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Laser Powered Paper Plane Takes Flight
RobertTaylor writes: "Ananova is reporting that Japanese scientists have developed a laser powered paper plane. A blast of light from a commercial laser heats up a droplet of acrylic polymer or water on its surface which acts as fuel. Full story here" Nature also has a story on this advance.
using the laser to power its direction by, for instance, blasting off parts of the wings.
Dont some airlines already do that though? Ie just dropping bits of its wings during flights. I wouldn't call it revolutionary, except in using a laser to do it rather than metal fatigue.
I remember a while back reading about a laser powered metal disk that was going to possibly be an alternative to space travel. A laser on the ground would shoot at the center of the craft, which (being a mirror on the bottom) would reflect the light to the sides. The air would get so hot that it would "ignite" and force the craft up a few inches. The great thing about this is that the energy to get into orbit doesn't need to be carried by the craft, rather simply kept on land.
Here's a link to an article about it.
...fanatical Muslim zealots hijacked a paper plane fully fueled with five drops of water and crashed it into a scale-model skyscraper built out of playing cards... approximately 4 people received horribly disfiguring paper cuts in the ensuing collapse of the structure.
An army of rescue workers has descended on the scene and is engaged in what has been described as "52 pick-up, one thousand times over."
SEC officials are looking into massive short-selling of United States Playing Card Company and Hammermill stock in the two days prior to the incident.
Actually, it's be reaction mass, not fuel. The water/polymer itself isn't releasing energy to propel the plane. The laser provides the energy to power a state change (liquid to gas) which pushes the sucker along.
I think the "fuel" (liquid cessium??) in an ion engine is the same way, providing reaction mass while the real energy is from the electrical source.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
I made a laser powered paper airplane once. Actually it was made out of aluminum, not paper. Well, actually one of those little foil gum wrappers, I'm not sure if it was aluminum or not. And I guess it wasn't really a laser, I guess it was my finger flicking it... but I was holding a laser pointer in the other hand and was guiding the plane to the target using it! (And then after I made a few of those and threw them into a big pile, I made a beowulf cluster out of them just for good measure.)