Single-atom Laser Built at Caltech

hweimer writes "A research group at Caltech has successfully constructed a laser consisting of only one caesium atom. The emitted light is very weak but highly ordered, so such a device may be used to control a quantum computer. More on this can be found at PhysicsWeb."

Begging the question:

[Anonymous Coward]

How big are the sharks?

Standby

[Brahmastra]

for all the ray-gun and light-sabre posts

Wow

[stratjakt]

Hooray

Quantum computers, sure. I bet they'll even run Duke Nuk'Em Forever lan parties over IPv6.

So when do we get...

[Anonymous Coward]

...the single-atom Mini Me to hump it?

But the bigger question is..

[inteller]

Will this incinerate ants better than my trusty magnifying glass?

Here we go again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell you what, I don't want to hear anymore about quantum computers or cold fusion until someone actually ships a quantum computer powered by cold fusion. A laptop form factor would be preferred but, is not required.

Mk?

Wow

[CaptBubba]

This is simply amazing. I'm trying to picture all the machinery and people that went into getting that one atom to light up.

And now the physicists hand the engineers the huge task: "Ok, we got it to work, you get it to do something usefull"

Not big enough.

[caluml]

I want a laser that can burn a 200 metre-wide hole through the moon from Earth.
What's that you say? Why? What do you mean, why?

Nope. Sorry.

[FreeLinux]

But, it may prove useful in surgery on ants and may even be used for tatoo removal on ants. This is especially important for those ants who now regret the indiscretions of their teenage years.

Friggin parameciums

[Unknown Poltroon]

with frigin lazers on their heads.

So...

[e_lehman]

How do you put an "on" switch on a cesium atom?

Finally, I have the weapon I need ...

[burgburgburg]

to conquer the Nanobot world. I WILL rule in Nanobotia. Benevolently, but firmly.

But should even one of those Nanobots cross me, ZZAPP!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Rubbish

[grub]

why does every science experiment have to throw in buzzwords such as "may be use in quantum computers" or "may help a cure for cancer"

A 12 gauge shotgun could be used in cancer treatments. Of course making sure you only blast out the cancer cells is the really hard part.

Imagine?

[Slicebo]

Can you imagine what you could make with a Beowulf cluster of these?

A FLASHLIGHT!

I don't know

[panurge]

Some of the ruby rods we were getting in the early 80s were such poor quality, I wouldn't be surprised if they were single atom lasers. Pity we didn't know it would one day be leading edge research.

I know, I know, I actually read the article. I can remember when lasers were interesting, before they were just cheap modern replacements for phonograph needles.

Re:laser

[Ayaress]

Yeah, because we all know how much the army needs to blow up those goddamn hydrogen nucleii.

At home with the amoeba

[Channard]

A 12 gauge shotgun could be used in cancer treatments. Of course making sure you only blast out the cancer cells is the really hard part.

Well, that's where the nano-rednecks come in.

Like this

[Anonymous Coward]

/--------\
Cesium atom ---- Internet ---> quantum computing
\--------/

Obviously you've never written a business proposal before.

Re:Not big enough.

[sharkey]

I want a laser that can burn a 200 metre-wide hole through the moon from Earth.

Or at least criss-cross campus leading co-eds to the sign it's lighting proclaiming one BITCHIN' pool party.

Re:Like this

[orthogonal]

> /--------\
> Cesium atom ---- Internet ---> quantum computing
> \--------/

> Obviously you've never written a business proposal
> before.

No, obviously YOU have not. The proper proposal looks like this:

/--------\
Collect underpants ---> Cesium atom ---- Internet ---> ??? ---> quantum computing
\--------/

Re:Wow

[EulerX07]

SCIENTIST : With this you could create a Quantum computer.

ENGINEER : Uhhm, it's not that simple...

SLASHDOTTER : Yes it is! Keep up please!

Yay!

[[e-mail]]

The emitted light is very weak but highly ordered

Does this mean it's not yet bright enough to point at my Keynote slides?

Finally!

[JWhitlock]

The emitted light is very weak but highly ordered, so such a device may be used to control a quantum computer.

I, for one, can now overthrow our quantum computer masters!

Thanks a lot

[arnie_apesacrappin]

QM just took an interesting step forward.

Now that you've told us where QM is, we'll never know how fast it's progressing.

Not Enough IP's

[stfvon007]

the 2,979,683,891 IP addesses that each person in the world would have with IPv8 are not enough. Go with IPv10 so I can have 193,753,945,031,922 IP addesses, that way each of my atoms can have its own IP address. :)

Next Step:

[show me]

2 atoms!

Re:Rubbish

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the usual question asked by Slashdot bores is "What's the point".

No, The usual question asked by /. is "Will it run Linux?"

Re:Wow

[poot_rootbeer]

Quantum computers, sure. I bet they'll even run Duke Nuk'Em Forever lan parties over IPv6.

They might, they might not...

Nightmare finding the replacement parts ...

[Spectre]

Given the state of my desk, I'll never be able to find the hot-swap spare atom ...

Thinkgeek.com

[Fubar411]

How long until ThinkGeek puts up a banner ad for single atom green lasers?

Re:Thinkgeek.com

[Walt Dismal]

You think that's bad, this morning already I've had 4 popup ads for the X10 Single-Atom Laser.

Random useless knowledge

[tomzyk]

This is especially important for those ants who now regret the indiscretions of their teenage years.

Perhaps "teenage weeks" or "teenage months", but certainly not [sonic.net] years [antsalive.com].
Yes, I understand your post was quite witty; ya never know when a random [worthless] piece of knowledge might come in handy though. :-)

Re:Wow

[killthiskid]

Or they could both be running and not running the game at the same time!

No one will know until they open up the door to the room where the lan party may or may not be taking place.

Sandpaper

[Julian Morrison]

Having an exoskeleton simplifies tattoo removal. You just need an extremely small piece of fine-grained sandpaper...