November 12, 2025 • 42 mins
Wrrraaohhh! Is it possible to make a REAL lightsaber that can glow, cut, and feel solid? Jorge duels with four physicists (or is it physi-Siths?) to find out.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, please take a second and leave us a review
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Speaker 2 (00:06):
Thanks a lot.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hey, Welcome to Sign Stuff production of iHeartRadio. I'm Hoorge
Champ and today we're answering the question could we build
a real lightsaber? A long long time ago in a
galaxy that's here. Star Wars became one of the most
popular movie and television franchises ever created, and arguably one
(00:30):
of the coolest things about it are the glowing sorts
of light that the characters used to fight with. I mean,
what self respecting geek hasn't dreamed of holding one in
their hands? But is it actually possible to build one?
Do the laws of physics allow it? Or is it
something that's completely in the realm of fantasy and magic.
To find out, we're going to talk to several scientists
(00:52):
who specialize in plasma and laser physics and.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Who are big Star Wars.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Nerdsally one of them prefers Star Trek, but I won't
tell you who it is. You'll have to use the
force to figure it out. So get ready to go
to warp speed, because this is the podcast you are
looking for. As we answer the question possible a real
lightsaber is hm? I promise it's not a trap. Hey everyone, Okay,
(01:28):
that was a lot of Star Wars puns, but don't worry.
There's a lot of real cool signs in this episode.
We're gonna be talking about plasmas, laser needles, and the
quantum vacuum energy. All have to figure out if it's
possible to make a real lightsaber and spoiler alert, the
answer is actually yes. Okay. My sagat to find the
(01:50):
answer started as most searches do on the Internet. There
is a YouTube channel called Hacksmith Industries that claims to
have built the first ever real lightsaber using plasma technology.
So to help me figure out what plasma is and
how this proto lightsaber on the Internet works, I reached
out to my friends at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory,
(02:13):
a research facility in New Jersey with over five hundred
scientists and engineers all working on plasma.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
I'm ANDREWS.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Ricker.
Speaker 4 (02:22):
I am a PhD plasma physicist who spent my entire
career at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, and I just
love my job.
Speaker 5 (02:31):
Archro Domingas. I am a PFC plasma physicist as well.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Amazing, And are you fans of Star Wars? Yes? Worse
of course you're physicist. Of course.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
Wait was ar truly even born when Star Wars came out?
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Not the first one, see see, I was a teenager.
Speaker 5 (02:51):
I have to say I am a fan, but none
of us are as much fans as my eight year
old son. He is obsessed with it.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Wow, you're lucky. I can't get my kids to watch
any of it.
Speaker 5 (03:03):
Oh, I can't get him not to watch.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
That original trilogy or the second.
Speaker 5 (03:09):
So I am very proud to say that he's watched
all of them, but always gravitates back to four or five.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
And oh, yeah, I can see why you're proud, Yes,
third proud. All right, Well, I guess the question is
what do you think about Lightsabers when you first saw
that movie?
Speaker 4 (03:25):
So I saw it in the theaters, and I'm vague
memories of just being blown away by these what looked
like sword fights with I didn't know what they were
at this time, lasers, plasmas. This was just way beyond
my teenage self.
Speaker 5 (03:41):
So I don't think I ever remember a time I
didn't know about lights So they're just kind of a
thing that existed and that when I was, you know,
ten or something, I found out that wasn't real. So
for me, it's just been like a part of life.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Okay. So there are a few concepts in physics that
could potentially be used to make a real lightsaber, and
one of them is plasma. Plasma is basically the fourth
state of matter. There's solid, liquid, gas, and then there
is plasma. If you heat up a solid, it melts
and becomes a liquid. If you heat up a liquid,
(04:16):
it evaporates and becomes a gas. And if you heat
up a gas, the gas gets so hot that the
electrons and all the gas atoms separate from the nucleus
and you get a floating soup of electrons and positive
ions the scientists called a plasma, and it can be
super hot and it glows kind of like a lightsaber.
(04:38):
So does the real lightsaber you see on YouTube actually
use plasma? Well, maybe step me through it. What do
you think is going on in that YouTube version of
the lightsaber?
Speaker 2 (04:50):
So, first of.
Speaker 4 (04:51):
All, what they did is beautiful. I mean, what a
beautiful feat of engineering and electronics. It looks beautiful, it
acts beutifully.
Speaker 5 (05:01):
Yeah. So it's really very much like a blowtorch in
which they have a directed jet of propane that has been.
Speaker 4 (05:10):
Lit up, and the length is related to how fast
it's coming out, and as it comes out, it's cooling down,
and at some point it cools down to the point
where it goes out at the tip right it stops combining.
That's what I think is happening. And I would argue
that the hottest part is the plasma, but the edges
are propably just spot gas.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
So the lightsaber they built on YouTube is basically just
the blowtorch or not that different from a lighter or
a flame. And I should mention that this video with
the lightsaber has gotten over forty one million views. As
they explained in the video, they found a nozzle they
can blow propane and oxygen in a very steady flow,
(05:52):
and when you ignite it, it makes very super controlled,
very lightsabery flame that gets up to according to them,
four thousand degrees celsius, which is hot enough to basically
burn most things the flame touches. But is it plasma,
that's not quite clear.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
That's probably a mixture of some plasma hot gas.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
It's a mix of it.
Speaker 5 (06:14):
It has some plasma in it, which leads to the
light emitted because plasma has light emissions. But I also
think part of it is that the black body radiation
from the little pieces of stuff that burnout. So it's
a mix of several sources of light.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Yes, okay, this is interesting because it gets into the
physics of flames or fire. A flame like from a
candle or a blowtorch can't have plasma in it, but
not necessarily. Here's what happens. Fire happens because of combustion,
which is a chemical reaction. That reaction creates energy, which
(06:54):
heats up what's left after the reaction, and that glows
just from being hot, kind of like a traditional light
bulb or a piece of metal that glows when it's hot.
It's called black body radiation. So on a flame, that
could be mostly what you see as the part that glows,
it's just hot gas or hot bits of what's combusted.
(07:17):
But on some flames, the center of it could be plasma.
It could be so hot that the electrons get ripped
from the atoms and you get a true plasma. So
in the lightsaber on YouTube, it's basically a blowtorch and
what you're seeing is probably a combination of a hot
gas and a plasma, and it's not Medichlorian's right, unfortunately. No, Yes, Okay,
(07:44):
So now the question is is it a real lightsaber?
Does a blowtorch with a long and super hot flame
count as a Star Wars lightsaber?
Speaker 5 (07:55):
But I think it goes back to the question like,
is a lightsaber by definition? Does it have to be
a plasma? I don't know what the answer to that is, right,
Can a lightsaber be a very hot blowtorch?
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Maybe? I think it would.
Speaker 5 (08:11):
Still count as a lightsaber. If somebody comes up to
me and does a flip and pulls that out and confronts.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Me, I will run away because that, to me is
a weapon made out of plasma.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
You'd be like, I got a bad feeling about this.
Speaker 5 (08:26):
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
I think the argument is what is a lightsaber? And
since this was inspired by Star Wars, I think we
have to take what was in the movie as a
definition of what a lightsaber is, which means you have
to be able to fight with it. As they hit.
It's as if two solid pieces of metal or something
(08:49):
are up against each other and you have to have
that battle. Where now is who's that the more arm strength?
Speaker 5 (08:56):
I think that is Andrew's strongest argument is when and
they have the fight scenes, you can stop a lightsaber
with another lightsaber. I very much doubt that you can
stop one of these that they made in twenty twenty
with another one of these. I think they would just
go through one another, And that I think is the
(09:17):
strongest argument against it being a lightsaber.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Okay, sorry, Hacksmith Industries. The physicists here from the Princeton
Plasma Physics Laboratory don't think what you've made is quite
a real lightsaber. If you cross to flames or to
blow torches, the flames are just gonna go through each other,
or the flow of the hot gases are gonna mix
in the form. They're not gonna collide and feel solid
(09:42):
like in the movies. So now the question is is
that actually possible? Can you create something with plasma so
that you get a glowing beam that is hot enough
to melt things and cut through them and also feel
solid when two of them hit each other? All right,
all right, I feel like Andrew, you have a vision
for making a more workable and real lightsaber from plasma.
(10:05):
How would that work, Andrew, The.
Speaker 4 (10:06):
Way we do it is with magnets. All right.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Here, doctor Zuicker has an idea for maybe how to
make a real plasma lightsaber work, and it has to
do with how scientists are trying to.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Make a fusion reactor.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
A future reactor is basically the idea that you could
create a miniature sun here on Earth. Inside of our Sun,
there's incredible pressure at the very core of it, and
there's plasma there, and the combination of those two things
makes atoms fuse together. Well, here on Earth, scientists are
working on making a plasma like that, and the way
(10:42):
they hold that plasma together is using essentially a magnetic
bottle that holds a blob of plasma together.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
We're trying to eventually make a miniature star like the Sun,
but we use powerful magnets to keep the plasma where
we want it to be and get it hotter and
hotter and hotter. So if a lightsaber were to have
a confining magnetic field in a tube that would keep
(11:13):
the plasma inside that tube. Number one, you get the shape, Okay, okay,
But what's interesting is that if two lightsabers, both with
the same magnetic field, were to then come together. Just
like your two magnets that want to repel each other,
they would collide, they would not pass through each other.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
What doctor Zicker is proposing here is that maybe a
lightsaber could be essentially a magnetic bottle. The hilt of
the lightsaber could somehow form a magnetic field that contains
a blob of plasma in the shape of a long tube,
and it would be hot enough to glow and cut
through things. And also when you hit another lightsaber, the
(11:58):
magnetic fields would repel each other, giving you that feeling
of hitting something solid. So I feel like you're saying
that to make a lightsaber, you could somehow create basically
a magnetic bottle in the shape of a sword.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
We have so many problems with the.
Speaker 4 (12:19):
Why is that nonsense?
Speaker 5 (12:21):
What Andrew is describing is literally what we call a
magnetic mirror, which is a cylinder of concentric rings that
are electromagnets with a very strong one at both ends.
So you've got to have some floating solid electromagnets all
around the platform.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
To create those kinds of magnetic fields, you need to
surround that whole area with magnets, which would defeat the
purpose of it being like a freestanding lightsaber.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
I mean, my entire thing was based upon magical magnetic fields.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Okay, we tried, but here's the thing about plot. A
plasma is basically like a gas. It's not solid, and
it wants to expand and spread out like a gas.
And the only way to contain a plasma is but
either something solid or you have to surround it with magnets,
which would ruin the idea of a lightsaber. So it
(13:18):
doesn't seem possible to make a real lightsaber using plasma.
Does that mean a lightsaber is impossible? Well, it turns
out there is another physics phenomenon that you could use
to make a lightsaber, and the next two physicists that
I talked to think it's totally possible. So when we
come back, we're going to try to make a lightsaber
(13:39):
out of lasers. Stay with us, we'll be right back. Hey,
welcome back. We're talking about whether it's possible to the
(14:00):
real lightsaber like the ones you see in Star Wars
and so far we talked about the possibility of making
one out of plasma, but as two physicists from the
Princeton Plasma Physics laboratory concluded it doesn't seem possible to
make one, to which I say, never tell me the odds, kid,
And so we turn to another possible technology we can
(14:22):
use to make a saver of light, and this one
involves using light. In twenty nineteen, two physicists polish the
paper in the European Journal of Physics titled on the
physical possibility of Lightsabers, in which they say, we focus
on one major problem with lightsabers that is commonly involved
(14:44):
as an argument to dismiss them as unrealistic. Light blades
are not solid and thus cannot be used in a
duel as normal swords would. Using techniques coming from ultra
intense laser science, we show that for high enough laser intensities,
lightsaber blades can feel solid to each other. Now, when
I read that, I thought, hello, there, so I reached
(15:08):
out to doctor Jean Sebastian and doctor Francois Fillon Gardeau,
the authors of the paper. Well, thank you, doctor Gagnon
and doctor Philian Gardou for joining.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Us like here is online.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Both Fasy and myself are really really huge Star Wars
fans born in the seventies. I mean Star Wars shape
my childhood. Really, I've watched the movie so many times,
like you then by heart, and I don't know. There's
something about like the Jedi Knight and the lightsaber that
is just I don't know, there's something to it, right,
Just the sound of it makes my hair rise on the.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Amazing I guess as a physicist, when you see the movies,
what do you think a lightsaber is?
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Actually it's funny because I think if you ask any
Star Wars fan, many of them will say that it's
like a plasma saber. They would say it's made of plasma.
I don't know what is the origin of the idea,
the exact origin, but I don't know. I'm a purist.
I like the original Star Wars trilogy, and you have
no mention of plasma anywhere there. We're called them lightsabers.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Right, that's true. They're not called plasma sabs.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
They're not called planas there. They're gonna light sabers, right.
Stick to that exactly for me. A concentration of light
energy that's concentrated in some shape that looks like a saber.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
So they need to be made out of light somehow.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Exactly, and that stopped at some point, it stops like
the blade is finite.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Oh okay, all right, Like I said, doctors Gagnon and
Filian Grudeaux think they found a way to make a
lightsaber actually out of light. But to do that, the
design has to overcome two big challenges that people say
makes it impossible to do that. Okay, Now, Star Wars
is fiction, we think.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
All of the future. Actually it happened a long time
ago in the galaxy far far away. It already happened.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
That's right, that's true. Good point, that's right. Well, we
can only hope. But people say that lightsabers are impossible.
What do you think people say lightsabers are impossible to
be made out of light?
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
One of the reasons for one thing is out do
you stop light after like a meter of propagation? You know,
when you have a leaser. Think about the leaser pointer
for example. The laser pointer will go on forever until
it hits something or it's reflected on something, so light
naturally does not stop by itself. One thing that it's
(17:39):
just for a lightsaber that would be hard to do
or hard to implement physically.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Okay, So the first challenge in making a lightsaber out
of light is that light, when it's admitted, tends to
want to keep going on forever. So how do you
make a sword out of light that has a finite length?
And the second problem, it's the same problem we had
with the plasma lightsaber, which is how do you make
(18:05):
the lightsaber feel solid?
Speaker 2 (18:10):
You've seen the movies when the two blades clash together,
they actually feel solid. But of course that's not what
you would expect from light, right.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Right, Like if I cross the flashlights.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
You can just do it and you see that they're
just like whoa go through each other.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
And that's because light doesn't necessarily interact with itself exactly,
That's exactly it.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
So if you think that light is made of photons,
let's say, so little particles of light, they are electrically neutral,
so it means that they don't have any electromagnetic interaction
between them. They don't interact in any other way in
terms of like other forces, like nuclear forces for instance.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
So to a photon, another photon is just invisible.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Yes, in some sense classically clastically, of.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Course, they have no way that we traditionally understand that
they can interact with each other exactly. So those are
the two reasons people say making a lightsaber out of
light is impossible. One how do you make it finite
so the light beam doesn't go on forever? And two
how do you make light feel solid? Well, it turns
(19:16):
out there is a way to get around both of
those problems, and no, it does not involve using the force.
We'll start with making a finite beam of light.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
According to doctors.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Canon and Fillian Cordeaux, you can do it with something
called a needle of light. I've definitely done that as
a kid, Like when you have a flashlight and you
turn off the lights and you pretend that you're swinging
a lightsaber around, but you're right that it keeps going
on forever. Is that something that you think you have
a solution.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
For, Well, not the direct solution, but if you look
at the scientific literature and the research done by any physicists,
it's called a needle of lights and so it's a
very particular electro magnetic fail configuration.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
They are very hard.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
To do in a laboratory, so you need very special
mirrors to do them, but they have the property that
when this light is focused, the energy will be in
the form of a long cylinder.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
WHOA, I don't think I was expecting this. Is there
a process in physics that might allow that to concentrate
light in a short beam like that?
Speaker 3 (20:26):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (20:28):
Yes, yeah, yes, yes, okay. Can you describe this phenomenon?
What is it?
Speaker 2 (20:34):
How does it work? I imagine like you're sending a
light beam that would be cylindrical, so it would be
more like an annular type of beam. It means that
instead of having like a cylinder that is filled with light,
you would only have like the outskirt of it, like
a ring.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Oh I see, Instead of a solid beam of light,
you're shooting out a ring of light.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Then you send it on. Imagine in the hilt of
the lightsaber there will be a mirror at the back,
and then you send towards that mirror, and then when
it's reflected like at the focus of the mirror, it
would look like a needle. And it's what I said.
It's related to the fact that you have like many
beams of light. When it reflects to the focus, some
(21:14):
of those beams will kind of interfere with each other.
It will cancel in many places, but it would add
up at the focus.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
And so that gives you a little light needle.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
Yep, exactly.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Okay, the details of this are a little hard to explain,
but it is something that physicists that specialize in optics
and lasers have been able to do. By shooting light
as a ring instead of a solid beam, and bousing
and off special curved mirrors, you can essentially focus the
light beam so that it interferes with itself and concentrates
(21:47):
its energy into a kind of needle or sharp stick
of light, and that basically looks like a light saver,
Like the black waves are interfering and they're building up
in this needle in this length of space.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Yes, yes, so the energy of the beam would be
concentrated in that tiny needle.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
And not anywhere else.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
So there would be much more energy conceptor along the
needle than the rest.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
But the light would keep going after the needle, it
just wouldn't be focused.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Yeah, exactly, so it would be diffuse. After the needles
you want, it will still propagate, but the energy will
go down drastically, so it would look like a small
light saber.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Uh huh. We would see like an actual seat of
glowing beam like a lightsaber.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Well, yeap.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
Actually, it depends a little bit on the medium. So
let's say you would open the slight sliaber in air.
She could create a plasma and the plasma could start
to emit light.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
I see. The light will then cause the air molecules
to glow.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
Basically, yes, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Okay, yeah, we did end up with plasma. But here
the plasma is only the reason we see the lightsaber.
The actual sword is technically made of light. So does
that solve the lightsaber problem?
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Kind of? There is one little problem.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
And I think you can have a slender that's about
fifty thousand times the wavelength of your user. And so
that's say in the optical regime, and for example, blue
fits around five hundred danometers, so time sixty thousand, that
will be the length of this needle of light.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
So we're talking about probably a millimeter. Yeah, it has limitations, right,
So it seems that they are able to do it
for about the size of one millimeter.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
What the physicists are saying is that this needle of
light phenomenon depends on the wavelength of the light you're using,
and so far, the longest needle scientists have been able
to make is about one millimeter long. In other words,
we can make a life lightsaber out of light, but
(24:01):
at least so far, it would only be one millimeter long. Now,
is it possible to make it longer?
Speaker 2 (24:09):
The answer is maybe.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Star Wars would be a lot less exciting if it
was called the light needle. Could I make it longer
by using a longer wavelength of light?
Speaker 2 (24:22):
I think so?
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Oh oh, now we're getting somewhere like.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
An infrared faber.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Oh yeah, I think it could work infrared. If so,
it would be red.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
The first lightsaber would be a sift lightsaber. It's harder
to make a good guy lightsaber, as I think that's
kind of one of the lessons of Star Wars is
that fear and anger are easier. Exactly, that's the bath
of the dark. The Bath of the Dark set is
(24:55):
easier yep, more plausible, more physically practical. Yeah, okay, so
that's where we stand on the problem of making a
finite beam of pure light. It's possible to make a
needle of light, but so far they are really short.
It might be possible to make them longer using longer
(25:15):
wavelength light, which would make the lightsabers red, but nobody's
tried it do it. It sounds like maybe we need
some physicists to make it work. Okay, when we come back,
we'll tackle the other big problem in making a lightsaber,
which is how do you make a beam of light
(25:35):
feel solid? As it turns out, there is a way,
and it involves tapping into the quantum vacuum energy of
the universe. We'll get into that, so don't go anywhere.
We'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Hey, welcome back.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
We're talking about whether we can build a real lightsaber
when that has a beam of light that stops at
a certain length, that can cut through things, and crucially
that you can spar with. In the movies when the
Jedi and the Cyth cross swords, they hit each other
and they feel solid. But as we learn, making a
lightsaber out of a plasma blowtorch meets all the requirements
(26:27):
except the last one, and so it turned to lasers.
According to doctor Johan Sevest and doctor Francois fon Grdeaux,
to laser physicists, it's possible to make a beam of
concentrated light, although you'd have to work on making it bigger.
But amazingly, they do think there is a way to
make a beam of light feel solid.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
So that was more the main focus of our paper.
So the idea is this. So we just said that
if you have two photons, they cannot interact directly with
each other, but it doesn't mean that they cannot interact indirectly. Okay,
this is a huge feel of research. It's called nonlinear optics. Oh,
so imagine that. Now you would have let's say a
(27:12):
medium in which you can shoot light through it. So
you send some light into it, and now let's say
the first photon that goes in will probably interact with
the medium itself, think of it as deforming it a
little bit. And then imagine the second photon that comes
after that. Now, that second photon will feel the deformation
(27:33):
of the first one. So in that sense, even if
the two photons do not interact directly, they could interact
indirectly through the medium.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Okay, here's the scenario that the physicists are imagining. Normally,
photons of light just ignore each other. Light is electrically
neutral and it has no mass, So photons can't push
or pull or bump into each other. If you take
two flashlights and you across the beams. The beams of
light just keep going straight. I mean, who hasn't done
that as a kid. But there is a way for
(28:06):
photons to interact indirectly with each other. Photon can interact
with the medium it's traveling in. Think of it as
leaving a ripple or a trail in the medium, and
then the next photon that comes through, say from a
different lightsab would feel that ripple or trail. And that's
how two lightsabers might possibly feel solid to each other.
(28:29):
I see. There are effects just from the light going
through the medium that you have to take into account
that sometimes.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Yeah, okay, it happens mostly when the intensity is very large.
Speaker 3 (28:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Oh, it has to be powerful enough to feel that
effect exactly. So it has to be.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
Powerful enough to deform the medium. So we send the
language to polarize it so it pulls the electron in
one direction, let's say, more than the other, so that
it changes and if another sluton comes in, it's propaggation
will be modified.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
So you could imagine this working in air as the
medium the lightsabers are in. But doctor Gannon and doctor
Phillian Grdeaux are envisioning something more universal. A lightsaber that
could work anywhere, even space.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
The next step is, but we don't want to rely
on the medium for that thing to work. We wanted
to work in vacuum, like in the movie in space.
Look like in the movie, if you want to turn
on your lightsaber on your spaceship and use it, you can't.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Well, technically, I think every time you see a lightsaber
in Star Wars, they're in air.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
That's true.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
True.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
We don't want it to depend on which atmosphere of
the planet in your room.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Yeah, okay, okay, got it, got it, all right, So
let's try to make a lightsaber that works in a vacuum.
Go ahead.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
So the question is if it is vacuum, then you
might say, like, it's completely empty, right, so there are
no media, right, so there cannot be any indirect interact
between the photons. What but it can, that's the thing.
So if you're talking about the quantum vacuum, quantum vacuum
is full of stuff.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
As it turns out, empty space is not really empty.
It has something that physicists called the quantum vacuum energy.
The theory is that empty space actually has something like
a background buzz or a low level of energy that
predisposes it to create particles out of nothing.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
So it's full of what we call virtual particles.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
I see, empty space is not really empty. It has
kind of like a bubbling frost of quantum particles that
come into existence and disappear.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Right according to the theory, Yeah, according to what like
the best theories that we have right now to describe
the microscopic world. They come into existence, but they go
back to the vacuum in such a short time that
we can't even measure them. That's why they are called
virtual particles. I see.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
But light as it goes through a vacuum, does interact
with virtual quantum particles.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Yes, it does, exactly.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
And actually one effect that it's supposed to happen when
you reach a very very high intensity is that you
can actually create matter directly from light. So light would
interact with this particle and it would pull them, and
then you can start generate electron pulls it from pairs
directly from light.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
I see. Okay, Okay, So let's say I have a
laser super intense, I shoot it. It's interacting with the
quantum vacuum, and is the idea then that it's that
trail that it leaves. That interaction would then affect the
other lightsaber. Is that where we're going, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Yeah, So imagine you would have like two lightsabers at
ninety degrees with each other, and then they clash like
in a fight for instance, and then there is an
interaction region between the two lightsabers. And then so imagine
some of those photons come from one of the hilts,
and then because of this indirect interaction between the photons
through the vacuum, then some of them might reflect towards
(32:11):
the other light saber. And as I said, if the
intensity is high enough, then a lot of those photons
will get reflected towards the other hilt. And if you
have enough photon on the other hilt, then you will
feel that as radiation pressure.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
Oh, you would feel a force.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
You would feel a force in the hilt.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
Yes, So that's kind of the idea. If you have
two of these laser swords, when they hit each other,
they would interact with the quantum vacuum energy, which would
cause photons to be reflected from one sort to the other,
and then those photons would make you feel a force
through what's called radiation pressure. Basically, when photons hit something,
(32:54):
they actually give whatever they're hitting some momentum, pushing it back.
It's what may solar sales work. And that push Doctor
Gannon and doctor Phelan Grideaux argue would make the light
beams feel solid. I see, I see like we're fighting.
We're having a lightsaber battle, and we swing our lightsabers,
(33:15):
and when my beam crosses yours, I'm going to feel
a little kickback maybe on my lightsaber. Yes, yeah, because
of these quantum effects.
Speaker 5 (33:25):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
Actually in the film called that quantum reflection. So it's
really a quantum effect that induces these direction between photons
and that reflect them.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Back towards the hill.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
Then that's what we think would make it feel. I
don't know if it will feel solid, but you will
feel something.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
We kind of analyze how you would feel it, and
it will feel very different than just like hitting something solid,
that's for sure.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
I see. It won't feel like you're clashing swords, but
you'll definitely feel something that kicks you back.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
Oh yeah, something like that.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Yeah, all right, well I think we did it that.
It's possible to make a real lightsaber sort of. You
can't have a standing beam of light and yes, it's small,
but as Yoda said, size matters not you can also
cut through things, and you could technically make it feel
solid or at least like it hit something. Does that
(34:18):
mean we should all grow a ponytail and become pata ones.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
No, well, hey, let's say let's put it in fury.
But one of the things that has been pointed out
is that, well, you need an energy source, right, and
the energy source, of course, has to fit into the
hilt of the lifesaver.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
Leather batteries all work for this.
Speaker 6 (34:41):
Yeah, it could not work so to have a significant
effect to feel let's say a kickback on the other hilt,
for instance, and it's ten to the twenty three watts.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
So that's just a shy less than the output of
the thought.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
You take the entire sun's output. That's how much you
need to feel a little kickback at this light saber
through this effect, meaning your lightsaber would be as powerful
as the sun. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (35:11):
Almost.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
These effects are weak.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
Yeah, the effects are weak, so you need a lot
just to get it.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
So you need to put in a lot of soot
on to see something or to feel something because.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
The problem is so small.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Okay, yeah, this kickback the fact that might make the
lightsaber feel solid depends on a quantum physics interaction that
is very unlikely, and so you need a lot of
photons to make it happen, which means your lightsaber needs
to output the same amount of energy as the sun.
But hey, as jin Urso said, rebellions are built on hope.
(35:47):
Maybe there is a way to get that kind of energy. Okay,
all right, Well I'm not the terror because I know
kyber crystals are who knows how they work?
Speaker 3 (35:57):
Right?
Speaker 1 (35:57):
Maybe they have the power of a sun.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
Oh yeah, people say that that's what also power the
Death Star. So that's another of my calculation that I do.
If one of my electromagnetic courses, I mean, it takes
a lot of energy for that later beam, trust me.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Well, let's take it a step further. Guys, is a
Kyberg crystal possible?
Speaker 2 (36:18):
Well, I would like to know what is the Kyberg crystal?
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
In the article, we talk about electron positron bears recombination,
which is probably one of the most efficient nichanism to
generate energy.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
So, as Fransos said, so the most efficient way would
be to use antimatter when you annihilate let's say to
an electron and a positron, all of it becomes energy.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
I see, a positron is like an anti electron basically, right, Yeah, yes, exactly, So.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
If you annihilate them, then you get like as much
energy as you can coming from that mass. So that's
probably the most efficient way. So I don't know if
kyber crystals are similar, for there be rate on a
different level than that, but as far as we know,
the best would be antimatter and aliation.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
This could be the subject of a whole other episode,
but antimatter is regular matter that has its quantum number flipped.
So if you take an electron and you flip its charge,
you get a positron, which is an anti electron. And
if you mix a matter particle with its antimatter version,
they annihilate and give out a whole bunch of energy. Now,
(37:29):
could you power a lightsaber with that, Yes, but you'd
need a lot of it.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
So even that, you would still need like one hundred
million kilograms of that into your hilt.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
One hundred kilograms of matter and antimatter one hundred million
kilogram Yeah, being annihilated at a time.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
The time to power it for about a minute.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
That's a lot, lot. That's a lot, a lot.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
It would squeeze all of that into the hilt. Would
be so similiar to like a white dwarf and the
neutron star.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
Even if you take that much matter and antimatter squeeze
it down to a hilt, you'd be basically carrying a
sun with you.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Yeah, you can carry it. Interesting, I mean I think
you would need the pores to actually life.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
Oh, there you go. That's how it works.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
Why they need the far Yeah, the power their lightsabers.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
Yeah, this is not looking so good. But the real
kicker is that shooting light actually.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Creates a kickback. Like if you turn on a.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
Flashlight, the flashlight actually gets pushed back, kind of like
give you fire a gun.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
The effect is super small.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
Because light has very little momentum, so you don't actually
feel it with a flashlight, but at the intensities of
light we're talking about in our lightsaber, it would be
a lot.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
When you turn your lightsaber on, you'll have some kind
of recoiled effects like a trust and the estimated that
the trust.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
There's like ten to the seven saturn five rockets, like
put like strap them all on together and when you
just power it on. That's what you would.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
Feel ten to the seven Saturn five rockets. Wait, if
I have a laser four, that's how much when I
turn it on, that light would actually push me back?
Speaker 3 (39:22):
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
Wait Wait guys, I feel like you're saying that the
thing that disqualifies Star Wars as fiction is not lightsabers.
It's not Kyper crystals. It's Newton's second law of motion.
Speaker 3 (39:40):
Yeah, you're probably right.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
Everything else is possible, but Neaton's second law says no,
that's all fiction.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
Yes, that's a very nice way to summarize it.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
You're right, all right, Well, to summarize our space opera
to a galaxy for are far away. It's definitely possible
to build a real lightsaber that glows in a beam
and can cut through metal. I mean, the folks on
YouTube did that, but it doesn't feel solid. To make
a lightsaber that feels solid, you could make it out
(40:14):
of lasers and have it interact with the quantum vacuum energy.
So it's possible, but it would require you to have
the power of the sun in the palm of your hand,
and it would probably kill you just from the recoil
of turning it on. But here's the thing about lightsabers.
Even if they can't be real or practical, the effective
(40:35):
hat on physics is definitely real. Here's how our physicists
put it. What do you think is so fascinating about lightsabers?
Speaker 2 (40:45):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (40:46):
It's so like it looks like an efficient weapon, a
noble weapon of a more civilized.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
Age, the idea of combining a sword, which as a kid,
swords are cool, but now it's a sword made out
of like lasers. Yeah. Yeah, that did Star Wars influence
either of you a little bit and your choice to
become physicists.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
Maybe at some deep level. I mean I always been
interested with sci fi in general. So Star Wars, of course,
as I said, shape my childhood.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
It makes people wonder what's possible?
Speaker 3 (41:18):
Yes, yeah, exactly, and personally for me, just the fact
that you know they were in space, and so I
think this movie brought interests to astrol physics, a rockets,
things like that. So it's not direct Star Wars, but
it's via space that brought me to physics.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
Thanks for joining us, See you next time, and hey,
may the Force be with you. Music and Time Effects
Firm Fix the Bay credit to Louise whom anoyed. You've
been listening to Science Stuff production of iHeartRadio, written and
produced by Me or Hm candidate by Rose Seguda, executive
(41:58):
producer Jerry Rowland, and audience enger and mixer Ksey Peckram.
And you can follow me on social media. Just search
for PhD Comics and the name of your favorite platform.
Be sure to describe to sign Stuff on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, and please
tell your friends we'll be back next Wednesday with another episode.
Hey, please take a second and leave us a review
on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to the podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Thanks a lot.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hey, Welcome to Sign Stuff production of iHeartRadio. I'm Hoorge
Champ and today we're answering the question could we build
a real lightsaber? A long long time ago in a
galaxy that's here. Star Wars became one of the most
popular movie and television franchises ever created, and arguably one
(00:30):
of the coolest things about it are the glowing sorts
of light that the characters used to fight with. I mean,
what self respecting geek hasn't dreamed of holding one in
their hands? But is it actually possible to build one?
Do the laws of physics allow it? Or is it
something that's completely in the realm of fantasy and magic.
To find out, we're going to talk to several scientists
(00:52):
who specialize in plasma and laser physics and.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Who are big Star Wars.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Nerdsally one of them prefers Star Trek, but I won't
tell you who it is. You'll have to use the
force to figure it out. So get ready to go
to warp speed, because this is the podcast you are
looking for. As we answer the question possible a real
lightsaber is hm? I promise it's not a trap. Hey everyone, Okay,
(01:28):
that was a lot of Star Wars puns, but don't worry.
There's a lot of real cool signs in this episode.
We're gonna be talking about plasmas, laser needles, and the
quantum vacuum energy. All have to figure out if it's
possible to make a real lightsaber and spoiler alert, the
answer is actually yes. Okay. My sagat to find the
(01:50):
answer started as most searches do on the Internet. There
is a YouTube channel called Hacksmith Industries that claims to
have built the first ever real lightsaber using plasma technology.
So to help me figure out what plasma is and
how this proto lightsaber on the Internet works, I reached
out to my friends at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory,
(02:13):
a research facility in New Jersey with over five hundred
scientists and engineers all working on plasma.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
I'm ANDREWS.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Ricker.
Speaker 4 (02:22):
I am a PhD plasma physicist who spent my entire
career at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, and I just
love my job.
Speaker 5 (02:31):
Archro Domingas. I am a PFC plasma physicist as well.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Amazing, And are you fans of Star Wars? Yes? Worse
of course you're physicist. Of course.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
Wait was ar truly even born when Star Wars came out?
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Not the first one, see see, I was a teenager.
Speaker 5 (02:51):
I have to say I am a fan, but none
of us are as much fans as my eight year
old son. He is obsessed with it.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Wow, you're lucky. I can't get my kids to watch
any of it.
Speaker 5 (03:03):
Oh, I can't get him not to watch.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
That original trilogy or the second.
Speaker 5 (03:09):
So I am very proud to say that he's watched
all of them, but always gravitates back to four or five.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
And oh, yeah, I can see why you're proud, Yes,
third proud. All right, Well, I guess the question is
what do you think about Lightsabers when you first saw
that movie?
Speaker 4 (03:25):
So I saw it in the theaters, and I'm vague
memories of just being blown away by these what looked
like sword fights with I didn't know what they were
at this time, lasers, plasmas. This was just way beyond
my teenage self.
Speaker 5 (03:41):
So I don't think I ever remember a time I
didn't know about lights So they're just kind of a
thing that existed and that when I was, you know,
ten or something, I found out that wasn't real. So
for me, it's just been like a part of life.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Okay. So there are a few concepts in physics that
could potentially be used to make a real lightsaber, and
one of them is plasma. Plasma is basically the fourth
state of matter. There's solid, liquid, gas, and then there
is plasma. If you heat up a solid, it melts
and becomes a liquid. If you heat up a liquid,
(04:16):
it evaporates and becomes a gas. And if you heat
up a gas, the gas gets so hot that the
electrons and all the gas atoms separate from the nucleus
and you get a floating soup of electrons and positive
ions the scientists called a plasma, and it can be
super hot and it glows kind of like a lightsaber.
(04:38):
So does the real lightsaber you see on YouTube actually
use plasma? Well, maybe step me through it. What do
you think is going on in that YouTube version of
the lightsaber?
Speaker 2 (04:50):
So, first of.
Speaker 4 (04:51):
All, what they did is beautiful. I mean, what a
beautiful feat of engineering and electronics. It looks beautiful, it
acts beutifully.
Speaker 5 (05:01):
Yeah. So it's really very much like a blowtorch in
which they have a directed jet of propane that has been.
Speaker 4 (05:10):
Lit up, and the length is related to how fast
it's coming out, and as it comes out, it's cooling down,
and at some point it cools down to the point
where it goes out at the tip right it stops combining.
That's what I think is happening. And I would argue
that the hottest part is the plasma, but the edges
are propably just spot gas.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
So the lightsaber they built on YouTube is basically just
the blowtorch or not that different from a lighter or
a flame. And I should mention that this video with
the lightsaber has gotten over forty one million views. As
they explained in the video, they found a nozzle they
can blow propane and oxygen in a very steady flow,
(05:52):
and when you ignite it, it makes very super controlled,
very lightsabery flame that gets up to according to them,
four thousand degrees celsius, which is hot enough to basically
burn most things the flame touches. But is it plasma,
that's not quite clear.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
That's probably a mixture of some plasma hot gas.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
It's a mix of it.
Speaker 5 (06:14):
It has some plasma in it, which leads to the
light emitted because plasma has light emissions. But I also
think part of it is that the black body radiation
from the little pieces of stuff that burnout. So it's
a mix of several sources of light.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Yes, okay, this is interesting because it gets into the
physics of flames or fire. A flame like from a
candle or a blowtorch can't have plasma in it, but
not necessarily. Here's what happens. Fire happens because of combustion,
which is a chemical reaction. That reaction creates energy, which
(06:54):
heats up what's left after the reaction, and that glows
just from being hot, kind of like a traditional light
bulb or a piece of metal that glows when it's hot.
It's called black body radiation. So on a flame, that
could be mostly what you see as the part that glows,
it's just hot gas or hot bits of what's combusted.
(07:17):
But on some flames, the center of it could be plasma.
It could be so hot that the electrons get ripped
from the atoms and you get a true plasma. So
in the lightsaber on YouTube, it's basically a blowtorch and
what you're seeing is probably a combination of a hot
gas and a plasma, and it's not Medichlorian's right, unfortunately. No, Yes, Okay,
(07:44):
So now the question is is it a real lightsaber?
Does a blowtorch with a long and super hot flame
count as a Star Wars lightsaber?
Speaker 5 (07:55):
But I think it goes back to the question like,
is a lightsaber by definition? Does it have to be
a plasma? I don't know what the answer to that is, right,
Can a lightsaber be a very hot blowtorch?
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Maybe? I think it would.
Speaker 5 (08:11):
Still count as a lightsaber. If somebody comes up to
me and does a flip and pulls that out and confronts.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Me, I will run away because that, to me is
a weapon made out of plasma.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
You'd be like, I got a bad feeling about this.
Speaker 5 (08:26):
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
I think the argument is what is a lightsaber? And
since this was inspired by Star Wars, I think we
have to take what was in the movie as a
definition of what a lightsaber is, which means you have
to be able to fight with it. As they hit.
It's as if two solid pieces of metal or something
(08:49):
are up against each other and you have to have
that battle. Where now is who's that the more arm strength?
Speaker 5 (08:56):
I think that is Andrew's strongest argument is when and
they have the fight scenes, you can stop a lightsaber
with another lightsaber. I very much doubt that you can
stop one of these that they made in twenty twenty
with another one of these. I think they would just
go through one another, And that I think is the
(09:17):
strongest argument against it being a lightsaber.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Okay, sorry, Hacksmith Industries. The physicists here from the Princeton
Plasma Physics Laboratory don't think what you've made is quite
a real lightsaber. If you cross to flames or to
blow torches, the flames are just gonna go through each other,
or the flow of the hot gases are gonna mix
in the form. They're not gonna collide and feel solid
(09:42):
like in the movies. So now the question is is
that actually possible? Can you create something with plasma so
that you get a glowing beam that is hot enough
to melt things and cut through them and also feel
solid when two of them hit each other? All right,
all right, I feel like Andrew, you have a vision
for making a more workable and real lightsaber from plasma.
(10:05):
How would that work, Andrew, The.
Speaker 4 (10:06):
Way we do it is with magnets. All right.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Here, doctor Zuicker has an idea for maybe how to
make a real plasma lightsaber work, and it has to
do with how scientists are trying to.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Make a fusion reactor.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
A future reactor is basically the idea that you could
create a miniature sun here on Earth. Inside of our Sun,
there's incredible pressure at the very core of it, and
there's plasma there, and the combination of those two things
makes atoms fuse together. Well, here on Earth, scientists are
working on making a plasma like that, and the way
(10:42):
they hold that plasma together is using essentially a magnetic
bottle that holds a blob of plasma together.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
We're trying to eventually make a miniature star like the Sun,
but we use powerful magnets to keep the plasma where
we want it to be and get it hotter and
hotter and hotter. So if a lightsaber were to have
a confining magnetic field in a tube that would keep
(11:13):
the plasma inside that tube. Number one, you get the shape, Okay, okay,
But what's interesting is that if two lightsabers, both with
the same magnetic field, were to then come together. Just
like your two magnets that want to repel each other,
they would collide, they would not pass through each other.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
What doctor Zicker is proposing here is that maybe a
lightsaber could be essentially a magnetic bottle. The hilt of
the lightsaber could somehow form a magnetic field that contains
a blob of plasma in the shape of a long tube,
and it would be hot enough to glow and cut
through things. And also when you hit another lightsaber, the
(11:58):
magnetic fields would repel each other, giving you that feeling
of hitting something solid. So I feel like you're saying
that to make a lightsaber, you could somehow create basically
a magnetic bottle in the shape of a sword.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
We have so many problems with the.
Speaker 4 (12:19):
Why is that nonsense?
Speaker 5 (12:21):
What Andrew is describing is literally what we call a
magnetic mirror, which is a cylinder of concentric rings that
are electromagnets with a very strong one at both ends.
So you've got to have some floating solid electromagnets all
around the platform.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
To create those kinds of magnetic fields, you need to
surround that whole area with magnets, which would defeat the
purpose of it being like a freestanding lightsaber.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
I mean, my entire thing was based upon magical magnetic fields.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Okay, we tried, but here's the thing about plot. A
plasma is basically like a gas. It's not solid, and
it wants to expand and spread out like a gas.
And the only way to contain a plasma is but
either something solid or you have to surround it with magnets,
which would ruin the idea of a lightsaber. So it
(13:18):
doesn't seem possible to make a real lightsaber using plasma.
Does that mean a lightsaber is impossible? Well, it turns
out there is another physics phenomenon that you could use
to make a lightsaber, and the next two physicists that
I talked to think it's totally possible. So when we
come back, we're going to try to make a lightsaber
(13:39):
out of lasers. Stay with us, we'll be right back. Hey,
welcome back. We're talking about whether it's possible to the
(14:00):
real lightsaber like the ones you see in Star Wars
and so far we talked about the possibility of making
one out of plasma, but as two physicists from the
Princeton Plasma Physics laboratory concluded it doesn't seem possible to
make one, to which I say, never tell me the odds, kid,
And so we turn to another possible technology we can
(14:22):
use to make a saver of light, and this one
involves using light. In twenty nineteen, two physicists polish the
paper in the European Journal of Physics titled on the
physical possibility of Lightsabers, in which they say, we focus
on one major problem with lightsabers that is commonly involved
(14:44):
as an argument to dismiss them as unrealistic. Light blades
are not solid and thus cannot be used in a
duel as normal swords would. Using techniques coming from ultra
intense laser science, we show that for high enough laser intensities,
lightsaber blades can feel solid to each other. Now, when
I read that, I thought, hello, there, so I reached
(15:08):
out to doctor Jean Sebastian and doctor Francois Fillon Gardeau,
the authors of the paper. Well, thank you, doctor Gagnon
and doctor Philian Gardou for joining.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Us like here is online.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Both Fasy and myself are really really huge Star Wars
fans born in the seventies. I mean Star Wars shape
my childhood. Really, I've watched the movie so many times,
like you then by heart, and I don't know. There's
something about like the Jedi Knight and the lightsaber that
is just I don't know, there's something to it, right,
Just the sound of it makes my hair rise on the.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Amazing I guess as a physicist, when you see the movies,
what do you think a lightsaber is?
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Actually it's funny because I think if you ask any
Star Wars fan, many of them will say that it's
like a plasma saber. They would say it's made of plasma.
I don't know what is the origin of the idea,
the exact origin, but I don't know. I'm a purist.
I like the original Star Wars trilogy, and you have
no mention of plasma anywhere there. We're called them lightsabers.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Right, that's true. They're not called plasma sabs.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
They're not called planas there. They're gonna light sabers, right.
Stick to that exactly for me. A concentration of light
energy that's concentrated in some shape that looks like a saber.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
So they need to be made out of light somehow.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Exactly, and that stopped at some point, it stops like
the blade is finite.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Oh okay, all right, Like I said, doctors Gagnon and
Filian Grudeaux think they found a way to make a
lightsaber actually out of light. But to do that, the
design has to overcome two big challenges that people say
makes it impossible to do that. Okay, Now, Star Wars
is fiction, we think.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
All of the future. Actually it happened a long time
ago in the galaxy far far away. It already happened.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
That's right, that's true. Good point, that's right. Well, we
can only hope. But people say that lightsabers are impossible.
What do you think people say lightsabers are impossible to
be made out of light?
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
One of the reasons for one thing is out do
you stop light after like a meter of propagation? You know,
when you have a leaser. Think about the leaser pointer
for example. The laser pointer will go on forever until
it hits something or it's reflected on something, so light
naturally does not stop by itself. One thing that it's
(17:39):
just for a lightsaber that would be hard to do
or hard to implement physically.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Okay, So the first challenge in making a lightsaber out
of light is that light, when it's admitted, tends to
want to keep going on forever. So how do you
make a sword out of light that has a finite length?
And the second problem, it's the same problem we had
with the plasma lightsaber, which is how do you make
(18:05):
the lightsaber feel solid?
Speaker 2 (18:10):
You've seen the movies when the two blades clash together,
they actually feel solid. But of course that's not what
you would expect from light, right.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Right, Like if I cross the flashlights.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
You can just do it and you see that they're
just like whoa go through each other.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
And that's because light doesn't necessarily interact with itself exactly,
That's exactly it.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
So if you think that light is made of photons,
let's say, so little particles of light, they are electrically neutral,
so it means that they don't have any electromagnetic interaction
between them. They don't interact in any other way in
terms of like other forces, like nuclear forces for instance.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
So to a photon, another photon is just invisible.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Yes, in some sense classically clastically, of.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Course, they have no way that we traditionally understand that
they can interact with each other exactly. So those are
the two reasons people say making a lightsaber out of
light is impossible. One how do you make it finite
so the light beam doesn't go on forever? And two
how do you make light feel solid? Well, it turns
(19:16):
out there is a way to get around both of
those problems, and no, it does not involve using the force.
We'll start with making a finite beam of light.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
According to doctors.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Canon and Fillian Cordeaux, you can do it with something
called a needle of light. I've definitely done that as
a kid, Like when you have a flashlight and you
turn off the lights and you pretend that you're swinging
a lightsaber around, but you're right that it keeps going
on forever. Is that something that you think you have
a solution.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
For, Well, not the direct solution, but if you look
at the scientific literature and the research done by any physicists,
it's called a needle of lights and so it's a
very particular electro magnetic fail configuration.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
They are very hard.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
To do in a laboratory, so you need very special
mirrors to do them, but they have the property that
when this light is focused, the energy will be in
the form of a long cylinder.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
WHOA, I don't think I was expecting this. Is there
a process in physics that might allow that to concentrate
light in a short beam like that?
Speaker 3 (20:26):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (20:28):
Yes, yeah, yes, yes, okay. Can you describe this phenomenon?
What is it?
Speaker 2 (20:34):
How does it work? I imagine like you're sending a
light beam that would be cylindrical, so it would be
more like an annular type of beam. It means that
instead of having like a cylinder that is filled with light,
you would only have like the outskirt of it, like
a ring.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Oh I see, Instead of a solid beam of light,
you're shooting out a ring of light.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Then you send it on. Imagine in the hilt of
the lightsaber there will be a mirror at the back,
and then you send towards that mirror, and then when
it's reflected like at the focus of the mirror, it
would look like a needle. And it's what I said.
It's related to the fact that you have like many
beams of light. When it reflects to the focus, some
(21:14):
of those beams will kind of interfere with each other.
It will cancel in many places, but it would add
up at the focus.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
And so that gives you a little light needle.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
Yep, exactly.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Okay, the details of this are a little hard to explain,
but it is something that physicists that specialize in optics
and lasers have been able to do. By shooting light
as a ring instead of a solid beam, and bousing
and off special curved mirrors, you can essentially focus the
light beam so that it interferes with itself and concentrates
(21:47):
its energy into a kind of needle or sharp stick
of light, and that basically looks like a light saver,
Like the black waves are interfering and they're building up
in this needle in this length of space.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Yes, yes, so the energy of the beam would be
concentrated in that tiny needle.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
And not anywhere else.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
So there would be much more energy conceptor along the
needle than the rest.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
But the light would keep going after the needle, it
just wouldn't be focused.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Yeah, exactly, so it would be diffuse. After the needles
you want, it will still propagate, but the energy will
go down drastically, so it would look like a small
light saber.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Uh huh. We would see like an actual seat of
glowing beam like a lightsaber.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Well, yeap.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
Actually, it depends a little bit on the medium. So
let's say you would open the slight sliaber in air.
She could create a plasma and the plasma could start
to emit light.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
I see. The light will then cause the air molecules
to glow.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
Basically, yes, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Okay, yeah, we did end up with plasma. But here
the plasma is only the reason we see the lightsaber.
The actual sword is technically made of light. So does
that solve the lightsaber problem?
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Kind of? There is one little problem.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
And I think you can have a slender that's about
fifty thousand times the wavelength of your user. And so
that's say in the optical regime, and for example, blue
fits around five hundred danometers, so time sixty thousand, that
will be the length of this needle of light.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
So we're talking about probably a millimeter. Yeah, it has limitations, right,
So it seems that they are able to do it
for about the size of one millimeter.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
What the physicists are saying is that this needle of
light phenomenon depends on the wavelength of the light you're using,
and so far, the longest needle scientists have been able
to make is about one millimeter long. In other words,
we can make a life lightsaber out of light, but
(24:01):
at least so far, it would only be one millimeter long. Now,
is it possible to make it longer?
Speaker 2 (24:09):
The answer is maybe.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Star Wars would be a lot less exciting if it
was called the light needle. Could I make it longer
by using a longer wavelength of light?
Speaker 2 (24:22):
I think so?
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Oh oh, now we're getting somewhere like.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
An infrared faber.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Oh yeah, I think it could work infrared. If so,
it would be red.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
The first lightsaber would be a sift lightsaber. It's harder
to make a good guy lightsaber, as I think that's
kind of one of the lessons of Star Wars is
that fear and anger are easier. Exactly, that's the bath
of the dark. The Bath of the Dark set is
(24:55):
easier yep, more plausible, more physically practical. Yeah, okay, so
that's where we stand on the problem of making a
finite beam of pure light. It's possible to make a
needle of light, but so far they are really short.
It might be possible to make them longer using longer
(25:15):
wavelength light, which would make the lightsabers red, but nobody's
tried it do it. It sounds like maybe we need
some physicists to make it work. Okay, when we come back,
we'll tackle the other big problem in making a lightsaber,
which is how do you make a beam of light
(25:35):
feel solid? As it turns out, there is a way,
and it involves tapping into the quantum vacuum energy of
the universe. We'll get into that, so don't go anywhere.
We'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Hey, welcome back.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
We're talking about whether we can build a real lightsaber
when that has a beam of light that stops at
a certain length, that can cut through things, and crucially
that you can spar with. In the movies when the
Jedi and the Cyth cross swords, they hit each other
and they feel solid. But as we learn, making a
lightsaber out of a plasma blowtorch meets all the requirements
(26:27):
except the last one, and so it turned to lasers.
According to doctor Johan Sevest and doctor Francois fon Grdeaux,
to laser physicists, it's possible to make a beam of
concentrated light, although you'd have to work on making it bigger.
But amazingly, they do think there is a way to
make a beam of light feel solid.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
So that was more the main focus of our paper.
So the idea is this. So we just said that
if you have two photons, they cannot interact directly with
each other, but it doesn't mean that they cannot interact indirectly. Okay,
this is a huge feel of research. It's called nonlinear optics. Oh,
so imagine that. Now you would have let's say a
(27:12):
medium in which you can shoot light through it. So
you send some light into it, and now let's say
the first photon that goes in will probably interact with
the medium itself, think of it as deforming it a
little bit. And then imagine the second photon that comes
after that. Now, that second photon will feel the deformation
(27:33):
of the first one. So in that sense, even if
the two photons do not interact directly, they could interact
indirectly through the medium.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Okay, here's the scenario that the physicists are imagining. Normally,
photons of light just ignore each other. Light is electrically
neutral and it has no mass, So photons can't push
or pull or bump into each other. If you take
two flashlights and you across the beams. The beams of
light just keep going straight. I mean, who hasn't done
that as a kid. But there is a way for
(28:06):
photons to interact indirectly with each other. Photon can interact
with the medium it's traveling in. Think of it as
leaving a ripple or a trail in the medium, and
then the next photon that comes through, say from a
different lightsab would feel that ripple or trail. And that's
how two lightsabers might possibly feel solid to each other.
(28:29):
I see. There are effects just from the light going
through the medium that you have to take into account
that sometimes.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Yeah, okay, it happens mostly when the intensity is very large.
Speaker 3 (28:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Oh, it has to be powerful enough to feel that
effect exactly. So it has to be.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
Powerful enough to deform the medium. So we send the
language to polarize it so it pulls the electron in
one direction, let's say, more than the other, so that
it changes and if another sluton comes in, it's propaggation
will be modified.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
So you could imagine this working in air as the
medium the lightsabers are in. But doctor Gannon and doctor
Phillian Grdeaux are envisioning something more universal. A lightsaber that
could work anywhere, even space.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
The next step is, but we don't want to rely
on the medium for that thing to work. We wanted
to work in vacuum, like in the movie in space.
Look like in the movie, if you want to turn
on your lightsaber on your spaceship and use it, you can't.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Well, technically, I think every time you see a lightsaber
in Star Wars, they're in air.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
That's true.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
True.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
We don't want it to depend on which atmosphere of
the planet in your room.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Yeah, okay, okay, got it, got it, all right, So
let's try to make a lightsaber that works in a vacuum.
Go ahead.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
So the question is if it is vacuum, then you
might say, like, it's completely empty, right, so there are
no media, right, so there cannot be any indirect interact
between the photons. What but it can, that's the thing.
So if you're talking about the quantum vacuum, quantum vacuum
is full of stuff.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
As it turns out, empty space is not really empty.
It has something that physicists called the quantum vacuum energy.
The theory is that empty space actually has something like
a background buzz or a low level of energy that
predisposes it to create particles out of nothing.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
So it's full of what we call virtual particles.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
I see, empty space is not really empty. It has
kind of like a bubbling frost of quantum particles that
come into existence and disappear.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Right according to the theory, Yeah, according to what like
the best theories that we have right now to describe
the microscopic world. They come into existence, but they go
back to the vacuum in such a short time that
we can't even measure them. That's why they are called
virtual particles. I see.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
But light as it goes through a vacuum, does interact
with virtual quantum particles.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Yes, it does, exactly.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
And actually one effect that it's supposed to happen when
you reach a very very high intensity is that you
can actually create matter directly from light. So light would
interact with this particle and it would pull them, and
then you can start generate electron pulls it from pairs
directly from light.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
I see. Okay, Okay, So let's say I have a
laser super intense, I shoot it. It's interacting with the
quantum vacuum, and is the idea then that it's that
trail that it leaves. That interaction would then affect the
other lightsaber. Is that where we're going, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Yeah, So imagine you would have like two lightsabers at
ninety degrees with each other, and then they clash like
in a fight for instance, and then there is an
interaction region between the two lightsabers. And then so imagine
some of those photons come from one of the hilts,
and then because of this indirect interaction between the photons
through the vacuum, then some of them might reflect towards
(32:11):
the other light saber. And as I said, if the
intensity is high enough, then a lot of those photons
will get reflected towards the other hilt. And if you
have enough photon on the other hilt, then you will
feel that as radiation pressure.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
Oh, you would feel a force.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
You would feel a force in the hilt.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
Yes, So that's kind of the idea. If you have
two of these laser swords, when they hit each other,
they would interact with the quantum vacuum energy, which would
cause photons to be reflected from one sort to the other,
and then those photons would make you feel a force
through what's called radiation pressure. Basically, when photons hit something,
(32:54):
they actually give whatever they're hitting some momentum, pushing it back.
It's what may solar sales work. And that push Doctor
Gannon and doctor Phelan Grideaux argue would make the light
beams feel solid. I see, I see like we're fighting.
We're having a lightsaber battle, and we swing our lightsabers,
(33:15):
and when my beam crosses yours, I'm going to feel
a little kickback maybe on my lightsaber. Yes, yeah, because
of these quantum effects.
Speaker 5 (33:25):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
Actually in the film called that quantum reflection. So it's
really a quantum effect that induces these direction between photons
and that reflect them.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Back towards the hill.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
Then that's what we think would make it feel. I
don't know if it will feel solid, but you will
feel something.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
We kind of analyze how you would feel it, and
it will feel very different than just like hitting something solid,
that's for sure.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
I see. It won't feel like you're clashing swords, but
you'll definitely feel something that kicks you back.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
Oh yeah, something like that.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Yeah, all right, well I think we did it that.
It's possible to make a real lightsaber sort of. You
can't have a standing beam of light and yes, it's small,
but as Yoda said, size matters not you can also
cut through things, and you could technically make it feel
solid or at least like it hit something. Does that
(34:18):
mean we should all grow a ponytail and become pata ones.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
No, well, hey, let's say let's put it in fury.
But one of the things that has been pointed out
is that, well, you need an energy source, right, and
the energy source, of course, has to fit into the
hilt of the lifesaver.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
Leather batteries all work for this.
Speaker 6 (34:41):
Yeah, it could not work so to have a significant
effect to feel let's say a kickback on the other hilt,
for instance, and it's ten to the twenty three watts.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
So that's just a shy less than the output of
the thought.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
You take the entire sun's output. That's how much you
need to feel a little kickback at this light saber
through this effect, meaning your lightsaber would be as powerful
as the sun. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (35:11):
Almost.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
These effects are weak.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
Yeah, the effects are weak, so you need a lot
just to get it.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
So you need to put in a lot of soot
on to see something or to feel something because.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
The problem is so small.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Okay, yeah, this kickback the fact that might make the
lightsaber feel solid depends on a quantum physics interaction that
is very unlikely, and so you need a lot of
photons to make it happen, which means your lightsaber needs
to output the same amount of energy as the sun.
But hey, as jin Urso said, rebellions are built on hope.
(35:47):
Maybe there is a way to get that kind of energy. Okay,
all right, Well I'm not the terror because I know
kyber crystals are who knows how they work?
Speaker 3 (35:57):
Right?
Speaker 1 (35:57):
Maybe they have the power of a sun.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
Oh yeah, people say that that's what also power the
Death Star. So that's another of my calculation that I do.
If one of my electromagnetic courses, I mean, it takes
a lot of energy for that later beam, trust me.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Well, let's take it a step further. Guys, is a
Kyberg crystal possible?
Speaker 2 (36:18):
Well, I would like to know what is the Kyberg crystal?
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
In the article, we talk about electron positron bears recombination,
which is probably one of the most efficient nichanism to
generate energy.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
So, as Fransos said, so the most efficient way would
be to use antimatter when you annihilate let's say to
an electron and a positron, all of it becomes energy.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
I see, a positron is like an anti electron basically, right, Yeah, yes, exactly, So.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
If you annihilate them, then you get like as much
energy as you can coming from that mass. So that's
probably the most efficient way. So I don't know if
kyber crystals are similar, for there be rate on a
different level than that, but as far as we know,
the best would be antimatter and aliation.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
This could be the subject of a whole other episode,
but antimatter is regular matter that has its quantum number flipped.
So if you take an electron and you flip its charge,
you get a positron, which is an anti electron. And
if you mix a matter particle with its antimatter version,
they annihilate and give out a whole bunch of energy. Now,
(37:29):
could you power a lightsaber with that, Yes, but you'd
need a lot of it.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
So even that, you would still need like one hundred
million kilograms of that into your hilt.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
One hundred kilograms of matter and antimatter one hundred million
kilogram Yeah, being annihilated at a time.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
The time to power it for about a minute.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
That's a lot, lot. That's a lot, a lot.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
It would squeeze all of that into the hilt. Would
be so similiar to like a white dwarf and the
neutron star.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
Even if you take that much matter and antimatter squeeze
it down to a hilt, you'd be basically carrying a
sun with you.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Yeah, you can carry it. Interesting, I mean I think
you would need the pores to actually life.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
Oh, there you go. That's how it works.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
Why they need the far Yeah, the power their lightsabers.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
Yeah, this is not looking so good. But the real
kicker is that shooting light actually.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Creates a kickback. Like if you turn on a.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
Flashlight, the flashlight actually gets pushed back, kind of like
give you fire a gun.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
The effect is super small.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
Because light has very little momentum, so you don't actually
feel it with a flashlight, but at the intensities of
light we're talking about in our lightsaber, it would be
a lot.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
When you turn your lightsaber on, you'll have some kind
of recoiled effects like a trust and the estimated that
the trust.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
There's like ten to the seven saturn five rockets, like
put like strap them all on together and when you
just power it on. That's what you would.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
Feel ten to the seven Saturn five rockets. Wait, if
I have a laser four, that's how much when I
turn it on, that light would actually push me back?
Speaker 3 (39:22):
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
Wait Wait guys, I feel like you're saying that the
thing that disqualifies Star Wars as fiction is not lightsabers.
It's not Kyper crystals. It's Newton's second law of motion.
Speaker 3 (39:40):
Yeah, you're probably right.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
Everything else is possible, but Neaton's second law says no,
that's all fiction.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
Yes, that's a very nice way to summarize it.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
You're right, all right, Well, to summarize our space opera
to a galaxy for are far away. It's definitely possible
to build a real lightsaber that glows in a beam
and can cut through metal. I mean, the folks on
YouTube did that, but it doesn't feel solid. To make
a lightsaber that feels solid, you could make it out
(40:14):
of lasers and have it interact with the quantum vacuum energy.
So it's possible, but it would require you to have
the power of the sun in the palm of your hand,
and it would probably kill you just from the recoil
of turning it on. But here's the thing about lightsabers.
Even if they can't be real or practical, the effective
(40:35):
hat on physics is definitely real. Here's how our physicists
put it. What do you think is so fascinating about lightsabers?
Speaker 2 (40:45):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (40:46):
It's so like it looks like an efficient weapon, a
noble weapon of a more civilized.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
Age, the idea of combining a sword, which as a kid,
swords are cool, but now it's a sword made out
of like lasers. Yeah. Yeah, that did Star Wars influence
either of you a little bit and your choice to
become physicists.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
Maybe at some deep level. I mean I always been
interested with sci fi in general. So Star Wars, of course,
as I said, shape my childhood.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
It makes people wonder what's possible?
Speaker 3 (41:18):
Yes, yeah, exactly, and personally for me, just the fact
that you know they were in space, and so I
think this movie brought interests to astrol physics, a rockets,
things like that. So it's not direct Star Wars, but
it's via space that brought me to physics.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
Thanks for joining us, See you next time, and hey,
may the Force be with you. Music and Time Effects
Firm Fix the Bay credit to Louise whom anoyed. You've
been listening to Science Stuff production of iHeartRadio, written and
produced by Me or Hm candidate by Rose Seguda, executive
(41:58):
producer Jerry Rowland, and audience enger and mixer Ksey Peckram.
And you can follow me on social media. Just search
for PhD Comics and the name of your favorite platform.
Be sure to describe to sign Stuff on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, and please
tell your friends we'll be back next Wednesday with another episode.
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