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"Anti-Laser" Would Absorb the Light a Laser Shoots Out

Posted August 04, 2010 1:47 PM

From Discover Technology:

Sure, a laser can shine finely-tuned light to do anything from scanning your barcodes to correcting your vision, but soon that precise hero may meet its match: Physicists have recently imagined a device that can absorb light of certain frequencies, an "anti-laser." Absorbing light may not seem all that impressive, since after all, anything that appears black works as an absorber. Your driveway, however, is not the anti-laser. A paper in the Physical Review Letters lays out the plans for this device which can absorb light wave clones (same frequency, phase, and polarization) that some lasers emit.

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#1

Re: "Anti-Laser" Would Absorb the Light a Laser Shoots Out

08/04/2010 8:13 PM

So now, Luke Skywalker will have a shield as well as a lightsaber.

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Guru

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#2
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Re: "Anti-Laser" Would Absorb the Light a Laser Shoots Out

08/05/2010 7:56 AM

Dang you beat me to a star wars joke.

You know I always wondered why jedi relied on a thin lightsaber to deflect lasers when they could make a shield or even just wear lots of mirrors.

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#3
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Re: "Anti-Laser" Would Absorb the Light a Laser Shoots Out

08/05/2010 9:07 AM

Well, now you know. Besides the cool cinematography it enables, they were WAAAYY ahead of us in their scientific know-how.

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