In honor of Star Wars Day, a day when all of your nerdiest Facebook friends identify themselves with "May the fourth be with you" statuses and all your angriest Facebook friends identify themselves with "Fuck May the fourth be with you" statuses, Bill Nye the science guy teamed up with Mashable and GE's Emoji Science Lab to teach us about how holograms, or 3-D images, actually work.
"We're able to do this with coherent light," Nye explains. "Coherent light is what comes from lasers. Coherent light has all its waves in perfect synchronization, so you have one beam go at the object and another beam come at the object from a different direction. Those waves of light constructively and destructively interfere in your photograph, so then, when you shine laser light through that photograph, instead of it just going straight through the photograph to your eye, it changes direction."
Nye then applies those principles to Princess Leia, because that is probably the only reason we're watching.
Watch the video below:
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