Laser

Antibiotics were one of the most important inventions of the 20th century, but bacteria are developing resistance to them. Now researchers have shown that ultrashort pulses of laser light can kill bacteria and viruses, without harming human cells.

Water can take on far more forms than many people give it credit for, and now scientists have recreated a particularly bizarre one in the lab – a “hot black ice” that may exist deep inside planets like Uranus and Neptune.

Several bike-mounted devices already laser-project lines onto the road, showing motorists how much passing space they should provide. tether works in a similar fashion, but it also senses passing vehicles in order to produce cyclist-safe road maps.

The US NRL is developing an Argon Fluoride laser that may one day make fusion power a practical by delivering the incredible temperatures required for a self-sustaining fusion reaction, with enough efficiency to make the process worthwhile.

Even though it's now possible to 3D-print foods into millimeter-precise shapes and forms, cooking those printed foods is still an inexact process. Scientists are trying to change that, by using lasers to cook foods to specific optimized standards.

In a busy workshop, it's possible to lose track of what substance a given sheet of material is composed of – making it risky to cut with a laser. SensiCut is designed to help, by identifying 30 different materials based on their surface qualities.

A compelling new study is offering an insight into the mechanism by which a novel form of light therapy can speed the healing of burn injuries. The research indicates the experimental therapy can activate a key protein that stimulates cell growth.

Physicists have outlined a relatively simple new way to create antimatter, by firing two lasers at each other to reproduce the conditions near a neutron star, converting light into matter and antimatter. Doing so could unlock cosmological mysteries.

Scientists at South Korea's Center for Relativistic Laser Science have achieved a major milestone in physics – and one pursued by researchers in the field for decades – by generating a record-breaking ultra-high intensity laser.

Scientists have developed a tiny first-of-its-kind imaging sensor designed to build detailed 3D maps of cellular structures inside the body, potentially revealing stiffness and abnormalities that may be indicative of cancer.

Startup Carbon Robotics has wheeled out an autonomous machine for farmers that has weeds in its cross hairs, using a combination of computer vision and high-powered lasers to comb fields and take out thousands of the pesky plants an hour.

Scientists at CERN have used lasers to cool down antimatter for the first time. The milestone could help unlock some of the secrets of this weird substance, including why it didn’t annihilate the universe soon after the Big Bang.