Living Lasers

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13725719

Da Rules excuse all the inaccuracy in the world. Listen to them, not me.

So, maybe in a few years I'll get myself laser eyes. Cool

"Take your (...) hippy dream world, I'll take reality and earning my happiness with my own efforts" - Barkey

The topic lied to me.

Those aren't sapient beings of light! those are living cells which produce laser lights.

This is quite great, but at the same time, I got hyped up over the wrong thing!

edited 13th Jun '11 8:17:29 AM by Counterclock

Well, it currently still needs two mirrors for the amplification cavity, and a light source for the pump. I know biological mirrors exist (there's some weird fish somewhere that uses mirrors instead of lenses to focus light in its eyes), so all we need then is a bio-phosphorescent protein that can emit "weak blue light" and we'll have all the components of an organic laser.

Perhaps the sharks will have laser beams in their eyes, rather than on their heads.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_Laser

Didn't know about that, honest.

Da Rules excuse all the inaccuracy in the world. Listen to them, not me.

I was hoping for actual alive lasers, but this is still pretty awesome

edited 15th Jun '11 5:49:07 AM by joeyjojo

hashtagsarestupid

What? I know that physical realism is not really one of the foremost concerns in superhero comics, and I can sort of buy the light manipulation thing, but come on — how the hell can an "overload" of diode implants replace the whole body with photons, and what does "increasing the density of photons" even mean?

edited 15th Jun '11 6:08:39 AM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Well, photons don't obey any exclusion principle, so you can pack as many of them into an arbitarily small space as you like.

...Except at that scales they're waves, obeying superpositional principles*

, and anyway the actual particle number isn't conserved with velocity so that doesn't make any sense anyway. Nevermind.

edited 15th Jun '11 6:50:12 AM by Yej

Da Rules excuse all the inaccuracy in the world. Listen to them, not me.

I wonder, suppose we would grow enough of those laser cells thingies and let them shine all over some photo-electric cells, could this be used as a new green power source?

That's possible with regular bioluminescence, hypothetically. For example, bioluminescent trees could be used as street lighting. No need to actually generate any electricity.

edited 15th Jun '11 8:12:27 AM by BobbyG

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No, because you need to provide energy to them in the first place, at vastly less than 100% efficiency. Remember thermodynamics. Living laser diodes that shine onto photovoltaic cells are roughly on the level of the self-blowing windmill (it's not even a close approximation to a perpetual motion machine, due to how much of the energy is lost in a single loop, much less multiple loops).

We just need to genetically engineer some sharks with these and then we'll have sharks with frickin' laser beams on their heads.

Fight smart, not fair.

except the energy we would provide to them would be in the form of sugar which is renewable so this would be more like using biofuel.

edited 15th Jun '11 10:29:23 AM by nnokwoodeye

And the energy to make the sugar has to come from somewhere else. And if so, why not convert the sugar into energy directly?

Fight smart, not fair.

Aww...I wanted sentient laser beams...Then I could name the seventh realm...

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah

That is pretty damn cool. Sharks won't have lasers on their heads, their heads will shoot lasers.

Who watches the watchmen?

Hmm... if we trace energy conversions across the food chain it always ends in the sun. I guess I could rephrase my original question into "can we use photosynthesis powered organic lasers to make solar energy more efficient?"

edited 16th Jun '11 10:48:16 AM by nnokwoodeye

No. Because you're still putting something between the sun and the photo-receptors.

Fight smart, not fair.

But deboss what about anti-laser materials that convert lasers into electricity :P

See here :D

Who watches the watchmen?

That's only useful for energy transmission. You get energy from the sun, you turn the energy into a laser, you shoot the laser at an antilaser material, it turns back into energy.

At no point do you get any extra energy out of this process. In fact, you're pretty much guaranteed to lose a decent portion of it.

It should be noted that due to complicated physics reasons, lasers are remarkably inefficient. A "highly efficient" laser might convert, say, 20% of the energy you put into it into coherent light. The rest gets turned into nearly-useless heat.

edited 16th Jun '11 8:37:36 PM by Shinziril

and your point is what? We already know this. I forgot about how useful it would be for transmission. It is more then just transmission that is also conversion.

Who watches the watchmen?

If you had the energy from the sun, you could just . . . use the energy, rather than swapping it back and forth and losing most of it.

You still lose energy from the sun because there is no direct way to use it. It still has to be converted and transmitted. What is the loss of this method compared to how we do it now?

Who watches the watchmen?

I'd just like to come in and say this is AWESOME.

peace out.

My name is Cu Chulainn. Beside the raging sea I am left to moan. Sorrow I am, for I brought down my only son.