In keeping with my previous posts about favorite science fiction condensed matter systems and the properties of vibranium, I think we are overdue for an observational analysis of the physics of beskar. Beskar is the material of choice of the Mandalorians in the Star Wars universe. It is apparently an alloy (according to wookiepedia), and it is most notable for being the only material that can resist direct attack by lightsaber, as well as deflecting blaster shots.
Like many fictional materials, beskar has whatever properties are needed to drive the plot and look cool doing so, but it's still fun to think about what would have to be going on in the material for it to behave the way it appears on screen.
In ingot form, beskar looks rather like Damascus steel (or perhaps Valyrian steel, though without the whole dragonfire aspect). That's a bit surprising, since the texturing in damascene steel involves phase separation upon solidification from the melt, while the appearance of beskar is homogeneous when it's in the form of armor plating or a spear. From the way people handle it, beskar seems to have a density similar to steel, though perhaps a bit lower.
Beskar's shiny appearance says that at least at optical frequencies the material is a metal, meaning it has highly mobile charge carriers. Certainly everyone calls it a metal. That is interesting in light of two of its other obvious properties: An extremely high melting point (we know that lightsabers can melt through extremely tough metal plating as in blast doors); and extremely poor thermal conductivity. (Possible spoilers for The Mandalorian S2E8 - it is possible to hold a beskar spear with gloved hands mere inches from where the spear is visibly glowing orange.) Because mobile charge carriers tend to conduct heat very well (see the Wiedemann Franz relation), it's tricky to have metals that are really bad thermal conductors. This is actually a point consistent with beskar being an alloy, though. Alloys tend to have higher electrical resistivity and poorer thermal conduction than pure substances.
The high melting temperature is consistent with the nice acoustic properties of beskar (as seen here, in S2E7), and its extreme mechanical toughness. The high melting temperature is tricky, though, because there is on-screen evidence that beskar may be melted (for forging into armor) without being heated to glowing. Indeed, at about 1:02 in this video, the Armorer is able to melt a beskar ingot at the touch of a button on a console. This raises a very interesting possibility, that beskar is close to a solid-liquid phase transition that may be tuned to room temperature via a simple external parameter (some externally applied field?). This must be something subtle, because otherwise you could imagine anti-beskar weapons that would turn Mandalorian armor into a puddle on the floor.
Regardless of the inconsistencies in its on-screen portrayal (which are all minor compared to the way dilithium has been shown), beskar is surely a worthy addition to fictional materials science. This is The Way.
7 comments:
It's possible that forging beskar uses some chemical processes as well.
I mean, technically those are still physical properties that all follow from Postulate 6 of quantum mechanics, but still.
If so, it would make sense to keep them very secretive, not even known to normal Mandalorians, because it would be a huge security risk.
It's actually interesting that you noted that anti-beskar weapons would turn those wearing into a puddle, since something similar (at least in the outcome for the wearer) actually happens in Star Wars: Rebels. A character designs a device capable of "instantly vaporizing the target" - the Arc Pulse Generator (https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Arc_Pulse_Generator).
A beskar-vibranium composite is obviously what Magneto's helmet is made of. I hear the high elves of Lothlorian forged it themselves, probably during their visit to Krypton to purchase a stock of quadrotriticale.
This reminds me of some cool work done by a collaborator of mine here at NRL. Maybe beskar is a metamaterial made from a superlattice of conducting and insulating nanocrystals? If the conducting nanoparticles are larger than the wavelength of visible light but don't form a percolating network, could you engineer it so the effective plasma frequency is set by the metallic component but long-range thermal transport is governed by the insulator? Then maybe the Armorer is in fact not melting the beskar but somehow tuning the inter-nanocrystal bonding strength. Maybe beskar manufacturers don't have the capability to tune this interaction, so striations in the ingot form are signs of phase segregation between the constituent nanocrystals.
In other news, the quantum information community has got a nice holiday present: quantum conversion of a superconducting qubit to an optical photon! Very impressive work, and amazing to see this finally being a reality. Now let's get a quantum network running from Google's quantum computer on the west coast and IBM's on the east coast!
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-3038-6
If beskar becomes strongly diamagnetic upon heating that would explain it's resistance to lightsabers and blasters. It can only deflect lightsabers, but a sustained thrust will push through. So it's diamagnetic until the temperature surpasses its curie point. The furnace is a plasma torch which easily reaches 50,000F.
I'd say it's about as dense as aluminium, try picking up a solid steel spear or watch someone welding a wooden staff to give you an idea of the weight. Also those boxes filled with ingots that they carry in one hand.... Not consistent with steels weight
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