Scientists create light-matter like Darth Vader's lightsaber
updated 9:58 AM EDT, Fri September 27, 2013
Darth Vader wields a lightsaber. Scientists have created molecules that behave a bit like the matter in the fictional weapons.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- When Vader and Skywalker whip out lightsabers, the blades look like sticks of light-matter
- Light usually won't stick together like regular matter, but scientists have made it happen
- The new light-matter acts like it does in the movies, scientists say
- But they have only created subatomic amounts of it, not nearly enough for a lightsaber
It's like they're sticks of light-matter.
Hollywood may have made
that stuff up, but now, scientists at MIT and Harvard have actually made
that stuff -- not enough for a lightsaber, only a subatomic smidgeon.
But even that much is a big deal.
Light-matter existed
previously only in theory, but now, for the first time, it has been
observed in reality, researchers from the Center for Ultracold Atoms
say.
To oversimplify things,
we'll say that photons are subatomic particles that make up light. They
have no detectable mass the way most matter does, and usually, they
don't stick together. You can shoot two lasers at each other, and the
photons will pass right through one another.
But physicists Mikhail Lukin and Vladan Vuletic recently got them to stick together to form molecules.
They published the results of their work in the science journal Nature this week.
The newly created photon
molecules don't behave like traditional light, but more like a
lightsaber, Lukin said. "The physics of what's happening in these
molecules is similar to what we see in the movies."
But don't picture
yourself swashbuckling with a lightsaber just yet. As in the creation of
pretty much all unusual matter, scientists have to produce extreme
conditions in laboratories that can't exist naturally anywhere on Earth.
They pumped atoms of
rubidium, a kind of metal, into a vacuum chamber -- air would otherwise
rapidly alter them. This created a metal cloud that they cooled down
with lasers to about -450 degrees Fahrenheit, near what is called
absolute zero. That makes atoms almost stand still.
Then they fired photons into the atom cloud.
The photons, elements of
light, did not shoot through at the speed of light but acted a little
like regular matter instead. They bumped into the atoms in a way similar
to the way regular matter would.
In the process, the photons slowed down enough to bump into each other and bond into molecules.
It was a first.
Though that's fascinating, it doesn't make for a handy lightsaber.
But it could help in the
future development of super computers known as quantum computers, Lukin
said. And with some work, scientists could make whole crystals out of
light.
So, if Darth Vader shows up with a lightsaber, your great-grandchildren may be able to throw photon rocks at him.
But don't count on it.
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