Star Wars tech is super-cool, but we usually have to accept that it only exists in the movies. However, some scientists and engineers aren't content on letting that happen, and have worked to create tech that resembles the stuff we see in the movie
Lightsabers
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Watching epic lightsaber battles in the movies is exciting, but everybody knows a sword made of light just can't work. Photons of light can't stop in mid-air or interact with other photons to create objects, doii.
Well, maybe it's not true. Photons normally don't do that, but researchers at MIT and Harvard have discovered a way to make light behave like lightsabers, called photonic matter. The science behind photonic matter is intricate and complex, so we'll spare you the gory details. Basically, photons have no mass, so they can't interact with each other like electrons and protons do. That is, unless you shoot them through supercooled rubidium gas.
When a photon enters the gas it slows down, losing energy as it bounces off rubidium atoms. If another photon enters the gas, it puts more energy into the system, pushing the original atom through the gas, so they're technically interacting like they have mass. It's like the photons turn into a mass of Black Friday shoppers trying to squeeze through the doors of Walmart, with the people behind them pushing them forwards.
Photonic matter isn't just a cool science experiment — it has real life implications. Since the light is acting like a molecule, it can get shaped into whatever scientists want. Researcher Mikhail Lukin has proposed making crystals out of pure light and, once you're making crystals, it's not a far step to e of light." Get ready for epic Jedi battles in our future.
