Watch a Hologram Breakthrough That Brings a Star Wars Fantasy Closer to Reality

Researchers have developed a new holographic display that has the potential to project three-dimensional images into the air, much in the way Princess Leia first popped up in Star Wars.

Researchers at Swinburne University say that by passing lasers through a graphene mesh, a material with an “exceptional” ability to bend light, they have developed a new way of casting 3-D images vertically into the air. The images are viewable from different angles and won’t require those fussy 3-D glasses.

“If you can change the refractive index you can create lots of optical effects,” professor Min Gu of Swinburne’s Centre for Micro-Photonics said in a public statement.

Researchers posted footage of the holograms in the current online issue of Nature Communications, including grainy images of balloons, kangaroos and human figures. It’s not quite Princess Leia-quality, and researchers say it has a long way to go before commercialization, but it’s a step.

Read more at Nature Communications.