Scientists getting closer to building Star Wars-like lightsabers

Scientists getting closer to building Star Wars-like lightsabers 

Photons, which are the fundamental particles of light, have long been thought to not be able to interact with each other. Wave two laser beams at each other and they’ll simply pass through each other.

No vuuuummmm. No whhhnnnn. No clashing weapons.

However, this group of scientists from the Harvard-MIT Center for Ultracold Atoms have figured out how to coax photons to bind together to form molecules that behave less like light and more like lightsabers.

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

Scientists had theorized about this for a while, noted Lukin. This, though, is the first time they’ve been able to observe it.

“It’s not an inapt analogy to compare this to light sabers,” he added. “When these photons interact with each other, they’re pushing against and deflecting each other. The physics of what’s happening in these molecules is similar to what we see in the movies.”

So how did scientists make this happen? It would be so much fun to say the Force was with them. Sadly no.

Instead, they pumped rubidium atoms into a vacuum chamber, then used lasers to cool the cloud of atoms to just a few degrees above absolute zero, Harvard explained. They then shot single photons into the atom cloud.

The photons, shooting through the cloud, affect the atoms it touches, causing them to slow dramatically. That energy is passed from atom to atom.

And when scientists fired two photons into the cloud, they exited it as a single molecule, according to Harvard.