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Surgery with Femtosecond Lasers
An anonymous reader writes "Science Daily has an article on femtosecond lasers, which emit pulses of light that are a billion times shorter than an electronic camera flash and how they are currently being used in LASIK procedures."
Light travels about a foot per nanosecond.
The article doesn't mention why ultra-short duration lasers are so much more attractive for surgery. The reason is that one of the problems with lasers is they heat the area around what you're trying to remove, and thus damage it and make imprecise cuts. Femto second lasers have such a short duration that there's not enough time to heat the surrounding area.
AccountKiller
No, you're wrong... that's 20/40 vision.
40/20 vision is GREAT vision... you can read at 40 feet what "normal" people can see only at 20 feet.