Word: laser
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...developed the world's first computer-generated freestanding hologram -- a three-dimensional image of a green Camaro sedan suspended in midair. Unlike most holographic images, which are put onto flat photographic plates, the Camaro is recorded on a concave plate and projected into the air by laser beams. The hologram was designed with funding from General Motors, which still painstakingly builds scale models of new car designs out of clay. In the future, GM and other automakers may be able to use holograms to see what a car will look like before it is actually manufactured. Eventually, such images...
...Grenada in 1983, the mission was beset by examples of military ineptitude and interservice rivalries. In Libya three years later, after Navy carriers could not provide enough bombers, Air Force F-111s had to fly all the way from their bases in Britain, and two pilots were lost; their laser-guided bombs were not capable of conducting the intended "surgical strike," and the French embassy...
...large modules to Mir to convert it into a full-fledged research and manufacturing station or send them into orbit to be assembled as a manned interplanetary ship. And they now have the muscle to do what the Pentagon cannot for the foreseeable future: orbit antisatellite and antimissile laser and particle-beam weapons for Star Wars-like battle stations in outer space...
...also compiling a computerized database that will enable American scientists to keep up to date on fast-breaking superconductor research results, and will co-sponsor a White House conference on superconductivity this summer. "It's a monumental subject," says Energy Secretary John Herrington. "It ranks up there with the laser." In the Senate, Minnesota Republican David Durenberger has co-sponsored a bill calling on the President to form a national commission to coordinate superconductivity research and development. Says Durenberger: "We cannot stand idly by while Japan targets another industry for industrial supremacy." Last week the National Science Foundation announced...
...most exotic technique of all is to play laser beams against a window or any surface that vibrates slightly with sound waves. The laser beam senses the minute reverberations and transmits them to a computer that converts them back into sound. Richard Heffernan, vice president of Information Security Associates, a Connecticut firm that makes countersnooping equipment, doubts that this technique is all that practical -- yet. A window, he explains, vibrates not only from voices inside but also with sounds that strike it from outside: jets overhead, traffic below, birds chirping. "Picking something off the window is difficult...