Real lightsabers now made in Shanghai

There’s something about $200 lasers that can blind people and burn flesh that makes me think the product isn’t all that safe. It may not be the 4-foot-long light sword we remember Jedis and Siths killing eachother with, but Shanghai’s Spyder III is the closest thing we’ve ever had to recreating such a fantasy.

The 445nm direct blue diode laser can fry your retinas and leave you praying for eyesight just to be able to look at the BladesGirls one more time. Blue lasers such as this one are what make Blu-ray players work, their extremely short wavelength compared to infrared lasers allows them to focus on a smaller spot and store much more data than DVDs or CDs. The laser is so powerful that by law it has to come with its very own yellow warning label reading “Laser radiation. Avoid eye or skin exposure to direct or scattered radiation.” The Class IV laser can burn your skin with only moments of beam contact to your skin, even reflecting it onto someone can do damage. What we have to worry about now is the people who have been aiming lasers at airline pilots landing planes, these lasers won’t only distract them, it could leave them blind.