“You would prefer another target? A military target?”
"What's the other problem, then?"
"The problem is the beam junction, you know, at the apex of the firing cone, where the eight beams meet at a point."
"Okay, so?"
"The idiots who designed this superlaser don't know jack about the Pauli exclusion principle. What a bunch of morons."
My lack of education was showing itself. "Can you translate that for me, please?"
"Sure thing. The Pauli exclusion principle is the idea that there is no limit to the number of photons that can occupy the same quantum state or the same position in spacetime. That is an over-simplification, I mean, for starters it works for all bosons, not just photons, but that's basically it, more or less."
"No limit."
"Yeah, there's no limit. You can cram in as many photons into as tight a space as you want, and there's always room to jam in some more. They don't interact. No limit."
"No limit. Well that's why this superlaser fires photons and not, say a plasma, right? 'No limit' is basically the whole idea of the exercise, yes?"
"Right. Hey, you're pretty smart. The Pauli exclusion principle means that the photons never interact with each other, not directly. They literally can't collide. The photons from the eight laser generators will just pass right through each other at the apex of the cone. They can't cancel out their momentum, merge, and fire one big shared beam out in a straight line from the apex. Photons just don't work that way."
"So what are you going to do?"
"I'm afraid I gotta use some Applied Phlebotium. I really don't like to do that. It's such a kludge."
"Applied Phlebotium?"
"Yeah. It's this glowing stuff in my bag here. See it? It works like magic!"
"Like magic?"
"Yeah, like magic! I just have to rub some on the apex focuser and voilà, the Pauli exclusion principle is violated for bosons! Neat, huh?"
"Uh, yeah, I guess.. but isn't that just cheating?"
"Hey, don't ask me. Ask the idiots who designed this thing. Stupid imperial retards. It could never work the way they designed it. Who was their scientific advisor on this project, Daffy Duck or something?"
"Okay, well, uh, good job. Carry on."
(Excerpt from The Fifth Kind of Love chapter 18)
"I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in Japanese."