2020 has been a train wreck of a year. The Australian forest fires, the impeachment of the president, drone strikes in Iran, and of course the start of the dreaded Corona virus, or the more scientific name the SARS- COV- 2 . But 2020 has had what I would say is one of the best scientific inventions to date for sci-fi nerds around the globe. Hacksmith Industries a Canadian company/ YouTube channel has made the first working lightsaber, that is also canonically accurate to the films.
This is insane, the engineers of the world are finally turning fantasy into reality. The lightsaber works by combining plasma and laminar flow. Now think back to your 8th to 9th grade science class, plasma is the forth form of matter, it is basically a super heated gas, and laminar flow is when a fluids particles move smoothly past each other without mixing. The Hacksmith combined this liquid property with super heated gas in order to get that nice beam that lightsabers are known for, and to help the lightsaber maintain heat better, which is ingenious. The lightsaber itself has been clocked at about 4000 degrees.
After watching Mr. Hobsons video I thought to myself, how many people at Cal know about this, and how much would they be willing to pay for something this spectacular to the scientific community. So that is hat I asked. A total of 13 kids responded to me, and out of those 13, only 4 knew what I was even talking about, the other 9 sadly had no idea.
Due to Christmas being right around the corner I was curious how much someone would pay for this item if it went to market, two kids decided to joke around and say a dollar or a cent, but there were 3 kids who gave me a proper answer, sadly they wanted to remain anonymous.
Anonymous 1: Around 9,000 to 10,000 seems like a good amount
Anonymous 2 : Most likely the cost of a new car sounds about right
The last person was very specific with their answer.
Anonymous 3 : I am an unemployed high school student, I don’t have that much money so like a dollar, you think I live in luxury.
Mr. Hobson has stated in some of his other videos that he would be willing to market some of his items, but due to how YouTube works if he shows his projects in a video he can’t patent them, so I guess the future will just have to wait and see if the lightsaber becomes a part of it, or if it becomes just another commodity for the rich.
Link to the Hacksmith Industry video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ey_EjSzKFWQ
Laminar flow: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Laminar_pipe_flow.png (July 26, 2018, added by Toomey USF)
Plasma: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Plasma-lamp.jpg (October 15, 2020, added by Pbrks)
