Dean's World

New Ideas In X-Ray Lasers

Dean

I found this story interesting for two reasons:

1) It's cool what they're increasingly able to do with lasers, and
2) Frickin' X-Ray Lasers!

Posted by Dean | Permalink | Technorati Trackbacks

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Dean Esmay:

I mean, I'm thinkin' if we could somehow cross a shark with frickin' x-ray lasers.... just imagine the possibilities!

9.29.2006 12:17pm

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Charles Werner (mail):

This is yet another example of how far we've come in (my) lifetime. Back in the olden days (1970's) when I was actually working on this stuff, x-ray lasers were talked about, but nobody really believed we'd actually be able to make one. Wrong again.

9.29.2006 12:40pm

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Jerry Kindall (www):

Shouldn't those be xasers? The "l" in laser means "light." X-Rays aren't light. (Hence the term "maser" for a "microwave laser.")

9.29.2006 1:03pm

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Ronald Coleman (mail) (www):

Pronounced "ksazers"? Great.

9.29.2006 3:33pm

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Martin L. Shoemaker (www):

Call it a remnant of my pathetic attempt to learn Russian; but I read it as khasers. (The symbol X in the cyrillic alphabet is pronounced with a hard "ch" like in Bach or L'chaim; but I transliterated it as "kh", because "chasers" only added to the confusion.)

9.29.2006 3:50pm

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Charles Werner (mail):

My vote is to pronounce it "zayzers", like the first 'x' in xanax. It's a moot point, though, because x-rays really are light. Just very short wavelength light. The term "maser" predates "laser" which explains why they both exist. "Laser" is the more general term.

9.29.2006 3:57pm

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Dean Esmay:

Yeah that's kind of what I thought. I didn't know masers predated lasers but that makes sense.

9.29.2006 4:55pm

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triticale (mail) (www):

Reverse alphabetical order. The earliest experiments were actually with nasers.

9.29.2006 8:11pm

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Ted Armstrong (mail) (www):

What is the difference between X-rays and light? Aren't X-rays just very high frequency light.

9.29.2006 9:53pm

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MaryJ:

I had pain blocks with steriods and marcain in my back. Three in the neck gave me my hands back and then, three in the middle and then three in the lower.

I can no longer have steriods for my illness and my doctor (Pain mgmt) said he will use a laser if it comes to it. Hopefully not but, man...a laser for pain!

This is exciting about lasers for Xrays too!

9.29.2006 11:41pm

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Dean Esmay:

Ted, yes, read the earlier comments. X-rays are just very very short light waves.

9.29.2006 11:49pm

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Cybrludite (mail) (www):

Well, that's more envirometnally friendly than the original way of making x-ray laser beams...

9.30.2006 4:37am