Lasers Enable Internet Backbone via Sat

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Lasers Enable Internet Backbone via Satellite

ETH Zurich (Switzerland), Daniel Meierhans

June 20, 2023

Scientists at Switzerland's ETH Zurich, French aerospace laboratory ONERA, and French space company Thales Alenia Space transmitted several dozen terabits per second between a mountain peak and the Swiss city of Bern using optical data communications lasers. The researchers supported a 1-terabit/second optical communication link between the High Altitude Research Station on the Jungfraujoch peak and the University of Bern's Zimmerwald Observatory, which are 53 kilometers (33 miles) apart. ONERA implemented a microelectromechanical system chip with 97 adjustable mirrors to improve signals about 500-fold by correcting the phase shift of the beam on its intersection surface along the currently measured gradient 1,500 times per second.

Lasers Enable Internet Backbone via Satellite

 Lasers Enable Internet Backbone via Satellite

ETH Zurich (Switzerland)

Daniel Meierhans

June 20, 2023

Scientists at Switzerland's ETH Zurich, French aerospace laboratory ONERA, and French space company Thales Alenia Space transmitted several dozen terabits per second between a mountain peak and the Swiss city of Bern using optical data communications lasers. The researchers supported a 1-terabit/second optical communication link between the High Altitude Research Station on the Jungfraujoch peak and the University of Bern's Zimmerwald Observatory, which are 53 kilometers (33 miles) apart. ONERA implemented a microelectromechanical system chip with 97 adjustable mirrors to improve signals about 500-fold by correcting the phase shift of the beam on its intersection surface along the currently measured gradient 1,500 times per second. ... '

Robots Killing Cockroaches

Robotic Insecticide

Robotic Laser Can Target, Kill Cockroaches

By New Scientist, October 27, 2022

The device is equipped with a laser, two cameras, and a small computer running an AI model that can be trained to target certain types of insect.

Researchers at the U.K.'s Heriot-Watt University developed a device that can kill cockroaches using a laser, two cameras, and an artificial intelligence (AI) model capable of targeting specific insect types.

The device could would be more cost-effective and environmentally friendly than insecticides, according to the researchers. The researchers were able to kill a common cockroach in about a second from 1.2 meters away using a 1,600 milliwatt laser.

They said the AI would have to be trained to target the laser at the cockroach's abdomen, which kills it quickly, rather than other parts of its body.

However, the dangerous impact of lasers on human eyesight means the device likely would not be suitable for home use.

Said Rakhmatulin, "If we talk about industrial or agricultural applications, it's a very serious possibility. It's very cheap, even compared to pesticides, because laser prices are not so high."

From New Scientist

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Directed Laser Light Attacks

I have a connection at Karlsruhe, seeking to connect on this. 

IT Security: Computer Attacks With Laser Light

By Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

Researchers at Germany's Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), the Technical University of Braunschweig, and the Technical University of Berlin demonstrated that physically isolated computer systems can be hacked using a directed laser.

The researchers found that hackers can communicate secretly with air-gapped computer systems over several meters of distance, using a directed laser to transmit data to the light-emitting diodes of traditional office devices without additional hardware at the attacked device. Their work was presented at ACSAC '21, the Annual Computer Security Applications Conference..

"The LaserShark project demonstrates how important it is to additionally protect critical IT systems optically next to conventional information and communication technology security measures," says KIT Professor Christian Wressnegger.

From Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

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Now we are Cooking with Lasers

 A long time amateur chef

Now We're Cooking With Lasers   By Columbia Engineering, September 20, 2021

Researchers at Columbia Engineering have digitized food creation and cooking processes, using 3D printing technology to tailor food shape and texture and lasers of various wavelengths to cook it.

"Precision Cooking for Printed Foods via Multiwavelength Lasers,"    Science of Food, explores various modalities of cooking. The researchers printed chicken samples as a test bed and assessed a range of parameters. They found that blue lasers (445 nm) are best for penetrative cooking, and infrared lasers (980 nm and 10.6 μm) best for browning. Laser-cooked meat shrinks 50% less and retains double the moisture as meat cooked in conventional ovens.

"Our two blind taste-testers preferred laser-cooked meat to the conventionally cooked samples, which shows promise for this burgeoning technology," says Jonathan Blutinger, a Ph.D. student in the Creative Machines Lab at Columbia University.

 "What we still don't have is what we call 'Food CAD,' sort of the Photoshop of food," says Professor Hod Lipson, lead author of the study. "We need a high level software that enables people who are not programmers or software developers to design the foods they want. And then we need a place where people can share digital recipes, like we share music."

From Columbia Engineering   View Full Article

Towards a Reality of Fusion Power

Quite a number of advances in recent years. Excellent overview.  With some technology explanation.

5 Big Ideas for Making Fusion Power a Reality In IEEE Spectrum

Startups, universities, and major companies are vying to commercialize a nuclear fusion reactor
By Tom Clynes

Fusion Vortex: General Fusion’s magnetized target reactor injects pulses of plasma into a sphere filled with swirling molten lead and lithium.

The joke has been around almost as long as the dream: Nuclear fusion energy is 30 years away...and always will be. But now, more than 80 years after Australian physicist Mark Oliphant first observed deuterium atoms fusing and releasing dollops of energy, it may finally be time to update the punch line.

Over the past several years, more than two dozen research groups—impressively staffed and well-funded startups, university programs, and corporate projects—have achieved eye-opening advances in controlled nuclear fusion. They’re building fusion reactors based on radically different designs that challenge the two mainstream approaches, which use either a huge, doughnut-shaped magnetic vessel called a tokamak or enormously powerful lasers.

What’s more, some of these groups are predicting significant fusion milestones within the next five years, including reaching the breakeven point at which the energy produced surpasses the energy used to spark the reaction. That’s shockingly soon, considering that the mainstream projects pursuing the conventional tokamak and laser-based approaches have been laboring for decades and spent billions of dollars without achieving breakeven. .... " 

Stanford Develops Technique to See Objects Around Corners

Recall testing clamp and fork lifts in warehouses for better viewing.

Stanford researchers develop technique to see objects hidden around corners

Someday your self-driving car could react to hazards before you even see them, thanks to a laser-based imaging technology being developed by Stanford researchers that can peek around corners.

Stanford Researchers Develop Technique to See Objects Hidden Around Corners

in Stanford News   By Taylor Kubota

Stanford University researchers have developed laser-based imaging technology that can produce images of objects hidden from view, which could enable self-driving cars to react to hazards before the driver even sees them. While the researchers are focused on applications for autonomous vehicles, some of which already have similar laser-based systems for detecting objects around the car, other applications could include seeing through foliage from aerial vehicles or giving rescue teams the ability to find people blocked from view by walls and rubble. The team is continuing its efforts to better handle the variability of the real world and complete the scan more quickly. ... "

Images Floating in the Air

Seems to compete with augmented reality scenarios I have seen.  Do we need a headset?     Advertising and more.  Not a Hologram, which powered the examples of this I have seen.

BYU Study Produces 3D Images That Float in 'Thin Air' 
BYU News (UT)
By Todd Hollingshead

Researchers at Brigham Young University (BYU) say they have developed a method to create a three-dimensional (3D) volumetric projection, or a 3D image that floats in air, that a viewer can walk around and see from every angle. The researchers note they developed a free-space volumetric display platform, based on photophoretic optical trapping, that produces full-color, aerial volumetric images with 10-micron image points by persistence of vision. The new technique uses forces conveyed by a set of near-invisible laser beams to trap a particle of cellulose and heat it evenly. This process enables the researchers to push and pull the cellulose around, while a second set of lasers projects visible light onto the particle, illuminating it as it moves through space. "In simple terms, we're using a laser beam to trap a particle, and then we can steer the laser beam around to move the particle and create the image," says BYU's Erich Nygaard. .... " 

Simulators for Quantum Computing

Simulators allow us to guide the future of direction of research for more universal solutions.

Two New Simulators Tease Future of Quantum Computing   By Jeremy Hsu

A universal quantum computer capable of outperforming today’s classical computers in solving many different problems remains the biggest future prize for many engineers and researchers. One possible path toward that goal comes from two U.S. research groups that have demonstrated some of the largest quantum simulators ever built. Such specialized devices are much less versatile than the vision for universal quantum computers, but share architectural similarities that could pave the way for the latter.

Quantum simulators are designed to tackle very specific problems in scientific fields such as high-energy physics and chemistry. These devices have mostly consisted of small arrays of five or 10 quantum bits (qubits) that can each represent multiple states of information simultaneously. In recent work, one research group used lasers as optical tweezers to assemble a 51-qubit array of so-called Rydberg atoms. A second group showed how to build a 53-qubit “trapped ion” device using electric fields to control a string of charged atoms.  .... "