Future Light Sabers? Scientists Turn Light Into Matter

What would you say if I told you that science has finally discovered a way to eventually manufacture actual light sabers just like those used in the Star Wars movie series? Crazy right? Well it’s true.

Scientists at Harvard-MIT Center for Ultracold Atoms were able to successfully bind together photons into a new state of matter that up until now has been entirely theoretical in nature. The successful test was published in a September 25 paper in Nature.

The finding is tremendous, because it turns the understanding of light on its head. Instead of particles without any mass that don’t interact with one another, these new “photonic molecules” are made up of photos that do interact with each other and develop into molecules with mass. This discovery could potentially lead to real world devices that may not be very much unlike the mythical light sabers of Star Wars.

How Photons Can Interact

The discovery will transform what scientists understand about light. The process used to coerce photons into interacting with one another was to create a “medium” within which the Read more…