New laser technology makes it possible to turn light into sound

September 19th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Researchers in Australia have demonstrated the first laser built with diamonds that has comparable efficiency to lasers built with other materials. Richard Mildren of Macqaurie University in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia and Alexander Sabella of the Defence Science and Technology Organisation in Edinburgh, South Australia developed the device.

September 11th, 2009 SYDNEY - A new way of storing and 'echoing' pulses of light allows bursts of laser to work as a flexible optical memory and potentially assist in extending the range of quantum information systems. A team at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Quantum-Atom Optics has demonstrated how photon echoes can be used to create a quantum memory device - meaning that pulses of light can be captured, stored and then released on demand.

September 6th, 2009 WASHINGTON - The United States Naval Research Laboratory is working on a new technology that uses flashes of laser light to remotely create underwater sound. Researchers behind the project say that the new technology has the potential to expand and improve both Naval and commercial underwater acoustic applications, including undersea communications, navigation, and acoustic imaging.

August 31st, 2009 LONDON - The dentist's dreaded drill may soon be a thing of past, thanks to the laser tests University of Sydney scientists have developed to identify weaknesses in dental enamel. Currently, X-rays and metal probes are used to check cavities, but they fail to detect weaknesses in the enamel in time to repair the surface.

July 16th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A team of scientists is using laser light technology to create new forms of metal and enhance aircraft performance. The laser light technology is being used by AFOSR (Air Force Office of Scientific Research) funded researchers at the University of Rochester to help the military create new forms of metal that may guide, attract and repel liquids and cool small electronic devices.

July 2nd, 2009 LONDON - Reports indicate that the Pentagon is developing a laser dazzler that will force drivers to stop without harming their eyes. When a vehicle approaches a checkpoint at speed, ignoring warning signs to slow down, troops do not know whether the driver is simply careless or a suicide bomber.

July 2nd, 2009 LONDON - Swiss researchers have made an optical transistor that uses one laser beam to control another, an instrument that could form the heart of a future generation of ultrafast light-based computers. Conventional computers are based on transistors, which allow one electrode to control the current moving through the device and are combined to form logic gates and processors.

June 17th, 2009 LONDON - A team of physicists have created an artificial black hole in their lab that traps sound instead of light, in an attempt to detect the theoretical Hawking radiation. The radiation, proposed by physicist Stephen Hawking more than 30 years ago, causes black holes to evaporate over time.

May 30th, 2009 WASHINGTON - An ultra-powerful laser not only doubles the brightness of light bulbs filaments but also slashes their power consumption, according to a new study. "We've been experimenting with the way ultra-fast lasers change metals, and we wondered what would happen if we trained the laser on a filament," said Chunlei Guo, associate professor of optics at the University of Rochester, who led the research.

May 30th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Optics researchers at the University of Rochester, US, have developed an ultra-powerful laser can turn regular incandescent light bulbs into power-sippers. The process could make a light as bright as a 100-watt bulb consume less electricity than a 60-watt bulb while remaining far cheaper and radiating a more pleasant light than a fluorescent bulb can.

April 11th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A team of scientists has developed a technique that enables the creation of features 2500 times smaller than the width of a human hair, which is a significant advancement in the nanofabrication Process. The ability to create tiny patterns is essential to the fabrication of computer chips and many other current and potential applications of nanotechnology.

April 3rd, 2009 WASHINGTON - Researchers at McGill University, Canada, have successfully amplified light with so-called "colloidal quantum dots," a technology that could lead to forward leaps in lasers, telecom and optical computing. Over the last 15 years, repeated quantum dot research efforts failed to deliver on expected improvements in amplification, and many researchers started to believe that an unknown, but insurmountable law of physics was blocking their path.

March 25th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Over the past three years there has been a drastic increase in the number of patients seeking laser treatments to take light-years off their faces, says a new American survey. According to American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery (AACS)'s annual Procedural Survey, there has been a 456pct increase in the number of males undergoing laser resurfacing, compared to 215pct in females.

March 18th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory say that they may have developed a new tool to enhance the way computer chips, LEDs, and transistors are built by reversing a process that converts electrical signals into sounds heard out of a cell phone. The researchers claim that this is the first time that any research team have converted the highest frequency sounds into light by reversing a process that converts electrical signals to sound.

December 22nd, 2008 WASHINGTON - A Princeton-led team of researchers has discovered an entirely new mechanism for making common electronic materials emit laser beams. The finding could lead to lasers that operate more efficiently and at higher temperatures than existing devices, and find applications in environmental monitoring, homeland security, medical diagnostics and other areas that require extremely sensitive detection of different chemicals.