Speaker 1: Welcome to Part Time Genius, the production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: I Guess what will? What's that mango? So Earlier this year,
Speaker 1: the mayor of Austin, Texas used a laser beam to
Speaker 1: send a recipe for kiso to the moon. It's impressive,
Speaker 1: but I have to ask why exactly did he do this? Well,
Speaker 1: according to his press release, this is what he said, quote,
Speaker 1: we choose to send keeso to the moon and maybe
Speaker 1: someday chips as well, not because these things are easy,
Speaker 1: but because they are hard. So maybe maybe that's the answer.
Speaker 1: But I think the real reason, and this is serious,
Speaker 1: was to uh to teach future aliens how to make
Speaker 1: keso in case they ever stop off at our moon,
Speaker 1: which is a serious bit of intergalactic hospitality. I think, wait,
Speaker 1: you're you're saying it's just the recipe, like the aliens
Speaker 1: will have to supply their own chips and cheese. I
Speaker 1: guess it's less hospitable when you when you put it way,
Speaker 1: But still the Mayor's heart I think was in the
Speaker 1: right place. His name is Steve Adler, by the way,
Speaker 1: and the recipe he chose is a local favorite in Austin,
Speaker 1: and it was sent to the Moon as part of
Speaker 1: a lunar library that was stowed aboard a SpaceX rocket,
Speaker 1: the Falcon nine. Oh like they Okay, I was I
Speaker 1: was confused on how you were saying they had sent it.
Speaker 1: I was actually hoping they kind of like carve the
Speaker 1: case a recipe into the Moon, like with a laser
Speaker 1: or something. But I guess sending it on a rocket
Speaker 1: is that's a little bit more practical, I guess, yeah,
Speaker 1: and a little less like cartoon supervillain. I guess that's true.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, then how does the laser fit into this?
Speaker 1: So the laser is actually what made the whole library possible,
Speaker 1: because they didn't just send a one page case a
Speaker 1: recipe to the Moon. The lunar library also included some
Speaker 1: other quote unquote light reading and it includes the entirety
Speaker 1: of Wikipedia um in English, tens of thousands of books,
Speaker 1: and a key to translate everything into five thousand different languages.
Speaker 1: So sending a hard copy of all those things clearly
Speaker 1: wasn't an option, and instead the mission crew used a
Speaker 1: power full laser to etch the entire library, letter by letter,
Speaker 1: into this super light radiation proof nickel disk. And just
Speaker 1: in case the aliens who find to have bad eyesight.
Speaker 1: All the information on the disc was also laser encoded digitally,
Speaker 1: so the aliens can put it up on their view
Speaker 1: screens or whatever they have. All Right, so all of this,
Speaker 1: like the laser ch case, a recipe, all of Wikipedia, this,
Speaker 1: this is all actually on the moon. Now, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean there's a bit of a twist. The moon lander
Speaker 1: that was carrying the library crash landed on the Moon,
Speaker 1: and this was on April eleven, so so the mission
Speaker 1: wasn't exactly a success. But the good news is the
Speaker 1: library probably did survive. According to a spokesperson for the Foundation,
Speaker 1: small light objects like our library do better and impact.
Speaker 1: It was probably thrown a few kilometers away a thirty
Speaker 1: million page frisbee on the Moon. I like to think
Speaker 1: about certain first like that, if you think about it,
Speaker 1: this was the first frisbee with a case of recipe
Speaker 1: on it ever thrown on the Moon. I mean that's
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Yeah, And and it was all made possible
Speaker 1: by lasers, which kind of sums up our show today.
Speaker 1: When you think of lasers, it's mostly like death rays
Speaker 1: from sci fi movies and whatever. But as the Lunar
Speaker 1: Library shows, the truth is that real world lasers have
Speaker 1: much more interesting applications than just blowing things up, from
Speaker 1: levitating objects to precision cooking bacon. There are lots of
Speaker 1: weird things you can do with a laser beam, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a whole look at a bunch of them.
Speaker 1: Let's dive in. Y Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to
Speaker 1: Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson, and as always I'm
Speaker 1: joined by my good friend Manguesho Ticketer and on the
Speaker 1: other side of the soundproof glass, carrying on the show's
Speaker 1: proud tradition of thematic prop comedy. That's our friend and
Speaker 1: producer Lull. Just look at that mango. He brought in
Speaker 1: his own laser pointer from home, waving it around on
Speaker 1: pointing to all these different objects. I mean, it's not
Speaker 1: a useful tool in his line of work, but he's
Speaker 1: made the effort anyway. I mean, it's always putting in
Speaker 1: the atah. I mean, it's that kind of spirit that
Speaker 1: we we really appreciate it around here absolutely. And and
Speaker 1: laser pointers are actually a good place to start because
Speaker 1: they really aren't much different from the lasers we use
Speaker 1: in research or defense. In either case you're dealing with
Speaker 1: the device that works by amplifying a highly concentrated beam
Speaker 1: of light a k A laser beam. So the main
Speaker 1: difference between these devices is their power level. Right, The
Speaker 1: maximum allowance for a laser pointer in the US is
Speaker 1: a measly five milliwatts, but other kinds of handheld lasers
Speaker 1: can rage anywhere from twenty five milliwatts all the way
Speaker 1: up to a thousand. And that's what would have been
Speaker 1: used to edge the case or recipe into that disk, right, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: which is also why they're used for laser removals and
Speaker 1: and certain kinds of surgery. And those procedures aren't just
Speaker 1: for humans either. For instance, I read that some aquariums
Speaker 1: has started using a seven d milliwatt laser to remove
Speaker 1: harmful polyps from their coral Apparently the laser can burn
Speaker 1: a poll up away so early that it won't ever
Speaker 1: grow back, and the whole process only takes about ten seconds.
Speaker 1: I mean, it does make you question at least a
Speaker 1: little bit how safe these laser pointers are really. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know they're weak, but if you think about sort
Speaker 1: of like their larger cousins and destroying pole ups whole
Speaker 1: cloth and a matter of seconds like the five milliwott
Speaker 1: versions must do some small scale damage on their own,
Speaker 1: I would think, right, yeah, and and that's actually why
Speaker 1: you're never supposed to look directly into the beam of
Speaker 1: a laser pointer, because if you're to do that, which
Speaker 1: again you shouldn't, what happens is that a small portion
Speaker 1: of your retina will be bombarded by like this highly
Speaker 1: focused light. And when that happens, the optical nerves get
Speaker 1: overloaded and you wind up seeing all these little floating spots.
Speaker 1: So it really is frying your retina, just not as
Speaker 1: quickly or decisively as like one of the stronger lasers,
Speaker 1: right and and so when we talk about modern lasers
Speaker 1: used for defense, it's that ability to temporarily blind and
Speaker 1: really disorient people that's in play. It's not like blasting
Speaker 1: through armor or blowing apart buildings. For example, in law enforcement,
Speaker 1: there's something called a day their laser, and it's used
Speaker 1: for riot control. It's basically like a larger version of
Speaker 1: a laser pointer. It's about the size of a flashlight,
Speaker 1: but it's got a two fifty milliwatt beam and it's
Speaker 1: effective from about thirty yards away. So if someone looks
Speaker 1: into the beam, they can lose sight for up to
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes and feel nauseous for even longer. So the
Speaker 1: idea is really to incapacitate a rowdy crowd all at once,
Speaker 1: and there's no need for physical contact, I guess. I mean,
Speaker 1: I could see how that'd be useful in some like
Speaker 1: really drastic circumstances, but it still feels pretty extreme to
Speaker 1: use these on civilians. But you know, there's one application
Speaker 1: where it seems a little more appropriate, and that's when
Speaker 1: ships use these dasers to ward off pirates. Have you
Speaker 1: heard about this, I haven't. It's called sea lays, and
Speaker 1: the stock version is a whopping five thousand milliwatts, twenty
Speaker 1: times stronger than the flashlight that you mentioned, But if
Speaker 1: you want it beeped up, you can actually get one
Speaker 1: all the way up to twenty thousand milliwatts. So the
Speaker 1: base model alone, though, is strong enough to be seen
Speaker 1: from nearly three months away. So the idea is that
Speaker 1: at a distance, you could signal the pirates not to
Speaker 1: come any closer, like a warning shot, basically, than if
Speaker 1: they continue to approach anyway, the daser's real effects would
Speaker 1: start to kick in. The pirates would find themselves nauseas, disoriented,
Speaker 1: and of course temporarily blind, which just doesn't seem pleasant. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and that's like consumer grade tech, Like anyone on
Speaker 1: the streets can buy the stuff. Well, they go for
Speaker 1: about a hundred thousand dollars a pop, so so maybe
Speaker 1: not anybody off the street, but anybody with a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars in their pocket. They are available for civilians. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Of course, the military has their own brand of daser lasers,
Speaker 1: and these go back as far as the early sixties,
Speaker 1: when the first real laser was invented. Their early reports
Speaker 1: of a so called I popper developed by the Air Force. So,
Speaker 1: according to this nineteen seventy two edition of the Post,
Speaker 1: quote the strangest of weapons was dreamed up in the
Speaker 1: early sixties as a means of exploding the eyes of
Speaker 1: an enemy soldiers and their officers from distances of more
Speaker 1: than a wile. Giant pulse lasers would sweep back and
Speaker 1: forth across the battlefield, blinding anyone who looked directly at it.
Speaker 1: That's sort of terrifying. Was it ever used in combat?
Speaker 1: Thankfully not? I mean, the military eventually decided that exploding
Speaker 1: the enemy's eyes from a mile away might not be
Speaker 1: the most honorable form of engagement, And in and update
Speaker 1: to the Geneva Conventions actually banned the use of any
Speaker 1: laser weapons that cause permanent blindness, So this idea was
Speaker 1: actually put to rest. So weird that they're like rules
Speaker 1: to wark like that, But why don't we move towards
Speaker 1: some of the more wholesome ways to use a laser beam?
Speaker 1: For instance, did you know that judges have started using
Speaker 1: lasers to help score gymnastics competitions. I had not heard this,
Speaker 1: and I'm curious why this is necessary, Like what was
Speaker 1: wrong with the old way of scoring competitions. So the
Speaker 1: main problem is that humans can sometimes miss important details
Speaker 1: when deciding the outcome of a sporting event. And that's
Speaker 1: true even with instant replays. In fact, there was a
Speaker 1: study on gymnastics competitions, and this was back into thousand fifteen,
Speaker 1: and it concluded that up to sixty of athlete errors
Speaker 1: go totally overlooked by judges. And so the solution of
Speaker 1: that is to shoot a bunch of lasers at the
Speaker 1: gymnast I guess, well sort of. I mean, there's this
Speaker 1: Japanese electronics company, it's called Fujitsu, and it's been working
Speaker 1: to develop three D laser sensors that can capture a
Speaker 1: gymnast movements and analyze them on the spot as I
Speaker 1: guess numerical data. So the idea is to use these
Speaker 1: recordings as a supplement to the judge's own observations, and
Speaker 1: if there's an error they didn't cash, the system will
Speaker 1: draw their attention to it. And if a judge ever
Speaker 1: needs evidence to back up a ruling, the system can
Speaker 1: provide that too. I see. So then it's kind of
Speaker 1: like the motion capture that's used in the you know,
Speaker 1: the digital characters for movies like Gallum and Lord of
Speaker 1: the Rings. Is it kind of like that? Yeah? I mean,
Speaker 1: except in this case, the gymnast doesn't have to do
Speaker 1: backflips while wearing like a suit covered in those ping
Speaker 1: pong balls. In said, there's a series of lasers that
Speaker 1: track their movements in real time and then transmit the
Speaker 1: data to a software program, and that way there's a
Speaker 1: detailed record of every move the athlete makes, no matter
Speaker 1: how fast or complex it is. And this includes everything
Speaker 1: from like the placement of their joints to the exact
Speaker 1: angles of their movements. That sounds pretty amazing. Actually, and
Speaker 1: you said, this is already being used in competitions. Fujitsu
Speaker 1: announced the deal last fall with the International Gymnastics Federation
Speaker 1: and they've already tested the system at a handful of
Speaker 1: competitions this year, and and the goals really to roll
Speaker 1: it out in earnest at the Gymnastics World Championships in
Speaker 1: late September. But beyond that, Fujitsu is hoping the laser
Speaker 1: system will become the go to tool for judges, not
Speaker 1: just for gymnastics, but also for things like figure skating
Speaker 1: or any other sport where they're like scoring inconsistencies and
Speaker 1: and involves decisions about precise movements. That's pretty cool, But
Speaker 1: I actually want to take us back to laser pointers
Speaker 1: for a second, because there's a practical use for them
Speaker 1: that I never would have thought about before we were
Speaker 1: doing our research this week. And apparently home care nurses
Speaker 1: sometimes use common laser pointers as a way to enable
Speaker 1: their patients to communicate. So, say a patient has limited
Speaker 1: mobility as well as difficulties speaking. In a case like that,
Speaker 1: a nurse might attach a laser pointer to a pair
Speaker 1: of eyeglasses or maybe the rim of a hat, and
Speaker 1: then the nurse would set up this communication board filled
Speaker 1: with common phrases plus all the letters of the alphabet,
Speaker 1: and you know, and the patient could express themselves by
Speaker 1: pointing to whatever it was they wanted to say. That's funny.
Speaker 1: It's it's like the simplest use of a pointer, but
Speaker 1: it's also to communicate in such a specific way. It's
Speaker 1: so much more clever than, uh than you know, just
Speaker 1: using it to get a cat to run around a room.
Speaker 1: Speaking of which I know, we both found some scientific
Speaker 1: uses for lasers that were equally unexpected. But before we
Speaker 1: get into those, let's take a quick break. You're listening
Speaker 1: to part Time Genius, so we're talking about all the
Speaker 1: surprising things you can do with a laser. So just
Speaker 1: keep in mind that even though you theoretically could do
Speaker 1: these things, you probably shouldn't do all, or actually any
Speaker 1: of them. The point you could use a high powered
Speaker 1: laser to heat a material to well over a million degrees,
Speaker 1: the atoms of that substance would cease to exist and
Speaker 1: you'd be left with a soupy mix of electrons and ions,
Speaker 1: what scientists lovingly referred to as plasma. But again, that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean you should do that. So don't do that, Mango. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you definitely shouldn't do that. Recreating the core
Speaker 1: of the sun in your living room is not recommended
Speaker 1: by this show. Well that's a good call on a
Speaker 1: less dangerous, but just as difficult side of things. It's
Speaker 1: also possible to use a laser to levitate tiny objects.
Speaker 1: So this is something I'm fascinated by, but it makes
Speaker 1: zero sense to my mind. I mean, lasers burn and
Speaker 1: melt and singe, so how could that possibly transfer into
Speaker 1: making something float in mid air? I agree, I mean
Speaker 1: it's not very intuitive for layman like ourselves, but it
Speaker 1: helps to remember that light, including laser light, is made
Speaker 1: up of photons, and those photons exert a special kind
Speaker 1: of force known as radiation pressure, and that's really the
Speaker 1: key to what scientists call optical levitation. So when you
Speaker 1: have a really powerful beam of light, the radiation pressure
Speaker 1: it exerts is sometimes strong enough to overcome the force
Speaker 1: of gravity. So if you aim a high enough power
Speaker 1: laser beam at a super light object, the force of
Speaker 1: the lights pressure can actually propel it forward or even
Speaker 1: lift it off the ground, which makes a little more
Speaker 1: sense to me. I guess. So, so are like solar
Speaker 1: sales an example of this, uh this technology, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: it exactly. I mean most people have probably seen one.
Speaker 1: They're they're like big gold colored square sheets attached to
Speaker 1: the end of a space probe or another small spacecraft,
Speaker 1: and the reflective surface harnesses radiation pressure from sunlight, and
Speaker 1: that in turn propels the craft through space. But you're
Speaker 1: saying it's possible to float something with a laser here
Speaker 1: on Earth as well. I mean theoretically, yes, the principle
Speaker 1: behind it has been proven in a lab setting, but
Speaker 1: a real world test is still years away. And if
Speaker 1: that works, the researchers would be able to push around
Speaker 1: tiny particles that are too small to control through other means,
Speaker 1: and even cooler than that, they'd be able to power
Speaker 1: real life micro machines, by which I don't mean the
Speaker 1: tiny monster trucks that used to be popular when you
Speaker 1: were kids, even though those are just as awesome as
Speaker 1: levitating things, but rather things like flying a teeny tiny
Speaker 1: camera over a volcano or through the wreckage of a
Speaker 1: building or something like that. That's pretty cool. Well, since
Speaker 1: you brought up radiation pressure, I do have to tell
Speaker 1: you about this other weird application Gabe told me about Basically,
Speaker 1: you can use to focused laser beams to create what's
Speaker 1: known as optical tweezers, and this allows scientists to manipulate
Speaker 1: objects smaller than a single micron, like a unit of
Speaker 1: measure that's equal to about thirty nine millions of an inch,
Speaker 1: or in other word, it's really really small. And and
Speaker 1: so this works because of radiation pressure from the lasers. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: so when you have a laser beam on other side
Speaker 1: of the object, the resulting forces actually work together and
Speaker 1: allow you to grip the object, so you can kind
Speaker 1: of think of it like laser beam chops six. That's cool. So,
Speaker 1: so is this something that was just recently discovered or
Speaker 1: what when Gay row up I I thought so too.
Speaker 1: But but researchers first created optical tweezers back in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties and they've been improving on the concept ever since.
Speaker 1: In fact, the biggest limitation to the technology was finally
Speaker 1: overcome just a few years ago. For the last thirty
Speaker 1: years or so, there was always a cap on how
Speaker 1: finally you could focus a beam of laser light, and
Speaker 1: the result was that anything smaller than a hundred nanometers
Speaker 1: couldn't be gripped by the tweezers. So I'm a little
Speaker 1: rusty on the micro measurements, like how small is that
Speaker 1: compared to the microns that you mentioned earlier. I'm embarrassed
Speaker 1: to admit that I'm a little rusty on these measures. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: if I didn't have a shooting paper in front of you,
Speaker 1: I would not A hundred nanometers is equal to just
Speaker 1: point one microns. So we were already dealing with incredibly
Speaker 1: small forms of matter before that, like the organelles inside
Speaker 1: a living cell, or or a particle of bacteria. But
Speaker 1: these are even smaller than those, and our laser chopsticks
Speaker 1: just couldn't get ahold of them. But back in two
Speaker 1: thousand fourteen, researchers and institute in Spain finally figured out
Speaker 1: how to focus laser light to such a fine degree
Speaker 1: that they could actually manipulate particles as small as just
Speaker 1: fifteen animators. And so what kind of stuff does that
Speaker 1: actually allow them to do so much stuff? Okay, enough said,
Speaker 1: I mean, we'll never really understand. In fact, I'm just
Speaker 1: going to defer to scientific American on this one and
Speaker 1: and tell you that possible applications include, quote, building, medical products,
Speaker 1: with nano scale exactness, manufacturing nanocrystal geometries for electronic devices,
Speaker 1: and manipulating single molecules such as proteins. Right right, I
Speaker 1: guess that that sounds good, I think, but we've still
Speaker 1: got a few strange uses for lasers to talk about,
Speaker 1: including a couple that are strictly just for laughs. But first,
Speaker 1: let's take one more quick break. Welcome back to part
Speaker 1: time Genius. Okay, Well, so we've talked about what lasers
Speaker 1: can do for aliens, and for sports judges and for scientists,
Speaker 1: but let's be selfish for a minute and talk about
Speaker 1: what lasers can do for us. All right, Well, how
Speaker 1: about this one. You can use a laser on your
Speaker 1: dirty dishes and have them cleaner than they've ever been before. Like,
Speaker 1: say goodbye to your dishwasher. You really won't need it
Speaker 1: from here on out because of lasers. Well, in my family,
Speaker 1: I'm actually the one who washes the dishes, and I'm
Speaker 1: always looking for an excuse to throw out my dishwasher,
Speaker 1: So so tell me more. All right, So it's pretty simple, really,
Speaker 1: Like you talked about burning polyps off a coral earlier,
Speaker 1: and it's it's the same premise here. Except with all
Speaker 1: the grease and oil and mystery crust that gets stuck
Speaker 1: to your cookware. You just install this device that kind
Speaker 1: of looks like really like a table lamp, I guess,
Speaker 1: and you put in your kitchen and then you never
Speaker 1: have to scrub another baking sheet or non stick pan again.
Speaker 1: You don't even have to control the laser by hand.
Speaker 1: It is totally automated, so the beam just scans back
Speaker 1: and forth over the pan or whatever it is that
Speaker 1: you're clean. It just burns the grease right off of there.
Speaker 1: It's pretty amazing. Wait, so it's going to leave something
Speaker 1: behind right like, like it doesn't just vaporize all that gunk.
Speaker 1: That is true, like there should be some food ash
Speaker 1: left behind. But that's not the case actually, because the
Speaker 1: laser cleaner also comes with a built in nozzle that
Speaker 1: sucks up whatever the laser leaves behind. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is just amazing. And the coolest part is that these
Speaker 1: two functions occur simultaneously. So the surface of the pan
Speaker 1: just goes from pitch black with grease too shiny and
Speaker 1: clean right before your eyes. It's like some kind of
Speaker 1: low key kitchen magic. It should totally be an informercial.
Speaker 1: This honestly feels like you're infomercial pitching. I am kind
Speaker 1: of also, I'm sold because you know, I'm the designated
Speaker 1: dishwasher and I hate scrubbing pans in the most It's
Speaker 1: definitely a pretty amazing invention. You can find the videos
Speaker 1: of this thing online. You just look up laser age
Speaker 1: TV on YouTube and look for the laser cleaning of
Speaker 1: a baking tray. But if you do, make sure you
Speaker 1: turn up the sound because you can hear the food
Speaker 1: waste just sizzling away with every sweep of this laser.
Speaker 1: It almost sounds like an electric shaver or something, and
Speaker 1: it's all just weirdly satisfying. Yeah, I bet you know.
Speaker 1: I'm already sold. But my only qualm is if it's
Speaker 1: kid friendly to have like lasers in your kitchen. Oh, mango,
Speaker 1: it is absolutely not kids, say, and it's it's really
Speaker 1: just for large scale kitchens and bakery is not something
Speaker 1: you'd want to keep around the house. In fact, this
Speaker 1: might actually be the strongest commercial laser we have talked
Speaker 1: about today. You remember the sea lays thing that ships
Speaker 1: used to scare off pirates, right? Yeah? Sorry, are you
Speaker 1: suggesting this technology? It can be used to clean pirates.
Speaker 1: To you know what, that's actually a great idea, but
Speaker 1: it's not exactly what I'm getting at here. But as
Speaker 1: strong as that was, it maxed out at twenty thousand milliwatts. Well,
Speaker 1: the laser for this cleaning system is six times stronger
Speaker 1: at one and twenty thousand milliwatts. But if you want
Speaker 1: to know the real deal breaker, here's another scary umber.
Speaker 1: Forty thousand dollars. That's actually the going rate for your
Speaker 1: own laser cleaner. I don't know, sending my kids to
Speaker 1: college for getting clean dishes and I have to wear
Speaker 1: it feels like an even trade. Possibly, but all right,
Speaker 1: well fair enough, So so tell me how this strikes you,
Speaker 1: though mego laser cooked bacon. I'm listening, all right. So
Speaker 1: there's this mathematical science professor in Tokyo named Kintaro Fukushi,
Speaker 1: and a few years ago he partnered with a guy
Speaker 1: who runs a maker space in Japan, and together they
Speaker 1: designed this laser cutter that can perfectly fry the fatty
Speaker 1: part of the bacon, leaving the rest of it completely untouched.
Speaker 1: That's interesting, but why not cook the bacon all the way? Well,
Speaker 1: you could definitely set it so that the whole piece
Speaker 1: of bacon was cooked. Like. The setup uses imaging software
Speaker 1: to build a map of each bacon strip, and then
Speaker 1: you can set the laser to aim at whichever parts
Speaker 1: you want. I love that this is like probably the
Speaker 1: most complicated way to cook bacon ever. But uh, I
Speaker 1: still don't understand, Like why would you want partially raw bacon?
Speaker 1: Like did they leave it that way on purpose? I mean,
Speaker 1: I love how much this is bothering you instead of
Speaker 1: just focusing on the amazing technology. I mean, the truth
Speaker 1: is they left the meaty parts of the bacon uncooked
Speaker 1: for a couple of reasons. First, it showed off the
Speaker 1: mapping feature for their laser cutter, and second, it was
Speaker 1: a way of honoring the raw food tradition in Japan,
Speaker 1: like seafood is you know, the big example, but there
Speaker 1: are lots of traditional Japanese dishes that call for raw
Speaker 1: chicken or pork. Eating raw meat is much less common
Speaker 1: in Japan these days, but some people still prefer their
Speaker 1: bacon only slightly browned. That's really interesting. I've never heard
Speaker 1: of that. Here's another unusual application for lasers I just
Speaker 1: learned about. According to the research from the Lincoln Lab
Speaker 1: at m I T it's possible to beam a secret
Speaker 1: message directly into someone's ear using a laser. So you
Speaker 1: can actually be walking along and all of a sudden
Speaker 1: you hear a whisper in your ear, But it's not
Speaker 1: coming from the person next to you. It's coming from
Speaker 1: someone eight feet away that you haven't even noticed. Who
Speaker 1: just shot a laser at your ear. That is so
Speaker 1: creepy sounding. So how would this even work? Like, what
Speaker 1: do lasers have to do with transmitting sound? According to
Speaker 1: the research team behind this, it works because laser light
Speaker 1: excites the moisture in the air around the target's ear.
Speaker 1: So basically there's a phenomena called the photoacoustic effect, and
Speaker 1: because of that, the water vapor in the air will
Speaker 1: absorb the lasers emission. And then what that produces sound? Yeah,
Speaker 1: the water vapor gets so excited by the laser that
Speaker 1: it actually starts to vibrate an audible frequency. All right,
Speaker 1: So let's say you live in a dry climate, like
Speaker 1: with this not work there, I feel like I might
Speaker 1: have to move to a desert just to escape this
Speaker 1: weird thing. Well, it actually does work there because even
Speaker 1: if you're somewhere dry, there's still usually enough water in
Speaker 1: the air to produce the effect. You maybe wouldn't hear
Speaker 1: it as strongly as you might in wetter environment, But
Speaker 1: even then, the researchers think the volume of the sound
Speaker 1: has more to do with how well the water absorbs
Speaker 1: the sound, rather than how much water there is in
Speaker 1: the air. That's terrific, you know, I'm still trying to
Speaker 1: decide if this is fascinating or horrifying. Like, on one hand,
Speaker 1: it would be pretty fun to beam whispers back and
Speaker 1: forth without leaving a paper trail or like disturbing people
Speaker 1: around you. You can even have a conversation from across
Speaker 1: a crowded room, which would make for like an amazing
Speaker 1: party trick or a spy trick or whatever. But on
Speaker 1: the other hand, it's easy to imagine like companies beaming
Speaker 1: ads into our ears at all hours of the day.
Speaker 1: Like imagine walking past a coke at at a bus
Speaker 1: stop and it triggers this like motion sensor, and as
Speaker 1: you walk away, you hear someone like playing the company
Speaker 1: jingle in your ear, and things could start to feel
Speaker 1: super dystopian like pretty quickly. With something like that around, Wow,
Speaker 1: I would be pretty unnerving. Yeah, it's it's so weird, right,
Speaker 1: But but amazingly, that's not even the scariest potential use
Speaker 1: for sound based lasers. Wired had this article recently about
Speaker 1: how hackers will soon be able to use lasers to
Speaker 1: speak to any kind of computer that uses voice commands.
Speaker 1: So we're talking smartphones, tablets, even home assistance like Alexa,
Speaker 1: Siri and and Google Home wes. You're saying the microphones
Speaker 1: and those devices will respond to the light of a
Speaker 1: laser just like they would respond to a sound. Exactly so,
Speaker 1: according to the researchers who discovered this was possible, if
Speaker 1: you point a laser at a microphone and change the
Speaker 1: intensity to a precise frequency, the light will somehow stimulate
Speaker 1: the microphone's membrane at that same exact frequency. They are
Speaker 1: completely sure yet what causes this light as speech effect,
Speaker 1: but the result is that the microphone reads the incoming
Speaker 1: light as a digital signal, just like it does with sounds.
Speaker 1: So if you were in a room when this happened,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't actually hear anything. The laser voice is completely silent,
Speaker 1: but the microphone inside your device would respond as if
Speaker 1: it had just received a voice command. All right, So
Speaker 1: what about the voice assistant that's on your phone, Like,
Speaker 1: like on my phone, series only responds to commands if
Speaker 1: I'm the one who speaks them. So does that make
Speaker 1: smartphones immune to these kind of laser attacks? I mean,
Speaker 1: they've got a slightly better line of defense than smart
Speaker 1: speakers like the Amazon Echo or the Google Home. Those
Speaker 1: don't have the kind of voice authentication you're talking about,
Speaker 1: and that makes them especially vulnerable to light commands from hackers.
Speaker 1: But that said, if a hacker had a recording of
Speaker 1: your voice or was somehow able to reconstruct it, they
Speaker 1: could actually adjust the frequency of their laser to match
Speaker 1: the sound of your own voice and then use the
Speaker 1: to issue commands to your phone. So what what kind
Speaker 1: of commands are we talking about? Exactly? I mean, it's terrifying.
Speaker 1: They can make online purchases, unlock your car, adjust your thermostat,
Speaker 1: open the garage door. It really just depends on the
Speaker 1: kind of system that's being hacked and what the user
Speaker 1: has it hooked up to. And the worst part is,
Speaker 1: because of how intense a laser beam is, hackers could
Speaker 1: use this trick even on devices that are hundreds of
Speaker 1: feet away. So if you have a home assistant that
Speaker 1: responds to voice commands. Your best bed is to keep
Speaker 1: it away from any windows. If it's in the hackers
Speaker 1: land of site, then it's in the land of their
Speaker 1: fire too. Yeah. That's that's interesting. You know, I thought
Speaker 1: we were selling a dishwasher laser in this show, but
Speaker 1: it turns out we're advocating for really heavy curtains and blinds.
Speaker 1: I feel like at this point, I mean, it really
Speaker 1: all goes back to what we were saying earlier. Just
Speaker 1: because we can do all of these things with lasers
Speaker 1: doesn't mean we should. I mean, for my part, I
Speaker 1: think I'll just stick to using them to point at
Speaker 1: things and we'll leave the rest to the professionals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's probably a good idea. But before we bow out
Speaker 1: of this laser game for good, let's fire off a
Speaker 1: few more rounds in today's back off. Yah yah h
Speaker 1: m okay. So I wanted to start with this one
Speaker 1: because it's something I always forget, which is that the
Speaker 1: word laser is really an acronym. It stands for light
Speaker 1: amplification by stimulated emission of radiation. And the other weird
Speaker 1: thing is that most of that name was actually taken
Speaker 1: from an earlier technology that amplified microwaves instead of instead
Speaker 1: of light waves. So some mazers, I guess, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: I I used to think masers were some kind of
Speaker 1: made up science fiction version of lasers, like in the
Speaker 1: old Godzilla movies, the military always rolled out these tanks
Speaker 1: with satellite dishes on them to to fight the monsters,
Speaker 1: and they were called maser cannons. But it turns out
Speaker 1: that those were a real thing, and they actually predate
Speaker 1: lasers by about a decade or so. Plus they're effective
Speaker 1: against Godzilla, which isn't nothing. I mean, that's that's impressive. Alright. Well,
Speaker 1: back to lasers. If today's show has you craving a
Speaker 1: few more lasers in your own life, you could always
Speaker 1: head to No Man's Land for the most remote game
Speaker 1: of laser tag on the planet. So Originally built during
Speaker 1: the Victorian era, as this British sea fort, the aptly
Speaker 1: named No Man's Land is an artificial island that never
Speaker 1: saw much action and was ultimately decommissioned during the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: So from there. The fort had a single brush with
Speaker 1: fame back in the seventies, when it served as a
Speaker 1: location for a doctor who episode, apparently it was home
Speaker 1: to a race of these evil bipedal reptiles called the
Speaker 1: Sea Devils. Then, in two thousand fifty No Man's Land
Speaker 1: entered the strangest chapter yet when it was converted into
Speaker 1: a luxury hotel and entertainment resort. These new features of
Speaker 1: the fort include twenty two bedrooms, a cabaret bar, a sauna,
Speaker 1: plenty of shops and restaurants, and of course, a twenty
Speaker 1: one room laser tag labyrinth that winds through the entire
Speaker 1: lower level. And if you think about, like, who doesn't
Speaker 1: want to play laser tag in the basement of an
Speaker 1: abandoned sea fort, it just sounds pretty awesome. Um. In
Speaker 1: November two thousand seventeen, a British laser lighting Companies set
Speaker 1: the world record for the largest laser light show of
Speaker 1: all time. This is at a convention in Las Vegas.
Speaker 1: The company made history with a thirty minute laser show
Speaker 1: that featured to staggering different lasers. The show culminated in
Speaker 1: a seven minute finale that lit up the Nevada sky
Speaker 1: with a massive one thousand, three d seventy seven watts
Speaker 1: of laser power and again for reference, the average laser
Speaker 1: pointer uses just five milliwatts. Yeah, that's a lot of juice.
Speaker 1: That's that's interesting, all right. So we've run through a
Speaker 1: bunch of different applications for lasers today, but back in
Speaker 1: the sixties when they were first being developed, no one
Speaker 1: was really sure how you could actually use these things.
Speaker 1: In fact, the inventor of the laser didn't even really know.
Speaker 1: His name was Theodore Maymon, and despite building the first
Speaker 1: functioning laser for Hughes Laboratories in nineteen sixty, he later
Speaker 1: referred to his creation as quote a solution seeking a problem.
Speaker 1: And the good news, as I think we've shown today,
Speaker 1: as they're turned out to be all all kinds of
Speaker 1: problems that lasers can actually help solve. Yeah, that that
Speaker 1: is true. But I have to point out there's at
Speaker 1: least one major problem that lasers could potentially create in
Speaker 1: the future, and that is, of course, the warping of
Speaker 1: space time. You know, I thought for sure this was
Speaker 1: gonna be about some like real life death star or something.
Speaker 1: But what do lasers have to do with space time?
Speaker 1: So this all comes down to gravity. Light carries energy,
Speaker 1: and because of that, light has its own gravity. But
Speaker 1: the gravitational force created by laser light is scientifically speaking,
Speaker 1: a little bit funky. It turns out that when you
Speaker 1: rotate a laser beam, it's gravity actually warps the nearby spacetime,
Speaker 1: which you might recall is basically the fabric of the universe.
Speaker 1: So as the beam rotates, spacetime curls along with it.
Speaker 1: And I know this all sounds kind of scary and
Speaker 1: world ending, but don't worry, because the researchers behind this
Speaker 1: discovery have a much less upsetting way to think about it.
Speaker 1: According to them, the reality warping effect is like if
Speaker 1: you put a ball into honey and spin it, the
Speaker 1: ball kind of drags along the honey around it. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that's any more reassuring, but it is
Speaker 1: fun to imagine the fabric of the universe is honey.
Speaker 1: So I really feel like for that alone, you've earned
Speaker 1: the trophy for this week, Mango. Congratulations. Well, it is
Speaker 1: an honor. As always, I do think we should thank
Speaker 1: Gabe for doing the heavy lifting on this episode, as
Speaker 1: he does for most episodes. But but lasers are so
Speaker 1: complicated and you did so much research for it. But
Speaker 1: I think that's it for today's part Time Genius from
Speaker 1: Will gave Lowell and myself thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 1: We'll be back next week with another new episode. Part
Speaker 1: Time Genius is a production of I heart Radio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts, form my heart Radio, visit the i heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite show.