Sunday 17 April 2016

THE MIRACLE LIGHT BEAM FROM MECHANIX ILLUSTRATED JANUARY 1963



THE MIRACLE LIGHT BEAM
By James H. Winchester
Nuclear tipped enemy missiles traveling at 17,000 miles an hour are streaking for American cities. Suddenly, sharp beams of ruby-red light, brighter than the center of the sun, stab out from the earth. The heat of those invisible rays is powerful enough to cut a diamond or slice through stainless steel. Meeting the intercontinental warhead head on at the incredible speed of 186,000 miles a second, they disintegrate it while it is still hundreds of miles away from its target.

This is only one of the revolutionary applications envisioned through the development of a new kind of light source known as the "laser". Lasers- the word is formed from the first letters of Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation-- take ordinary light, greatly increase its strength and direct it with pin point accuracy in a pencil-thin beam for incredible distances without spreading out or dispersing as ordinary light beams do.

One such laser beam has already been used to shine a light on the moon from earth for the first time, illuminating a two mile area. If an inch wide beam was fired from Los Angeles, it could be trained on a single building in San Francisco, 347 miles away. This new technique of harnessing light is creating a technological sensation in the electronic world, both military and civilian, paralleled only by the introduction of the transistor a decade ago.

The laser is already pointed toward many peaceful and practical uses-- superlative communications, new dimensions, in astronomy, wireless power transmission, knifeless surgery, navigation and mapping made accurate to the millionth on an inch, to name a few-- but its applications for weapons of tomorrow are the ones that stagger the imagination.

"The United States must not let the Soviet Union be the first to develop such a system of weapons," warns blunt talking Air Force Chief of Staff Curtis Lemay. "With them, they could neutralize our intercontinental ballistic missiles. They could change the balance of decisive power in their favor."

To make certain that we do not lose this race for supremacy in any futuristic war without bullets, the Department of Defense is pouring increasing millions into laser research and developments. Among the projects being pushed is one which would use invisible, infrared laser light to blind enemy troops-- temporarily or permanently. The enemy wouldn't even know how or from where its troops were being attacked.   

At the Redstone Arsenal in Alabama, the Army Ordance Missile Command is deep into the development of a mobile light ray machine for use by ground troops against low flying planes. A single burst from the "death ray" gun would ignite fuel tanks. Air Force scientists are working toward the day day when supersonic planes would fight one another with these invisible rays. Electronic equipment would be made unworkable, the plane itself knocked off course, its crewmen blinded.

Spy satellites, armed with laser guns, will be extremely valuable for reconnaissance, allowing infrared photos to be taken from high altitudes with pin point accuracy. A laser camera, for instance, aimed from New York, could photograph a golf ball dropped over Chicago. With Substitution of harmful rays of light for the visible light, literal "death rays" could be directed onto earth from satellites.

Whole areas could be terrorized. Military scientists are already testing the effect X-rays or gamma rays might have when concentrated from a height of several hundred miles. The Navy is hard at work seeking to adapt laser rays for underwater anti-submarine sound detection uses.

It takes a powerful tool to accomplish these, as well as hundreds of other applications envisioned in industry, medicine, chemistry and other peaceful fields. The laser is all of that. Two dramatic demonstrations of this awesome energy were given last spring, less than two years after the first laser light ray was perfected.

In one, engineers from General Electric used laser light rays, generating temperatures in the order of 10,000 degrees F., to cut diamonds one of the toughest substances (see cover). General Electric, as well as others, have also used the light to pierce holes in stainless steel, tungsten and other hard metals.

A few days after the diamond cutting demonstration, Raytheon Co. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists in Lexington, Mass. hit the moon repeatedly with powerful bursts of laser lights, and caught the reflections back on earth. Man had never before hit a celestial body with a light ray.

The object of all this intensive attention, the laser, is based on breakthroughs achieved in the use of electromagnetic radiation as a force. First, there was the "maser," for Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Masers, which use invisible radio microwaves, were developed in 1954 in a Columbia University laboratory by Dr. Charles H. Townes. Just as the name implies, when the maser is "stimulated" by a high frequency radio signal, a microwave, it amplifies the signal and re-emits it.

Lasers work in a like manner, except they are stimulated by and emit light instead of microwaves, amplifying and generating coherent energy in the optical, or light, region of the spectrum. For this reason the laser is sometimes called an "optical maser." The achievement of laser, first from announced in 1960 by scientists from the Hughes Aircraft Co. was the culmination of a half-century of research and experimenting to generate light waves as efficient and precise as radio waves.

Just how a laser works is explained in detail by Raytheon scientists, who’s recently announced LHM-1 is four times more powerful than any other device in the field:
"Light of course is usually thought of as being waves of energy. The waves being extremely short, being measured from crest to crest in millionths of an inch. Each color light has its specific wavelength and frequency.

That is, the waves will pour past at a certain number per second. The longer wavelengths and lower frequencies are in the red part of the spectrum. As the wavelengths and lower frequencies are in the red part of the spectrum. As the wavelengths grow shorter and more waves per second are generated, the color changes, moving toward the blue or violet end of the spectrum.

"Light from the sun or from ordinary lamps is actually a conglomeration of all of these colors, a mixture of all the wavelengths or frequencies. The light pours out in an 'incoherent' label or jumble of wavelengths or frequencies, constantly interfering with each other.

"By contrast, radio waves are what are called 'coherent.' The waves pour out evenly, rhythmically, undisturbed by other wavelengths. Thus a radio or TV receiver can tune in on a specific wavelength, or frequency, and receive a clear signal, undisturbed by other stations. "In the laser, we have perfected beams of coherent light, light that is a single color, a single wavelength, or frequency.

This is the real key to laser- the use of light beams as radio beams are used." To generate these beams of coherent light, scientists apply the fact that atoms contain varying amounts of energy. At one moment, an atom may have a high level of energy. The next moment it will fall to low level, giving off the lost energy in waves. Chromium atoms, for instance, emit energy in red wavelengths.

To create laser beams, either in a natural or synthetic ruby, containing atoms of chromium, is exposed to an intense flash of incoherent light. This light "pumps" the chromium atoms up to a high energy level. As they fall back to low energy levels, a red light of a single wavelength and frequency is emitted. (Light sources on the order of 1000 watts have been used to stimulate the ruby. But, recently RCA scientists used a 12-inch parabolic mirror and 50 watts of sunlight to power a laser.)

The result is an almost perfect ray-- intense red light shooting out in a narrow controlled beam at the rate of 400 trillion unbroken waves a second. The end focus of this ray, as an example of its concentrated power, might be no bigger than a man's fingernail. Yet its light would be as bright as a million 100-watt bulbs. This power can be further concentrated through a focusing lens, as was done in the diamond cutting, to such a strength that it vaporizes anything within the tiny area it hits.
In this manner, GE engineers, among many others, have produced laser light with a heat of some 18,000 degrees F., about twice the temperature of the sun's white hot surface.

In Schenectady, GE's Dr. Kiyo Tomiyasu and his associates have also learned how to make laser light carry information. Modulated in the same manner as radio waves, laser rays can carry far more intelligence than any known microwave beam. Each five-thousandth-of-a-second burst of light can be made to transmit coded information equivalent to 20,000 words. One beam theoretically will allow transmission of 100 million simultaneous telephone calls.

Such performance is possible because of laser's high frequencies. Signals on laser rays are static-free and jam-proof. They are also spy-proof because their high directional beams do not "leak" to any important degree. Looking toward a peaceful future for lasers rather than strict military applications, scientists see great uses in space, particularly in communications. For instance, when a missile nose cone-- or future spaceship--- reenters the atmosphere, it surrounds itself with a sheath of plasma, or hot, ionized gases.

These repel radio waves. Strong laser light can penetrate this plasma belt and be used to carry messages down to earth and back again.

Chemical manufactures are looking toward laser and its high degree of control for use in controlling delicate chemical reactions. Separating uranium 235 isotopes from its neighbors is one possibility. In addition, entirely new compounds, ones never seen or heard of, may come when chemical react under beams of laser light.

Long distances-- on earth and in space-- can be measured with laser light with millionths of an inch accuracy. Laser beams are already in use as a cutting tool, even for some kinds of surgery to burn off tumors on the retina of the eye of animals and to weld damaged retinas of humans.        

There are predictions that laser rays will be used for delicate brain surgery, cutting through human tissues with a controlled precision now impossible. The Hughes Aircraft Co. and the Sperry Rand Corp. have developed laser powered radar that is 10,000 times more accurate than the present radio-frequencies. (The Sperry Rand radar can measure spaceship speeds from five miles per second down to  one ten-thousandth of an inch per second!)

Laser rays, used with telescopes, will give astronomers clearer pictures of the outer world than ever before, enable them to chart stars now invisible by any means from earth. Others foresee laser beams being used to carry power, much as high tension wires are now used.

The realization of these wonders are rapidly being achieved. Laser ranging and radar equipment is already being built. Laser navigation systems are expected before 1965. Communications by light beams are expected to be at work before the end of the decade. The first of the military "death rays" will be reality, say Pentagon planners, before 1970.

However long it takes to move from research to reality though, the magic word in science today is "laser." It's a field exploding like the atom itself and nobody yet can even envision half the things it will accomplish in war and peace

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