Scientists Build First “Antilaser”

“Anti-LASER?” Something that can cancel out a laser beam? Dewd! Cool! Now we can stop the alien invasion in its tracks!

Scientists Build First “Antilaser”

“The laser – a 50-year-old invention now used in everything from CDs to laser pointers — has met its match in the ‘antilaser,’ the first device capable of trapping and canceling out laser beams.

While such a device would seem most fitting in a science fiction movie, its real-world application will likely be in next-generation, optical computers, which will be powered by light in addition to electrons, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

‘It’s a device which basically works like running a laser backwards,’ A. Douglas Stone of Yale University, who published his findings in the journal Science, said in a telephone interview.

While a laser takes in electrical energy and emits light in a very narrow frequency range, Stone said, his antilaser takes in laser light and transforms it into heat energy.

But it could be easily converted into electrical energy, he said.”