Midi - chlorian / Legends Midi - chlorians were intelligent microscopic life forms that lived symbiotically inside the cells of all living things . When present in sufficient numbers , they could allow their host to detect the pervasive energy field known as the Force . Midi - chlorian counts were linked to potential in the Force , ranging from normal Human levels of 2 , 500 per cell to the much higher levels of Jedi . The highest known midi - chlorian count — over 20 , 000 per cell — belonged to the Jedi Anakin Skywalker , who was believed to have been conceived by the midi - chlorians . Midi - chlorian counts were measured through a blood test ; the Jedi used this method to locate Force - sensitive children before their Order was purged by the Galactic Empire . With the rise of the Empire , research into Jedi and the Force was banned , and though midi - chlorians continued to be tested for , sometimes by the Empire itself to root out hidden Jedi and other Force - sensitives , knowledge of them was diminished and inquiries into them were branded as illegal medical research . Midi - chlorians were only rediscovered after the New Jedi Order was founded . When not forbidden , studies of midi - chlorians occurred among those who could master the Force and those who could not . While medical teams worked to understand the relationship between midi - chlorians and the Force , Jedi healer s performed their own studies of the organisms . Even more esoteric studies were conducted by the Dark Lord of the Sith Darth Plagueis , who discovered a way to manipulate the midi - chlorians to create new life . Biology . Midi - chlorians were intelligent microscopic life - forms that served as within all living cells , existing in a symbiotic relationship with the beings they inhabited and comprising a collective consciousness among themselves . Present in all life , midi - chlorians were on every planet that supported life . Midi - chlorians , in fact , were necessary for life to exist . They also allowed for a connection with the pervasive energy field known as the Force ; in sufficient numbers , midi - chlorians could allow their symbiont organism to detect the Force , and this connection could be strengthened by quieting one ' s mind , allowing the midi - chlorians to " speak " to their symbiont and communicate the will of the Force . Counts as low as 2 , 000 midi - chlorians per cell provided no sensitivity to the Force ; an average Human had less than 2 , 500 per cell , while a mildly Force - sensitive being such as Nova Stihl had a count in excess of 5 , 000 . According to Sith Lord Darth Tenebrous , a being born of " pure force " might have a count of 15 , 000 or more , implying that most Force - sensitives did not have a count that high . Jedi had especially high midi - chlorian counts , and of them Anakin Skywalker was said to have the highest ever recorded at over 20 , 000 , even higher than the powerful Jedi Master Yoda . Though Skywalker later lost a good deal of his organic body , his cells continued to teem with midi - chlorians . The magnitude of the midi - chlorian count served as a measure of one ' s potential in the Force , though there were other inheritable characteristics that could influence Force ability as well . Indeed , though Force ability often meant a high midi - chlorian count , it was not always the case . While some medical theories postulated that the midi - chlorians created the connection between more macroscopic organisms and the Force , some Jedi believed that , contrarily , the midi - chlorians were created by the Force to serve as the link between it and other life . Midi - chlorian counts did not indicate an upper limit to Force ability ; the possibility existed for a Jedi to achieve a connection to the Force on an equivalent level to a Jedi with a higher count . Midi - chlorians could be influenced by the Force to create new life , a technique developed by Dark Lord of the Sith Darth Plagueis . There was even a possibility that they could induce conception in a Human ; Anakin Skywalker was believed to have been conceived by the midi - chlorians , with no biological father . This was considered impossible by many Jedi , however , and the idea received only shock when it was first proposed to the Jedi High Council . Though tested for , midi - chlorians did not usually figure into the medical treatment of most beings , and they were linked to no known pathology . Chemicals used in medicine , such as anesthetics , could thin the midi - chlorians ; if it was vital they be preserved , a being could be operated on without anesthesia . The drug bota , on the other hand , was thought capable of boosting the effects of the midi - chlorians , enhancing an individual ' s Force - sensitivity . An organism that had been grievously injured and unable to be kept alive through medical treatment could be infused with blood rich in midi - chlorians , forcing an organism to stay alive when it would normally die , as was the case with General Grievous . However , this would not transfer any of the blood donor ' s Force - sensitivity . The Sith virus known as the Sickness could alter the midi - chlorians within an infected individual . The Sith Lord Darth Drear devised it as a means of immortality , the final step of which involved eating the living heart of a Jedi , and thus obtaining an infusion of midi - chlorians from the Jedi ' s blood . He was never able to capture a Jedi with sufficiently high midi - chlorian count before dying , however . When Darth Tenebrous was killed by his apprentice Plagueis on Bal ' demnic , amidst the billions upon billions of individual midi - chlorians in his cells , a tiny fraction of his midi - chlorians were not dying . They would not die as long as they inhabited a living host . These especially tenacious midi - chlorians were privately named maxi - chlorian s by Tenebrous himself , and had been altered to be long - lived midi - chlorians , and would migrate , not in the Force , but into Plagueis , as a retrovirus designed to infect the host ' s blood , in order to gain conscience beyond death . At the same time , Darth Plagueis sensed Tenebrous ' midi - chlorians wink out , like lights slowly deprived of a power source , and yet , he could perceive his master in the Force . Plagueis ' work with midi - chlorians was directly rooted in what was traditionally considered the Living Force , or those energies attached to the anima and the pneuma . At the same time , Plagueis mused that although the Unifying Force was not specifically necessary for the creation and manipulation of life , midi - chlorians channeled it nonetheless . Through his studies , Plagueis found that the aperion governs the cohesion of matter , from the atoms of a pebble to all planets and gravity in the universe , including the dimension of time , which could be possibly manipulated on a grand scale , allowing an individual to step instantly from one place to another by folding space , regardless of the intervening distance . The anima governs life , and it is through this state that all Force healing is possible . The pneuma governs consciousness , and through this , Plagueis was convinced that the energy pattern known as self - awareness could be preserved and imprinted a second time into the neural pathways of a different brain . Force - sensitive members of the rock - based B ' rknaa species had microscopic midi - chlorian - infused structures that were very different from the midi - chlorian - infused cells of organic beings . Though rumored , the Yinchorr were resistant to Force suggestion . The species has a survival mechanism , in which the midi - chlorians protected the consciousness of their vessels by refusing to be manipulated . Study and analysis . Midi - chlorians could be detected through a blood test by measuring their concentration in a being ' s red blood cells , though such tests were not perfect and were prone to fault . Midi - chlorian tests were part of a standard medical check - up , recorded in a blood analysis . From at least 1000 BBY to 19 BBY , blood tests for midi - chlorians were the primary way by which the Jedi Order found Force - sensitive children . Such tests were mandatory for beings born in regions controlled by the Galactic Republic . Some Jedi comlinks could have midi - chlorian samplers attached to them to measure blood samples , though these results would need to be interpolated through a computer , such as that found aboard a starship , to get a count . Darth Vader had an entire blood - testing system in his meditation chamber , which he not only used to test for infections , but also measure his midi - chlorian count . While most research on midi - chlorians was conducted by Jedi healer s , the connection between midi - chlorians and the Force was studied in non - Jedi medical circles as well , with theories advanced as to the relation between them . On Vjun , high midi - chlorian counts were a mark of status , possessed by the more prestigious families . As a result , interest in the midi - chlorians remained high on that world . Experimentation on midi - chlorians happened occasionally as well . Nobles on Vjun conducted forbidden experiments on the life - forms in an attempt to increase Force sensitivity , the results of which drove the population of Vjun insane . Darth Plagueis , Dark Lord of the Sith , sought a way of influencing the midi - chlorians with the Force to create new life from nothing , and he may have succeeded before his death at the hands of his apprentice . Plagueis also possessed a lab located in the planet Aborah , in which he experimented with different species , altering their midi - chlorians in order to prolong their lives . Some time later , after killing Darth Tenebrous , Darth Venamis sought to get revenge on Plagueis . However , Venamis was defeated and kept by Plagueis in his lab in a near - coma stasis . Through the years , Plagueis experimented with Venamis , killing and reviving him , manipulating the midi - chlorians within the Bith ' s body . Therefore , Plagueis concluded that in order to stop aging , the solution was not to add more midi - chlorians to a body , but to impose one ' s will on the midi - chlorians already present on the subject ; because midi - chlorians were linked by a universal mind , the ones in Plagueis ' cells initially resisted his imposition upon their fellows , but eventually he succeeded , first with small creatures , then with slaves . Through these experiments , Plagueis discovered that these midi - chlorians would not die ; instead , they drew upon sustaining Force energy , which acted on a microscopic level to halt tissue decay in their host , putting an end to aging and disease . In his writings , Plagueis believed this could only be achieved with a sharpened mental focus and an affinity for the Force to impose a measurable effect on living cells . Darth Drear , another Sith Lord , incorporated the midi - chlorians into his own research into immortality . The Force detector was one of the tools developed to measure midi - chlorian counts . Based on plans of the scientist Jenna Zan Arbor , the Force Detector consisted of a pair of paddles connected to a control pack ; the paddles were placed around the subject , at which point the control pack would read out a list of statistics , including midi - chlorian count . It also generated a blue nimbus around a wireframe hologram of the subject ; though this correlated to Force - sensitivity , it was not a direct measurement of the subject ' s midi - chlorian concentration . The DRK - 1 Dark Eye probe droid , a tool of the Sith , was also capable of scanning lifeforms for the presence of midi - chlorians . Measuring midi - chlorian counts was not always accurate , particularly among older children or individuals with unusual psychologies . The Jedi therefore sometimes used alternative methods to determine Force - sensitivity , such as testing with a mental maze or testing screen . History . Early years . Midi - chlorians evolved on a luminous planet located somewhere " in the heart of the galaxy " , according to the Five Priestesses . Before the creation of the Jedi Order around 25 , 783 BBY , a number of Force sects including the Followers of Palawa , Chatos Academy , and Order of Dai Bendu studied the Force scientifically , including the science of midi - chlorians , on worlds from Had Abbadon to Ondos . The Sith knew of midi - chlorians by c . 4645 BBY , when Darth Drear utilized them in his experiments on immortality . Circa 3956 BBY , the Rakata , a species that had almost lost all trace of Force - sensitivity , conducted their own scientific inquiries to find a genetic basis for the Force , which they hoped would allow them to become Force - sensitive once again . How the Jedi detected Force - sensitives in their early millennia was lost to time , but shortly after the Battle of Ruusan in 1000 BBY , midi - chlorians were either discovered by them for the first time , or rediscovered after having lost knowledge of them in an earlier era — at least one Jedi , Hestizo Trace , had known of the existence of midi - chlorians as early as 3645 BBY . Blood tests for midi - chlorians were instituted to find recruits with a connection to the Force , a method used by the Jedi for almost a thousand years until the purge of the Jedi in 19 BBY . In an event that would have repercussions a very long time in the future , a prophecy was made in these early days of a Chosen One who would bring balance to the Force and was said to have a high concentration of midi - chlorians . On the world of Vjun , a high midi - chlorian count was synonymous with status , leading to a surge of interest in midi - chlorian phenomena . When Vjun came into contact with the Galactic Republic and Jedi Order , the most eminent families — those with the highest counts — sought to protect themselves from Jedi recruitment by augmenting their own abilities . The seventeenth Viscount Malreaux of the esteemed House Malreaux , along with a consortium of others , worked to genetically manipulate the midi - chlorians and thereby enhance the counts of Vjun ' s population . They were successful , but at a cost : when the entire planet became Force - sensitive with no mental training to handle it , the populace went mad and murdered each other . In the decades before the Battle of Naboo , Dark Lord of the Sith Darth Plagueis commenced his own experiments with the midi - chlorians . While the Jedi thought of the cellular organelles as symbionts , Plagueis believed they were interlopers , running interference for the Force , and standing in the way of a beings ' ability to contact the Force directly . Through years of experimentation , Plagueis had honed an ability to perceive the actions of midi - chlorians . Furthermore , Plagueis believed that only the Sith understood that sentient life was on the verge of a transformative leap ; that through the manipulation of midi - chlorians , or the overthrow of the Forceful group that supervised them , the divide between organic life and the Force could be bridged , and death could be erased from the continuum . In order to further the Grand Plan , Darth Plagueis , and his apprentice , Darth Sidious , committed an act in direct violation to the nature of the Force , and attempted to tip its balance toward the dark side . The experiment yielded unfruitful however , and the midi - chlorians , unwilling to comply , struck back in retaliation conceiving a savior to ultimately destroy the Sith : the prophesied Chosen One , Anakin Skywalker . In 32 BBY , Jedi Master Qui - Gon Jinn was stranded on the planet Tatooine , where he encountered the slave boy Anakin Skywalker . Jinn sensed the Force strongly in Skywalker , and when he learned from the boy ' s mother Shmi Skywalker that Anakin had had no father , Jinn realized that there was something special about him . That night , Jinn took a blood sample from a scrape on Skywalker ' s arm and tested it , telling the boy that he was checking for infections . Jinn had his Padawan Obi - Wan Kenobi run a midi - chlorian test on the sample ; Kenobi was surprised to find Skywalker ' s count was off the chart — over 20 , 000 , exceeding that of even the powerful Master Yoda , or any other Jedi . Jinn later brought Skywalker to the galactic capital of Coruscant and took him before the Jedi Council . There he informed them of Skywalker ' s unusually high midi - chlorian count and stated his belief that the boy had been conceived by the midi - chlorians . Jinn was referring to the prophecy of the Chosen One ; while the Council recognized the reference , they did not agree with Jinn ' s conclusion , although some Jedi nonetheless believed Skywalker had the potential to become the most powerful Jedi ever . The lore of the Sith Lords claimed that Skywalker ' s conception had been a result of Plagueis ' manipulations of the midi - chlorians . By these latter years of the Republic , midi - chlorians were a matter of public knowledge , though some found the idea of them to be unclear . In 22 BBY , the Spotts TradeChip Company released a set of tradechip s of famous Jedi Knights , featuring data , including midi - chlorian counts , garnered from what the company called the " best information available . " However , the chips attracted criticism from the Jedi Order for their inaccuracies , as did the midi - chlorian counts provided ; Yoda ' s , for example , provided the wildly inaccurate number of four million . Spotts defended its product , claiming that all mistakes were minor . Later that year , Count Dooku , leader of the Separatist movement , revealed to the Jedi that Plagueis ' apprentice Darth Sidious secretly controlled the Galactic Senate . Seventeen months later , the Jedi Ronhar Kim conceived of the idea to test the midi - chlorian counts of the senators , believing that the Force - sensitive Sith would be revealed in this way . Kim approached Supreme Chancellor Palpatine with his plan , but Palpatine , who secretly was Sidious , discouraged him , advising him that it would be politically impossible . Upon learning that Kim had not spoken of his idea to the Jedi Council , Palpatine arranged for the Jedi to be killed in a trap , and Kim ' s plan was never implemented . Under the Empire . In the closing years of the Republic , studies of midi - chlorians were conducted by Jedi healers and medical personnel alike . During the Clone Wars , Kaminoan defector Ko Sai was one of the scientists who sought to uncover the mysteries of the midi - chlorians and Jedi genome . The Jedi Order in its later years established a taboo over empirical studies into the Force and its tangible aspects , believing it could not be scientifically studied . When the Order was disbanded and Galactic Empire declared , though , the taboo was broken . The scientists of Emperor Palpatine treated the Force as a purely physical phenomenon , breaking it apart into the tangible components of midi - chlorians and energy . The Force Detector was one of the results of these studies , and it was used by the Inquisitorius in the Great Jedi Purge . During the reign of the Empire , midi - chlorian tests were performed routinely on Inner and Mid Rim worlds to root out Force - sensitives and Jedi in hiding . Such individuals were rarely heard from again . In response , an underground trade of drugs and blood treatments sprang up that could supposedly fool a test or lower one ' s count ; however , they were largely ineffective . After the rise of the Empire , Palpatine ordered a complete ban on all information related to Jedi or the Force and had such data purged from data banks galaxy - wide . Statute OB - CPO - 1198 , covering illegal medical research that included studies of midi - chlorians , was also enacted . With the Jedi ' s records on midi - chlorians no longer available for study and any information on their relation to the Force kept out of medical libraries , medical professionals knew little of the nature of midi - chlorians , even as they continued to test for them . When Kornell Divini , a doctor on the Death Star , measured an abnormally high midi - chlorian count from one of his patients , he put out a request on the MedNet for any further information on midi - chlorians . Divini ' s search triggered warning flags put in place by the Empire , attracting the attention of the Emperor ' s servant Darth Vader , and Divini was arrested under the provisions of OB - CPO - 1198 . At a top - secret facility on the Frozen moon in the Unknown Regions , Imperial scientists under Grand Admiral Thrawn collected DNA from multiple Force - sensitives and cloned them , altering the midi - chlorians in their blood . When Luke Skywalker established his New Jedi Order in 11 ABY , he had no knowledge of midi - chlorian tests and as a result was forced to devise his own tests for finding Force - sensitives . The midi - chlorian method was rediscovered by the Order at some point before 40 ABY . Behind the scenes . Origins . Midi - chlorians were first conceived by George Lucas as early as 1977 . In this time the first Expanded Universe products were being created , including the ongoing Marvel Star Wars series and Alan Dean Foster ' s novel " Splinter of the Mind ' s Eye " . Lucas sat down with a member of his staff , Carol Titelman , to dictate a number of guidelines for these works , explaining various concepts of his universe . Among them were an explanation of midi - chlorians , which Force - sensitive beings were said to have more of in their cells . However , Lucas did not feel he had the time to introduce the concept of midi - chlorians . The idea would not appear in any " Star Wars " product for twenty - two years ; Lucas chose 1999 ' s as the opportunity to first mention the midi - chlorians , explaining why some were sensitive to the Force while others were not , an issue that he had left unresolved since the original film " " . Lucas incorporated the explanation of midi - chlorians into the film as part of Anakin Skywalker ' s journey towards understanding the Force . That Lucas had planned the midi - chlorians as far back as 1977 was hinted at on the DVD commentary of " The Phantom Menace " , but the details would not be fully revealed for another eight years , coming to light in the 2007 book " " , the hardcover edition of which had , among its appendices , Lucas ' notes for the Expanded Universe authors . Despite this , however , Lucas implied that the precepts of being a Jedi could be practiced by " anyone " when discussing the story treatment for in 1981 ( then - titled " Revenge of the Sith " ) , and in particular the backstory for Anakin ( who had been revealed to be Darth Vader ) , comparing it to yoga or karate . Midi - chlorians in " The Phantom Menace " are part of a recurring theme throughout the movie , that of symbiotic relationships . They were loosely based on , organelles that provide energy for cells ; like midi - chlorians , mitochondria are believed to have once been separate organisms that inhabited living cells and have since become part of them ; even now , mitochondria act in some ways as independent lifeforms , with DNA all their own . Lucas established this relation with mitochondria , in particular the necessity of midi - chlorians for life to exist , as a metaphor for society ; namely , he says all parts of society must get along in much the same way the midi - chlorians and their symbiont do . In 2006 — as a tribute to this similarity — a newly discovered species of bacteria residing within mitochondria was named " Midichloria mitochondrii " after the midi - chlorians . Its discoverer , Nate Lo , wrote to Lucas requesting permission to use the name , and was granted it . Though midi - chlorians would not make a public appearance until 1999 , pre – " Phantom Menace " Expanded Universe materials hinted at an individual ' s biological connection to the Force . In " Jedi Search " , Lando Calrissian carries out a search for potential Jedi for Luke Skywalker ' s new academy by using a device that can detect affinity to the Force . In the " " , two organisms are mentioned , the vornskr s and the ysalamir i , that have evolved the ability respectively to use the Force to hunt prey and block the Force . Non - canonical information . On April 1 , 2006 , several entries relating to George Lucas ' " Willow " universe were added to the StarWars . com Databank as an joke . The update page names the planet Andowyne as the possible homeworld of the midi - chlorians . The non - canonical comic " " tells of other effects of Darth Plagueis ' manipulations of the midi - chlorians : Tag Greenley and Bink Otauna became Force - sensitive , while a red sun and its planet , whose only survivor would go on to become a hero on Earth , was destroyed — references to and , respectively . In the introduction page to " Star Wars Tales 10 " , Dark Horse Comics editor David Land goes inside a Jedi Knight with the help of droid 2 - 1B in search of midi - chlorians . He finds they look like assistant editor Philip Simon , then orders them back to work . The " Tales " story " Skippy the Jedi Droid " mentions the similarly - named midi - chloroxian s , found in the lubricant s of the eponymous droid , which gave it mastery of the Force . Controversy . Midi - chlorians have had some negative reception among fans ; some see them as adding hard science to the alleged " mysteriousness " or spirituality of the Force and dislike what they see as a new concept . Others , however , believe that having a physical aspect to a mystical Force calls upon real - world religious traditions , feeling that the mythic qualities of the Force have been strengthened by midi - chlorians . A misconception exists that rather than being indicators , midi - chlorians actually " are " the Force or create it ; there is no canonical basis for this belief . Steve Perry , who used midi - chlorians in his novel " Death Star " , opined that they were " less than inspired . " George Lucas , on the other hand , considers the two aspects of the Force separately , treating the midi - chlorians as the practical , biological side , distinct from the spiritual and metaphysical side of the Force .