom Hoover]

Star Wars shields were essentially never shown onscreen or elaborated upon beyond the occasional mention that there was one present, so I'm not sure how people are getting all these details on them?

[General Battuta]

Make that almost nobody.

Your post just made it clear the answer is still 'nobody'

[Dragon]

That's what you get for trying to be funny... Well, I admit I'm a specialist in this field (though maybe I'll be, I haven't deiced on that yet), but I do know a thing or two about physics (and a thing of a thousand to learn. Which I should probably be doing now...  ). Still, I wasn't trying to start an academic discussion about this, since I feel that inpenetrable jargon it requires is a bit beyond the scope of this forum (and it's not like we have LaTeX support in here anyway, it's pretty much vital if you want to talk maths). From what I've seen, an actual academic discussion of pretty much any modern physics problem needs a whole lot of mathematics. Popular approach to this, while shallow, is far more accessible. Also note that my SW divagation was completely separate from anything remotely scientific, unless you count researching SW canon as a science (given what some universities teach these days, it might not be that much of a stretch...).

Star Wars shields were essentially never shown onscreen or elaborated upon beyond the occasional mention that there was one present, so I'm not sure how people are getting all these details on them?

Wookiepedia. It was all very well described in the EU. Oh, and the distinction between particle and ray shields was established in ANH. "The port is ray-shielded, so we'll have to use proton torpedoes", or something like that. IIRC, there's also a brief, brown-ish flash (doesn't look like an explosion) in ESB when the Falcon is hit by a turbolaser, which is it's ray shield absorbing the blast. There's little to go on, but it was enough.

[Phantom Hoover]

Yes exactly, shields in SW are something established only through EU technowank supported by obsessive pixel-combing. They're certainly not the cultural touchstone that the article and this discussion make them out to be. (Interestingly I can't really think where the 'standard' depiction of sci-fi shields came from. Was it Star Trek?)

[General Battuta]

The root is probably Lensman, though I can't offer much confidence on that guess.

[Flipside]

I think it's a reciprocal thing, like Star Trek's 'Warp Drives'...

People seem to think that Star Trek 'invented' the Warp Drive, but it didn't, TOS barely mentioned how Warp Drives worked, and technobabble was added that worked roughly along the lines of theoretical science for TNG. When someone suggested that it may be possible in real life to create a Warp Bubble, people started heralding the show as Prophetic, but it wasn't, it was simply that the theoretical science that the researchers of Star Trek were basing their ideas on became a little more tangible.

Edit : And to clarify, I'm not saying Star Wars was based on actual theoretical science, but the EU, to a certain degree, used that science to explain how things worked.

[An4ximandros]

Is this the Holtzman effect?

[Dragon]

The root is probably Lensman, though I can't offer much confidence on that guess.

You could say that for most "Space Opera" tropes out there, you know? Lensman invented a lot of things, but only popularized them just enough for other authors to copy them. Including, notably, Lucas. Star Wars contain few truly original elements, but it combined the old ones in such a way they became embedded in public consciousness for good.

[General Battuta]

You're saying what I'm saying.

[Klaustrophobia]

  - my face while reading this.

without going beyond the article and video, it really sounds to me like all these guys did was identify that hey, plasma could reflect EM radiation!  which, as they pointed out themselves, was already known. 

[Unknown Target]

The thing that I always found the funniest was that the deflector shields in Star Wars never seemed to actually deflect anything. A few laser blasts and everything was toast. They might as well not have been shielded.

[Dragon]

Well, the Falcon survived being shot at by an ISD thanks to it's shields. They were the reason DS exhaust port couldn't be shot at with lasers (though it was a different kind of shield). Also the reason Empire landed on Hoth instead of bombing the heck out of it. They were there, it's just that fighter ones were very weak.

[jr2]

It was a trade off between speed, offence, and defense, just like in FS, albeit with less OP shields.

[Phantom Hoover]

Like I was saying earlier, the way shields are depicted in Star Wars is more as an occasional narrative shorthand that seems to be relying on the audience to already have a rough idea of what a 'deflector shield' would do than an actual exposited mechanic of the universe. I don't think there is a single onscreen depiction of a shield's actual function in the original trilogy.

[jr2]

Just a flash off light and a distortion, like the shield is flickering on fire a sec or something.