Physicists who really know how to market themselves put out this video of a laser pulse they’re experimenting with that looks pretty reminiscent of the lasers in Star Wars when filmed with some clever camera tricks. Is there some kind of small exhaust port at the end of that hallway?
Unfortunately, the kind of laser bolts seen in the movies are still firmly in the realm of fiction. The video above is actually more like a stop-motion animation put together with a new laser pulse in each frame to make it look like we can see a single pulse traveling. In reality, the pulses the physicists fire from the laser travel at the speed of light and would be impossible to record in motion.
They wouldn’t turn green or red or blow up planets, either. The pulses themselves appear white. The reason the researchers at the University of Warsaw are experimenting with long-distance laser pulses is to test atmospheric pollution over great distances by measuring how the pulses interact with the atoms in the air.
So not quite as exciting as bullseyeing womp rats in our T-16s, but useful to science nonetheless.
(via cnet)
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