YouTuber James Hobson recently revealed he has created the world’s first real-life plasma lightsaber, which can cut steel and retract just like the “Star Wars” device.
- The story made its way throughout the internet, reaching even NPR.
Hobson — a YouTube personality and engineer — used laser engineering to create the device. He explains in his near 20-minute video how he created the weapon.
- “Even with all of our new equipment and capabilities, we’re still bound by the laws of thermodynamics,” Hobson said in the video.
- “Well, theories say that plasma is best held in a beam by a magnetic field, which, scientifically, checks out,” he added. “The issue is producing a strong enough electromagnetic field to contain a blade, well the lightsaber would have to be quite literally built inside a box coated in electromagnets, which turns it into a kind of useless science project.”
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There’s a lot of scientific explanations for how he created the lightsaber — you can learn more about it in the YouTube video itself — but the result is the same. A real lightsaber was created, according to the New York Post.
- “We did it. The world’s first retractable plasma-based lightsaber,” he said.
- A follow-up video will “really put (the lightsaber) through its paces, including cutting through a steel door.”