Techno

UMich unveils the most intense laser of the Universe

Laser has been one of the most overwhelming technologies of all time. The Cyclops of lasers of our time so far could perform feats like heating coffee in few seconds.

However, the University of Michigan, which boasts one of the largest engineering research budgets of any public university, at more than $130 million annually, have introduced a new hero to the world of lasers - the HERCULES. The research team has intentionally used upper case in the name since this new laser is believed to be the most intense laser ever created by mankind.

Technically speaking, this laser contains a staggering power of 300 terawatts. This is reportedly 300 times the capacity of the US electricity grid, and though you would believe it or not, it is also almost two million times the grid capacity of Sri Lanka.

The description of this masterpiece in its creator's own words would be, "If you could hold a giant magnifying glass in space and focus all the sunlight shining toward Earth onto one grain of sand, that concentrated ray would approach the intensity of HERCULES".

The record-setting beam measures 20 billion trillion watts per square centimeter. The laser beam's power is concentrated to a 1.3-micron speck about 100th the diameter of a human hair. A human hair is about 100 microns wide. What's more? This laser can produce this intense beam once every 10 seconds, whereas other powerful lasers can take an hour to recharge.

However, it would be horrifying to imagine the amount of power this would consume if it was to run even for few minutes. But, we can shed a sigh of relief since the high intensity is produced only for a very short period of time.

This pulse lasts only 30 femtoseconds, and a femtosecond is a millionth of a billionth of a second. Even so, researchers believe that an intensity of this magnitude has not yet been found anywhere in the universe, and thus the HERCULES holds the record for the highest intensity achieved so far in the universe thus far.

HERCULES is a titanium-sapphire laser that takes up several rooms at University of Michigan's Center for Ultrafast Optical Science. Light fed into it bounces like a pinball off a series of mirrors and other optical elements. It gets stretched, energized, squeezed and focused along the way.

The usability of such an intense laser lies in the fact that it could help scientists develop better proton and electron beams for radiation treatment of cancer, among other applications. In addition to medical uses, intense laser beams like these could help researchers explore new frontiers in science.

At even more extreme intensities, laser beams could potentially 'boil the vacuum', which scientists theorize would generate matter by merely focusing light into empty space.

Some scientists also see applications in inertial confinement fusion research, coaxing low-mass atoms to join together into heavier ones and release energy in the process.

The Cell Phone redesigned!!!!!

The cell phone - the consumer electronic device that has virtually emerged as the most sought after product, which has had a conventional framework, has started to show a deviation in its design as a consequence of initiatives taken by an Israeli company.

This new thinking of the cell phone is built up on the fact that it can work on it own or in conjunction with a range of other devices.

This new product is branded as the Modu, and was launched at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. At a glance it is a simple, generic mobile phone of a size slightly larger than a domino. As obviously expected, it is capable of sending and receiving calls and text messages and furthermore, it houses a 16GB storage capacity.

The display is quite small, yet it preserves usability and the keypad consists of only few buttons where numbers are taken off. In this sense, it can be easily used as a basic standalone phone.

Today, people generally have one phone that they use all the time, and they use it for a year or two because it's too expensive to buy a new model more frequently. The idea of one phone rarely meshes with the exact lifestyles of people.

For example, sometimes you might want to walk around with the smallest possible phone, and at other times you might want a good messaging device with a large keyboard, or a media player with a large screen.

However, the wonder exists in fact that the Modu can be slipped in to a variety of 'jackets' which extend the generic features of it as a composite device. These jackets can be in the form of in-car MP3 players, Global Positioning Systems, and even larger cell phones, and these collectively change the functionality as well as the look and feel of the Modu.

So, with this new approach, instead of buying a completely new phone, the jacket enables you to switch.

Once a user plugs the Modu into a jacket, however, the features improve. The jacket may also have a battery, and the combined device shares the load between the two batteries.

Consequently, it extends the talk time and standby time. One of the main innovations is that the software that runs the Modu automatically reconfigures when it is put in another device.

A resource file defines the way the Modu and jacket will work together. Every jacket it is plugged into, the user will get a completely different experience, yet it keeps the basic functionality in all cases so that it's familiar to the user.

The new concept of extensibility goes beyond cell-phone jackets and Modu Mobile will offer other consumer-electronics devices in which the phone module can be inserted, improving the basic functions of the device.

For instance, a camera with the Modu could wirelessly send pictures to other phones, and a car entertainment system designed for the Modu could let a user access his MP3s while enabling hands-free calling.

Although there have been quite similar initiatives which tried to extend the capabilities of mobile phones by interconnecting them with other devices through Bluetooth they haven't made such a big impact, and although this new move seems pretty exciting, critics have stated that pushing the consumers to deviate from the conventional method and go with this modular approach is going to be pretty tough.

Ultimately, this is a totally novel and different idea, and time will tell how it will pull off mainly because the Apple iPhone, which as has come up with this all-in-one package has started to catch up the market. However, creators of the Modu emphasis that no matter what jacket you slip this thing into, it's not going to be an iPhone,

Aravinda Dassanayake