Investigating Super Efficient Laser Propulsion Leads to Serendipitous UV effects

wvanhuffel writes "In this article from spacedaily the authors may be on the road to creating the impulse engine....then again, maybe not. It's life imitating art again!" The article details the exploration of the use of lasers and more importantly a new effect when certain materials (in this case lead) are struck by the laser, apparantly a predictable secondary explosion 50 millionths of a second after the target is struck, emitting UV light.

Comments

Re:It's BIG!

[Doctor Fishboy]

I have been watching the discover and history channels lately, and one thing that seems to stick out like a sore thumb in science is people finding incredible discoveries, and then shelving them or ignoring them becuase it isn't part of the expierement that was being performed. Then maybe 5, 10 or even 100 years later someone will stumble on to it and change the world.

It could also be that they repeated the experiment many times, subsequently realised that it was a known side-effect that they hadn't taken into account the first time around, and then carried on as normal.

The difference is that the History and Discovery channels rarely do programs on "Incredible discovery of the millenium turns out to be misunderstood version of the photoelectric effect".

Please don't misunderstand me, I'm just as excited about new, interesting and unexplained phonomena too. It's just that the media hypes up the unexplained whilst dismissing it as 'boring' if scientists then find out an explanation using known physics.

Dr Fish