Russians Nicolay Basov and Aleksandr Prokhorov did their research in Moscow. Their work led to technology important to lasers and masers. The three men received the Nobel Prize in Physics in nineteen sixty-four.
The idea of a thin beam of light with deadly power came much earlier. By the end of the eighteen hundreds, the industrial revolution had shown that science could invent machines with almost magical powers. And some writers of the time were the first to imagine something like a laser.
In eighteen ninety-eighty, H.G. Wells published a science fiction novel called “The War of the Worlds.” In it, he described creatures from the planet Mars that had technology far beyond anything on Earth. Among their weapons was what Wells called a “heat ray.” Listen to actor Orson Welles describe the weapon in a famous radio broadcast of “The War of the Worlds” from nineteen thirty-eight.
“I shall refer to the mysterious weapon as a heat ray… It's my guess that in some way they are able to generate an intense heat in a chamber of practically absolute non-conductivity. This intense heat they project in a parallel beam against any object they choose, by means of a polished parabolic mirror of unknown composition, much as the mirror of a lighthouse projects a beam of light. That -- That is my conjecture of the origin of the heat ray.”
H.G. Wells’ description is not too far from the truth. All lasers have several things in common. They have a material that supplies electrons and a power source that lifts the energy level of those electrons. And, as Wells guessed, many lasers have mirrors that direct light.
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25