News: Bomb Sniffing Laser, the first step for Star Trek technology

Few weeks back I was comparing some recent trends in technology to the concepts from Minority Report movie and felt that the futuristic concepts seemed more practical now. Now another research from Princeton University makes Star Trek tech more likely.

Star Trek (Original Series) was some thing that I used to watch and still watch when they are aired for their story and concepts. This series was conceptualized and developed well before any technology boom happened, so when you see different people in the series using all possible gadgets, it seemed unreal.

Now looking at the present, we already have sleek (flip model) Smartphones and now the recent study from Princeton University is likely to help in assessing chemical composition of objects from a distance. The research funded by Office of Naval Research, is mean to use laser to ID bombs from a distance.

The research team discovered that if you fire a laser in one direction, then the air itself fires another right back at the source. Using 226 nm UV laser, they managed to excite Oxygen atoms to the point, where they in turn emitted IR rays in the direction of the source. As per the team, the return beam's chemistry depends on the particle that was excited to generate the "backward laser".

I could imagine that some day we will have hand-held device that would transmit this laser and analyze the backward laser to study the chemical composition of the remote objects.

Can someone find out who is working on the beaming up research to transport us from one location to another?

Author: Vinod
Source: Engadget