Princess Leia hologram reporting for CNN!

OK, not really. But some of the early returns reporting sure looked like it.  

In what could be the most awesome technological doohickey to come out of this election cycle, CNN is having its correspondents show up in the CNN Election Center AS HOLOGRAMS!

 

That's right. At a little past 7:00 p.m. ET, Jessica Yellin was doing a cross-talk with Wolf Blitzer. She was in Chicago and he was in New York. Instead of seeing the typical split-screen, viewers saw a three-dimensional hologram! In my mind, this election officially cannot get any cooler.

It was a scene reminiscent of Carrie Fisher's "Obi-Wan, you're my only hope" hologram from "Star Wars."

USA Today had the details on how the CNN wizards were pulling this off:

"CNN will have 44 cameras and 20 computers in each remote location to capture 360-degree imaging data of the person being interviewed. Images are processed and projected by computers and cameras in New York. There'll also be plasma TVs in Chicago and Phoenix that will let the people being interviewed see Blitzer and other CNN correspondents. [CNN Senior Vice President David] Bohrman says the network can project two different views from each city so Blitzer can appear to be in the studio with two holograms."

Wow.