A Boy Invents The First Functional Retractable Sword: The Iconic Object Of “Star Wars” Becomes Reality.

Star Wars is a film saga appreciated all over the world: an imaginary galaxy, an unknown era, fantastic characters have accompanied many generations. Fan pages, groups, and thematic shops have been created. Today, famous objects from the movies can be found on the internet, including imitations of the famous lightsaber, the Jedi’s favorite weapon. A Russian Youtuber has just won a Guinness World Record for making the saga’s fan dream come true: creating the first truly functional retractable lightsaber .

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image credit: Youtube Screenshot – Guinness World Record

Alex Burkan is a Russian YouTuber, and his channel Alex Lab is very popular: it has more than 800,000 subscribers. The YouTuber is a huge Star Wars fan and has searched his whole life for a faithfully reproduced gadget. Today, Alex has stopped searching and created the first working retractable lightsaber, fulfilling the dream of many Star Wars fans. Today, Alex has been recognized internationally by the Guinness World Record for having created a sword very close to that of the famous saga. What does Alex’s lightsaber look like? It can produce a plasma blade nearly a meter long and reach temperatures of over 2,800 degrees. The sword’s temperature is so high that it can even cut steel. 

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image credit: Youtube Screenshot – Guinness World Record

How was the idea born? Alex is an experimenter, and he was working on tools to generate hydrogen. But he realized he could use his skills to create a lightsaber. Here is what he told the Guinness World Record:

Every step of the development and construction process was a challenge. For many years I collected ideas and spare parts for my lightsaber and electrical equipment from internet markets and scrap yards. The key component of my lightsaber is an electrolyzer. An electrolyzer is a device that can generate a huge amount of hydrogen and oxygen and compress the gas to any pressure without a mechanical compressor. The hardest job was fitting the entire gas delivery system into a lightsaber hilt.

The fan of the saga has therefore proceeded by trial and error, but says that there is still a lot of work to be done before the saber is really ready: it currently only works for 30 seconds at full power. Will fans of the saga be able to purchase the item based on Alex’s prototype in the future? All we can do is wait.

source used: Guinness World Record