Star Wars was always one of my favorite movies – from the space battles, plot twists, and storyline. As a kid I was always fascinated with a Jedi’s main weapon – a light saber. This light blade could cut into any material as easy as cutting butter with a hot knife. Will our generation ever be able to see a light saber, or even used on the battlefield by soldiers? 

Scientists at Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have challenged “the conventional wisdom about light, and they didn’t need to go far, far away to do it.” Scientists were able to coax photons (particles of light) into molecules. “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,” Mikhail Lukin said (one of the scientists in the experiment).

Researchers pumped rubidium atoms into a vacuum container, and then cooled the atoms to absolute zero using other lasers. With this new environment being created, the researches then fired photons into the cloud of atoms. Two of the separate photons fired into the cloud came out the other side as a molecule. This result is known as Rydberg blockade (Click this link to get more information about this “blockade”).

The photons can arguably interact with each other, allowing the possibility for creating two beams of photon molecules that could interact with each other.  All scientists would need to do is figure out a way to make the beam stop at around two-feet, and you’re on your way to becoming a Jedi Knight.

Chris Lough comments in his article about the difficulties surrounding making a full-functional light saber. For one, he says that this was created in a vacuum, which we as humans obviously don’t live in. Second, being able to contain the molecules in a two-foot, vertical Lightsaber is not something that scientists are able to do as of now. They would need to create a type of barrier that would have to coat the Lightsaber in order to keep it together. Furthermore, the beam itself (let’s assume scientists were able to contain it) wouldn’t have the destruction capabilities that an actual Lightsaber has. The beam wouldn’t be hot enough to cut through anything.

Although it would be amazing to wield the power of a Jedi, scientists are using this new technology of photonic molecules to help speed up ways to do quantum computing.