{"id":17945,"date":"2015-09-29T14:46:46","date_gmt":"2015-09-29T21:46:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2015\/09\/were-one-small-step-closer-to-a-working-light-saber"},"modified":"2017-06-04T11:35:33","modified_gmt":"2017-06-04T18:35:33","slug":"were-one-small-step-closer-to-a-working-light-saber","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2015\/09\/were-one-small-step-closer-to-a-working-light-saber","title":{"rendered":"We\u2019re One Small Step Closer to a Working Light Saber"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\\'blog-photo\\' href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/were-one-small-step-closer-to-a-working-light-saber.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Wow, first they create a real hoverboard, and now they\u2019re on the road to creating a real lightsaber? Joy! <span class=\"wp-smiley emoji emoji-wink\" title=\";-)\">wink<\/span>   <\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>Killjoy physicists have long pointed out the sheer unlikelihood of building a working light saber. But now, they\u2019ve taken a small step toward realizing the dream of <em>Star Wars<\/em> fans worldwide, by figuring out how to get photons to stick together like molecules in a super-chilled gas.<\/p>\n<p>This latest work <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/nature\/journal\/v502\/n7469\/full\/nature12512.html\" target=\"_blank\">builds on prior experiments<\/a> from 2013, when Harvard physicists first announced a new state of matter.<\/p>\n<p>Photons don\u2019t have mass and zip along at the speed of light, with no time to hang around in clumps. They also aren\u2019t charged particles and thus don\u2019t interact with each other much at all. They love to hang out with charged electrons, though. And that\u2019s what\u2019s going on here: the Harvard experiment created a special kind of medium in which photons act like charged particles with mass, enabling them to form molecules.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/were-one-small-step-closer-to-a-working-light-saber-1733275700\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wow, first they create a real hoverboard, and now they\u2019re on the road to creating a real lightsaber? Joy! wink Killjoy physicists have long pointed out the sheer unlikelihood of building a working light saber. But now, they\u2019ve taken a small step toward realizing the dream of Star Wars fans worldwide, by figuring out how [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":362,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,2008],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics","category-weapons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/362"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17945"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64051,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17945\/revisions\/64051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}