‘Star Wars’ no longer science fiction: Harvard, MIT scientists create lightsaber

“Star Wars, Episode VII” isn’t scheduled to come out until 2015, but researchers have made real lightsaber technology available — today.

A Boston television station reports that researchers at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have “discovered a new kind of matter” that would prevent traditional laser beams from passing through each other. The matter, called “photonic molecules,” solidifies laser beams in ways reminiscent of the famous science-fiction weapons imagined by George Lucas.

The “Jedi” masters who led the study? Physics Professors Mikhail Lukin of Harvard and Vladan Vuleti of MIT.