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If you’ve ever seen Star Wars - A New Hope, you know that Luke Skywalker relied heavily on his starfighter’s lasers to destroy the Death Star. Now the Department of Defense is making big bets on lasers (but in real life), at the tune of $3.2M in its latest round of funding.

How? Take some sci-fi movie inspiration, some super complicated science about what happens to light at extremely high intensity, add in two uber-smart engineers from Clemson and you may have yourself a real-life laser beam. They are two of five individuals who have received nearly $16 million from the Department of Defense’s High-Energy Laser Joint Technology Office (wait, that exists?).

Clemson has been on the forefront of laser technology since the ‘90’s and now COMSET (Clemson’s optical materials lab) has the only industry-grade optical fiber capability at a U.S. university through a two-story tower that allows their engineers to create optical fiber (needed to create the “laser beam”). Luckily for us (and the sharks) Dr. Evil is no longer evil and trying to destroy the world.

Clemson Newsstand