Here is the original paper on Arxiv:<p><a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1505.03859" rel="nofollow">http://arxiv.org/abs/1505.03859</a><p>What the linked article fails to mention among all the fantasizing about light sabers is that this kind of interaction is only possible in matter. These "molecules made of light" can only exist when photons interact with atoms while the light travels in a very special medium.<p>In vacuum, photon-photon interactions do not allow for any kind of bound states like that.
Why do people think of lightsabers first? I think better control over light leads to true holograms, primarily. Frankly, if holograms and lightsabers both magically appeared tomorrow, I would lean towards holograms being more important.
Note that in the article linked above, no real matter is created, just configurations that "act" as matter.<p>However, from [1]:<p>> [...] scientists at Imperial College London (including a visiting physicist from Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics) think they’ve figured out how to turn energy directly into matter [...] Their article in Nature Photonics proposes that a new kind of collider be built, one that smashes photons instead of protons, as at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN where the Higgs boson was discovered last year.<p>Of course, this probably requires much more energy.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulrodgers/2014/05/19/einstein-was-right-you-can-turn-energy-into-matter/" rel="nofollow">http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulrodgers/2014/05/19/einstein-...</a>
Are they seriously still running a Cold Fusion website?<p>Note: it'd be nice if the site could survive being on HN's cover. My past experience with CF makes me thing it's a poor choice if you want that.