A group from University of California, San Diego use a pair of antennae aligned with the laser to automatically detect the traffic control transponder on every airplane. “One antenna has a broad beam, the other a narrow beam.” In this way, airplanes can be detected as they approach the laser. Using the ratio of the signal from both antennae, the distance of the aircaft from the laser can be measured. If its “too close” then the laser is automatically shuttered, preventing any catastrophes at 35,000 feet.

Initial test are positive, though there are of course still a few kinks to work out. Chalk another one up for science!

Via Technology Review.

As laser pointers go, you could do far worse than this little keychain Lightsaber. I mean think about it; if your job requires you to use a laser pointer, then you might as well have a cool one. And at $15, it’s not like this is a huge monetary investment. As an investment in your social standing amongst your peers, though, this thing ought to pay off in spades.

Choose from Darth Vader or Darth Maul versions, available at ThinkGeek.

Features include:

• Working red dot laser pointer
• The force
• Highly detailed scaled replicas
• Batteries included
• Pew pew pew!

Those are the actual features listed on the product page. Very nice.

Star Wars Lightsaber Laser Pointer [ThinkGeek]

Some of you may recall the Airzooka — a large cannon-like apparatus that, thanks to the magic of physics, somehow shoots a ball of air at unsuspecting office mates. Well apparently shooting a ball of air is now much more fun and accurate with the addition of a laser scope.

UK-based gadget shop I Want One Of Those is now selling the Laser Airzooka. With the original Airzooka going for $13 at ThinkGeek, the laser scope fetches quite a premium with the Laser Airzooka selling for almost $33.

Call me crazy, but it seems that blasting a big floating ball of air wouldn’t necessitate the skills of a highly-trained marksman. Except, of course, that you’re not supposed to aim the laser at anyone’s eyeballs, which means shooting someone in the face with a ball of air is going to require some pretty steady aim after all.

Laser Airzooka [iwantoneofthose.com via Foolish Gadgets]

Similar to a light saber but more Nintendo-y, this DIY beam katana seems to be an actual working device, although I question its lethality. The creator won’t reveal his secrets, but I think it’s pretty clear there’s some kind of little smoke generator and one of those green high-powered lasers involved. Get a couple more high-powered ones or a mirror setup in there and you could actually start burning through some junk, though admittedly not at a true beam katana rate.

Here’s another video, with some cosplay thrown in there for good measure:

He looks like the kind of person my mom warned me about.

Interestingly, this level of power was achieved by using a scalable system, combing multiple lasers into one high powered beam. To put the power level into perspective, most industrial lasers use a maximum 1.5 kilowatt beam to cut metal with. This suggests that a weapons grade 105.5kw beam would potentially have the power to destroy aircraft and vehicles, not to mention what it could do to a human body.

There are lasers and then there are lasers. The Spyder II GX is a crazy 200-300mW green laser that can burn through paper, balloons, and skin and generally blind you if you’re not careful. How much does all this fun cost? $1,699 including a pair of absolutely essential shades that will keep you from blinding yourself.

I had used WickedLasers before but those models were mere laser pointers compared to this monster. It comes in a Mil-Spec Type III hard anodized case with rubber washers on all the joints and includes two lithium ion batteries that last 60 minutes on one charge. Note that these batteries take a long time to charge, so be prepared to wait.

The first time I tried the laser I was actually able to light a candle. Subsequent tries resulted in lots of smoke but no fire. However, it can easily burn through black paper – just draw a dot with a Sharpie and you can get a hole in a few seconds – and burned dark tissue paper on contact.

From WickedLasers:

Unfortunately submerging the product under water is considered miss use of product. It was never intended to be used under water. While it can operate in rain and seasonal elements, the Spyder IIGX, is made for a variety of demographics, however under water operations is not one of them.

I tried this laser under water and found water in the front filter. It didn’t touch the laser, so I expect it will just dry out, but since you can’t really disassemble it easily it’s something to think about when using this outdoors. It still works but it’s a bit disconcerting to get water inside your laser.

Here’s the bad news: This laser costs $1,699. That’s right. Almost $2,000 freaking dollars. There are some rumors that they use this beast over in Iraq to mess with insurgents, and I wouldn’t be surprised. It shoots a straight, bright beam for what seems like miles – I was able to hit the Verrazano Bridge from 96th Street in Bay Ridge, which is about a mile away.

I did a few tests, one trying to recreate my candle test and another basically shooting holes in paper. The results were immediate and dramatic. This laser is great for stargazing and educational experimentation but please, please don’t play around with it. It’s more a weapon than a laser pointer, but it’s totally amazing.

Pretty soon they’re going to be taking it for its first ride on a 747 — you’re going to want to have the camera ready! And then take out the SD card once you’re done and swallow it because they’re going to need to confiscate your camera, sir. Orders.

Can you say “plausible deniability?” I knew you could!

Yes that is an X-COM screenshot.

The ability to puncture a cell wall with ease and precision with an extremely non-invasive tool like a fiber (paired with another for drug delivery) is a coup for scientists testing at the cellular level. The new technology requires no focusing and is actually very much like a microscopic light saber when I think about it. Paging Dr. Vader…
[via Physorg]

A new blue laser diode, developed by Sanyo, could help increase the capacity of Blu-ray discs. Even if it does, however, we’re still a few years away from seeing any such discs.

The new diode emits a beam of 450 milliwatts, which would be powerful enough to write onto two additional data layers on a Blu-ray disc. While current Blu-ray discs max out at two, 25GB layers, discs produced using this new Sanyo diode would see their capacity double—four, 25GB layers adding up to a total capacity of 100GB per disc.

Write speeds would also increase, moving up to 12X. That means you’d be able to write an entire disc in just 10 minutes.

But again, this fancy new diode was just developed, meaning it won’t used in the production of Blu-ray discs for at least one year, if not two.

And they say physical media has no future, ha!

Giving a man of any age a powerful laser is like giving a bear an AK-47: it’s in his very nature to point it at things and look menacing. Thankfully, the bear is rarely able to do any damage – no trigger finger – but the man, be he 16 or 65 or 33, will definitely aim it at something that will inevitably reflect the laser back into his own eyes, rendering him temporarily blind and making him freak out thinking that he is now sightless. I speak, friends, from experience.

WickedLasers makes, well, wicked lasers. Instead of the standard red-dot laser pointer you buy at Odd Lots, WickedLaser imports amazingly powerful and expensive lasers for the home hobbyist.

So read on, laser troopers, for a bit more info and a contest.

The model I tested is a Elite 125 plus green pointer. It comes in a discrete black box and is clad in copper-colored metal. It takes two AAA batteries and when the batteries are fresh it can cause enough heat to be noticeably painful on bare skin.

These things are essentially high-power laser pointers. You can use them to point out stars in the dark and pretend you’re the Terminator by hitting objects hundreds of yards away. Case-in-point: we were able to hit the Verrazano Bridge from 96th Street in Brooklyn. That’s about a half mile. It’s that powerful.

A word of warning: don’t look at the scattered light. It hurts and it causes excellent visual artifacts that could be retinal damage.

Clearly you need a special case to warrant spending $499 on a laser but for hobbyists and folks who love crazy lasers this thing is amazing. We were able to char tissue paper and, given enough patience, you can use this to pop balloons and burn electrical tape. When the light scatters it’s like a supernova and the folks at Wicked Lasers – and I – recommend you wear protective glasses when handling this monster. Also do not aim it at airplanes like my neighbor did.

Now for the contest: I want you guys to tell me what you’d do with this laser if I send it to you. Put your reasons in the comments and the best one, as judged by me and maybe some of the CG guys, gets this laser and a pair of protective shades. Get cracking. This thing will make a hell of a laser pointer at your next company retreat.

It’s about time. The storied laser pointer has, let’s admit it, gotten pretty boring over the years. People have returned to a simpler time of retro pointing, using old yardsticks and their trusty, dusty fingers, and the last time anyone laughed at the laser-pointer-on-someone’s-face gag, the elder Bush was in office. So a big thank you is in order to Alpay Kasal for inventing a way to use laser pointers with projectors to play some old-school video games. The whole idea is for the laser pointer to work as a type of mouse emulator, so the sky would theoretically be the limit as it pertains to what you’d be able to do with this sort of setup.

It’s patent-pending, so the actual behind-the-scenes stuff hasn’t been revealed but apparently an outdoor test on the public streets is on the docket, so that’ll be something to see. Check out the above video for the system in action.

[via Gizmodo]

The laser turns 48 today! (Just as important, if not more so: It’s also Megan Fox’s birthday. She turns 22.) Crazy! To celebrate this, Wired has put together a list of some of its best laser-related stories, everything from laser-etched iPhones to 100 kW Naval weapons.

No, it’s nothing to get too excited over, but perhaps you have nothing better to do on this crummy Friday than troll random blogs looking for a way to kill a few minutes. We’re here to help in that regard.

Straight out of the University of Texas at Austin comes the world’s most powerful laser. I just assumed that most lasers were very powerful, but apparently the great state of Texas has the best one until someone else can come along and build an even more powerful laser or mounts this same laser to a shark’s head.

According to Gizmag.com,

“With greater than one quadrillion watts of laser power, the level of output achieved on March 31 by the Texas Petawatt laser is equivalent to more than 2,000 times the output of all power plants in the United States and brighter than the Sun’s surface, according team leader and physicist at The University of Texas at Austin, Dr. Todd Ditmire.

The one quadrillion watt laser burst, which lasts just a 10th of a trillionth of a second (0.0000000000001 second) will be used to study the secrets of the universe by enabling examination of gases at extreme temperatures solids at pressures of many billions of atmospheres – even creating mini-supernovas and exploring energy made by controlled fusion.”

That sounds very nice (impossible, but nice). Maybe, though, we could use the beam for energy since it’s more than 2,000 times the output of all power plants in the United States. I’m all for studying the universe, but maybe we could eradicate everyone’s home energy bills and then I’ll personally promise to donate half of what my bill used to be to this project. Everyone wins! Also, if you could make a laser that does the same for natural gas, my Comcast bill, the wife’s cell phone bill and car payment, and maybe even my rent somehow, that’d be really cool too.

The Texas Petawatt Project [University of Texas]

In a smashing blow against my neighbor Carmine, Australia has outlawed high power laser pointers. Like Carmine, Australians cannot be trusted with high powered lasers and, like Carmine one night last summer, they’ve been shooting them at airplanes.

WA Police have reported people pointing lasers at a Royal Flying Doctor plane, a police helicopter, a rescue helicopter, and several commercial and private airplanes.

That’s right: About five aircraft have been hit so far. That’s considerably fewer people in danger than those who eat the Bloomin’ Onion each year, but no one’s outlawed that yet. Where is the fairness?

Remember the Laser TV from Mitsubishi that was unveiled at CES? Well, Mitsu finally dated and named the new fangled TV this morning. The LaserVue will launch Q3, but still no word on pricing. Along with news of the LaserVue, Mitsu announced a slew of new 1080p DLP HDTVs ranging in size from 60- to 73-inches dubbed Diamond. The Diamond series features 120Hz, something called Dark Detailer for high contrast images and Blue Light Accent. These DLP sets will be available this month.

WD-60735 – $1,799
WD-65736 – $2,499
Diamond WD-73835 – $4,699
WD-65735 – $2,199
WD-73736 – $3,599
WD-73735 – $3,199
Diamond WD-65835 – $3,399

But wait. There’s more.

Thin is in, after all, so there will be seven new Ultra Thin Frame 1080p LCD sets ranging from 40- to 52-inch. These, too, will be 120Hz for silky smooth images.

LT-40148 – $2,499
LT-52148 – $3,599
Diamond LT-52246 – $4,499
LT-46148 – $2,999
LT-52149 – $4,099
LT-46149 – $3,499
Diamond LT-46246 – $3,799

test
You don’t need an imaginary cellphone to project text onto someone’s person. This device, which can be put together after a quick trip to the hardware store, places laser text onto any surface; it’s powered by magic, as a matter of fact.

You’re given a maximum of 20 characters to play with at any one time, which is more than enough to project dumb slogans like “PINK” or “JUICY” or “JAZZ LOBSTER.”

via Make Blog

Right now, plugged into my Mac I have an iPod Touch, an SD card reader, and a currently charging Palm Centro. Did you know that you can also control a laser-guided robot with your Mac? It’s true!

Scienticians from Georgia Tech and Emory University have developed just such a robot, called the EL-E, which is capable of tracking objects targeted by a laser and picking them up, all powered by a Mac Mini.

Later, they’re planning on upgrading to a Mac Pro, after which the computer/robot hybrid will scour the globe for Sarah Connor.

Scientists Unveil Mac mini-powered Robot [Daily Tech]

You know how much I like tech with a purpose that’s something other than more and more megawidgets or terabloops. Hence, a line or two on this laser than can detect diseases.

Developed by a team at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a laser device that detects molecules in one’s breath that may hint at diseases. It can also detect diseases that aren’t specifically respiratory in nature, like cancer.

For example, the device detected carbon monoxide at five times the normal level in a smoker. Use that info with other data and you could have a powerful tool that makes early detection the norm.

Laser light may detect asthma [Times of India via Drudge Report]

I’m currently debating whether I should feel safe or frightened knowing that Boeing’s Advanced Tactical Laser has been successfully installed on a C-130H. The high energy chemical laser was completed on the 4th of this month in New Mexico at Kirtland Air Force Base. The entire system weighs an astonishing 12,000-pounds. Testing of the system along with a demonstration will occur sometime next year where the laser will be fired from a rotating turret on the belly of the C-130H at mission-representative ground targets. Previous tests were done in June on a ‘low-power’ setting where the laser found and tracked moving and stationary targets. I just soiled myself.

Press Release

The Germans have invented what is supposedly the world’s first backpack-mounted laser cleaner. Clearly there was a need for such high-powered cleaners. There’s no real explanation of how the laser cleans, but we can assume that it burns away layers of dirt. Probably not for use by children under three years of age, or any of us here, really.

The laser will make the rounds in the UK in November, demoed at universities and super villain hideouts.

World First Backpack Laser [CIProcess via Sci Fi Tech]