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Scientists Invent World's First Anti-Laser
Velcroman1 writes "Two scientists at Yale University have built the laser's first doppelganger: the anti-laser. While a conventional laser emits a constant beam of light in one direction, the anti-laser simply does the opposite. It takes that same steady light stream and interacts with it in such a way that it absorbs and cancels out the light. And scientists hope the strange creation could help the fight against cancer. A. Douglas Stone, one of the two researchers behind the project, said he came up with the idea for a 'nega-laser' when working with equations for a random laser with his partner in crime, Hui Cao. 'I figured, if we just somehow illuminated the cavity, and replaced the gain medium with something that tends to absorb light, we could essentially reverse the process,' Stone said. Oh, that makes sense."
an anti-laser pointer.
Now it's up to the biologists to create anti-sharks
It shoots a coherent beam of darkness!
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"nega-laser"
I think the prefer vernacular is African-American-laser
...an anti-laser capable of emitting a beam of pure anti-anti-matter.
Now they'll create freaking anti-sharks to attach these to.
All I wanted was frickin' nega-sharks with anti-lasers on their heads. Is that too much to ask?
Because it sounds like they just figured out how to turn off a laser...
you could just use a mirror.
How will this affect the Anti-Shark population?
It just sounds like they turned the laser off.
They can use it to zap the anti-news slashdot keeps posting.
Sure, their idea sounds fancy, but really it's just needlessly complex. I've discovered a material that provides the same effect, but much more cheaply. Additionaly, it can be applied to nearly any surface.
It's called matte black paint.
This post has been brought to you by equal parts ignorance and pedantry.
Obviously they just reversed the polarity.
I'm shocked. I would've assumed it was priests, or maybe economists.
non sequitur Harry Potter reference
No doubt there's more to it than this. But TFA isn't clear.
Shoot, you beat me to it...
Can you install this near the cockpit of planes, making them immune to the dreaded blinding green laser attack? Or for that matter, make something immune to laser guided missiles?
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
It sounds just like an inverse tachyon pulse, really.
Lasers have always confused me, and maybe someone smarter than me can explain this. Why can't you just hold up a mirror, or create something even more reflective to make weapons grade lasers useless? Isn't it just light?
I call them "walls"
That's "Darkness Amplification by Stimulated Absorbance of Radiation"
Odd this will be able to treat cancer: 0.
Scientist: We have an amazing toy! It does weird stuff, but nothing useful. In fact it's so weird, we don't even know what's happening. Who knows, once we figure it out, we might find that it is similar to radiation therapy used today to combat cancer.
Reporter: The scientists believe that someday it could be used in our fight against cancer
Editor: hmm... it's not really that big of a story. The only thing that makes it interesting enough to print is the bit about cancer.
Final printed version: It CURES cancer!
Free unix account: freeshell.org
I hope a diamond-encrusted gold bust of my magnificently pale ass will help to fight cancer. Doesn't mean it will, and it doesn't justify the ridiculous cost of following through with such an endeavour.
Something tells me these Yale guys got their tenure renewed not too long ago.
Two scientists at Yale University have built the laser's first doppelganger: the anti-laser.
I do not think this word means what you think it means.
I invented an anti-laser too. I call it a mirror. And it has 101 other uses!
If we could put one of those on an airplane and rig up a system that could target people lasering aircraft, pilots wouldn't have to worry about being "lased" while they're on final approach. It's a serious problem and as a private pilot I have no sympathy for people who lase aircraft, especially during final approach when you're going "low and slow" or when you're doing your base/final approach.
Now we have to invent anti-sharks!
I thought a doppelganger was a "Twin" or as Dictionary.com says "–noun a ghostly double or counterpart of a living person." Wouldn't this be more like the antithesis of a laser? Just throwing that out there.
an anti-laser was just a flashlight /shrug
An anti-laser would emit light in every direction except for a tightly focused beam.
....anti-fricking laser beams on their heads?
Uh? What about those?
Yea, you better go get 'em Frau if you know what's good for ya!
*snap* *snap*
I hope a diamond-encrusted gold bust of my magnificently pale ass will help to fight cancer.
A bust of your ass?
bust
n.
1. A sculpture representing a person's head, shoulders, and upper chest.
What does your face look like?
Do you have someone busting your ass right now?
1) Anti-laser
2) ?
3) Profit!
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
BBC article on the same subject talks only about using in optical computers.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12453893
I want a device that I can point to a screen and make the slides disappear
Why are we getting ours news from Fox? For every concrete nit-picky criticism I can make about the article (improper use of the word "doppelganger", the strangely "compressed" quotation at the end) there are some serious conceptual issues with the article as well. I'm not convinced the author understands half of what's going on. I've gotten the distant impression from the interviews that this is a device that takes in a laser light and dissipates the light into heat, but the article seems to be implying any number of things from an EMP-like device that cancels out lasers to a laser shield. There was no adequate explanation of how the device could be used for cancer treatment. Finally, and the one thing that gives the article that special Fox News touch, is the subtle but definitely present underlying tone of "This technology will be the death of us all, because science is really complicated, I don't understand it, and I don't like things I don't understand."
I sometimes ask revealing, often ignorant-seeming questions. Maybe they're harder to answer than you think.
I saw this in Nature when it first was published. It's completely useless. Basically what they are suggesting is putting weak absorber inside a high-Q cavity. The result? High absorption at the fabrey-perot modes. Surprise, surprise.
Guess what - absorbing light isn't particularly difficult. This is probably the most overblown waste of memory I have every read.
... just heaved a huge sigh of relief.
In related news, evil scientists are working feverishly to invent anti-sharks.
I have for sale today a combined laser/anti-laser device. It has the laser and anti-laser integrated, so that the end result is a powerful canceled-out beam. The device looks just like a laserpointer with the batteries removed.
Inquiries only from interested parties, please.
"According to Stone and other physicists, the creation of the anti-laser -- the eggheads refer to it as a coherent perfect absorber (CPA) -- has been one of the defining technological innovations of the past century. So could this anti-laser have just as much impact on society’s future?"
Considering the source, that eggheads comment comes off as pejorative. Cool editorializing bro.
This is just constructive or destructive interference of two beams of light, no different than a resonant-cavity photodiode, which has existed for 20 years. Lasing, if you recall, is stimulated emission, represented by one of Einstein's coefficients. The opposite physical process, which is the opposite Einstein coefficient, is absorption, which is always stimulated (there's no such thing as spontaneous absorption). We've long known about "anti-lasing"--it's called absorption.
Nothing to see here, move along.
I'm TOTALLY going to $&*# with the cat's head!
and emits it in the other direction.
You will be assimilated.
Can this technology be adapted as a defense used by a cyborg alien race, by any chance?
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To create a laser, you need to excite the atoms in the medium. So with an anti-laser, does that mean the atoms are depressed? Maybe they need a little atomic prozaic.
Holy shit, did he just invert the polarity?
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
Why are we getting ours news from Fox?
Fox News reported something the mainstream media didn't.
/. and lots of other technews sites. Statistics is also science, so don't generalize.
You anti-Foxers have this infinite loop problem:
1) Fox News reports something no other source does;
2) Libs yell "LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU FOX IS BIASED!" and remain ignorant of the story;
3) Rinse and repeat.
I can name numerous stories the MSM ignores, and only Fox reports, but you wouldn't want to hear about it because Fox reported it!
And your whole anti-science thing by Fox viewers is just BS generalization. Sure, there are some creationists out there who would naturally gravitate there. But I am intellectually curious enough to read
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
For those interested (and assuming you can read it), http://arxiv.org/abs/1003.4968 is the pre-print article.
Congratulations, you corrected an Anonymous Coward on the internet. Your trophy is in the mail.
You knew what he meant.
If these guys have come up with something that will scale up to megawatt powers, this could spell the end of overhead power lines. It could power anything line-of-sight, including satellites. It could also transmit solar power harvested from space to the earth. Laser light can be focused tightly onto a target, unlike microwaves or radio-based radiation. This could be very efficient...
..flesh and bone turn into minerals. Realising this it was a simple matter to reverse the process.
- Hubert Farnsworth
came up with the idea for a "nega-laser" when working with equations for a random laser with his partner in crime
Wow, some people are really taking their DC Universe Online character builds seriously. Can I join their guild?
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
most technologies build on prior discovery; Years ago a non-coherent version was descrbed in JIR
http://www.artofhacking.com/IET/NEWTECH/live/aoh_darkbulb.htm
I invented an anti-laser weapon years ago. It's called a corner reflector.
Man they'll throw the C word into anything in hopes of getting public attention and grant money.
Everyone knows that to make an anti-laser, you just have to switch the polarity!
(Does that mean it doesn't not matter?) Good heavens!
A government-funded anti-vibrator!
"You mean, he's going to send us to an anti-planet?" ... what's the name of this song ...
OK, enough of that. ;)
I'm adding you to my zoo.pl friends for the RHPS reference. I'm posting anon, b/c I know most mods won't have a clue (we'll all fuck the mods, GANG BANG THE MODS!), but if you wanted to friend me back, I'm /. user orangesquid
ta-ta!
We now have flash-darks for when it's light?
OMG a cavity with an absorber. I want to go to an over priced school for spoiled babies that would publish crap like this like its a big deal. Can we stop getting retarded press releases for the ivy league on /. please?
Scientist: Fuck you! Reporter: Scientist rapes journalist. (from SMBC)
Sooo... lightsaber anyone?
Oh, wait.
You mean its a real Dark Sucker?
I've heard about that in a campfire skit. Isn't that why burnt stuff turns black, because the light gets out?
*DO* look at the anti-laser with the damaged eye???
I am an ACCA student. Got a query on Accountancy/Finance? Maybe I can help!
Could this be used for power transmission? Think of the money that could be saved.
I wonder what implications this discovery will have in holographic technology. Could there be such thing as an anti-hologram?
Since the provided Fox News link is useless, here is the link to the original Science paper published today by the researchers. Requires paid access, if you don't have that, try PhysicsWorld.
Basically, it is a time-reversed laser, so it absorbs coherent light.
We will finally know the Speed of Dark!
That was my first thought too :P
This would solve a lot of transportation/transmission issues.
Can't you make a light sabre with this or a laser cheese slicer like cutting tool?
I was ACTUALLY GOING TO RTFA, until I saw fox noise as the source. Instantly zeroed credibility.
does superman have to be worried?