Tag Archive: Lasers
Very interesting. Propellent-less drives requiring no fuel but electricity have long been a dream of the space community.
That’s microwave laser, basically. No one’s really sure what the applications are, but that’s partially because masers have mostly been highly experimental novelty devices until now. And considering how we use lasers just about everywhere…
Their first target is Alzheimer’s, using a strain of worm they’ve bred that develops the disease in 5 days.
Modeled after bird feathers, which produce very specific frequencies of light.
Neat. Hopefully it lets us get higher frequency lasers easier.
One Japanese team is getting ready to do so. The trick is using ceramics for the laser’s hardware components.
They block light at a very specific frequency. That sounds immensely useful for optical switching, and potentially for optical computing, as well.
After the satellite collision of yesterday, Popular Mechanics has an article showing how the debris propogated from China’s satellite kill a few years back. A similar effect will probably happen pretty quickly with the recent collision. The question is how do we deal with it. Space lasers? An aerogel based brilliant pebble? Are there any other options?
Update: Glenn Reynolds has some suggestions regarding incentives. That could certainly help.
Tai-Chi Policy 