Pictures of the Week (slideshow)

Lightsabers and high-tech rifles, along with berry-picking robots, are all part of the week in pictures.

James Martin

Sept. 27, 2013 4:48 p.m. PT

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Wicked Lasers

A real-life lightsaber?

Researchers from MIT and Harvard managed to create a new form of matter, teaching us all a lesson about the power of quantum friendship.

"It's not an in-apt analogy to compare this to lightsabers," Harvard physics professor Mikhail Lukin said in a news release. "When these photons interact with each other, they're pushing against and deflect each other. The physics of what's happening in these molecules is similar to what we see in the movies."

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August Crocker

High-tech long-range rifles

Tracking Point, a startup based in Austin, Texas, just began selling some of the world's most high-tech long-range shooting rifles available. These guns come wired with a small computer that provides a "guided trigger," tag and lock technology, and a Wi-Fi antenna, which lets users gather ballistics data in real time and live-stream their shots to share on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, or e-mail.

The key to Tracking Point's firearms is that anyone -- even someone who's never picked up a rifle -- can hit a target at distances of up to 1,200 yards, or 12 football fields, with near 100 percent accuracy.

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Lisa Pacini and Christine Istad

A fake, traveling sun

Two Norwegian artists created a giant glowing light sculpture and took it on a road trip through regions that get little or no sun in winter.

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Hollywood's Finest

Your very own AT-ST

A nearly life-size AT-ST Walker is up for sale and ready to be the crowning glory for your "Star Wars" collection.

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Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP/Getty Images

A strawberry-picking robot

This $50,000 strawberry-picking robot uses an imaging system to gauge when berries are ripe.

Developed in part by automation firm Shibuya Seiki, the bot was shown off in Tokyo this week at the Auto-ID & Communication Expo trade show.

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Dirk Mathesius/Long Distance Art

Robot sketches

Artist Alex Kiessling puts himself in three places at once by getting remote robots to mimic his sketching, drawing simultaneous portraits in three cities.

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Fredrik Broms

Green energy

For the past four years, Britain's Royal Observatory has held a contest for the best astronomy photographs from around the world. Its picks for 2013, drawn from 1,200 entries, are utterly eye-popping.

"With this image I wanted to show the magic and dramatic feeling of being drawn into the whirlpool of a powerful Northern Lights corona," said Norway's Fredrik Broms, runner-up in the Earth and Space category of the Royal Observatory's annual space photography contest.