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Posted by rbanffy 8 hours ago

NIST scientists create 'any wavelength' lasers(www.nist.gov)
201 points | 84 commentspage 3
__MatrixMan__ 6 hours ago|
I'll take one in gamma please.
Retro_Dev 6 hours ago|
A gamma wavelength handheld laser would be cool; "and on this petri dish, we see a dot of cells instantaneously develop cancer"
__MatrixMan__ 5 hours ago||
At high energies I think you could point two at a spot in space and get antimatter where the beams cross (also matter, and then an explosion... see the Breit-Wheeler process).

We have a hard enough time building shipping-container sized devices that reflect extreme ultraviolet though... so I think a handheld gamma ray laser is off the table for this century.

wizardforhire 4 hours ago||
Just read the article and didn't see anything about building an actual laser… what details the article has (and its scant) its seems they took a fluorescing layer and sandwiched with a color wheel and added the additional wiring and control circuitry… (Obviously more nuanced and interesting physics but still…) cool and practical, but not a diode and definitely not a laser… I could be wrong and would love to be!

… now, if that setup could be drawn out into a fiber laser as cladding with a wide spectrum neural amplifying core (if such a material exists) that could maybe be something idk

guzfip 6 hours ago||
Very cool stuff. I regret wasting my life in software when I see other fields still doing interesting work.
analog8374 7 hours ago||
can they do microwave?

if you do the exact right color you can make certain things melt very precisely.

BigTTYGothGF 6 hours ago||
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maser
analog8374 6 hours ago||
thanks, I'm familiar. But it doesn't answer my question.
Aboutplants 6 hours ago||
An application that came to mind is tunneling (through rock and earth). You could absolutely tune the wavelength to whatever material your drilling through absorbs best, to help ease and speed. Would need a good amount of energy but I could see that utilized in some fashion in the next 10-20 years
NitpickLawyer 1 hour ago|||
I remember seeing a yt video about this tech being already trialed (w/ regular lasers) for geothermal. They use lasers to "vaporise" rock, in the hopes of digging much more efficiently.
analog8374 51 minutes ago|||
I think that if you can hit the right frequency, the resonant frequency for wiggling the water molecule or whatever, it can cost less energy.

So like if you can get just the right frequency you could cause a skin protein molecule to fall apart, which might be nicer than scalpels.

Maybe you could weld it too. A "protoplaser" like in startrek.

jiveturkey 7 hours ago||
But can it produce magenta?
ivanjermakov 6 hours ago||
Not every color has a corresponding wavelength, rather a combination of wavelengths.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_vision

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIE_1931_color_space

dnnddidiej 6 hours ago||
Magenta is the Doom of colour lasers by the look of it.
lwansbrough 4 hours ago||
0.1nm please. It's x-ray lithography time!
loudmax 3 hours ago|
I was thinking the same thing. The stuff ASML does to produce a light at exactly the right wavelength is bananas. Making of stream of molten tin, and shooting each droplet with a laser, twice! Then bouncing the light through a series of super high precision mirrors to capture just the right spread. If you can get a laser to produce your desired wavelength without all that complexity, that's a major breakthrough.
staplung 7 hours ago||
What if I like magenta? Or brown?
zamadatix 7 hours ago||
Pedantry for pedantry, you're in luck as the title says they created 'any wavelength lasers' not 'any wavelength laser' so you can make any such combos you like rather than the fixed set now (if true) :p.
dullcrisp 7 hours ago||
Can I interest you in indigo or violet? Or a nice orange?
dnnddidiej 6 hours ago||
Genuine q: how close can you get to magenta with the rainbow?
nine_k 6 hours ago|||
What we call "magenta" is the sensation of both red and blue color-sensitive cells in the eye being excited at the same time. There's no single wavelength that produces this effect (unlike e.g. yellow). The closes you can get is violet, which looks faint to the eye.

A rainbow gives you both red and blue; mute everything else, and you'll get magenta. That's what magenta pigments do when illuminated by white light (which is a rainbow scrambled).

dnnddidiej 3 hours ago|||
It never clicked before that yellow and magenta are snowflakes to each other in this regard. I thought they were equals, but magenta is more majestic!
dyauspitr 6 hours ago|||
Saying a wavelength doesn’t do it doesn’t make any sense. If you can perceive it visually, a wavelength is doing it.
nine_k 5 hours ago|||
Two wavelengths do it; one does not suffice. It's like a perfect fifth can not one note.
dyauspitr 5 hours ago||
The interference is a wavelength too. Maybe not pure but it is one. Afaik they cannot be interpreted as two separate wavelengths and then “brain combined” when the aperture (the retina) is so small.
dnnddidiej 3 hours ago|||
I haven't heard of a wavelength of 2 frequencies merged. It is like saying what is the wavelength if you tune to 2 radio stations with 2 radios (assume silent transmition for simplicity). There are 2 wavelengths.
redsocksfan45 5 hours ago|||
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redsocksfan45 5 hours ago|||
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compass_copium 6 hours ago|||
Not very! This is on the "line of purples".

Here's a nice visualization of color perception (there are more modern ones, but we used the 1931 color space when I was working in the field). The horseshoe shape on the outside is the single wavelength colors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIE_1931_color_space

rogmash 4 hours ago|
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