Have you ever watched a film and wished what you saw on screen could happen in real-life?

Whether it’s snogging the leading man or woman, jumping across New York rooftops before nabbing a crook or simply a happy ending, movies help take us away from our humdrum lives or mortgages, work and wet weather.

But this week a piece of science fiction morphed into being science fact.

Let me take you back to 1978 and Star Wars.

Kids running around pretending to be Luke Skywalker, Han Solo or making fun hairy people with shouts of “Chewbacca”.

Star Wars was the film franchise of the next decade raking in billions and setting alight children’s playtimes with battles between good and evil.

School playgrounds across the country were redolent with the improvised sounds of the lightsabre – green for the goodies and red for the baddies.

“Whooooof, whoooof, crash” nippers mouthed as their imaginary poles of light clashed in huge battles that were only ended by being told to hurry up and get back inside and get some work done.

I was lucky enough to get a lightsabre as a Christmas present one year. To say I was a bit disappointed was an understatement.

A plastic handle with a two foot long translucent tube on the end with a bulb in the bottom. I was more Luke Warm than Luke Skywalker.

But my childhood disappointment may now be assuaged thanks to scientists in the US.

Boffins (no doubt in white coats with thick glasses and bad hair) have come up with a way of making light act like solid matter.

And before you say: “Ah Andrew, this is the media taking something tiny and twisting it into something much larger that isn’t really applicable” then let me pooh pooh your disbelief.

“It’s not an inapt analogy to compare this to lightsabres,” boasts Harvard physics prof Mikhail Lukin, one of the big know-it-alls involved in the project.

Basically (that’s a fantastic one-word understatement in this case) our friends in the lab have figured out a way of taking photons (bits of light) and making them act like molecules (groups or atoms) in order to produce a solid object.

Just before you add ‘lightsabre’ to your son’s/daughter’s/niece’s/nephew’s/grandchild’s/own Christmas list, hold on a physics-bending minute.

The photons are slowed down by ultracold atoms. And when I say ultracold, I mean colder than a cool drink, icepop or even a Huddersfield summer.

So you might want to wear a vest under your sweater.

But if blokes with empty online dating email inboxes and names for their favourite pens can make light stick together then what else can they do?

First up surely must be the hoverboard from Back to the Future. Pint-sized Michael J Fox whizzed around Hill Valley on his floating skateboard and mesmerised a generation of kids who fancied skateboarding but couldn’t be bothered to learn how.

What about our very own Jurassic Park? Diplodocuses (Diplodocii?) in Dalton, Stegosauruses in Slaithwaite and Brontosauruses in Birkby.

Can you imagine the letters page in the Examiner if they’re angry about dog poo? They’d be incandescent at stepping in a family car-sized pile of steaming dino dump.

I’m hoping they create the magic dancing mops in Disney’s Fantasia. I don’t do that much mopping to be fair but I’m sure they could extend it to a Hoover or lawnmower.

Those plates that jump about and clean themselves would be good too.

Saying that, if scientists could create that then maybe they may end up creating a Terminator, Alien or even another Star Wars VI featuring Jar Jar Binks.

I think on balance we’re probably better off as we are!