After 60 Years, a Room-Temperature Maser

gbrumfiel writes "Before there were lasers, there were masers: systems that amplified microwaves instead of light. Solid state masers are used in a variety of applications, including deep space communication, but they've never been as popular as lasers, in part because they have to be cooled to near absolute zero in order to work. Now a team of British physicists have built a room-temperature maser using some spare chemicals and a laser they bought off of eBay. The new device is 100 million times as powerful as existing masers and might revolutionize telecommunications."

Comments

Re:Cold Fusion?

[cjc25]

Because you saw the words "room-temperature" and you missed the last sentence of the first paragraph where it says the findings were published in one of the most widely respected peer reviewed journals?

Or just didn't read TFA ;)

Absolute Zero

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to nitpick a bit, 10 K (as the article mentions) is really quite easy to achieve with off-the-shelf cryogenic equipment, and not the "near absolute zero" as the summary sort of suggests (I usually reserve this for 1 K, but maybe this is just me).

Re:Absolute Zero

[hamster_nz]

Must be just you...

* When I need a hat on it's cold

* When my beer in the truck freezes overnight then it's really cold

* When the diesel in my truck freezes overnight then it's really cold.

* When my desktop maser works without any external cooling, then it's near absolute zero.

Re:I want diagrams, temperatures, power figures, e

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the link to the proper paper is at the bottom in the references part, with a good description of results. Here is a direct link: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v488/n7411/pdf/nature11339.pdf

Re:Cold Fusion?

[symbolset]

You may be destined for a long unpleasant online experience.