The laser that lets you see through solid objects

[antiaristo]

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr><!--EZCODE FONT START--><span style="font-size:small;">The laser that lets you see through solid objects</span><!--EZCODE FONT END--> <br><br>James Randerson, science correspondent<br>Monday February 20, 2006<br>The Guardian <br><br><br>Comic book fantasies of being able to see through concrete walls and locked doors may have taken a step closer to becoming reality after it emerged that British and Swiss scientists have developed a way of seeing through solid objects.<br><br>At the moment the "X-ray specs effect", as Chris Phillips at Imperial College London calls it, is restricted to the lab, but it could in theory work on any material.<br><br>His set-up, which he describes in the journal Nature Materials today, involves shining a laser at a specially designed solid. "The material goes from being opaque to being completely transparent. There is a little circular window that you can see through," Professor Phillips told the Guardian. "It has the potential to lead to all sorts of applications."<br><br>Nosy neighbours are not likely to have first access to the technology though: it will lead first to more efficient lasers and the next generation of computers.<br>When light hits a normal material it is absorbed by electrons. But when Prof Phillips' material is hit by a laser something strange happens, which relies on the fact that electrons can behave both as particles and waves at the same time.<br><br>The laser sets up electron waves that interfere with each other destructively. Rather as two sets of waves on water can result in a calm surface, the electron waves effectively take each other out. The light from behind the material can then pass through. At the moment the material - which is a few billionths of a millimetre across - is the clever bit, but Prof Phillips says the effect could be recreated in other materials with a special laser.<br><br>Albert Einstein was famously sceptical about the wave-like properties of electrons and so ignored the effect, said Prof Phillips. "Einstein was wrong but he was wrong in a way that is useful."<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1713403,00.html">www.guardian.co.uk/uk_new...03,00.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> <p></p><i></i>

[heath7]

I wonder if technology is being 'borrowed' from Canadian Troy Hurtubise's 'Angel Light'. <br><br>Its interesting that these scientists are saying they can look through walls now, just a few short years after <!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_Hurtubise">Hurtubise</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--> (scroll half-way down for the Angel Light) started making waves with his Angel Light. <p></p><i></i>