Laser Technology Advancements (at least from my easily impressed perspective)

In this time-lapse series of photos, progressing from top to bottom, a coating of sucrose (ordinary sugar) over a wire made of carbon nanotubes is lit at the left end, and burns from one end to the other. As it heats the wire, it drives a wave of electrons along with it, thus converting the heat into electricity.

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Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have come up with a new system for generating electricity that could*show promise for powering small airplanes.*"The potential energy density of this power source is on the same scale with petrochemical energy sources, and it is orders of magnitude higher than commercial lithium ion batteries," Michael Strano, an MIT professor of chemical engineering, told AVweb this week. "It definitely has the potential to power airplanes of any size," Strano said, "especially after our continuous power output methodology (which is not included in this report) is worked out." The report on the team's experiments was published this week in the journal Energy & Environmental Science.

The new approach is based on a discovery announced in 2010 by Strano and his co-workers: A wire made from tiny cylinders of carbon, known as carbon nanotubes, can produce an electrical current when it is progressively heated from one end to the other, for example by coating it with a combustible material and then lighting one end to let it burn like a fuse. That discovery represented a previously unknown phenomenon. Strano and his team have increased the efficiency of the process more than a thousandfold and have produced devices that can put out power that is, pound for pound, in the same ballpark as what can be produced by today's best batteries, accordingp to MIT.

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Strano said an open flame is not the only way to make the technology work. "The reaction wave can be triggered via multiple methods, such as a laser (demonstrated in the past), a joule heater (used in this report), etc.," he told AVweb

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Strano added that his 2010 experiments with the technology demonstrated seven times the power density as compared to a commercial lithium ion battery. "Even with the current numbers, we could sustain an engine that is seven times as powerful as before, which allows us to bring more fuels on board," he said. "Given similar energy density of the device, it should not come as a surprise that it will sustain a longer flight time than the current battery technology. Exactly how much longer depends on the efficiency of the engine as well as the aerodynamics, in that how much more weight can an engine pull given it could generate seven times its original power."

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This video from June 2010 demonstrates the basic technology. It was produced by*"Daily Planet" on Discovery Channel Canada.

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Researchers have figured out how to write data to glass so that the data will survive for billions of years, paving the way for super powerful optical storage devices. Optical scientists from the University of Southampton have developed a new revolutionary method called 5D optical memory, where up to 360TB of data can be stored on glass for billions of years, which could help mankind to be remembered ages after we are gone.

In order to store data in glass, scientists need to make use of nanogratings, which put simply, refers to a nanoscale grating created by shooting extremely fast femtosecond laser pulses of light at a material – usually metal or glass – to produce grooves or markings in it. In popular culture, this would be something similar to Superman using the laser beams in his eyes to store information in the memory crystals of the Fortress of Solitude.

Nanogratings were first invented in 1999 by Professor Peter Kazansky, who leads a group in physical optoelectronics at a research centre at the University of Southampton. Developing that technique, in 2011 researchers at the university also discovered how to store up to 50GB of data in glass shards by using the lasers to create tiny dots called "voids" in to pure silica glass.

The idea is that the femtosecond laser writes information into the glass by changing the way light moves through it, and each tiny dot created is able to store one bit of information. This 3D optical data storage method is similar to that used by CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs today, and the researchers have recorded a copy each of the Magna Carta, the King James Bible and the UN Declaration of Human Rights to glass to preserve

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But to make glass digital data storage devices a viable reality, the researchers, including photonics and optoelectronics PhD students Aušra Cerkauskaite, Aabid Patel and Rokas Drevinskas, have now developed a method of reading and writing data to glass, using a five-dimensional (5D) digital data storage method whereby instead of tiny dots, the femtosecond lasers create self-assembling nanostructures.

Depending on the orientation of the structures as well as strength of the structures (which is determined by how long the glass is exposed to light), the scientists found that they could increase the capacity of each dot in the glass, so that each dot is able to store three bits of information, instead of one.

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"We are the first in the world to have developed and successfully stored data in glass in the manner we're doing it, as well as having a large capacity. Our leading competition is 3D void printing which is being developed by Hitachi, but because we've deviated from 3D void printing, we can store more data in the same volumes they're storing data in."

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At the moment, the longest-lasting storage technology in the world is the M-Disc, which uses Blu-ray technology to store data for up to 1,000 years. To give you context, a regular Blu Ray disc lasts for between 10-20 years, and flash storage lasts for a few years at most.

In contrast, the 3D void-based fused silica disc technology currently being developed would enable storage devices to last for 100 million years, but the 5D digital storage method goes beyond this by hitting "billions upon billions of years", according to the researchers.

The research, entitled "Eternal 5D data storage by ultrafast laser writing in glass", will be presented at the SPIE—The International Society for Optical Engineering Conference in San Francisco on 17 February.

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This new material is so black, scientists can't even measure it. In fact, it barely reflects any light at all.This is a highly unusual property for most substances. Normally, when you shine a laser on a material, you can see the light from the laser drift across it as it reflects back at you. This is how our eyes can see the colors that make up the world around us.

But when engineers from British company Surrey NanoSystems trace a laser over the blackest material ever, the light disappears.

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Where does the light go? Basically, it gets trapped inside the material. Vantablack, as the material is called, is made by tightly packing carbon nanotubes — rods of carbon that are much, much thinner than any human hair — so close together that light goes in, but can't escape.

The material is so black that even their spectrometers (machines that record colors and light) can't measure its darkness. It's likely higher than the original Vantablack, which could absorbed 99.96% of the light that hit it.

To be clear, Vantablack isn't paint and is unlikely to be as durable, too. Even a little bit of water can mess up other ultra-black materials made of nanomaterials — though the original Vantablack seems to hold up pretty well*to dunking in water*as well as liquid nitrogen.

Surrey NanoSystems made the original Vantablack back in 2014, which they said absorbed 99.96% of the light that hit it. But this new version of Vantablack (which we first heard about from ScienceAlert) is so black that their machines aren't powerful enough to measure its darkness.

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At a Los Angeles tech show in August, Japanese researchers vaporized visitors’ fingertips with high-energy lasers. They were not demonstrating a new form of torture. On the contrary, says principal investigator Yoichi Ochiai, their laser plasma display is the future of entertainment.

Ochiai has created the first airborne hologram that can be physically felt and manipulated. He’s done so by precisely focusing infrared laser light to selectively ionize, or steal the electrons from, air molecules at the beam’s focal point, generating a flash of bluish-white plasma. Two-hundred-thousand flashes per second are sufficient to generate a three-dimensional moving image.

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How it Works

1. A femtosecond laser system sends out ultrashort bursts of laser light.

2. A spatial light modulator, which adjusts laser intensity using an array of computer-controlled pixels, generates a holographic image.

3. Mirrors focus the beam into position, arranging each individual voxel (the term for 3-D pixels) at specific lateral (X,Y) and axial (Z) points. The focused beam excites the air, ionizing electrons and creating points of bluish-white light.

4. A camera captures user interaction.

Ordinarily, plasma is dangerously hot; Ochiai’s tests with nanosecond blasts quickly incinerated bits of leather. But by shortening the bursts from nanoseconds to femtoseconds — quadrillionths of a second — Ochiai’s team can make the plasma safe for fingers. Although the ultrashort bursts do ionize the skin’s surface, turning it into plasma, it’s not long enough to cause damage. Instead, the ionization makes shock waves across the finger’s surface, resulting in a tingling sensation. Ochiai says it feels like touching sandpaper.

Contact with flesh also causes the plasma to brighten, an effect Ochiai plans to exploit for interactive holograms, noting that the brightening can provide a visual cue for video tracking.

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And he intends to go big. Ochiai foresees fully immersive holographic experiences in concert halls and stadiums — as well as aerial 3-D markers for roads and runways — all within decades. “I’m a 28-year-old assistant professor,” he remarks. “I think I can make it before my retirement.”

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In the world of wireless gadgets, charging is still a big problem Israeli startup Wi-Charge*is looking to change that by allowing us constant wireless charging using infrared laser technology.

Ortal Alpert, Wi-Charge's founder, had worked for years developing advanced optical storage solutions for his former startup. During this time he frequently travelled the globe on business, which forced him to constantly look for places to charge his mobile devices. Based on his experience as an optical engineer, he developed a new technology for wireless charging that uses infrared lasers and relies on two unique, and now patented, ideas.

Powerful lasers can be dangerous, however Wi-Charge uses a class 1 infra red laser (safe under all conditions of normal use) and more importantly the "external cavity" design means that the instant anything crosses the path of the laser—your hand, your eye—amplification will stop and the energy will drop.

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Unlike other far field technologies, Wi-Charge has a pretty small footprint. A receiver can be as small as your phone's camera module and still charge from a distance of ten meters, Wi-Charge claims. For more power demanding applications and longer ranges both the transmitter and receiver will have to be larger, but not dramatically so.

One potential application of the technology can be for powering a drone for border patrol or installation security. In this scenario a drone will receive power along its way from a transmitter mounted on a patrol car or on top of a building or tower from a distance of dozens or even hundreds of meters away and can stay in the air for countless hours or even days.

Laser power beaming isn't a new concept. Researchers from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and the University of Alabamapowered a small-scale aircraft that flew solely by means of propulsive power from a ground-based 1-kw infrared laser back in 2003.

Wi-Charge says it's inherent safety and small footprint would allow it to ground-power private and commercial drones in urban environment.

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Alpert promises that the first product based on Wi-Charge's technology will be available in late 2016 and would be Internet-of-Things or smart home related. A year later the company is planning to release a residential mobile phone charging solution that will include a transmitter and phone case at the retail price of just under US $200.*

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One of the big advantages of Wi-Charge's technology is its ability to deliver almost any amount of power, from few milliwatts for sensor powering to hundreds of watts used in industrial or even military applications. For the consumer market with devices such as smart phones and wearables, Wi-Charge is looking to start with a system capable of delivering 10 W.

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Wi-Charge's ingenious idea was to take (the laser) cavity, which is typically a closed device, and turn it into an "open unit" where one of the mirrors is located for example in a light fixture on the ceiling and the other one on the receiving device. The semiconductor gain medium is located in the transmitter and provides the photons that are harvested by the photovoltaic cell at the receiver.

. . . Wi-Charge uses a class 1 infra red laser (safe under all conditions of normal use)

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Scientists in Germany have just made a remarkable breakthrough in transporter technology inspired by the hit TV show and movie phenomenon Star Trek.

Researchers from the Institute of Applied Physics at the University of Jena have used lasers to move information from one place to another instantaneously in the first demonstration of quantum teleportation, according to the Express.

“Just like it did at the starship USS Enterprise, the information is transmitted fully and instantly, without any loss of time.”

While the scientists can’t transport solid matter yet, they can transmit the chemical and physical properties of objects with their laser beams, an important first step in developing Star Trek style transporter technology for everyday use.

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Dr Alexander Szameit and Dr Marco Ornigotti have successfully used their transporter technology to move elementary particles like electrons and photons using their “spatially delocalized state” in a process known as quantum teleportation.

The theory of quantum teleportation was first written in 1993 and advances in technology enabled scientists to transport information 63 miles away using fiber optic cable in 2015. Now, German scientists have been able to reproduce that experiment without the physical necessity of wires or cables bringing the Star Trek technology much closer to becoming reality, reports the Express.

“It is possible to transmit information from one location to another without any loss of time"

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But reading the state of that faraway particle required an additional message sent at the speed of light, placing a limit on how quickly teleportation can be used to send information.

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Last year, NASA scientists developed the ability to create a warp drive engine like the one that powers the Enterprise. The EmDrive project was able to create a small warp bubble that suspended spacetime for objects inside the bubble. The technology could theoretically be used to allow a ship to travel faster than light without the negative effects; the front of the bubble pushed space time away from the object which then reformed around the back.
Read more at 'Beam Me Up Scotty', Breakthrough In Star Trek Style Transporter Technology

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paul1598419 said:

Hi, Mac. Don't see the post diachi is talking about, but the one on laser transmittance of information was informative. Thanks for the news.

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