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Researchers Use Lasers For Cooling

Posted by samzenpus on from the keeping-it-cool dept.

MatthewVD writes "Infrared cameras on satellites and night vision goggles could soon use lasers to cool their components. According to the study published in Nature, researchers in Singapore were able to cool the semiconductor cadmium sulfide from 62 degrees fahrenheit to -9 degrees by focusing a green laser on it and making it fluoresce and lose energy as light. Since they require neither gas nor moving parts, they can be more compact, free from vibration and not prone to mechanical failure."

10 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. Pff by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Been saying lasers are cool for ages, but do they listen to me? Nooo...

    1. Re:Pff by ackthpt · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Been saying lasers are cool for ages, but do they listen to me? Nooo...

      So I'm out with the astronomy club with all our cool glass and tubes and stuff and have people looking at Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, M-13, fun stuff like that there. Someone asks, "Which star is Sirius?" I pull out my laser pointer and show them. Little kid says, "Whoa! That's COOL! Mom! Buy me one!"

      I tell the mother, "No, do not buy him one. Laser is not toy. Can blind himself or a friend with it. Under no circumstances should you buy him a laser. Buy him a UV flashlight to look at centipedes or something."

      Lasers are cool, but only for grown up kids.

      --

      A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  2. That wont work.. by Brad1138 · · Score: 5, Funny

    It would freeze the water around the shark.

    --
    If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
  3. Use SI units for reporting science by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The scientists used SI units all the way through in their paper (Kelvin for temperature), and they would have been laughed out of court and certainly not published in Nature if they'd done otherwise.

    Why does Slashdot even accept a submission in Fahrenheit when the subject is science? Most nerds understand SI units, and most of the planet is metric. How about trying to be a bit educational for the few that don't? Quote both if you're trying to be helpful, with the SI units as primary for science reporting and imperial equivalents only in brackets.

  4. Re:Defeats the purpose by aXis100 · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's only the sensor that needs to be cooled below ambient, other parts can use traditional methods. So, you make the back side of the sensor flouresce, capture that light in a chamber where it is converted back to heat, then dissipate that heat through regular air cooled heatsinks.

    In the end it's just shifting the heat whilst working against a thermal gradient - same as a refridgerative system, but without moving parts.

  5. Re:Yeap, a bright idea by ackthpt · · Score: 4, Funny

    Ze goggles, zey do NUTHINK!

    I see nothing wrong with the goggles... I see NOTHING! AAAAAHHHHHH

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  6. Re:Cool! by Nationless · · Score: 5, Funny

    Another laser, duh.

  7. Re:Cool! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's lasers all the way down.

  8. temperature in celsius by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Sorry about hijacking this thread, but nobody seems to have posted the temperatures in a proper scale yet, so here we go:

    Researchers in Singapore were able to cool the semiconductor cadmium sulfide from 17 degrees Celsius to -23 degrees

  9. Re:Rubidium by Noughmad · · Score: 5, Informative

    No, this is different. What you describe is called Doppler cooling and is basically "slowing down" the atoms/ions.

    TFA, on the other hand, talks about using a laser to cause fluorescence in the material. It's a completely different principle.

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