• Question: What is the most exciting aspect of lasers and their potential for the future?

    Asked by ewrig to Mike, Pip, Tianfu, Tim, Tom on 25 Jun 2012. This question was also asked by alfredfjones.
    • Photo: Tom Lister

      Tom Lister answered on 25 Jun 2012:

      I’m anti-war, so nothing to do with warfare here. I think lasers are very helpful in medicine, and there’s some great ideas around, but for world changing ideas you have to look to physics.

      Lasers can be used to produce very well defined streams of photons which are used to manipulate things on an atomic scale. They are also very useful for measuring things. It’s over my head somewhat, but I would love to see if they have any more use in finding out about superconductivity.

    • Photo: Tianfu Yao

      Tianfu Yao answered on 25 Jun 2012:

      I build fibre lasers and there are indeed many applications with high power lasers. Power scaling is the most exciting aspect of fibre lasers in my view. And as it comes to applications, the foremost example is in the telecommunication area. Furthermore, Furthermore, fibre lasers are becoming increasingly competitive at high powers, and leading alternatives to solid-state lasers in various industries for machining, welding, cutting, and so on.

    • Photo: Philippa Bird

      Philippa Bird answered on 25 Jun 2012:

      Wow, lasers are already more than fulfilling their potential. They have so many diverse uses. I guess in the future it would be good to make them even more accessible and cheaper for the more advanced applications.
      I would like them to be able to cut people out of cars quickly and without further injury to the person.

    • Photo: Tim Stephens

      Tim Stephens answered on 25 Jun 2012:

      When the first lasers were invented, people thought that they were a toy and could not think what they would be useful for. Today they’re everywhere in science, industry and entertainment. I think that the most exciting aspect about this field is that there are so many things that people haven’t thought of doing with them yet. Perhaps you’ll think of a new use for them yourself when you’re older.

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