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Lasers for Fun and Profit
Stuart of Wapping writes "This is a very interesting site, links to pages describing real-life, tried-and-tested Star-Trek/James Bond gadgets... The Laser Medical Pen, or Medpen, developed in-house by the Laser Division of the Air Force Research Laboratory's Directed Energy Directorate, is a second-generation device that provides a physician or paramedic with a unique, compact, portable, and battery-operated laser capability. The laser can cut like a scalpel as well as coagulate bleeding."
I remember Scott Adams mentioning something like this in "The Dilbert Future", and why it wouldn't go mainstream, because people would buy them from medical supply stores. And then just imagine them in the hands of your friends. Go to sleep and have your asscrack sealed.
Only in slashdot are posts of solidarity modded at -1 Redundant, while posts of antagonism are modded as -1 Flamebait.
Wow, I thought laser pointers in traffic were bad.
This'll bring it to a whole new level.
This is just another example of how real life follows in the footsteps of science fiction: impossible things 30 years ago being made possible in similar ways that they were 'being done' in sci-fi stuffs. It never ceases to amaze me how writers with far-fetched ideas can be on the money so often, even though they are way ahead of their time.
What intrigued me was the information about high power microwaves. It says
"High Power Microwave produces burnout and disruption in electronics while not affecting humans."
Yes, I realize that anything within a range of the spectrum around 2.4Ghz is considered microwave (cell phone, cordless phones, 802.11, etc.) but isn't the only reason they don't hurt people because they are relatively low power? I imagine if you pump enough power into one of those things it could start to make you boil.
Anyway, I'd hate to be one of the test subjects used in determining whether or not this actually does cause damage.
The future isn't what it used to be.
I used to work at a laser lab and we had a suitcase laser. Looked like a photographers case, brushed aluminum, plug it in, and out from the corner came a beam of Alexandrite produced photons (Alexandrite is a vibronic and can be tuned to lase at many different frequencies). This suitcase was shopped around the military quite a bit, that same lab used to buy meat from the grocery store and cut it with the lasers to test surgical properties. Most dangerous place I ever worked, coding with green goggles on, possible instant blindness, 20kv shocks whilst standing in water from leaking cooling pumps! I even got my belt burned like a high school ticker tape experiment, an ND (neutral density) filter exploded because the energy from the beam was so powerful, my boss knocked the hamamatsu(sp?) energy meter out of the way, and I was behind it at belt level, two burns close together in the leather belt and one further away as I tried to escape :)
Hedley
First page of the instruction manual that comes with a laser:
CAUTION: DO NOT LOOK INTO LASER WITH REMAINING EYE!
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
All that money. All that research. All those lasers.
And yet the one thing I ask for is still missing. That's right. I want some sharks with frickin lasers attached to their heads.
Throw me a bone here, people.
Everyone should have a Death Ray.
Especially a battery operated, portable Death Ray!
I just picked up a 3 Watt laser diode at a Hamfest recently. It's whats at the core of the med-pack and portable med-pens displayed. This thing is really fucking cool. It will make paper and wire insulation, plastic, etc. burst into flame from about 1/4 inch away.
The diode is made by Spectra Diode Labs (SDL) and channels 3 Watts of optical energy at 808 nanometers into a fiber optic. I have that clamped into a standard mechanical pencil to hold the fiber and allow it to be directed with some control.
The spot that appears is very scary because it appears weak red, about 5 mW of visible light energy is present but 98 % of the optical power is invisible in the infrared spectrum.
I haven't tried any home laser surgery yet, but it makes a dandy wire stripper or marking scribe. I also use it to open sealed ni-cad battery packs and change cells for walkie-talkies, etc.
Yep, Everyone should have a Death Ray!
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
Actually I think most of the things we have today are because of the ideas in books/movies/etc. Not becuase some writer "predicted" it but because some reader thought "man it would be cool to have one of those communicator thingys" and so he made one. I doubt most writers are ahead of thier time but they have damn good ideas which us ubergeeks latch on to and make a reality. Mark my words, one day some geek will beat his brains out until warp engines are cruising ships around the galaxy not because Gene Roddenberry had some kinda vision of the future but because his idea seemed like it made some sense and sparked the brain of a few fans.