X-Message-Number: 7598 Date: Wed, 29 Jan 1997 19:03:11 -1000 From: Rick Friedlander <> Subject: 'atom' laser beam Check this out: Knight-Ridder Service Dallas--Physicists have done to atoms what they did a long time ago to light: They've created a laser beam, this time made of a stream of atoms. The new "atom laser" may someday have applications ranging from building VERY TINY (caps mine) devices to making more precise atomic clocks. Scientists say that it's not possibe to predict what applications will come from the atom laser, just as no one could foresee three decades ago that the light laser would one day be used in supermarket price scanners and CD players. The atom laser may be a crucial breakthrough toward controlling atoms at a very precise level, researchers say. "This discovery is one of the most exciting things I've seen during my career in atomic physics," said John Doyle of Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. "It's a spectacular result." agreed Randy Hulet, a physicist at Rice University in Houston. Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reported their development in two scientific papers this week. One paper appears in today's (Tuesday) Physical Review Letters, and the other will appear Friday in the journal Science. Physicists have dreamed of making an atom laser for years, but the MIT group is the first to demonstate one, scientists said. The hallmark of a laser is that the material moves in a "coherent" beam. In the case of a light laser, this means that the light waves all move in step with one another. The atom laser is made of a beam of atoms marching one after the other. [end] So please don't tell me that it will be centuries before nanotechnology will do anything useful. I'm predicting immortality by Sunday. Rick F. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=7598