It’s hard to believe that it’s the 21st Century and we’re still talking about pirates, but high-seas bandits are a big problem for ships, including oil tankers and container ships. Last year, there were 430 reported attacks and in 2009, 406, according to reports from the ICC’s International Maritime Bureau.

Pirates are also expanding their range. We’re becoming accustomed to hearing about attacks off the coast of Somalia, but reports of pirate attacks are coming from vessels off the coast of Bangladesh, Nigeria and around Indonesia. The map at right shows piracy and armed robbery events reported to the IMB during 2010.

London-based BAE Systems has come up with a prototype device that they hope will deter pirates from attacking ships altogether. The device shoots a nonlethal laser beam that can be seen at distances greater than 1.2 miles away. The laser provides a visual warning to not come any closer. Attackers who do, will be subjected to the disorienting effects of the light. At all distances, the laser does not cause any harm to eyes.

“The effect is similar to when a fighter pilot attacks from the direction of the sun,” Roy Evans, BAE Systems capability technology lead for laser photonic systems said in a press release from the company. “The glare from the laser is intense enough to make it impossible to aim weapons like AK47s or RPGs, but doesn’t have a permanent effect.”

Tests showed that the laser works well both in daylight and at night.

BAE sees this device as something that could be combined with a ships targeting and radar systems to help aim the device. And they’ve built in security features that would prevent the laser from being used if pirates managed to take over the ship.

As of January 10, 2011, Somali pirates hold 25 vessels and 586 people hostage.

Caption: Instead of a laser, sailors aboard the French Navy ship “La Somme” direct a high-powered light at a small craft after a pirate attack during the night. Credit: Corbis

One of the most striking images from The Terminator was the weapon he carried and used in his first attempt on Sarah Connor’s life: the .45 Longslide, with laser sighting. Who can forget the scene in the gun shop? The gun was likewise such a striking presence on screen it was used on the film’s poster. There are T-shirts dedicated to the gun.

Terminator was released in 1984, and while laser sights on weapons are common now, when the film was first shown the red laser was able to communicate something subtle and powerful to the audience: this is a machine, deadly accurate and futuristic. It made the Terminator seem other-worldly and terrifying. At a party during CES, Deputy Editor Jon Stokes and I bumped into some representatives from SureFire, a company that specializes in tactical flashlights. We talked about some of our favorite moments with technology in cinema, and The Terminator came up.

“We created that laser!” I was told. They told me the gentleman who built the prop was named Ed Reynolds, and he was still with the company. More than a little jazzed about bumping into a fun part of film history, we knew we had to get the full story behind the Terminator’s gun.

What you can get for a T-Shirt

“I’m vice president of the Operations Group. We keep the place running,” Reynolds said when we spoke on the phone. How did he get involved with the Terminator?

“I got a call from one of the prop houses, and they told me what they wanted to do. They came down and met with me, and told me they wanted something to go on the weapon.” What weapon? “AMT Longslide, Hardballer.”

This wasn’t the first time Reynolds had put a laser on a gun. As early as 1978 he designed a laser sight for the Colt Trooper .357 Magnum. “It was a viable product out in the marketplace, primarily law enforcement. They were also very expensive, and we highly modified the weapon. We had to machine the frame and mounts; the sights were taken off the weapon to mount the laser on top. We designed a power supply that was smaller than a small candy bar and had to fit inside the grip, fed by a rechargeable 12 volt battery.”

This was the early days of lasers for commercial use. “At that time we were dealing with helium neon laser. All the newer lasers are solid state, about the size of an aspirin or smaller.” HeNe lasers are much larger than that, he explained, and required about 10,000 volts to get started. Once ignited, they take 1,000 volts to keep them running. That makes the power supply a tricky thing to design.

Reynolds had made a small power supply for the Colt, and also designed power supplies for lasers placed on a shotgun and the Ruger Mini-14. A laser-sighted M-16 was also created. Each of these weapons required a new design, but the prop house asking about the weapon wasn’t willing to… well, pay for anything.

“We spent quite a bit of money creating a power supply to fit in the Colt Trooper. These people came to us, and they wanted this for free,” Reynolds explained. “I ended up getting a t-shirt, a sweatshirt, a baseball cap, and a poster. That’s all the company got, outside of a small credit at the end of the movie.”

There were two props made for the movie: one shell that looked good but was non-functional, and a working model with a laser that actually fired. Since there was no money for a custom power supply, there was a line running from the laser to a cable that connected to an external power supply. To fire the laser, Arnold Schwarzenegger had to reach into his coat pocket with his other hand and flip a switch.

After the creation of the gun

The finished gun became a large part of the film, figuring in multiple key scenes and becoming a large element in the poster. “I’ve seen postcards in Europe with the same picture on it,” Reynolds told Ars. “The company doesn’t get a lot of things off it. I got to benefit because I could say, ‘Hey, I did that!’ I don’t know how many people sit in the movie before the date shows and the screen goes blank, and that’s how long you’d have to be there until you know where the laser comes from.” He says it was worth it to look back as an accomplishment, and recently Schwarzenegger sent a signed poster.

“I only watched it one time in the theater, and I wasn’t there trying to gauge response. I was just in awe thinking, this is a weapon I made, up on screen. It was a pretty exciting movie, there were plenty of heart-pounding scenes,” Reynolds said.

Free t-shirts aren’t much in the way of payment for creating an iconic weapon in science fiction history, but the scene speaks for itself. Ed Reynolds was a fascinating man to speak with, and we’d like to thank him for his time.

Source : arstechnica

A team of researchers from across Europe will present details of a fully CMOS-compatible laser source that is coupled to a silicon waveguide this week. The achievement is a major milestone in a three-year €3.2m project known as WADIMOS (Wavelength Division Multiplexed Photonic Layer on CMOS). The ultimate goal of the project is to demonstrate a photonic interconnect layer on CMOS.

WADIMOS, an EU-funded research project, started in January 2008 and has six project partners. It is co-ordinated by IMEC of Belgium and also involves STMicroelectronics, MAPPER Lithography, Lyon Institute of Nanotechnologies (INL) and the University of Trento.

Working with a circuit design from INL and IMEC, LETI completed the specific process studies for the laser source by adapting and modifying standard III-V materials process steps to comply with a CMOS environment. Specifically, LETI replaced gold-based metal contacts with a Ti/TiN/AlCu metal stack. The circuits were processed on 200 mm wafers at LETI’s facilities.

WADIMOS partners will present their results at this week’s Photonics Europe conference in Brussels, which runs 12–16 April.

The enormous computing power of multi-processor systems and manufacturing tools being considered will require data transfer rates of more than 100 Terabit/s. These data rates may be needed on-chip, e.g. in multi-core processors, which are expected to require total on-chip data rates of up to 100 TB/s by 2015, or off-chip, e.g. in short-distance data interconnects, requiring up to 100 TB/s over a distance of 10–100 m. Optical interconnects are the only viable technology for transmitting these amounts of data.

Besides a huge data rate, optical interconnects also allow for additional flexibility through the use of wavelength division multiplexing. This feature may help realizing more intelligent interconnect systems such as the optical network-on-chip system that the WADIMOS project also is studying.

WADIMOS will build a complex photonic interconnect layer incorporating multi-channel microsources, microdetectors and different advanced wavelength routing functions directly integrated with electronic driver circuits. It also will demonstrate the application of the electro-photonic ICs in an on-chip optical network and a terabit optical datalink.

Source : optics.org

The small California start-up we wrote about last year is in the news again as more details about HDI’s laser-powered 3D TV are released.  HDI-US Inc. already has orders for its prototype 103-inch 3D HDTV and is now actively marketing itself as a television manufacturer and not just a 3D solutions licensor.  HDI’s platform is a laser-based projection system blended with proprietary optics and LCoS.  Glasses are needed for viewing in 3D, but reportedly the glasses are passively designed to provide less eye strain than the active-shutter models already in the market.

HDI is marketing heavily on the unique immersive qualities of large HDTV displays and 3D technology.  Steve Wozniak has praised the company and HDI’s future home models may incorporate such unique features as a 2D-to-3D processor, integrated soundbar and a personal 3D camcorder, all for less than $15,000.  Models can be purchased now for around $100,000 if you simply cannot wait until production begins in 2011 (tell them laser-tv.org sent you).

“We’ve witnessed 3D from a variety of sources, be it in a RealD theater, NVIDIA’s active-shutter 3D Vision gaming or Sony’s own active solution. Without a doubt, HDI’s 3D HDTV was the best in-home 3D product that we’ve had the pleasure of viewing.”

Engadget

UVA were commissioned by Virgin Media to create ‘an immersive light installation celebrating 10 years of broadband in the UK’. It comprises a series of laser-based experimental light works which flow through the labyrinthine spaces of the Bargehouse, the four-storey ex-warehouse on London’s South Bank.

On entering the space, visitors are asked to speak into a suspended microphone to answer questions displayed on the wall in front of them. Their answers follow them around the building as they explore the various installations over four floors.

These sounds and others, as well as light, are carried around the building using fibre optics, thus tying in with the broadband theme. See a video of the installation here

Source : Creative Review

© 2010 National Geographic; video courtesy Intellectual Ventures

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Unedited Transcript:

Scientists have developed a hand-held laser that can kill mosquitoes in high volume. And they’re hoping that this will help combat one of the world’s most deadly diseases.  A high-speed video camera that captures up to 6,000 frames per second was used by a company called Intellectual Ventures to show the invention in action. But first, to study the flight dynamics of mosquitoes, the scientists recorded their flight movements. In this video, tiny suspended water droplets, illuminated by a green laser, show the movement of air around the mosquito’s wing.  In this video, a mosquito’s flight was recorded, and we’re seeing it in extreme slow motion. To get this footage, the mosquito was placed in a custom designed chamber that sensed when the mosquito flew through the focal plane of the camera.  Later, after studying the data, and setting up the system, the mosquitoes are struck and killed by lasers. Here (3rd video, 2nd clip) you can see the laser strike… parts of the mosquito breaking off… and the body falling to the ground.  If played in real time, these segments would be about one-tenth of a second long.  The goal of this research is combating malaria, a disease spread through tropical regions of the world by mosquitoes. Nearly a million people die of the disease each year.  Intellectual Ventures says their involvement began with a challenge from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. To set up their system, the scientists created what they call a Photonic Fence, which, in the field, (photo) would have a beam of infrared light between fence posts. The system detects mosquitoes and shoots them down. The inventors claim all the laser parts came from inexpensive consumer electronics.  They also claim the system can distinguish between different insects. It would only target mosquitoes, and let others, such as butterflies and bumblebees, to pass through unharmed. The system can even distinguish between male and female mosquitoes, based on their wing beats. This is important, because only female mosquitoes bite humans.

Source : National Geographic Daily News

The 3D film, Avatar, represents decades of planning and waiting by the filmmaker’s for technological advances sufficient enough to allow expressive 3D rendering.  3D cinema and 3D TV are poised to change the way we view entertainment, and high-efficiency and low-power consumption laser-powered electronics could help drive the technology for 3D goods and content.

Seattle-Tacoma: The FBI and Transportation Security Administration are investigating complaints that someone has been pointing lasers at airline pilots as they approach Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

To illustrate the problem, the State Patrol today released this video of a laser pointer being aimed at a pilot flying at 2,000 feet.

On Jan. 29, troopers in a State Patrol airplane were targeted with a laser pointer in the Fife area. The airplane was initially hit with a green laser and the tactical flight officer (TFO) was able to turn the airplane’s Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) camera on the residential area where the initial laser originated. The individual soon tried it again, and the TFO was able to identify the individual’s location.

The airplane flew over the residence until Pierce County sheriff’s deputies were able to make contact with the individual.

The suspect was not arrested at the scene. However, a person can be indicted under the Patriot Act for interfering with aircraft pilots, and charges by the Pierce County Prosecutor’s Office are considered pending and should be filed by the end of this month, the State Patrol said.

http://www.purdue.edu/discoverypark/news.php?id=257&center=1

At Sumitomo Electric, they have overcome this problem by developing a GaN crystal which inhibits the efficiency drop, resulting in room temperature pulse operation of a laser diode emitting in the pure-green region at 531nm. It is the first green laser diode in the world.

Features of their green laser diodes are as follows:

1. High quality crystal emitting in the green region

The luminous efficiency of GaN light-emitting devices is known to show a sharp decline with increasing wavelength (*2). This is a combined result of the internal field effects as well as the deterioration of the crystal quality of the active layer. Several organizations are studying to alleviate this problem by changing the crystal orientation.

At Sumitomo Electric, they have developed a crystal which weakens the internal field effects and also improves the quality of the active layer. This has lead to the successful development of the world’s first green laser diode.

2. Tunability of the wavelength in the green region

With a proper design of the active layer, Sumitomo Electric have succeeded in covering the entire range of the lasing spectrum in the green region. While the lasing wavelengths of the conventional frequency-converted lasers are locked at a specific wavelength, their device can be tuned to any wavelength in the green region. Furthermore, the lasing spectrum remains virtually unshifted even in the high current range, and therefore, we believe our device has advantages in high power applications.

Another advantage of their green laser diode is that the dependence of wavelength at ambient temperature is minimal.

They have applied for over 60 patents related to this technology. Details of the device will be presented in the July 17th edition of the Applied Physics Express.
The successful development of the green laser diode leads to the red-green-blue (RGB) laser light sources and should lead to new applications.

Green Laser

A laser operates in the green region of the optical spectrum. Until now, green lasers based on semiconductors materials, such as blue or red lasers, did not exist. Commercial green lasers, such as those used in laser pointers, emit green light at the wavelength of 532nm by down converting a 1064nm infrared laser light. The needs for large number of mechanical parts resulting in high costs, along with their inherent low efficiencies, have prevented widespread commercialization of these devices.

Sharp efficiency decline with increasing wavelength

The main reason for the low luminous efficiency of green light-emitting devices based on GaN materials is an electric field, commonly known as “the piezoelectric field.” Piezoelectric polarization caused by a large distortion in the crystal structure is the origin of this field. The piezoelectric field, while it has less effect on blue lasers, has a serious influence upon green lasers.

Source: Sumitomo Electric Industries