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Tech Podcast: The laser turns 50

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Lasers are cool, and we like them. There, we said it. Why else would Dr. Evil want so badly to put them on sharks? Yep, because that would doubly cool. “Light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation” (laser) turned 50 on May 16th — the anniversary of the day American physicist Theodore Maiman fired up the first working laser at the Hughes Research Laboratories in California. The newspaper headlines at the time heralded the advent of the “death ray,” and while military interest in lasers continues to be keen and varied, its in everyday life that the laser has made enormous impacts. They allow us to play CDs and DVDs, they’re used extensively in various kinds of surgery, and they are helping ring up your barcodes at the grocery store. So, in WTP 288, we say Happy B-Day to the laser by taking a look back at the theory and tech behind it, and then taking a look what the future might hold for the laser. Nice.

We’ve also got an update on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, including a look at how the Soviets handled gas leaks back in the 1960s and 70s. Prepare to be slightly disturbed.

Then, we revisit a couple of stories we’ve been following here on the Tech Podcast. First, we’ll hear Cyrus Farivar’s report on Haystack, software that’s been designed to help Iranians circumvent the government’s online censorship. The US government has given its seal of approval to Haystack, and Cyrus assesses its likely technological and political effectiveness.

And remember Latvia’s digital Robin Hood? Using the Matrix-ish online name “Neo,” this person exposed government data on salaries. Turns out that in a time of recession, some Latvian bankers didn’t take their pay cuts…and Neo put that data out there for everyone to see. Well, Neo’s been outed. He’s Ilmars Poikans, a 31 year old IT researcher from the University of Latvia’s Computer Science department. We’ll hear from Poikans himself. You’ll be interested to hear how easy it was for him to access supposedly secure government data.

We end with, what else, robot nurses in Japan. The population is aging, foreign nurses are having a hard time passing the difficult language exams required to stay in the country, and so some see robotic care as the way forward. The BBC’s Roland Buerk has the story.

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(Photo by the Air Force Research Laboratory, via Wikipedia)