Monday, September 30, 2013

A Lightsaber For Every Soldier?

Coming to a store near you … Ewan McGregor with a lightsaber in Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith Photograph: Digital work by ILM

Star Wars Lightsabers Finally Invented -- The Guardian

Scientists in America have 'accidentally' found a way forward to the creation of real-life weapons as used by Jedi Knights

Wannabe Jedi Knights rejoice, for scientists have discovered that the famous lightsaber weapon wielded by Luke Skywalker and his ilk in the long-running space opera saga might one day exist beyond the realms of fiction.

Harvard and MIT physicists writing in the new edition of Nature say they have discovered a way to bind photons together in order to form a new molecule which behaves almost exactly like George Lucas's deadly devices.

"Most of the properties of light we know about originate from the fact that photons are massless and do not interact," said Harvard university physics professor Mikhail Lukin. "What we have done is create a special type of medium in which photons interact with each other so strongly that they act as though they have mass, and bind together to form molecules.

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My Comment: We are still a long long long way from that reality (of soldiers having lightsabers). But the science is making progress.

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