Experts create real-life images that move in air

Aholography research group at Brigham Young University recently figured out how to create lightsabers, green for Yoda and red for Darth Vader, naturally, with actual luminous beams rising from them.

Inspired by the displays of science fiction, the researchers have also engineered battles between equally small versions of the Starship Enterprise and a Klingon Battle Cruiser that incorporate photon torpedoes launching and striking the enemy vessel that you can see with the naked eye. The research was published in the journal Scientific Reports “What you’re seeing in the scenes we create is real; there is nothing computer-generated about them,” said lead researcher Dan Smalley, a professor of electrical engineering at

BYU. “This is not like the movies, where the lightsabers or the photon torpedoes never really existed in physical space. These are real, and if you look at them from any angle, you will see them existing in that space.”

It’s the latest work from Smalley and his team of researchers who garnered national and international attention three years ago when they figured out how to draw screenless, free-floating objects in space. Called optical trap displays, they're created by trapping a single particle in the air with a laser beam and then moving that particle around, leaving behind a laser-illuminated path that floats in midair; like a “a 3D printer for light.”

The development paves the way for an immersive experience where people can interact with holographic-like virtual objects that co-exist in their immediate space.