Japanese Scientists Create Holograms That You Can Actually Touch

A group of scientists has created a method of making holgrams that can be touched, thanks to haptic feedback.

Referred to by its creators at the Digital Nature Group at the University of Tsukuba as ‘fairy lights’, the holograms are in fact created by ultrafast femtosecond lasers.

A femtosecond is 1,000,000,000,000,000 of a second - the touchable holograms need to use a fast laser, as a slower beam would potentially burn anyone that tried to touch it.

It’s possible to ‘feel’ the holograms thanks to a variation of the vibration-based haptic feedback technology used in the Apple Watch.

In a paper submitted to SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive Techniques), the scientists explain:

“Shock waves are generated by plasma when a user touches the plasma voxels. The user feels an impulse on the finger as if the light has physical substance.”