Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Laser Blast Makes Regular Light Bulbs Super-Efficient

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the bright-ideas dept.

guruevi writes with news that a process using an ultra-powerful laser can crank up the efficiency of everyday incandescent light bulbs. Using the same laser process covered several years ago, the tungsten filament has an array of nano- and micro-scale structures formed on the surface making the resulting light as bright as a 100-watt bulb while consuming less electricity than a 60-watt bulb and remaining much cheaper to produce. "The key to creating the super-filament is an ultra-brief, ultra-intense beam of light called a femtosecond laser pulse. The laser burst lasts only a few quadrillionths of a second. To get a grasp of that kind of speed, consider that a femtosecond is to a second what a second is to about 32 million years. During its brief burst, Guo's laser unleashes as much power as the entire grid of North America onto a spot the size of a needle point. That intense blast forces the surface of the metal to form nanostructures and microstructures that dramatically alter how efficiently light can radiate from the filament."

14 of 559 comments (clear)

  1. Now I Understand Lasers by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Funny

    Laser Blast Makes Regular Light Bulbs Super-Efficient

    So that whole time in Star Wars, they were just trying to make each other Super-Efficient? That's a whole lot nicer than what I was led to believe was initially going on.

    LASIK makes a lot more sense now too.

    I'm learning!

    --
    My work here is dung.
    1. Re:Now I Understand Lasers by gnick · · Score: 4, Funny

      I think you just redefined "learning". But, it is in line with a lot of the "facts" I've picked up on /.

      --
      He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
    2. Re:Now I Understand Lasers by sesshomaru · · Score: 5, Funny

      James Bond: Do you expect me to talk?

      Auric Goldfinger: No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to be more efficient!

      --
      "MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
    3. Re:Now I Understand Lasers by bugnuts · · Score: 4, Funny

      Couple this thing with a few femtosharks, and my high-efficiency evil lair will be complete.

    4. Re:Now I Understand Lasers by cheftw · · Score: 5, Funny

      Well I just learned how femtoseconds work. Thanks to TFS.

      Though it might have been more helpfully put if they said that a car travelling at 40 furlongs per fortnight goes 6.652x10^-8 Angstroms in a femtosecond.

      --
      Always back up, never back down. ---- Think you're cool 'cos your uid is prime? Take mine, modulo the one digit integers
    5. Re:Now I Understand Lasers by Thinboy00 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Couple this thing with a few femtosharks with frickin' femtolasers, and my high-efficiency evil lair will be complete.

      There, fixed that for you.

      --
      $ make available
    6. Re:Now I Understand Lasers by Gilmoure · · Score: 3, Funny

      I knew a girl like that in high school. At least, that's what other guys said she'd do but she never wanted to go out with me. Still, D&D was fun.

      --
      I drank what? -- Socrates
    7. Re:Now I Understand Lasers by Nefarious+Wheel · · Score: 3, Funny

      Though it might have been more helpfully put if they said that a car travelling at 40 furlongs per fortnight goes 6.652x10^-8 Angstroms in a femtosecond.

      A person I worked with during the Pioneer 12/13 Venus launch was responsible for a program called "orgeom" (orbital geometry, Fortran 4P on a PDP 11/40 iirc). For a lark, he first computed the trajectory using furlongs per fortnight. Later (I'm sure the two events were not linked) there was a VMS SYSGEN parameter called "IOTA" (an arbitrary value assigning kernel/exec computing time to a process for accounting purposes) somewhere around 4.0 or so that was measured in "microfortnights".

      Resolved: Geek humour runs on a 14 day cycle.

      --
      Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
  2. And they will hit the shelves in... by pandymen · · Score: 5, Funny

    So, considering they are as cheap to produce as normal lightbulbs, we can expect to see these on the shelves in...2050?

    1. Re:And they will hit the shelves in... by Garridan · · Score: 3, Funny

      Yes, but these incandescents contain nanoparticles which are going to reduce our world to grey goo! Fear! The certainty of yet another generation of children subjected to scientifically-proven mercury poisoning is much less scary than the possibility of the destruction of all life on earth!

  3. Re:This just in... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    There's an app for that.

  4. Re:Too late by b4dc0d3r · · Score: 4, Funny

    But... with LEDs you don't get to shoot a powerful laser at a tungsten filament!

  5. Re:High-efficeiency incandescent bulbs by Kral_Blbec · · Score: 3, Funny

    You dont have to dispose of it from coal though, the wind does it for you!

  6. Re:This just in... by someone1234 · · Score: 4, Funny

    The rest goes to feed the sharks.

    --
    Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry