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A swarm of laser-wielding robots could map the bottom of the ocean at high resolution, say researchers, potentially detecting hazards such as mines in shipping lanes. It's a cool idea, but it only takes looking at cloudy sea water (or schools of fish) to understand how big a problem scattering and attenuation would present, no matter how short the optical path length. The controls and communications aspects alone are boggling. We need to be developing fundamental science but should we really be putting money into research only marginally more practical than the Star Wars concept?
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