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.


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