Board Thread:Fun and Games/@comment-25012056-20141025153920/@comment-27723099-20141108171238

Ok, it's an explanation though it doesn't really satisfy me. A blaster bolt is described as a combination of energized gas and light. I won't even ask how the light can be held by the gas.

But why should you use gas instead of solid bullets, fired at an even higher speed with a mass accelerator? Gases drift in all directions and you can't accelerate them very fast. So in effect, blaster shots are different from lasers, but slower than conventional weapons and in addtion have an inefficient energy usage: They emit light (and noise) instead of simply killing the person on that they are shot at. To kill a clone trooper, a "simple" mass accelerator weapon would be enough, but have a better range, accuracy, energy efficiency and (impact) speed.

Here also an interesting forum post I found about it:

In most cases blaster bolts move slower than bullets. Most firearms generally fire a round at about 720mph. The speed of sound is 762mph (roughly). So in actuality the sound of the shot firing reaches you an instant before the bullet does. There are weapons that fire at faster than sound though. We have high caliber rifles that can fire bullets at super-sonic speed, roughly between 900-1300mph, a bit shy of mach 2. Then we have Rail Guns which can fire projectiles around Mach 7. But those're big, Naval Ship mounted guns. From what I've seen in TCW and the movies, Blaster Bolts aren't as fast as some of the claims I have heard. For one thing, Clone Troopers have dodged shots, which would mean there is no invisible part of the bolt that strikes before the visible light hits you. in fact, no damage is seen until the visible bolt hits you. Another thing is that blaster bolts do have a limit effective range. Just as a bullet will lose momentum, a blaster bolt will lose energy and dissipate. Only a laser could stretch on forever, so long as the energy behind it was continual. Blasters, however, shoot in limited, contain bursts rather than a concentrated continuous beam.