laser

Star Trek introduced the world to a wide range of fictional technology, most of which, like beaming or warp drive, will likely remain fiction. However, a team of scientists from the University of Canada has taken the phaser, the show's famous stun-laser, out of the TV and into reality. Unfortunately, right now it only works on worms.

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In a recent test at the White Sands Missile Range, a specially equipped C-130 plane fried a parked truck with a powerful laser. And while we still haven't seen evidence of the laser "defeating" a ground target, as Boeing puts it, a video of it scorching a direct hit on the hood of a truck is still pretty amazing.

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Fancy yourself a sharpshooter at laser tag? The team at Goddard Space Flight Center might just have you beat. After all, since launching the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, they've been firing a laser across 250,000 miles of space, hitting the minivan-sized LRO as it orbits the moon at nearly 3,600 miles per hour. It's no lucky shot either; they do it 28 times per second.

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Nanotechnology, lasers, genetics, and cancer? If there was also something about space, this story might have been a PopSci full house. Scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), have figured out a way to deliver cancer-stopping RNA directly into the nucleus of a diseased cell. To get into the nucleus, the RNA is wrapped in special gold nanoshells which are then selectively opened by a laser.

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People with glass desks shouldn’t use mice without a dusty old mousepad–that used to be the rule, at least. Logitech announced two new mice today that work on virtually any surface, even glass. The Performance Mouse MX ($100) and Anywhere Mouse MX ($80) use a new dual-laser technology called DarkField (said in an ominous Dark Knight voice, of course) to track your movements on the shiniest, clear surfaces. Can it be true?

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There's no fricking laser beams attached to sharks, but Dr. Evil might still be jealous. The U.S. Navy wants to test a high-powered laser against the threat of small boats or even jet skis carrying RPG-wielding riders.

Northrop Grumman came away with the $98-million contract for the Maritime Laser Demonstration (MLD) in early July. Next up: installing a prototype of the laser on a ship and testing it on a remote-controlled small boat within the next 18 months.

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For long-distance trips, the seeing-eye dog might soon be replaced by the seeing-eye car. Researchers on Virginia Tech's Blind Driver Team, with funding from the National Federation of the Blind, might soon give blind people the ability to do something they never thought possible: drive. The prototype "car" is actually a buggy equipped with lasers that judge the surrounding terrain.

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This has been a good week for sonic physics. First came reports that scientists used sound waves to create a sonic black hole. Now, it seems that a different group of scientists have used specially calibrated sound waves to create something almost as cool: a sonic laser.

The lasers most people are familiar with are formed from beams of light with identical wave structures, added together to form one giant, coherent wave. The saser, created by scientists from the University of Nottingham, England, works the same way, but with correlated sound waves instead of light waves.

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The U.S. Navy is still looking for an energy ray to defeat IEDs. However, unlike previous attempts, the new technology they're dreaming of would render the explosives inert, rather than prematurely detonate them.

Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), also often referred to as roadside bombs, have been the deadliest weapon used by anti-U.S. forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The devices prey on the U.S. military's dependence on roads for logistics; they target supply convoys and patrols alike. Unfortunately, many of these mines can't distinguish between U.S. Marines in a Humvee and an Iraqi or Afghan family in an Opel, leading to many civilian deaths as well.

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Using an unbelievably powerful laser over an unbelievably short period of time, scientists have been able to alter the surface of metals to control the flow of water across their surfaces down to the individual molecule.

And when we say an unbelievable amount of energy, we’re talking about the power of the entire grid of the United States at once. When we say an unbelievably short period of time, we’re talking about a femtosecond, which is to a second what a second is to 32 million years. Think about both of those for a femtosecond.

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