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It's not quite Cyclops, the sci-fi superhero from the X-Men franchise whose eyes produce destructive blasts of light, but for the first time a laser has been created using a biological cell.
The human kidney cell that was used to make the laser survived the experience. In future such "living lasers" might be created inside live animals, which could potentially allow internal tissues to be imaged in unprecedented detail.
It's not the first unconventional laser. Other attempts include lasers made of Jell-O and powered by nuclear reactors (see box below). But how do you go about giving a living cell this bizarre ability?
Typically, a laser consists of two mirrors on either side of a gain medium - a material whose structural properties allow it to amplify light. A source of energy such as a flash tube or electrical discharge excites the atoms in the gain medium, releasing photons. Normally, these would shoot out in random directions, as in the broad beam of a flashlight, but a laser uses mirrors on either end of the gain medium to create a directed beam.
As photons bounce back and forth between the mirrors, repeatedly passing through the gain medium, they stimulate other atoms to release photons of exactly the same wavelength, phase and direction. Eventually, a concentrated single-frequency beam of light erupts through one of the mirrors as laser light.
"Basically, any computing device (or switch, or router) that is based on light requires a nonlinear interaction between different light beams, but light doesn't like to do nonlinear stuff. With current technology, you can get efficient nonlinear optical interactions, but the hardware is kind of bulky or very delicate. Not the sort of thing you want to put in a billion devices. What my friends in Barcelona have demonstrated is that it's possible to create a relatively efficient optical nonlinear interaction in a nano-structured metallic surface. "
Exposure to even a dim night-time light may cause physical changes in the brain linked to depression, according to an Ohio State University hamster study.
Free Download - StanfordUniversity - January 22, 2009 - Karl Deisseroth is pioneering bold new treatments for depression and other psychiatric diseases. By sending pulses of light into the brain, Deisseroth can control neural activity with remarkable precision. In this short talk, Deisseroth gives an thoughtful and awe-inspiring overview of his Stanford University lab's groundbreaking research in "optogenetics".
Astronomers' new observations have spotted the most distant galaxy ever seen. The galaxy's light comes from about 13.1 billion light-years away, making it one of the first galaxies to form after the Big Bang.
ScienceDaily (Dec. 3, 2010) - IBM scientists have unveiled a new chip technology that integrates electrical and optical devices on the same piece of silicon, enabling computer chips to communicate using pulses of light (instead of electrical signals), resulting in smaller, faster and more power-efficient chips than is possible with conventional technologies.
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With this new experiment, the researchers have succeeded for the first time in experimentally reconstructing full trajectories which provide a description of how light particles move through the two slits and form an interference pattern. Their technique builds on a new theory of weak measurement that was developed by Yakir Aharonov's group at Tel Aviv University. Howard Wiseman of Griffith University proposed that it might be possible to measure the direction a photon (particle of light) was moving, conditioned upon where the photon is found. By combining information about the photon's direction at many different points, one could construct its entire flow pattern ie. the trajectories it takes to a screen.
Captured by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and combined with data from infrared and optical telescopes, this image shows the farthest galaxy cluster ever detected. Designated JKCS041, the cluster is located 10.2 billion light-years from Earth, beating the previous distance record by a billion light-years. Astronomers think JKCS041 formed just about as early as was feasible.
The most distant known galaxy cluster has been discovered with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The cluster, known as JKCS041, is located about 10.2 billion light-years away and is observed as it was when the universe was only about a quarter of its present age. It beats the previous record holder, XMMXCS J2215.9-1738, by about a billion light-years.
ScienceDaily (July 10, 2011) - University of Toronto researchers have derived inspiration from the photosynthetic apparatus in plants to engineer a new generation of nanomaterials that control and direct the energy absorbed from light.
ScienceDaily (July 11, 2011) - Researchers at Columbia Engineering School have built optical nanostructures that enable them to engineer the index of refraction and fully control light dispersion.
ScienceDaily (June 9, 2011) - On rare occasion, the light-sensing photoreceptor cells in the eye misfire and signal to the brain as if they have captured photons, when in reality they haven't. For years this phenomenon remained a mystery. Reporting in the June 10 issue of Science, neuroscientists at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have discovered that a light-capturing pigment molecule in photoreceptors can be triggered by heat, as well, giving rise to these false alarms.