Scientists have created a lightsaber (Picture: AP / Jeff Chiu)

It’s the news that Star Wars fans have been waiting for for years – scientists have created a lightsaber.

However, the weapon will be of little use if you are trying to fend off the dark side of the Force.

It was created by accident when a team managed to get photons to stick together and form a molecule.

This molecule behaves like a Jedi’s lightsaber – ‘an elegant weapon for a more civilised age’, as Obi-Wan Kenobi described it – by moving the light particles around in a solid mass.


But try to cut through flesh with it or listen out for the familiar ‘whoosh’ sound and you will be disappointed.



‘Most of the properties of light we know about originate from the fact that photons are massless and do not interact,’ said Harvard university physics professor Mikhail Lukin.

‘What we have done is create a special type of medium in which photons interact with each other so strongly that they act as though they have mass, and bind together to form molecules.

‘They’re pushing against and deflect each other.’

He added: ‘The physics of what’s happening in these molecules is similar to what we see in the movies.’