real technology inspired by what was seen in a TV show/movie,
like cell phones (Star Trek) and bionic limbs (Six Million Dollar Man), simple lighting using soda bottles placed in roofs in
poor communities (MacGyver/simple, cheap and effective tools made from
unrelated objects already around you) or lightsabers (Star Wars).
While a
team of physicists was attempting to find
new ways to deliver quantum information, they found that when more than one photon was
fired through a
cloud of rubidium in a chamber cooled by lasers to just a few degrees above absolute zero, the photons teamed up and started interacting and behaving in a surprising and unexpected manner. They discovered a way to bind photons together in order to form a
new molecule, which behaves similarly to the lightsaber. It was an unintentional discovery and actually a "startrekked" by-product of these experiments. Otherwise, how would they have known the by-product was a lightsaber? The report gives no indication that the scientists will be using the discovery to create real-life lightsabers, but understanding the
physics is the first step to that ever happening.