As the innovation was first introduced to the world, some in the scientific community pooh-poohed it as a mere novelty, “a solution looking for a problem.” But shortly after Bell Labs scientists built the first working laser, which initially operated on May 16, 1960, plenty of useful applications for the unusual new technology were soon uncovered. Fifty years on from the laser’s genesis, still more uses for the laser simply await being discovered and uncovered by us. We can expect some of them to be pretty surprising: Nature reports of researchers who have recently discovered that shooting a laser beam into the sky can result in the formation of droplets of condensation, putting a leading-edge technological spin on the concept of cloud-seeding.
It probably won’t come as a surprise to many that long before the switch was first successfully flipped to the on position, the theoretical underpinnings to the laser (an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) came our way from Albert Einstein, who relied on the radiation theories of German physicist Max Planck to suggest the possibility of the laser. The maser, technological precursor to the laser, uses microwaves instead of visible light and first appeared in the 1950s paving the way for the laser to arrive just a few years later.
Lasers emit beams of light of a uniform wavelength that have been amplified by the addition of additional energy. Thanks to the added energy and uniformity of wavelength, the beam of a laser is sharp and concentrated, with very little scattering over long distances.
While this week marks the 50th anniversary with the precision of, well, of a laser, the folks behind Laserfest just couldn’t wait. Having declared all of 2010 to be “The Year of the Laser,” a coalition made up of the American Physical Society, the Optical Society, SPIE and IEEE Photonics Society is celebrating the history and the astonishing variety of uses for the technology. Across applications that range from medicine to entertainment electronics to telecommunications, the ability to amplify and concentrate light has made a world of difference in our capacity to accomplish a stunning array of things.
And of course, the laser continues to figure prominently into the collective science fiction imagination. As the technology was being developed, many in and outside of the scientific community had images of the space-age, laser-based weapon. While laser guns as such have not come to fruition, it’s a notion that remains strong with us, and will likely remain a common and effective device in science fiction (and in comedies) for years to come.
Photo by NASA via Wikimedia Commons.