Oh baby. The US Navy is saying a prototype of the solid state Laser Weapons System (LaWS) is ready for deployment. This summer in the Persian Sea, the USS Ponce will be outfitted with lasers that can shoot down aerial drones, speedboats and swarm boats that are miles away. It’s going to be Star Wars in the open sea.
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Whether you’re a huge geek or a total luddite, you’ve got to be excited when scientists invent a new kind of laser, especially one that stands to replace the one we’ve been using for fiber optic communications for the last 40 years. A team of CalTech researchers did just that. Be excited.
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Eventually, they could end up on your roof, beaming trading data across the sky: Lasers, originally developed by the military, that are now being co-opted by high-frequency traders looking for even faster ways to do business.
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Imagine a laser that fires super-powerful blasts of light ten times a second. A laser with one quadrillion watts of power. That’s one powerful piece of equipment—the most powerful—and it’s exactly what’s being built for the ELI-Beamlines science facility in the Czech Republic.
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It’s much easier for a telescope to see deep into the universe when it doesn’t have to peer through the Earth’s atmosphere, but getting them into space is expensive. There is a much cheaper solution, though, as researchers have actually found a way to make incredibly light mirrors using lasers and polystyrene—aka styrofoam—beads.
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Cyclists can adorn themselves from head to toe in flashing lights, but it’s still possible that pedestrians and drivers won’t see them until it’s too late. It’s a problem the Blaze Laserlight hopes to solve by projecting an early warning signal 16 to 20 feet ahead of a cyclist, so that others on the road will know they’re coming in advance—and have time to react.
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Lasers shine a beam of pure inspiration into our dreams. They are the ultimate proof that science is made of win, and the foundation of every great Pink Floyd show. But who used lasers the best? We’ve painstakingly catalogued the 10 greatest laser moments in movie history. Plus the absolute worst.
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The original Laser Tag game was a huge hit back in the 1980s, though the campy ray guns, clunky helmet, and embarrassing sensor vest just aren’t fashion forward these days. But it’s still fun—which is why ThinkGeek has resurrected the old game, giving it an updated look that includes a stylish windbreaker jacket, smaller sensors, and an arm-mounted laser blaster.
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Forget the sanding, the painting, and all the construction; the worst part of a renovation is having to use a tape measure to size up a room. But if you’re willing to cough up $560, there’s now a much better way that almost sounds like magic. It’s a smartphone accessory called the Spike that uses lasers, GPS, and other sensors to automatically measure everything in a photo you take. Say wha?!
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With a breakthrough that will hopefully eventually trickle down to tea kettles, coffee machines, and even showerheads, researchers at the Hamburg Center for Free-Electron Laser Science in Germany have devised a way to boil water to 600 degrees celsius in less than a trillionth of a second. To put that into perspective, as the folks at DESY point out, one picasecond is to a second what one second is to 32,000 years.
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