Via Yahoo: ”That’s because I can’t decide if it’s more important that researchers at MIT and Harvard have just managed to create a previously unobserved form of matter by getting photons to bind together into molecules, or the fact that the result is basically a real-life lightsaber — that could be part of a quantum computer one day.
See, photons — which are the elementary particles of light — tend to be massless and kind of aloof. If you shoot two laser beams at each other, the photons just pass right through each other without so much as a hello or a high five.
But when the researchers fired a few photons into a vacuum chamber with a cloud of extremely cold rubidium atoms to take advantage of an effect called a Rydberg blockade, the photons started hanging out and even left the chamber together as the first “photonic molecule” — a sort of quantum bromance — ever observed.
And it’s that bond between new particle bros that creates the new form of matter, which bears a resemblance to that most awesome weapon from a galaxy far, far away.”
What the hell? Real life lightsaber? Leave it up to the geniuses in Cambridge, MA to blow my freakin’ mind. What happens if this hits the open market? How many Star Wars crazies are going to be ebaying their computers to buy one of these? Think about the conventions and how out of hand they’d get. People showing up with real life lightsabers; waving them around like they have any clue what the outcome would be if they actually hit someone with it. They’d probably have to have a roped off area where you could only use your lightsaber. Safety first people.
Harvard and MIT for the win.
P.S. Did I just create a new action? Ebaying? Nailed it.
