Laser Created Audio by MIT

Cures for deafness, secret communications?  The future for audiophiles?  A kind of whisper into your ear.

deliver secret messages directly to your ears   By Luke Dormehl —  in Digitaltrend

What’s the best way to communicate with a person when they’re outside of normal speaking distance? Call them on their phone, obviously. But what if the person either doesn’t have a phone with them — or you’re just looking for a high-tech communication method that’s a little more James Bond in its nature? Researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology have you covered with a new invention that makes it possible to literally beam an audible message to a specific person across the room using a laser. Because, you know, science.

“We have demonstrated that an eye-safe laser will heat the water molecules in the air, via the well-known photoacoustic effect, to create a local sound,” Ryan Sullenberger, a researcher who worked on the project, told Digital Trends. “We have also leveraged the special behaviors that occur at the speed of sound to help us amplify and localize the sound. If we rotate our laser beam, we can localize the sound not only along the laser path, but also isolate a specific range — the one at which the beam is moving at the speed of sound — at which the signal is amplified to an audible level.” ... "