Create Lasers From Thin Air? Princeton Engineers Think They Nailed It
|
|
0 comments
Engineers from Princeton have just published their findings into a
laser experiment that allows them to create lasers out of thin air. How?
Why, that will take a bit of explaining. But no worries, we’re up to
the task.
It
involves a focused laser pulse amplifying the atoms in a targeted area,
causing a release of infrared light, thereby creating a laser.
Aerospace Engineering professor Richard Miles had this to say (a detailed article can be enjoyed over at Physorg):
“In
general, when you want to determine if there are contaminants in the
air you need to collect a sample of that air and test it. But with
remote sensing you don’t need to do that. If there’s a bomb buried on
the road ahead of you, you’d like to detect it by sampling the
surrounding air, much like bomb-sniffing dogs can do, except from far
away. That way you’re out of the blast zone if it explodes. It’s the
same thing with hazardous gases – you don’t want to be there yourself.
Greenhouse gases and pollutants are up in the atmosphere, so sampling is
difficult.”
Rest assured, once the method has been perfected it
won’t be built into robots. The spontaneous lasers seem destined as bomb
detectors in U.S. Army vehicles.
Via Gearlog
Filed Under: Amazing , amazon , Gadgets , gearlog , Technology
0 comments
Trackback URL | Comments RSS Feed