Surgery Using A Sunlight Scalpel

Makarand writes "Research conducted by Israeli doctors has shown that it is possible to use concentrated sunlight instead of lasers to perform surgery, providing a safe and low cost alternative to laser treatment. In their experiments sunlight was transported into the operating room from outside using a system of optical fibers. The concentrated rays - containing several watts of energy - were then used in the experimental surgery conducted on rats." Here is Wired's similar story.

Comments

Re:Cloudy days.

[MImeKillEr]

You can't fry ants in the winter, cause a) there are no ants to be seen, and b) the sunligth is not strong enough.

You've obviously never lived in my area of Texas.

Summers (with the exception of this one) usually have 30+ consecutive days over 100 degrees F. I'm not sure how many days we've had in the 100s this year. Three years ago we hit 117F.

We've had 'winters' where temps were in the 80s and not a single cloud in the sky.

We can literally wear shorts outdoors on Christmas.

Sure, the ants would usually be dormant, but not when that warm.

That was my idea!

[Gyl]

Of course I wasn't going to do surgery with it. I was thinking take the Keck telescope (10 m diameter), aim it at the sun, attach fiber optic cable at the focus, cut down a forest (being a gentle example of what to do :)

A quick google search reveals high power lasers of 100 W another quick search shows: ~250 W/m^2 as solar power reaching earth's surface. A circle of diameter 10 m, 78.5 m^2. Giving almost 20,000 watts. hehehe. Assume you loose half of that in mechanics, it's still 10,000 watts!

Several watts?

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

Granted the article is light on details (no pun intended) but why does the power source need to be the Sun? Why not use the same combining/collimating /focus method but draw the power from one or more conventional incandescent lamps?
Yes, I realize that Sun == free, and electicity != free. Howsabout the Solar version for subsaharan Africa where reliable power is rare but sunlight is not, and we'll take the 1/10th-the-price-of-a-laser incandescent one here in North America where the opposite is true.

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Re:Danger Wil Robinson!

[reverseengineer]

Is this sounding like a good way to get skin cancer to anyone else?

No, because the idea is to aim the beam at tissues that you want to destroy, such as tumor cells. Ideally, the targeted cells will be vaporized, so whether or not UV light induces mutations in them is a moot point.

I do personally love the ironic possibility of using a beam of focused sunlight to destroy a melanoma caused by too much exposure to sunlight, though.