-
Tech NewsYouTuber Builds the World’s Most Powerful Handheld Laser Pointer and It Can Instantly Melt Glass
The handheld laser pointers you can buy at office supplies stores are legally required to be no powerful than 0.005-watts, and most fall well below that threshold so they’re relatively safe to use. With that as a reference, you have a better understanding of just how terrifying this 100-watt handheld laser pointer really is. The … Continued
-
ScienceHealthMIT Engineers Create Laser Ultrasounds That Can Look Inside Your Body Without You Even Feeling It
Engineers at MIT have come up with a new approach to medical imaging that is both non-invasive and hands-off the patient. Using lasers, they can peer beneath the surface of the skin without any physical contact required, improving upon the limitations of equipment like ultrasound machines. There’s a myriad of techniques and machines that physicians … Continued
-
Tech NewsGadgetsYouTuber Buys a Laser on eBay That’s So Terrifyingly Powerful, It Instantly Fries His Camera
You can now add ‘30 million-watt peak power tattoo removing laser’ to the long list of things you probably shouldn’t be able to buy on eBay. YouTuber Drake Anthony, better known as Styropyro, is an expert on all things lasers, and even he was taken aback by the power of a laser that he, or … Continued
-
ScienceBiologyWatch Wild Fish Chase a Laser Pointer
Laser pointers: they’re not just for taunting cats anymore. Marine researchers claim that at least some species of wild fish will dutifully chase a laser point on the seabed. And what’s more, this quirk might help scientists better understand how these fish protect their homes. According to the researchers behind a new study in the … Continued
By Ed Cara -
Tech NewsRaytheon Delivers First Anti-Drone Laser Weapon to U.S. Air Force
Raytheon has announced that it delivered the first publicly acknowledged anti-drone laser weapon to the U.S. Air Force earlier this month. The military contractor said the Air Force will deploy the weapon in a year-long experiment overseas in order to train people how to use it and test its effectiveness out in the real world. … Continued
By Matt Novak -
Tech NewsGadgetsEpson’s New Short Throw Laser Projector Includes a Special Screen to Bounce Away Overhead Lighting
Projectors can be a cheaper and far more convenient way to put a gigantic 100+ inch TV in your living room. But to get an image that rivals an LCD or OLED TV, you can’t just point them at a bare wall. So with its new LS500 short-throw 4K laser projector, Epson is including a … Continued
-
Tech NewsPew-Pew: What Do Lasers Actually Sound Like?
If you’ve ever watched a science-fiction movie, you might think you know what lasers sound like: some variation of a noise you could write as “pew.” But, you’ve used a laser pointer, right? Did it go “pew”? Powerful lasers do make sounds—but they’re not “pew” and they don’t come from the light itself. Instead, the noise … Continued
-
SciencePhysics & ChemistryThis Compact System Lets Scientists See Biological Molecules in a Whole New Way
Researchers have combined laser techniques and an ingenious detection scheme in order to create a powerful new molecule-imaging system—a quicker, easier way to determine the identity of microscopic molecules. Basically, it’s an advanced yet surprisingly simple microscope. Shining mid-infrared light on complex molecules like proteins and observing how they react can provide detailed information on their … Continued
-
Tech NewsAir Force Says It Has Successfully Shot Down Multiple Missiles Using a Laser Prototype
The U.S. Air Force announced on Friday that it had successfully used a ground-based surrogate for its laser weapons project, the Self-Protect High-Energy Laser Demonstrator (SHiELD), to shoot down multiple air-launched missiles during a test at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The system is designed to eventually be mounted on aircraft, where it … Continued
By Tom McKay -
SciencePhysics & ChemistryHow Scientists Made a Laser Beam That Can Pass Through White Paint
It’s not quite seeing through walls, but scientists are working to engineer light beams so that they can pass through an opaque medium without scattering, according to a new paper. When you shine headlights through a fog, they scatter or reflect and the beam spreads out. But there are times when scientists really need to … Continued
-
Tech News
Scientists Figured Out How to Send Secret Messages to Your Ear With Lasers
Scientists have devised a way to communicate secretly by sending laser-transmitted messages directly into the area around a person’s ear. Humans enjoy talking with one another, and often do so in ways that prevent eavesdroppers from listening in. This new research could have potential military applications—but who knows where else it might find use? “The … Continued
-
Tech News
How Plants Produce Oxygen Revealed by ‘Tour-de-Force’ Laser Measurement
An experiment using intense laser pulses has allowed scientists to watch plants produce oxygen from water part of photosynthesis in real time, according to a groundbreaking new paper. Photosynthesis fixes carbon dioxide into sugars and creates oxygen out of water in the presence of sunlight—it turns the sun into usable energy. Scientists hope to understand … Continued
-
Tech News
Would You Pay $2,400 for a Laser Bong?
If there is a God and he is indeed omniscient, it is also true that he foresaw the human race’s ability to create a great many things that would change the world, improve the overall quality of life here on Earth, and maybe even one day move beyond it. I can’t help but wonder what … Continued
By Catie Keck -
SciencePhysics & ChemistryA Visit to One of the Most Powerful Lasers on Earth
BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA—The winners of this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics didn’t just make discoveries. Their revolutionary work turned powerful lasers into ubiquitous lab tools. The day of the announcement earlier this month, I’d already planned to visit the tennis-court sized Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator, or BELLA, which uses one of the Nobel-winning methods to create … Continued
-
SciencePhysics & Chemistry
Donna Strickland, Third Woman to Ever Win Nobel Prize in Physics, Helped Make Awesome Laser Tool
Scientists Arthur Ashkin from the U.S.-based Bell Labs, Gérard Mourou from École Polytechnique in France, and Donna Strickland from the University of Waterloo in Canada shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for their pioneering work in laser physics. Strickland is the third female physics laureate ever, after Maria Goeppert Mayer in 1963, and the third … Continued
-
Tech NewsHateful Kitties, Space Lasers, Spider-Man, and Soundbars: Best Gizmodo Posts of the Week
We’re up for a big week in the news, folks. There’s a lot going to happen, from Apple’s big September 12th announcement event to the notably less fun Hurricane Florence, which is currently projected to barrel into the East Coast at a minimum Category 3 status or possibly even worse before the weekend. As the … Continued
By Tom McKay -
ReviewsOther GadgetsNerf’s New Laser Tag Blasters Ditched the Darts, and I Don’t Miss Them
Over-the-top Nerf battles are a fun and (mostly) painless way to determine who in the office has to buy the donuts this week. What’s not so fun is having to hunt down every last missing dart afterwards. Hasbro’s eliminated that hassle with its new Laser Ops Pro blasters; an updated version of laser tag that … Continued
