Are they “lasers” though?
According to Han Solo they are: “That wasn’t a laser blast…something hit us!”
Lasers don’t come in bolt form and they don’t travel slower than the speed of light.
So either the “lasers” in SW aren’t literally lasers (just like most blueprints aren’t literally blue) or light operates under different physical laws in the SW Universe.
I’m repeating myself here, but the whole point here is that there aren’t any answers to these questions (outside of the EU anyway) and that it doesn’t matter. It’s a movie, all that matters is the story and the characters, not what the lasers are made of.
(PS, my statement “Are they “lasers” though?” was more of a sarcastic and rhetoric question.)