Universities and institutions all around the world are
researching about different aspects and applications for something so common,
but so necessary in our lives that most of the people would not even notice it’s
there: light. With all the advances in
science and technology, light is being used in vary fields, such as medicine,
communications and weaponry, and it may be a crucial factor in bringing us to a
quick start into the future. We are
unleashing the power of light.
Scientists and engineers at the U.S. Army’s Picatinny Arsenal
are developing a Laser-Induced
Plasma Channel (LIPC) weapon to take out targets that conduct electricity
better than the air or ground that surrounds them. This future-like laser machine would guide a
lightning bolt via laser beam to hit the target with the possible power of 50
billion watts, more power than a larger city needs.
"If a laser beam is intense enough, its
electro-magnetic field is strong enough to rip electrons off of air molecules,
creating plasma," said Fischer. "This plasma is located along the
path of the laser beam, so we can direct it wherever we want by moving a
mirror."
Meanwhile, researchers of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech)
have developed a procedure to focus light inside biological tissue which allows
doctors to perform surgery
without having to cut through your skin, or diagnose cancer by seeing tumors
inside the body.
Such a less invasive technique of diagnosing and treating
diseases enables scientists to research and develop promising applications for
this ultrasound based method, and the benefits for patients are easily recognizable.
Ok; we are developing weapons and medical
technology. That doesn’t sound so
futuristic, right? What else?
Think about history; think about nowadays. What is one of the most important factors for
human development, for learning and progressing into a more advanced society
and going beyond our physical limitations? Communication, I would say.
Without communication, knowledge would be lost in time
and space and we would never be able to reach our potential. Today, we live in a globalized era where we
can share and learn with each other, doesn’t matter where in the world you live. Computers, internet, cell phones; technology bring
us together and it’s the key for our evolution.
The advances in computer technology are widely defined by
the amount and speed of data we can storage and share, and microchips and
processors nowadays have a great power comparing to, let’s say, last year. The Moore’s
Law isn’t dead yet and new supercomputers – funny term as they always get
old – are being developed right now. But,
wait – aren’t you talking about light? Let’s
talk briefly about something else first: superconductors.
Superconductivity can be defined as a phenomenon of
no resistance for an electric current with the expulsion of magnetic
fields occurring in certain materials when cooled below a
characteristic critical temperature, and superconductors are materials
which allow these phenomena to occur, with no energy loss. Superconductors can be used in defense,
transportation, energy generation, communication and research, just to
summarize a few applications.
A team of researchers from the University of Oxford Department of Physics, Japan and
Germany were able to transform a non-superconducting insulator into a
superconductor by the use of light. An infrared
laser pulse was used to perturb the positions of some of the atoms in the
material, and the compound, held at a temperature just 20 degrees above
absolute zero, almost instantaneously became a superconductor for a fraction of
a second, before relaxing back to its normal state.
The researchers are hopeful that it could offer a new
route to obtaining superconductivity at higher temperatures. If superconductors that work at room
temperature could be achieved, it would open up many more technological
applications.
The applications
of these materials are wide and they may even hold the key for the next step in
the evolution of processors. Maybe, in
the near future, superconductors can be used to manufacture real quantum computers as
first coined by Richard Feynman in 1982; who knows? The good thing about the future is that it
keeps turning into present.
