For a little under $300 you, too, can ruin passing satellites with what is purported to be the brightest legal laser available. The Krypton S3 goes up to 1000mW for an output of 86 million lux – “8,000 times brighter than looking directly at the sun.” That kind of power will cost you, though: the 1000mW unit costs $999 compared to the $300 300mW laser.
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The ongoing search for cartoon-style laser guns is likely to continue for a while, given the rather poor showing by even large, ship-mounted lasers. But that shouldn’t stop researchers from looking into it and making handheld lasers, even if they’re super weak. You have to start somewhere, right? Early guns were just tiny cannons, and inaccurate past 50 feet. You were better off with bows and arrows. Same story here. → Read More
Remember when Lucasfilm sued WickedLasers for using Star Wars imagery in their marketing language? Remember how they got a C&D? Well WickedLasers is doing it again with this wild, double-headed “Sith Lord” blue laser and I’m not sure George will be as understanding this time. → Read More
We get excited about lasers here at CrunchGear, mainly because they’re lasers. Lasers are something we’ve wanted since our childhoods, when we watched Star Wars and thought “Man! I’m so glad they don’t have guns in the future distant past, or this movie would have been boring!” Yes, these brightly-colored rays captured our hearts, even if our brains kind of knew that things didn’t really work like that.
Fast forward 30 years or so, and here we are, watching a video of the Navy setting a boat on fire with a real-life laser. Shouldn’t we be jumping for joy? This guy thinks we should be throwing ourselves into the ocean for shame. And he’s kind of right. → Read More
Now that the whole “laser on a plane” thing has been resolved, the military is starting to test the technology on smaller platforms, and at longer ranges. Check out the video from first test, after the jump. → Read More
When we last left the intrepid research scientists at Intel, they had managed to hit 40Gbps throughput using something called the Avalanche Photodetector. It’s been two years since that report (yeah, this has been in development for a while), and the gang at Intel have not been idle, let me tell you. They’ve managed to improve the field of photonics to achieve throughput of 50 Gbps! While not as much of an advance as one might like to see in two years, this is still a respectable achievement. → Read More
Well, well, well. Yesterday morning I wrote a quick thing about the U.S. Navy and Raytheon’s successful laser attack in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Several hours later DRUDGE~! runs the same story way up top, in bold red font. The point is: I beat Drudge. Yes! I bring this up because, in the hours after I wrote the story a whole bunch of pictures came out that are worth your time gawking at. → Read More
There’s no way to begin this next story without breaking out this movie quote: “If I were creating the world I wouldn’t mess about with butterflies and daffodils. I would have started with lasers, eight o’clock, Day One!” With that out of the way, for the first time in human history a laser was used to shoot down an aircraft in flight. Well done to the fine folks at the US Navy. → Read More
Remember that cool-looking Spyder III Pro Arctic laser from WickedLasers? Remember how LucasFilm thought it looked a little too much like a lightsaber? Remember how they then served WickedLasers a Cease and Desist? And then, remember how WickedLasers put that Cease and Desist up on eBay? You probably don’t remember that last part, because I’m just telling you now. It’s up on eBay, as of this writing going for around $600. That’s one way to pay for your legal fees. I love that the letter starts off with “Gentlemen.” [via TechDirt] → Read More
Holy wow. I saw this thing this morning but I forgot about it. Then Kyle at Giz pointed out that this laser – made from diodes out of a Casio slim projector – costs only $200 and can burn almost anything. Now I’m interested. We’ve done reviews of WickedLaser products in the past but this looks like a doozy. While something like the Photonic Disruptor is pretty exciting, this laser blasts out one full Watt and is 4000% brighter than WL’s other burners. → Read More
You tend to think of archaeologists as academic types, dusting off pottery shards and bones, and a comfy tent in the desert. Generally speaking, you don’t think of them buzzing Mayan ruins and bombarding the jungle with lasers.Yet that’s just what Arlen and Diane Chase are doing in Belize. They’re using LIDAR to scan below the trees, which form an effective screen against satellite imaging, and it’s making mapping the ancient Mayan city of Caracol a snap. → Read More
Here in Seattle (welcome!) we have no problem getting enough rain. Lasers are not necessary. But this international project studying the effect of high-power lasers on mistifying the atmosphere could still help a lot of areas where rainclouds are shy. The effect, which has no cool name yet, comes from the fact that high-energy beams like terawatt lasers and cosmic rays will knock electrons off water molecules, which end up lopsided chargewise and glom together, forming the rudiments of a raindrop. → Read More
So somehow, you’ve ended up with 200 laser pointers. What on earth do you do with 200 laser diodes? Well, you could combine them all into one super laser and write your name on the moon. Or you could find 200 sharks and.. never mind. Or, you could wire them all together into a jacket, and wear it to the mall. That’s it! → Read More
Those wacky artists at Art Lebedev are at it again. This time, they’ve created a concept clock that uses a single laser beam directed by 60 rotating mirrors to tell us what time it is. → Read More
One look at what this watch does will tell you that it’s just a concept, and will most likely never see the light of day (no pun intended). The Aurora Watch was designed by Jihun Yeom, and features a hollow face that makes it look like you lost part of your wristwatch, until you push a button and two lasers come out of the bezel to show you the time. → Read More
Apparently NASA saw something when they sent up the last Mars rover, because the next one is going to be packing heat. The next rover, named Curiosity, is scheduled to launch next year and will be equipped with an analysis system that uses high-energy laser pulses to help find out what Mars is made of. → Read More
Do you see what I’m seeing? That big ol’ column in the first shot is a LASER. A huge, sustained, sci-fi style laser. It’s blasting a missile in midair during a test. And that second shot? Talk about C-beams off the shoulder of Orion. → Read More
So the Federal Aviation Administration doesn’t like guys like you and me shining lasers into the sky at airplanes. But what about real scientists looking to use lasers for real scientific research? The current rules require, essentially, a spotter to look for aircraft within twenty five degrees of the laser. Obviously, this is extremely prone to human error. This sounds like a job for science! → Read More
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. → Read More
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. → Read More
