Ten scientific institutions from Spain and Portugal have joined forces to create the SPALINET lidar network, radars with laser technology intended to study the aerosols in the atmosphere. The aim of the team is to homogenise and enhance the quality of measurements in order to better understand the scattering of these particles in the sky over the Iberian Peninsula and the Canary Islands.
via EurekAlert.
The dungeon believed to have housed Robin Hood when he was caught by the Sheriff of Nottingham is to be surveyed using a laser.
via BBC
Coherent Inc. has opened a new CO2 laser applications laboratory in Beijing, China. This facility will give customers in the rapidly growing Chinese materials processing and microelectronics markets the ability to get quick feedback on the suitability of their specific application for CO2 laser processing. This applications laboratory is able to process a wide variety of laser/material interactions with up to 400 watts of laser power, and as it adds higher power levels it will be able to address a broader selection of applications.
Raytheon and Emirates Advanced Investments EAI completed four ground-based guided flight tests of the TALON Laser-Guided Rocket. The TALON LGR is an affordable, semi-active laser guidance and control kit that connects directly to the front of 2.75-inch unguided rockets currently in U.S. and international inventories.
via spacedaily
The Economist reported Dr. Takashi Yabe’s solar pumped laser and “Magnesium Injection Cycle” for renewable energy.
But there is, of course, a catch. Although magnesium is abundant, its production is neither cheap nor clean, says Takashi Yabe of the Tokyo Institute of Technology. Various industrial methods are used to extract magnesium, ranging from an electrolytic process to a high temperature method called the Pidgeon process, but the energy cost is high. Producing a single kilogram of magnesium requires 10kg of coal, says Dr Yabe.
To change this, he is developing a process using only renewable energy. Dr Yabe’s solution is to use concentrated solar energy to power a laser, which is used to heat and ultimately burn magnesium oxide extracted from seawater—where, he says, there is enough magnesium to meet the world’s energy needs for the next 300,000 years. A solar-pumped laser is necessary, he says, because concentrated solar energy alone would not be enough to generate the 3,700˚C temperatures required. Dr Yabe calls his approach the Magnesium Injection Cycle.
The pure magnesium can then be used as a fuel (its energy density is about ten times that of hydrogen). When the magnesium is mixed with water, it produces heat, boiling the water to produce steam, which can then drive a turbine and do useful work. The reaction also produces hydrogen, which can be burned to produce even more energy. The byproducts are water and magnesium oxide, which can then be converted back into magnesium using the solar laser.
The trouble is that concentrated solar collectors tend to be huge and costly, and solar-pumped lasers are normally very low powered. Dr Yabe’s trick is to use relatively small Fresnel lenses—transparent and relatively thin planar lenses made up of concentric rings of prisms. These are commonly found in lighthouses to magnify light in a way that would normally require a much larger, thicker lens. His other trick is to boost the output power of the lasing material, neodymium-doped yttrium aluminium garnet. It normally only absorbs about 7% of the energy from sunlight, but when doped with chromium this figure increases to more than 67%.
Dr Yabe has built a demonstration plant at Chitose, Japan, in partnership with Mitsubishi. It is capable of producing 80 watts of power from the laser, enough to cut steel and extract 70% of the magnesium in seawater. The process will, says Dr Yabe, become commercially viable when the laser power reaches 400 watts, which could happen later this year. “As a starting point we are planning to use 300 lasers to produce 50 tonnes of magnesium per year,” he says. After that, it is just a small matter of convincing the world to start thinking about a magnesium economy instead of hydrogen one, he adds.
Atmospheric researchers are able to detect the cloud using a special measuring device that functions a lot like the laser pistols used by police. So-called light detection and ranging systems (Lidar) send laser signals straight up into the sky, which are then reflected back by the airborne particles in the atmosphere, so-called aerosols. Using the lidar signals, scientists can determine the type, dimension and the elevation at which the ash cloud is moving — at least where sensors are in place. Compared to other types of aerosols, ash tends to absorb considerably more light.
For the areas between the Lidar points the German Aerospace Center (DLR) is now using a special aircraft to provide further information. On Monday, a modified Falcon 20E jet, registration D-CMET, took off from Oberpfaffenhofen research center in Bavaria and did a round flight over Leipzig, Hamburg, Cologne and Stuttgart. The aircraft spent three hours at different altitudes. There were two experienced pilots on board the 18-meter long blue and white jet as well as two scientists and a flight mechanic.
via The Scientific Debate over the Flight Ban: ‘The Cloud Smells Like a Steam Engine’
Elizabeth Goldschimdt explains research at NIST on a solid-state quantum memory and single photon gun, promising for a variety of quantum information applications.
Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the US say that they have developed the world’s most efficient single photon detector. The device is said to be able to count individual photons travelling through fibre optic cables with roughly 99% efficiency. The team's efforts could bring improvements to secure electronic communication, advanced quantum computation and the measurement of optical power.
via optics.org.
Germany was sending up a special flight Monday equipped with a laser capable of testing the amount of volcanic ash in the nation's airspace.
Scientists from the German Aerospace Center have spent days outfitting a special Falcon 20E airplane with instruments that will allow them to measure the concentration of dangerous volcanic ash in the air.
via The Canadian Press.
Laser weather technology, originally devised for 3D humidity maps, is the ideal solution for monitoring the volcanic ash cloud, says a top MeteoSwiss official.
via Swiss lasers map volcanic ash cloud from Iceland – swissinfo.
