Japan Tests Death Star Laser – Now Looking For Death Star
We’ve just seen the announcement of a new so-called non-lethal “noise weapon”
that sends a sound with the decibel level of a fighter jet to a
specific target using a laser beam as its delivery device. Next, Japan
test-fires a so-called “Death Star” laser capable of producing energy
equal to 1,000 times Earth’s total power consumption – in other words,
enough power to destroy a Star Wars Death Star. Meanwhile, researchers
in the U.S. have created the first white laser that can provide more
efficient lighting and someday replace Wi-Fi with high speed Internet
connections via a light bulb. Death and destruction or illumination and
communications – are lasers the light of good or evil?
According to the journal Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion,
researchers at Osaka University have created and tested a 300-foot-long
Laser For Fast Experiments (LFEX) that beamed a 2-petawatt (two
quadrillion watt) pulse for one picosecond (a trillionth of a second).
Is that enough to demolish a Death Star?
How the Death Star laser works
In a previous experiment, a 50 kilowatt laser was used to a drone at a
distance of a mile. The LFEX was 10 billion times more powerful than
that. You do the math. Did that pulse dim the lights in Japan? Not at
all, since the LFEX used the same amount of energy needed to power a
microwave for two seconds.
The 300-foot-long Laser For Fast Experiments
Moving over to the side of good, Nature Nanotechnology
reports that researchers from Arizona State University have created the
first semiconductor lasers can emit the full color range of the visible
spectrum that are required to make white laser light. These lasers are
brighter and more energy efficient than LEDs and the light is safe for
human eyes.
The spectrum that makes up the white laser
What’s even more exciting is the possibility for Li-Fi – visible
light communication where data is encoded at ultra-high frequencies in
the light. A Li-Fi laser light bulb would contain a microchip that
produces a signal that computers receiving the light could connect to.
This has already been done with white LEDs but white laser would push
the Li-Fi speeds 10 to 100 times faster.
From death to Li-Fi … the laser has not yet reached its potential
where we can decide if it’s a tool of good or evil or both. Any guess
what it will be?
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