Word: lasered
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...ASAT system in operation. For their part, the Soviets threatened to break their unilateral moratorium on ASAT testing if the Pentagon proceeded. Ironically, the system that was tested last week is not necessarily the one that the U.S. is most likely to deploy. A ground-based model, possibly using laser technology, is favored by many military scientists...
Lieut. General James Abrahamson, head of the Strategic Defense Initiative, disclosed last week that the U.S. had recently aimed a powerful laser at part of a Titan II on the ground in New Mexico and had "blasted the thing just absolutely apart." The test was research for the President's Star Wars defense against missiles. Hitting a grounded target may have been a breeze, but the potency of the laser also showed the potential kinship in technology between knocking out satellites and destroying missiles...
...witnessing against the background of a negative response to our proposal for the U.S. to join the moratorium on nuclear explosions. The U.S. does not want to join that moratorium for one simple reason, among others: the U.S. needs nuclear testing to provide the nuclear element for space lasers. It has to be used to produce an X-ray laser effect. All these are elements in the space-based antiballistic missile defense. Think then what would happen if the whole thing goes full steam ahead. We believe America should give honest thought to these matters before proceeding further...
Compact disks replace the old technology with a digital system based on computers and laser light. On a CD, sound is broken down into binary digits (zeros and ones). Those numbers are stored on an aluminum disk in some 15 billion microscopic pits. When the CD plays, rotating at up to 500 r.p.m., a laser silently scans the pits and then beams their information to a microcomputer that converts the digits back into sound. Because no mechanical part touches the disk's surface, the resulting tone is virtually free of distortion...
...laser can even pass noiselessly over deep scratches that would cause a stylus to make a clicking sound and perhaps get stuck. When the light encounters a blemish, the microcomputer instantly uses the material stored just before and after the scratch to cover up the missing part...