Real-life lightsabers research at MIT

October 1, 2013 (BOSTON) -- Real-life lightsabers is how an MIT professor describes complex research into photons.

MIT Professor Vladan Vuletic used lasers to discover a new form of matter.

"It has long been a dream to have photons of light beams interact with one another," Vuletic said. "We use laser beams and shine them in from six sides and these laser beams actually cool the atoms."

The complex physics research led Vuletic to make light particles, or photons, bind together into a molecule.

"Maybe characteristic of a lightsaber is that you have these two light beams and they don't go through each other as you might expect they just kind of bounce off each other," he said.

The technology is now there, but Vuletic has yet to create a lightsaber.

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