Posted 12.26.2011 at 4:00 pm
16 Comments
Does This Mean We'll Be Able to Fire Beams out of our Eyes?
Everett Collection
By day, Seok-Hyun Yun and Malte Gather are physicists at Massachusetts General Hospital. But at night, for the past four years, they worked on making a human cell behave like a laser. They built their human laser out of the same three components found in all lasers: a pump source, which provides the initial light energy; an optical cavity, which concentrates the light from the pump source into a beam; and a gain medium, a substance in which electrons are excited until they reach a higher-energy state and simultaneously release that energy as a beam of photons—laser light.
Awesome!
Yun and Gather modified a human kidney cell to produce green fluorescent protein (GFP), the substance that makes jellyfish bioluminescent. This was their gain medium. They cultured these modified cells and placed one between two mirrors, creating the optical cavity—“a cell sandwich,” Yun says. They then sent pulses of blue light from a miniature laser (the pump source) through the cell, where it bounced between the mirrors. The cell glowed green, and light shot out. Through a microscope, the physicists saw a grayish mass (the cell) with luminescent spots (the laser).
Light Pinball: Physicists created a laser by placing mirrors on either side of a human cell and sending pulses of blue light through it. The light bounced back and forth until a laser beam shot out in one direction. Courtesy Malte Gather
Now What?
A living laser could be used to activate cancer-treating drugs using photodynamic therapy. Doctors could inject light-sensitive compounds into a patient’s bloodstream to seek out tumors and diseased cells. Normally, such compounds are activated externally, but if both the drugs and the light itself were internal, treatment would be more precise. For now, though, Yun is primarily interested in the possibility of using his human laser to detect slight changes in cells. The intracavity light passes through the cells thousands or millions of times before exiting as a laser beam. Yun says that scientists could use the ricocheting light to monitor cell behavior with unprecedented sensitivity, similar to an intracellular high-speed camera. And yes, he says, his process could one day allow people to shoot laser beams from their eyes, though it would be more flashlight than death ray. “If a light source was implanted in the eye, it might be possible to control it with brain signals.”
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It is going to kill the key-chain flash-light industry!
With this, everyone can go to the movies and put a laser light on the movie screen and be annoying too!
OR
I kill you with my eyes!
It is all stupid; next POPSCI article please, thank you.
GeeWillikers...maybe stupid to you is as stupid does, quit with the negative trolling
Oh great! Now looks will be able to kill indefinitely!
drchuck1,
Oh, where are you positive words other than magically showing up mouth spattering as norm for you? “Hypocritical narcissistic jerk, Go away!”
........................................
I adore the inventors of this technology and POPSCI!
POPSCI is wonderful!!!!!!!!!!!
YEA POPSCI!!!!!!!
But, I do have a difficult time finding a practical use for it...
The waiter serves your steak to you. You stare at it for a moment a little disappointed; it was cooked rare and not the way you ordered. You do not want to send it back and wait another 10 minutes.
So you power up the old laser eyes and cook your steak exactly how you like it.
You smile with delight and look to your date across the table to your achievement, only to find she is really pissed off as you splattered her with hot grease from the sizzling hot stake.
Win some, loose some.
I am so excited and on pins and needles with anticipation to all the wondrous positive comments and information "DOCTOR CHARLES ONE" will supply us about this article!
..........................................
See life in all its beautiful colors, and
from different perspectives too!
Bubba, stfu. You are god-awful.
aldrons-last-hope non-sheep
aidrons-last-hope typical herd sheep,lol.
Biological lasers technology is incredable and so cool!
.............................
Science sees no further than what it can sense.
Religion sees beyond the senses.
@robot - Religion sees beyond the senses? What religion sees beyond sense is nonsense. It sees what no one can know or see. Man becomes the ultimate creator. He creates God in the image of man.
@ rfr88 ..........just think, 400 years ago no one ever saw an amoeba. Now we think we know all the poop there is to know. Or we can judge God existence or non-existance.
Hi GeeWillikers I agree with drchuck1
about all that negative talk
ps:this article is awesome
The lasing potential of human anatomy was known to the ancients and is symbolized by the medical symbol known as the caduceus.
www.realitysandwich.com/kundalini_and_human_laser