Newton's Law of Motiion

[Pyramid Head]

Think about all the cruisers, and battleships, and starfighters that have missed shots in space...what did they end up hitting???

 

[Lord Gaius]

I'd imagine quite a lot of them hit either space debris or nothing. Space is huge, enormous, mind-boggingly MASSIVE. Planets and stars barely fill up room in space.

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

They go until the energy dissipates which actually doesn't take that long, all told.

 

[Fabula Caromed]

A blaster bolt's containment field is a temporary thing. The charge given to it the ignited Tibanna gas by the power pack to sheath the plasma so it doesn't dissipate into the world around it probably lasts for a few seconds, which is more than enough to function at almost any blaster range. However, when shot into the vast emptiness of deep space, the sheath would only last a few heartbeats. At that point, the charged energy sheath dissipates, which allows the ignited plasma to spread. When you include the rapid loss of temperature in deep space, the Tibanna would change states from a plasma to a gas to a liquid and eventually simply freeze over within an hour. If that.

The individual particles of even a capital-sized Tibanna blast would barely make up a small cloud of Tibanna crystals, considering the extreme expansion that occurs over three different stages of matter. There's an astronomically small chance that, at some point, the tiny crystals of frozen Tibanna would collide harmlessly with another space body.

Capital-scale slug weapons, like mass driver cannons, would follow the third law more appropriately, but as pointed out, space is extremely huge and extremely empty. Chances are they'd never hit anything. At all.

 

[Soeht]

Think about all the cruisers, and battleships, and starfighters that have missed shots in space...what did they end up hitting???

In all likelihood, nothing. If shots can continue on forever, then they hit nothing because the vast majority of space is just a vacuum - to the point that it's safe to say 99% of the universe is just a vacuum.

However, since shots are energized and are essentially a bunch of particles in an excited state (indicative by being luminescent and giving off light), then shots are likely to "burn out" well before infinity time and probably disintegrate since they'd rapidly be losing energy through radiation.

 

[Atlas Kane]

99% of the universe is just a vacuum

Actually it's more like 95.4%.

 

[Pyramid Head]

We also forget that we have giant slug throwing weapons which will (suitably) go forever till it hits something. those weapons are what I wonder.

Star Destroyer fires rounds, misses, 100 years later, Luke gets a nasty giant bullet to the head, well body.

(Joke scenario)

 

[Soeht]

Actually it's more like 95.4%.

Didn't know there was an actual statistic, so that's interesting to know. Far less than I thought it'd be.

 

[Atlas Kane]

Well, about 4.6% of the universe is made up of atoms, the rest is pretty much vacuum.
This graph shows it well.

Spoiler

 

[Soeht]

I assume that's by volume, then. Not too sure though because it could also be interpreted as by Mass/Energy since there is a relation between mass and energy.

 

[Atlas Kane]

Probably! Not sure myself!

 

[Verz Horak]

Let's just say that unless you are the luckiest son of a bantha ever if you hit something after missing the enemy.

 

[Pyramid Head]

Hahahahahah I knew this would peek interest. Anyone wanna know what made me think about this???