The next time the U.S. Army rolls into battle, it may do so with lasers mounted on the tops of the trucks carrying its soldiers. The lasers will protect the troops inside the armored, IED-resistant Stryker transports from drones, mortars, and other artillery. According to the director of strategic planning for General Dynamics Land Systems, this laser weapon could be ready as early as next year.
America's first laser gun went to war in 2014, to protect a ship against robots. On board the USS Ponce, the Navy's Laser Weapon System is a modest sign of the lasers to come: at 30 kilowatts, it's powerful enough to slowly burn through a drone, given time. But the Pentagon's plans for lasers go far beyond its modest first showcase: they want lasers to disable everything from small drones to mortar shells, rockets, and missiles. For nations that might someday fight against American military machines, the answer to lasers could be a far more ancient technology: smoke, judiciously applied.
According to the Air Force, the future of war in the sky is lasers. Lasers on new jet fighters are a future goal, but there's lower-hanging fruit in the world of science fiction weapons that the Air Force hopes to reach first: why not mount the lasers on heavier and relatively more spacious gunships?
A famed physicist who was among the creators of lasers died yesterday. Charles Townes invented the MASER--short for Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation, instead of LASER's Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation--and filed patents for lasers as well. As implied by the name, masers amplify microwaves by using [hard crystals and powerful magnetic fields]; they often serve as key components of atomic clocks and radio telescopes.
In January, we wrote about an impressive feat—when NASA sent the Mona Lisa to the moon using lasers. In the accompanying video, NASA noted that they've been using lasers to track satellites, and in the future, lasers may also work well for space communication. Well, that futureis happening.
Ok, so it's not quite as cool as shooting lasers out of your eyes. But for the 39 million blind people alive around the world today, and the many more who will live in the future, a pair of goggles that allows you to see by shooting lasers into your eyes would no doubt sound like the best thing ever. Scientists from Stanford University in the States have put together a proof-of-concept demonstrating core system that could make such a device a future possibility.
